I was forced to forgo anything for Halloween in 2005 because I was stuck 4 hours away from home, on bed rest, expecting my third child any day. (She was born 5 days after Halloween.)
Of course, the following year in 2006 I had to make up for missing 2005 with my most elaborate spook house to date. This time, the Harry Potter movies and books inspired me to choose an academic theme. |
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Trick or treaters saw a cage with bent bars as they approached the house. My husband built this for a spook walk he was in charge of at the college where he works, so I swiped it when he was finished for my Halloween haunt. He built it out of PVC pipes painted a metallic silver. The top and bottom are wooden slabs with holes drilled to fit the pipes. Though it looked good, it was actually a little flimsy and was difficult to move without making it fall apart. But we managed. The sign was made from foam board that I sawed with a knife to look like claw marks and painted.
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My husband in costume for his haunted walk. I used the same costume to create the dummy for my haunt (see below). |
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Then, to enhance the effect, I created a wolfman dummy a short distance away, behind a tree. Later, as it grew dark, it became difficult to see this dummy, and I wish I would have spotlighted it. Live and learn.
I was dressed as a gypsy and answered the door in the character of a teacher giving a tour of the school to prospective students. We listened to the "choir" (the song Double Trouble from Harry Potter 3), saw a picture of the school's founder, Professor D'arc (whose eyes moved to follow you--I swiped the eyes off an old poster I had and put it on a picture of myself dressed as a man), and avoided a ghost who was taking up the hallway space in one direction (the doorway was covered with black paper on which I'd painted a hallway and a ghost at the end).
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After these simple things, I had the children crawl through a tunnel while adults walked around. We had a glimpse of the anatomy classroom (a Dr. Frankenstein-type lab in the kitchen), then I led them to my own "class" where I looked into the crystal ball. I used a projector at this point to project a short video of my two kids onto a mirror. This effect didn't work quite as well as I would have liked, but the visitors were amused. My kids appeared as ghosts that were asking to be let out of the mirror. |
| I "interacted" with
them as they turned into devils and scolded them because they knew
perfectly well that if someone let them out of the mirror, that someone
would be trapped in their place. My little sequence ended when the
devils gave me "raspberries" and
I acted outraged and stomped out of the room. Everyone got a kick out
of that. |
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The next class was potions, set up in my garage. For this, I enlisted the help of my teenage niece. She was dressed in Hermione-type robes and as the visitors entered, she was busy mopping up a spot on the floor under a witch hat.
As I asked for an explanation, she described that Professor Virago had taken a bubble bath and had melted away. Oops. I told her she would just have to take charge, then. She acted frightened, but gave the visitors instructions to make their potion |
| This was my treat part of the haunt. I had numerous bowls of different types of goodies-- raisins, nuts, candy corn, pretzels--set out with labels like "bat's eyes, spider legs," etc. The kids got a little pumpkin or cauldron (available at the dollar store) to fill with their favorite treats to take home as their "potion." |
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The final class was located outside as visitors left my garage to return to their cars. This class was gravedigging, where I had a plastic fence I'd picked up somewhere that had a sign: "out to lunch." Another dummy was seated several feet away near some fake headstones, facing away from visitors and holding a sandwich with a rat inside. Again, this didn't work as well as I would have liked. I don't think anyone could see the rat because of the darkness. Next time, I would light him with a spotlight to alleviate this problem. But, after this last amusement, visitors were on their way. |
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