# SF Themed Haunt?



## JustJimAZ (Aug 19, 2010)

It seems to me that most haunts, if they have any literary influence at all, use the same books. Frankenstein, Dracula, maybe some Lovecraft.

My son suggested the idea of a Haunt based on HG Wells' stories, and I thought it would be interesting. Then I naturally thought about Jules Verne. I wonder if this has been done? Either is too ambitious for me at the moment, but here are some thoughts I have, for your consideration and comment:

Wells' Books:
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth
Giant rats, chickens, worms, wasps, spiders, even people.
The Invisible Man
The obvious man in bandages, mad scientist in his lab.
The Island of Dr. Moreau
Any number of pseudo-human creatures here
The War of the Worlds
The ships, the aftermath of battle, maybe the aliens themselves
The First Men in the Moon
Especially the insectoid aliens in the caverns
Empire of the Ants
Intelligent ants destroy a South American town
The Crystal Egg
The egg allows people to view mars. Wouldn't that be a cool application of a Pepper's Ghost effect? You could use video on a laptop and even make it interactive.

Verne's books:

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

The infamous Captain Nemo and his amazing ship The Nautilus explore any number of weird underwater worlds and encounter any number of creatures! He sank a lot of ships, so underwater zombies are not impossible there!
Master of the world
Basically Captain Nemo in a flying machine. Mad scientist?
Mysterious Island
Nemo again. Not much in the book, but in the movie there were giant beasts
Dr. Ox's Experiment
Giant mutated plants. Maybe they could become man eaters!
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Underwater scenes, sea monsters
From the Earth to the Moon
Again, nothing in the story, but an excuse for an alien planet kind of scene
A Journey to the Center of the Earth
Caves, subterranean creatures, dinosaurs

Let's not forget that Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, which is definitely horror sci-fi, much like Frankenstein was. Like the werewolf, I think much of the horror there is in the transformation. Unlike the werewolf, it has the additional element of Mr. Hyde slowly taking over. That would be a pretty cerebral haunt though.


Looking at this, I now see a lot of steampunk themed opportunity that I did not consider when I began writing it. Odd, considering how much Wells and Verne are revered in steampunk circles. The thing is to make it a haunt - a creepy, uncanny place suitable for scaring the fluids out of ToTs!

If you were creating a haunt based on a sci-fi author, who would you pick, and what would you do? What would you do - or like to see done - with Wells and Verne?


----------



## Vlad (Aug 2, 2005)

I'm not sure I have the artistic flair to theme my whole haunt to any of that. But the whole steampunk concept has captured my mind as of late.


----------



## niblique71 (Dec 2, 2009)

Don't forget Steven King....No Steampunk, but LOTS of content for haunts


----------



## Allen H (Feb 13, 2010)

I doa lot of odd themes onmy trail- I am going to do one based on through the looking glass. I am most likely going to do it in Black light 3D. I think there are a ton of geniuinely scary sets and characters in it.


----------



## ScreamReaper (Feb 21, 2010)

Wow, there's a LOT of places you could go with that theme. Jabberwocky, The Walrus and the Carpenter, the chess theme... There's no shortage of ways to go with this one. I'll look forward to seeing some pics.


----------



## Jaybo (Mar 2, 2009)

Allen H said:


> I doa lot of odd themes onmy trail- I am going to do one based on through the looking glass. I am most likely going to do it in Black light 3D. I think there are a ton of geniuinely scary sets and characters in it.


Ok, I'll be picking your brain for ideas later in the season. Dixie and I have discussed doing a Tim Burton themed haunt. Not Nightmare Before Christmas, more of a collage of all his influences. We want to make it our own, and not just copy items from the movies. I've recently been looking at American McGee's Alice for reference material. Lots of nice imagery in that game.


----------



## Spooky1 (Aug 25, 2008)

If you do an Invisible Man theme, you won't need to put out anything, just tell people it's there.


----------



## niblique71 (Dec 2, 2009)

Don't forget Frank Herbert (Dune series), and Philip K. Dick who has several mind bending books (Blade runner was based on one). As for Dune, I always loved the spice worms, and the guild creatures. Not sure how they'd work for a haunt but very visually stimulating. And then there's the Gom Jabar (the box you put your hand in that makes your mind feel like your hand is being burnt or eaten off). Tons of cool weapons and the mystery of an ancient all knowing/seeing sisterhood. perhaps more difficult for an entire haunt theme but it could inspire a few rooms or scenes


----------



## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

The problem with doing a "Burton" haunt is that you can't stray from the things he's already created and keep it his theme, and then it just makes your haunt a trip down memory lane for those that have seen his movies.

For the classics you left out Verne's Time machine, where you could build the classic machine, and have some of the creatures from the past and the future brought back by the time traveler.

Sleepy Hollow leaves you lots of options (The book not just the movie).

There are tons of Victorian horror stories, it was an extremely popular genre of books for the period.

To me, I think creating your own monster and legend leaves you the most options to play with. It takes out the potential whiners who complain because you didn't follow the story line of the original. If it's your own creation then you are writing the original.


----------



## JustJimAZ (Aug 19, 2010)

niblique71 said:


> Don't forget Steven King....No Steampunk, but LOTS of content for haunts


Sure, Lots of Stephen King stuff and Dean Koontz too, but they are more horror and suspense rather than sci-fi. Nothing wrong with horror in a haunt of course, just a little different from where I was going with this.

It seems to me Verne and Wells wrote stuff that more properly could fit into a haunt. They seemed to have more fantastical themes. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that Asimov or Clarke, for example, wrote great stuff, just not much that could be a haunt. Robots? Maybe.

Ray Bradbury, on the other hand, famously has "something wicked this way comes".

Dune is an interesting choice I hadn't thought of.

BTW - I left out "Time Machine" not because it is a bad choice, but because I assumed it was well known that there was an amazing haunt based on this already done. Not that others couldn't do one of their own of course...


----------



## JustJimAZ (Aug 19, 2010)

Spooky1 said:


> If you do an Invisible Man theme, you won't need to put out anything, just tell people it's there.


That's what my son said!


----------



## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

For someone who already has a zombie-themed haunt, transitioning to creatures from The Island of Dr. Moreau might be relatively painless. Just take your zombies and give them more animal-like features. Add a crude operating room and you're set to go


----------

