How to Make a Haunted House

Co-authored by wikiHow Staff

Last Updated: April 26, 2024 Approved

Making a haunted house is the perfect way to celebrate Halloween and spook your guests. Transforming your ordinary home into a blood-curdling haunted house takes some creativity, hard work, and planning. Your effort will pay off, however, when your guests are screaming with both laughter and fright.

Part 1

Part 1 of 3:

Concocting a Haunted Plan

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1
Set a date. Halloween (October 31st) is a great day to have a haunted house, but you can choose any date. Sometime during October, however, is ideal. Make sure to tell people about the date and time you plan to have your haunted house a few weeks ahead of time.^{[1]
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- If you do want your haunted house to be on Halloween, make sure to start preparations a few weeks before Halloween.
2
Plan details that are age-appropriate for your expected guests. Think about who will be following your haunted path. Will the audience be filled with little kids or older adults? This will also determine what you put in your house. If the haunted house will mainly be visited by adults, it's okay to pump up the gore and jump scares. If kids will be visiting the most, rely heavily on design and add in a few, mild jump scares.
- You could give out a little prize at the end for children, like some candy, goody bag, or some other Halloween treat.
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3
Plan your haunted path. Before you start preparing your home, you need to decide what the guests will see. Will you commit to decorating the outside of the house, or will you focus on the inside? Will you decorate all the rooms in the house, or just a few key rooms and hallways? The haunted house can be as big or small as you want it to be.^{[2]
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- It's also an option to create a maze in your home out of supplies such as painted boxes and cloth.
4
Plan the tone of your haunted house. Once you've planned the path, you can think more about the tone you want to set in the home. Will this house be aimed to make people laugh, or will it freak people out? You could plan a little bit of both if you don't want your haunted house to be too scary.^{[3]
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- For a lighter, funnier tone, have an actor play a “mad scientist” that acts silly as he works around his lab. Or, have typical scary monsters, like Frankenstein, bump into things and joke around as they try to “haunt” your guests.
- For a scarier tone, have jump scares in every room, have an actor scream or bang on something when it gets quiet, and tone down the lighting to make the setting spookier.
5
Come up with a theme. The more specific your haunted house is, the scarier it will be. Decide if you want a traditional haunted house, if it's the house of a serial killer, or even an abandoned insane asylum or hospital. Maybe the person who lived there before died and now they are a ghost. Your theme will determine how you decorate your haunted house.
- If you really want your haunted house to be authentic, come up with a story for why the house is haunted. For example, the house could be haunted by a family that was brutally murdered in the basement. You can tell your guests the haunted story as they enter the haunted house.
- For an unexpected twist, have a setting that look cute and cheery, but reveal sinister details, like “dead” bodies or spooky noises, as the guests travel through the house.
6
Enlist the help of your spooky friends. It will be nearly impossible to pull off making a haunted house on your own. Not only will your friends be able to decorate, but they will also be able to guide and spook your guests throughout the haunted house. Here are a few things your friends can do:^{[4]
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- Your friends can dress up as ghosts or goblins and grab, shout at, or make noise around your guests when they least expect it.
- They can help "guide" the guests through the different haunted rooms, and can be in charge of different activities or games.
- If you don't have any friends who want to participate, consider hiring actors.

Part 2

Part 2 of 3:

Creating an Eerie Atmosphere

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1
Create an eerie effect through lighting. Do not put a lot of lights in your haunted house, or people will be too relaxed. They will also be able to tell where your spooky friends are hiding. If it's dark, they will be tense and have a better time. Just make sure your guests have enough light to get through the house safely. Here are some ways to use the lighting to create a haunted effect:
- Consider putting your guests in a very dark room and giving them flashlights to try to find the way out.
- Replace your lamps with dim, green bulbs around the house.
- Drape traditional lamps with cobwebs and tape rubber bats to the insides.
- Light a spotlight under a spider web or fake creepy insect to create a spooky shadow.
2
Use special effects like strobe lights and a fog machine. Try mirrors, black lights, and smoke to confuse the visitors. The special effects will make your visitors feel more shocked and spooked at every turn. Fog machines and strobe lights are also classics when it comes to haunted house special effects.^{[5]
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- You can find fog machines for around $30 at a party or Halloween store.
- Put strobe lights in a room to create a dramatic effect.
3
Create spooky noises. The sounds in the haunted house will scare your visitors and keep them on their toes. The trick to having spooky noises is to time them perfectly and not use them too often, or your guests won't be surprised. Here are some tricks to creating some scary sounds:^{[6]
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- Have a recording of a different spooky sound in every room. One room can have the sound of a chainsaw, while another can have the sound of a woman screaming.
- Your volunteers can scamper from one side of an empty room to another to create a scary sound.
- Put on a soundtrack made up of soft, creepy music.
- Use silence to your advantage. Pick some key moments to keep the house silent so your guests will be even more startled by the next sound.
4
Create a maze for your guests. A maze is a great way to guide your guests through your haunted house, whether it is located in a house, apartment, or even a garage. You could stack boxes and cover them with a black cloth so they look like walls. Plan your maze out with a sketch first and then start building it at least a week before the haunted house. Decorate your maze with scary props, lights, and characters.^{[7]
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- Make sure the way out of the maze is clear to guests.
If you are going for a fun, child-friendly theme, avoid gore and try to keep the decorations fun or only mildly scary. For example, use bats, friendly looking ghosts, or cartoonish looking monsters. Use decorations such as fake blood, skulls, hazmat suits, heads in a jar, or gory “bodies” if you want a more adult, scary theme.

