How to Create a Haunted House on a Budget

Haunted Houses are wildly popular, and a terrific addition to your neighborhood Halloween Trick or Treat festivities. Building your own haunted house doesn't have to be expensive, and requires little more than a few props, yards of black visqueen, paint and some imagination.

Creating the structure

Garages are terrific places to set up a haunted house, although a covered patio or car port will also work. Begin by covering the walls with black visqueen, or in the case of a carport, creating walls. Don't bother stapling the visqueen directly to the walls; hanging it from the ceiling is preferable since swinging sheets of black plastic add to the spookiness.

Once the exterior framework of the haunted house is in place, create a maze by hanging even more sheets of visqueen from the ceiling. The maze doesn't have to be too elaborate ~ a simple passage way in the shape of a couple of Esses will do. By creating passageways, neighborhood Trick or Treater's will be forced down a gauntlet of spooky activities.

Building tableaus

After the walls are up, the fun part of decorating can begin. At the opening of the Haunted House, string up cobwebs and lots of spiders. If you are skilled with paint, sketch in glow-in-the-dark cobwebs on the visqueen walls. Those cobwebs are what the kids should see when they look inside the Haunted House ~ giving them no clue as to what hides behind the corner.

And once they turn that first corner, you'll have them walking straight into their first spooky tableau! This is the place for a cemetery, which can be crafted from cardboard headstones decorated with glow in the dark paint. Draw a luminescent skeleton on the visqueen wall, toss a few luminescent bones around, and set up a fog machine if one is available.

As the kids leave the cemetery and turn down the halls, they will enter another passageway which should be scattered with a few spooky props. These props should be tied into the second tableau hidden behind the next corner.