As kids get older, trick or treating becomes less of a thrill, and haunted houses become more interesting. But it can be exhausting to have your living space become overrun by screaming kids. So why not create a haunted house in your RV?
You can go as spooky as you want, but there are some really cool ways to scare people using the space in your RV. Especially if you have a larger, multi-room unit with slide-outs, you can really create some drama, inside and out.
1. Set up a path for the participants to follow. You can use the yard, the garage and the house in addition to your
RV if you are going big, or just the RV if you are going small. If possible, have a route planned, with a separate exit and entrance.
2. Use a fog machine to set up a spooky scene, either in the RV or just outside of it. You could create a graveyard scene on the path up to the door, for instance, using foam tombstones, and lots of scary fog (and maybe even a skeleton or zombie crawling out of the ground). The most important premise of haunted houses is: when in doubt, add fog.
3. Use scary holograms to project spooky images. You can do this yourself with a piece of glass and a computer monitor, or a projector. You can find some truly terrifying animations to project here. Imagine walking by a window and having a haunted face appear in the window at the same time as a scream? Horrifying.
4. Hang spooky things to create a mood. This cocoon corpse is my favourite.
5. Use the right lighting. You don’t want things to bright or too dark for an effective haunted house. Use different colour – like purple, red and dark green – to cast a scary glow. Periodically, having your guests thrown into complete darkness can also be effective, as long as it is timed correctly.
6. Create movement. Either have someone lying in wait to surprise your Halloween guests, or use more advanced electronics to have things jump out and scare people. This is the bread and butter of the scary experience and should be used sparingly. It works best when paired with distraction – have the participants looking at something else before startling them. Or scare them once, have them think it’s over, and go for an even bigger surprise.
7. Utilize spooky sounds. Soft, creepy music throughout, with audios of chainsaws or screaming punctuating is a great way to go. Used correctly, children singing nursery rhymes in a minor key or even slow whistling can be terrifying. Don’t forget to use silence at key moments as well, followed by a fright or having a volunteer run from one side of the room to the other in the dark.
8. Lastly, have a treat at the end – a bag of candy, maybe a homemade medal for completing the haunted house – to give to the kids. Everyone deserves a nice treat after going through that terrifying experience.