A Halloween Scenario with X10!

So far in our Halloween How2s we’ve taken you through the graveyard (the front yard) and the entrance to your haunted house. This week, we’re going to take you into that last room, the payoff, where the trick-or-treaters finally get their candy, but not before we scare them just a little more. So here we go with the conclusion of our haunted house series.

Once that trap door is open (the one we set up last week), it’s time to take the trick-or-treaters into their final resting place... er into that final scary room. To make the room look authentic, it’s best to give it a dank and castle-like/basement sort of feel. This can be done by moving all the furniture out of the room, covering the walls with gray or black cloth, or purchasing Styrofoam wall covers.

In a corner of the room, have a large coffin sitting quietly. To give the room an even eerier feel, take some large wooden crates and scatter them around. You don’t have to put anything into them; just knowing that they’re there should cause some sense of apprehension in the trick-or-treaters. Fresh dirt around or on the crates can be a good touch. Just make sure to put some plastic on the floor so you don’t have ground up dirt in the carpet.

If you can get hold of them, placing some large birds in the room could be an added scare, such as vultures, owls, bats, and ravens.

As you enter the room, have a HawkEye motion sensor set up to trigger a boom box with a continuous loop of wolves howling in the background, maybe some water dripping, bats flying and screeching. A good sound effect cassette would combine many of these sounds so that you will have the full effect. Make sure not to turn it up too loud though, as you don’t want to overpower the effect of the room. By keeping it low, you affect the subconscious, and things are much more scary there.

For lighting, use very soft black and blue lights throughout the room. Hook them into ActiveHome lamp modules so that you can control them at will. Maybe you’ll want to suddenly dim the lights, like when the coffin is open, and you can do it quickly with the remote.

Just inside the door, have a large cauldron, with plenty of hot water. Beside that, have some chunks of dry ice in a cooler. Camouflage the cooler to make it look like a part of the surroundings. You could throw a black cloth over it, or put it inside one of the crates, covering the top to look like the crate. Once inside the room, put on the big thick glove resting on the top of the cooler and reach into the cooler and pull out a chunk of the ice and put it in the cauldron. This will cause the hot water to boil and fog will come out and crawl down the cauldron. Next to the cauldron have a SlimLine switch securely fastened to the wall so that you can inconspicuously hit it and start the sound effect of someone screaming, and then gurgling in the water.

Lead the trick-or-treaters through the room toward the coffin. If you can, make sure some of the birds are close by so that they have to pass by the birds maybe a little closer than they would like.

If you can, get your friends in on this too. Maybe you could have them standing as still as statues. You could make the place look like a large "wax museum."

In another corner you can have a large fan and some gray cloth. If you can, get one of your friends to do this. They can wrap themselves in the cloth to look like a banshee. As the trick-or-treaters pass by, you hit the remote, which turns on the fan. Once the fan goes on, it blows the cloth as if there’s wind in the room. The banshee shrieks and wails, bemoaning the death in the room.

Inside the coffin is where you keep the candy. But there’s one setback. There’s also a vampire lying very still inside as well. The trick-or-treaters must reach into the coffin and pick out their own candy, which they will do very cautiously.

There are two ways to do this next part. First, you can give a very stern warning that under no circumstances must the trick-or-treater take more than one or two pieces of candy lest there be grave consequences. Of course this is going to be challenged by at least one of them so when they reach for that third piece of candy, suddenly the count grabs them by the hand and sits up, still holding on to them. You hit a button on your remote labeled "Finale Macro," which activates a macro in ActiveHome, which suddenly begins to shut off the lights and turn them on very rapidly, and in random order. It also turns on one or two strobes, which begin to flash rapidly. If you’ve got your friends acting as statues, they can all scream and jump around in the room, creating that feeling of utter chaos.

The second option is to simply start this macro as soon as the last trick-or-treater has taken their candy.

You struggle for control, until at last all is silent. The lights have stopped flashing, and all the statues are still again. The trick-or-treaters have had their scare, and you lead them out of the room, out of the house, and turn them loose to finish their trick-or-treating.

And that’s it for this How2. You now have an idea for setting up your own haunted house, but you don’t have too much time left, so you may want to begin preparing now.

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