Crafting a spooky homestead is a wonderful way to make the season magical for your little ghouls and goblins. Creating a spooktacularly appropriate Halloween environment does not have to be pricey or difficult. With an eye for detail and some thematically appropriate additions to your existing decor, you can transform your normally well-decorated home into a temporary house of horrors.
Plan a Path
Plan a path for your guests to follow. Determine how you want your guests to move through your house, and decorate accordingly. By mapping out a tentative scare-fest path, you can determine where you should tuck away fright inducers.
Lighting is Everything
Set the scene with lighting. All attempts at creepiness will be in vain if your house is not adequately dimmed. If you normally rely on bright overhead lighting, distribute some lamps around your space, and replace the standard incandescent bulbs with dim purple or painted black options. Add only enough light to ensure that guests can see to move about the space but not so much that they feel comfortable and safe.
Creepy Beats
Play a creepy soundtrack. As any scary movie fan will tell you, creepy tunes play an important part in the development of suspense. Set your guests on edge with music by playing a Halloween soundtrack in your house. Select a soundtrack from a popular scary movie, or instead a special effects soundtrack that provides naturally creepy ambiance.
Spin a Web
Distribute spider webs lavishly. Use artificial spider webs to give your normally well-kept house an unkempt look. Place these spider webs in corners and suspend them from surfaces.
Glow, Baby, Glow!
Toss in some glow in the dark decorations. Select spiders, skeletons or skulls that glow in the dark, and place them in darkened corners. These decorations will likely set your guests on edge and add to the creepy feel of your house as a whole.
Who You Gonna Call?
Create some hovering ghosts. Purchase or create ghosts, and suspend them from the ceiling with translucent line. Place them in a walkway so that guests have no choice but to duck under them as they walk through your home.
Battery-Powered Thrills
Add automated frights. Purchase battery-operated or plug-in figures that move when they detect motion. Look for common spooky figures, such as witches, vampires and werewolves. Place these figures in darkened hallways or tucked away in corners so that they can incite temporary terror in those who walk by.
Live-Action Chills
Enlist live-action fright-inducers. Ask other neighbors to help out by dressing up and becoming part of your Halloween fright fest. Instruct volunteers to tuck themselves away in doorways or crouch down and pop up, right as unsuspecting victims walk by.
