Halloween How To's How you can Haunt you House
	My top favorite big impact ideas: Lighting - Perhaps the biggest and best way to change the look of any house is to do it with lighting. Although light bulbs can ad up, they last long especially when used for seasonal projects.  First, put a colored light bulb in a lamp in every room in the window to give an eerie glow throughout the house.  Second use plastic electric Christmas candles you may already own, and ad flicker bulbs to create candles that can be seen from various locations.  You can also put flicker bulbs in almost any other light in the house like a chandelier. Third, take on that project you have been putting off and change the switches in some areas of the house to dimmer switches.  That can really transform things and create a spectacular mood, especially for parties. Lastly, make a huge change by using ground stake flood lights to put colored spot lights in to illuminate the trees and yard.  Green, Red, Yellow and Blue are perfect scene setters. Target already has many of the tools needed for these lighting effects at great prices in their seasonal section Home Depot has great prices on light bulbs and floods Music - Music, is perhaps the second best way to create a frightening mood. Don’t just use one set of music, have different music through out the house and some in the yard.  Use organ, thunder and lightening, wolves, and crickets mixed in with a strobe light to create lightening flashes.  Midnight Syndicate is a company that has a variety of fantastic mood setting music and a few sound effects.  Their CD’s can be found at any Spirit Halloween Superstore. Fog ideas - Fog is something that always comes to mind with any Haunted House.  Most people think of using dry ice, however dry ice is expensive, will be gone at the end of the night, and can be dangerous. Many stores now carry inexpensive fog machines that just do the trick.  Looking for foggers that have a timer or one sold separately, will reduce your time pushing a button all night.   The latest and greatest other method of creating fog, comes with the purchase of a mister.   Misters produce a small amount of low laying misty fog and are designed to be used for a boiling brew effect. You simply place them in water, plug them in, and off they go.  They even have small colored changing lights that really ad to the look when in the water. Although a bit pricier at roughly $25, they can be used over and over again and only require a small amount of cleaning from year to year.     Cob webbing and bed sheets - Another clever technique to Haunt your home, is to use lots and lots of very inexpensive cob webbing.  This is a common purchase for many but can be used in a variety of ways.  Covering the windows, bushes, some furniture, and carefully covering lamps, so as not to touch the hot bulb, will make your house look ancient.  The key is to take time when creating your cob webs and really stretch and thin the material to create the most realistic cob web look.  You will see a big difference from that of big white fluffy clumps.  In addition, you can really make your house look abandon by covering furniture with old white bed sheets.  Great for parties. Grave stone fun! - It takes a bit of crafting, but the time is well worth it, and it’s fun!  Go to your local home depot and buy the thickest pink insulation foam you can find in the lumber area.  It comes in 4x8 sheets but can be broken in half the long way, with a preexisting break line, for easy travel.  Once home, draw out your grave stone shapes onto the foam with a black marker.  Go online to get images of old stones that you can use for shape ideas. Use an old serrated kitchen knife to cut the foam into your desired shapes.  You can also use a tool called a hot wire that is available at many hobby stores, to ad further detail.  I also like to use a box cutter to shave off the sharp edges and corners to give an even more realistic stone look.  Finish your grave stones off with a coat of grey outdoor latex paint, and a product called fleck spray.  One can of this will do many of your stones and will really make them look real.  You could also use cans of white and black spray paint that you may already have laying around the house. To make your grave stones stand in the yard, carefully drill holes into the bottom of the foam, place a 1 foot wooden dowel in the holes, and them stick them in the ground.  Be sure to take your gravestones in on very windy nights to prevent them from breaking. You can use this very same idea to create signs around the house too, like Do Not Enter, Haunted House, or Beware.  Make a simple shape and then use a dremel tool with a router bit to write what ever words you like.  If you don’t have a dremel tool, you can also burn your words into the foam with a soldering tool.  You can either stencil your desired words, or use an overhead projector borrowed from work or school.  I got an old one from a school that they no longer wanted.  Paint your now indented words black first, and then put your coat of grey paint over that and the words will look perfect.  Don’t want to do all that? You could just write on the foam with a black sharpie marker or paint the words on freehand.   String Fun! - This could very well be my favorite thing.  I started doing this as a kid and it freaked people out.   Buy an inexpensive Halloween prop like a bat, ghost, or spider (or use one you have).  Go to Home Depot and get a few screws with eyelets on them (screw with a loop on one end) (Hardware section) for a couple of bucks.  Screw the screw or screws into trees to create your pivot points.  Go to Dicks Sporting goods and buy a string called water foul string.  It is a very strong nylon string that comes in long lengths.  Tie some of this to your prop and run the string through the eyelets in your screws and then up to a bedroom window of your house.  You could also run the string down to the ground and hold it with a weight.  The end result, is a prop that will drop down from your tree, under your commanding hand release, right next to an unsuspecting trick or treater or party goer.  Be careful when placing you screw high in a tree and be sure not to drop the prop on someone’s head.  Prepare for pure bliss and screams all night.  You could also use this idea to open things.  Instead of having something drop down, pull the string to have it open a coffin door, or item hidden in the leaves.  Be creative! For further animation, buy a $5 pressure triggered screaming door mat found at Party America and cut it open to reveal the screaming trigger.  Take the screamer box and pressure controller and tape it to the prop you plan on animating with string.  You’ll discover that upon moving your prop, the screamer will be triggered.  You now have a very life like, self animated screaming prop.  Yikes! -        Where to go for all the goods: •        Spirit Halloween Super Stores •        Twin Cities Magic and Costume Company •        Target •        Party America •        Home Depot – Supplies •        Terror Synicate.com for all sorts of home haunting ideas and links to others.