Part 3

Part 3 of 3:

Using Props and Actors

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1
Scare your guests with your volunteers. Props are important, but it's the characters that can truly make a haunted house feel terrifying. There are a number of ways that your friends can step out and scare your guests. Here are a few things they can do:
- After a bout of silence, a spooky ghost can jump out and scare your guests. Try having the ghost pop out of a closet.
- Have a volunteer grip guests' shoulders. Have them do this slowly so the guest thinks it's just another guest at first.
- Bring your guests in a dark room. Have your volunteer turn on a flashlight under his face and laugh maniacally.
- Have one of your volunteers get in line behind a pack of guests, and wait for them to slowly realize that he is there.
- Have one of your guests dress up like a famous horror film character, such as Jason, or Freddy.
Gore is often overdone, but it can be effective if used properly. For example, place a "victim" who is playing dead next to a pool of blood. Or, cover a “victim” with makeup that makes them look as if they have a horrible infection. You can also put a bloody brain out on a table or near a “victim.”
3
Have spooky activities for your guests. If you want your haunted house to be a bit less terrifying and more fun for your guests, especially younger ones, you can arrange to have a different spooky activity in different rooms. Some activities to try are:
- Have a tub of cold water with fake snakes slithering in them. Place some coins on the bottom. Tell your guests they can't move on until they reach down and find a coin.
- Instead of bobbing for apples, carve apples to look like skulls and play bobbing for skulls!
- Peel the skin off a bunch of grapes and put them in a bowl. Cover the bowl and tell your guests to put their hands inside and tell you what they feel. Correct answer: eyeballs!
Have your guests open a room where there is nothing but a full length mirror covered in cobwebs. Give them a few seconds to stare at the mirror. Then, have a goblin or ghost jump out at them from behind them or the mirror.
5
Play up the jump scares. Jump scares are very effective when it comes to getting people to scream during a haunted house visit. Have a room with a closed coffin in the center. Have a few activities or surprises to keep the guests busy in the room. Then, right before they leave the room, have a "skeleton" jump out of the casket.
- You can also have characters jump out during certain sections of the house as the visitors walk through.
- If your guests will be older, have an “actor” chase them with a chainsaw that no longer has a chain.
6
Set up a few fake dummies throughout the haunted house. Your guests will get used to them as they walk through. Have your friends blend in with the dummies and then jump out at your guests when they least expect it. This will work especially well at the entrance or exit of the house.^{[8]
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- You can make a dummy by stuffing clothes with newspaper, and putting a mask over a balloon.

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How do I find the perfect time to scare my guests?

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It is best to scare them when they are distracted, by others or some specific prop/item/action. Example: they walk in a room and in front of them is a person they are expecting to scare them (that person is the draw). Then you come up behind or from the side and scare them while their focus is elsewhere (you are the hit).

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I have a small hallway. What should I do?

Michael Hathman

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For best effect, you could decorate it all in black and hang big spiders in cobwebs (if you can get them to move battery-operated, all the better). Seems to really add to the "scare factor" because so many people are terrified of spiders.

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If I make a haunted house should I charge for it?

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This should depend on how much effort was put in and how big or it is. Ask some friends or neighbors to check the haunted house out, and afterward ask them what they think would be a good admission price.

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Tips

If you're going for the "abandoned" haunted house look, drape your furniture in white and tape fake "boards" to your windows to make it look like it's boarded up.

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Create a bloody effect by putting some fake blood over mirrors, or dripping red candle wax over mirrors or white candles.

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Before buying props or decorations from major Halloween stores, check out your local grocery store to get some affordable and high-quality props and decorations.

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Warnings

Avoid having real candles in your haunted home. Remember that part of a haunted house is the element of surprise, and if your guests are truly surprised, they can run into or bump into a candle and set your haunted house on fire.

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Avoid having pregnant women, elderly people, very young children, people with heart conditions, or people who are claustrophobic or easily scared in your haunted house. Your haunted house should ultimately be fun and shouldn't make anyone panic or feel truly ill.

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Be sure that your neighborhood or apartment complex is okay with you having a haunted house if it will be noisy.

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