I have run the haunted house at our fall fair for 6 years, this is my seventh, at our fall festival. We take over the stage and put up black plastic, lots of black lights and strobe lights, some fog, some bubbles etc. It is the treat of the 5th graders to be able to dress up and work in it. We run it for 4 hours on a Sat. afternoon.
We put on a Fall Festival around Halloween time, and along with the hayride, pumpkin decorating, food, and music, we have a "Ghost trail". Mostly the fathers take care of organizing it and they use other fathers and Highschool students. They mark off a trail in the woods behind the school and drape it with dark plastic, have fog and strobe lighting and then you are gudied through to different sketches involving ghosts, werewolves, botched operations, etc. There are about 8 stops on the route. The kids and parents love it. It is a bit intense for some of the younger kids so this year the first hour will be toned done for the younger set. This night is highly anticipated every year and we have close to 1000 people attending. (we are a grade 1-6 school with about 500 students).
We have a haunted house every year at our carnival and it's usually hosted by the senior class (we're a preschool-12th school). The more popular ones have been haunted laboratories and were more gross than scary. Noodle "guts", grape "eyeballs", botched operations, etc...Dim the lights, add fog and everything can take an eerie look! :cool:
Has anyone other than C. Brookes hosted a Haunted House before? I already emailed her to ask more questions. We traditionally have a "Pumpkin Walk" event 10/30 every year--big family festival--but never with a spooky nature to it. For the first year the Cub Scouts has asked if they could put on a Haunted House at the event. There are some mixed feelings on it. If we pursued it, I'm wondering what other people may have done and how it's gone. There's always opportunity to steer their efforts into a different direction for participation, but this does sound like fun, although a very different angle. Any input?
