Ten ways to make your house haunted for Hallowe’en
Getting into the Hallowe’en spirit, Arthur looks at cheap and easy ways to make your house spooky…
- Pumpkins – for the seasoned hallowe’ener, this may seem very obvious, but this goes slightly further than one jack –o-lantern . Get a lot. They don’t even have to be pumpkins, get any root vegetable that you can hollow out and make a scary face. Dot these around porches, front gardens, windows and in and around your property to create an eerie feeling of being watched.
- Noise – place a wireless speaker somewhere and get it to play spooky sounds. Classics such as metal being scraped along a floor, static television, screams and evil laughs will scare anyone walking past. If you’re playing music inside during a hallowe’en party, interject these noises into your playlist to catch people by surprise.
- Lighting – If you can get your hands one some (heat proof) translucent red plastic to put over your security lights, this will add a more scary light to your outside spaces. Equally you can put this on your lights inside. This gives the room lower level lighting, meaning you can hide surprises and make everything that bit more spooky. (Please be very careful when putting anything onto light-bulbs and always read the instructions!)
- Repurpose other decorations – get those Christmas fairy lights down from the attic and use them for some low level lighting in outside spaces, or make them into creepy shapes. If you’ve got a box of decorations you were planning to throw away, why not make them look even worse and dot them around so it looks like something went horribly wrong around the holiday period.
- Cardboard – For some reason I always seem to have copious amounts of cardboard lying around. Now’s the time to get rid of it by getting creative. Cut it up into gravestones or coffins and dot them around. Of course these are weather dependant. Rainy weather will see these turned to mush. Much less scary.
- Toys – there aren’t many things creepier than an old broken doll. Think the Chucky movies. Get some old broken toys and leave them dotted around the space your decorating. Make sure they are obviously broken and that’s it. The less said, the more implied.
- Signs – Write warning messages from ‘survivors’ or maybe the last words of those that weren’t so lucky…
- Old clothes – cover them in some fake blood and dot them around on the floor or, better yet, stuff them and leave them sat in strange positions, making it look like a person…well, part of a person.
- Old sheets – the obvious again jumps to mind – Ghosts. But you can use old sheets in a variety of other ways. Cover up your nice sofa and cover the sheet in blood or stick them to walls. Maybe create an horrible scene in a bedroom. Or rip them up and hang them from the ceiling in a dark room. People won’t know what it is when they walk in.
- Cheese cloth – This may be a bit out there as to whether you have any lying around, but if you do you’ll be saving yourself a lot of money by using it as a spiders web instead of buying them from a shop! Spiders are a staple of Hallowe’en, so you can use it again and again.
BONUS: This requires a lot of effort and dedication, but it is definitely worth it. Human props. Get someone to hide or sit very still so people believe it is a doll. This will get the best reactions, but also a willing person.
Enjoy Hallowe’en!
