A Halloween Scenario with X10!

This is the month of October, and that means getting ready to do some serious haunting. So this month we’re going to help you prepare a Halloween scenario that will not only scare trick-or-treating visitors, but should also make you the talk of the neighborhood.

Last week we showed you some things you could do with the outside of your house, and briefly gave you some ideas for the inside of the house as well. This week we’re going to expound on those ideas with more details.

Inside the first room of the house (for most people the living room), place white sheets over the furniture and black cloth over the floor. Throw dust and dark-colored glitter over everything that to give it an old look. Create a path down the middle of the room so that all this stuff doesn’t get ground into the carpet.

Take a large bookcase, and place those new moving castors underneath it. Then move the bookcase in front of the door leading into the next room. This will act as your secret passage. Decorate the bookcase to look like those secret passages in the movies.

Then take a generous portion of spider webbing, and set up two or three spider webs throughout the room. Inside those spider webs insert a giant Hershey chocolate bar. This will help ease some of the tension, and maybe tempt the trick-or-treaters enough to continue on with their journey. Along the floor, and on the furniture, scatter Hershey’s Kisses in conspicuous places.

Take a pair of pants and a shirt and stuff them with cloth so that they look real. Set them up on the sofa looking toward the entryway. Take a hollowed out pumpkin and put a wig on it, and paint it to look like a face. Place it in the lap of your dummy so that it appears as if this headless person is holding his head in his lap.

Hook up the XCam2 with battery pack inside the pumpkin, and camouflage the camera with some form of dark cloth that blends in with the head/face. Just inside the front door, hook up another XCam2 WideEye where it will give a good view of the room from nearly eye level.

Set up your TV along the wall by the secret passage. If you can, make the TV look like a large painting. You can do this by creating a frame that will fit snugly around the TV. Then take some sheer and colored cloth and place it over the television.

Hook your XCam2 Receiver into the VCR, and leave the television on.

Remember that the XCam2 does require some light, so here would be a great place to get creative with the lights. One suggestion would be to place two spots, one on each side of the front door and aim them up toward the ceiling so they don’t throw too much light. (You can buy these at your local gadget store for around twenty dollars.)

Hook the spots into an ActiveHome Lamp Module. The dimmer option will allow you to control the brightness of the light from your remote control.

If the spots are still too bright, then a gel (a piece of colored paper that goes over spotlights) can be used to tone the light down. You may also want to experiment with lighting the spider webs and throwing light in other areas of the room. Proper lighting can really enhance the experience, and it’s easily controlled through the ActiveHome Remote Control.

As the trick-or-treaters enter the house, they will see the body and head, and they will see themselves looking back through the picture you set up and think the head is watching them. Then as you are watching them, you can switch cameras with your remote, and suddenly something’s looking at them from behind. When they turn to see what’s behind them, then you can switch back to the camera in the head.

Creepy crawly things always work really well when it comes to scaring someone. Little rubber snakes, and mice and spiders should have a good effect. Put them up on your secret passage entrance, and any place where a trick-or-treater might brush them as they pass by.

Once you reach the secret passage slowly and melodramatically open it, revealing nothing but blackness behind it. If you wanted, you could punctuate this by suddenly turning off all the lights with your ActiveHome remote once the door is opened.

Hook up a boom box, along with a sound effect of a wolf howling, or several wolves howling into an ActiveHome Appliance Module and have that on a loop. As soon as you open the secret passage, hit your remote and listen to the wolves. You as the host of your haunted house can take in the sound. Breathe it in and enjoy it.

Have another light just under your face and hook that up to an ActiveHome Lamp Module so that you can hit your remote and bring up the light just under your face. This is a very creepy look, and should get some really good reactions. If you have an acting bug, there’s a great line from the book "Brahm Stoker’s Dracula." When the Count welcomes Jonathan Harker into his castle wolves start howling. The Count's eyes gleamed, and he said:

"Listen to them--the children of the night! What music they make!"

So here’s how your story will play out. Once you get the trick-or-treaters into the room, with your ActiveHome remote bring up the spotlights and welcome them with your best "Igor" impersonation. As you lead them through the house they can see themselves in the picture as if the head in front of them is looking directly at them. Once you see that their attention is focused on that picture, you suddenly change the camera with your remote. This will cause a stir among the trick-or-treaters as they become aware that they are being watched from behind. Once they turn to see who or what is looking at them, you turn the camera back to the headless man on the couch.

Move aside some creepy critters along the secret passage and open it in a melodramatic fashion. Then with your ActiveHome remote, turn off all the lights and turn on the sound effect of wolves howling. Hit the light underneath you, and deliver your line. Remember, this is your chance to be "stellar" and to deliver chills into the heart of every trick-or-treater present. The next step will be to lead them into the darkened room.

We’ll look deeper into the darkened room in next week’s conclusion of our Haunted House series.

So that’s it for today’s How2. Next week we’ll finish our Halloween Haunted House and show you what you can do with that darkened room. So be sure and come back and visit us.

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