# Let me hear about your succesful big scares.



## joker (Sep 25, 2007)

Last year was our first haunt and we had a blast, but it was a little unorganized in the fact that we didn't keep a consistent theme throughout the haunt. I realize that doesn't have to be the case, but I would like to give it a try this year. Here's a link to the back story if you're intersted.....It's kinda a twist on the bloody mary character


Last year we had a 7' toe pincher at the end of the maze in our haunt, that had a shelf in it with candy. In the back of the toe pincher was a hole for an actor to poke through and scare the guests. Worked really well and was a big hit.

What big scares have you used in the past?


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## hauntkid (Dec 16, 2007)

lets see..... some big scares in my haunt????

we had a scarecrow that was hand operated to tip over and make the tots feel like it was gonna crush then. we had a large fence that was inches from the tots face and we would through things at the fence. and we had 2 chainsaw wielding maniacs that would come in from both directions of the tots. 

also one of the most effective scares was fishing lines that was hung from trees the would brush along the tots and really creep them out!!!


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## GothicCandle (Mar 26, 2007)

umm, my haunt has no "big" scares. its more about mood and being creepy. but, there have been quite a few people that asked if my wizard/elf/ dude was real. he is five feet tall and looks pretty real. And also, i have a six feet tall skeleton that talks when you walk by it. lots of people jumped because of him.


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## Eric Striffler (May 6, 2006)

Here's a video with tons of scares from our 2007 haunt.


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## Darkside (Aug 6, 2007)

Well, I don’t have a haunt as much as an elaborate display encompassing my whole yard.
After doing this far a few years, my favorite thing to do still has to be sitting limp in a chair appearing to be a prop and when they approach, jump. Gets them every time. I had a mother so scared that she left her kid behind this year.


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## joker (Sep 25, 2007)

> its more about mood and being creepy


That's what i'm mainly after, but I want to use the mood and creepiness to build the suspense. Then when they think they've been let down with no big scare hit 'em with both barrels...lol



Darkside said:


> Well, I don't have a haunt as much as an elaborate display encompassing my whole yard.
> After doing this far a few years, my favorite thing to do still has to be sitting limp in a chair appearing to be a prop and when they approach, jump. Gets them every time. I had a mother so scared that she left her kid behind this year.


Hahahaha....i did that year before last. It was a blast.


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## skeletonowl (Aug 8, 2006)

Village Haunt has all these amazing scares at the end of the video check them out

Funny Eric With No K you got so many people with BREAK DOT COM!


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## Death Master (Jul 1, 2007)

I have a 55 Gal. metal Bio hazard drum laying on its side and as the TOTs go by the sensor, a hammer unit inside it hits the drum, Man you should see them jump out of there skins, a very very loud scare.


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## joker (Sep 25, 2007)

Death Master said:


> I have a 55 Gal. metal Bio hazard drum laying on its side and as the TOTs go by the sensor, a hammer unit inside it hits the drum, Man you should see them jump out of there skins, a very very loud scare.


Got any pics or vid? What did you use for your hammer?


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## tobmaster (Feb 21, 2008)

We have over 16 pneumatic startle props, animations and other things....yet the best scare in '07 was a 12 year old kid wearing a grim reaper costume. He would stand in the corner and wouldn't move. Then just move a bit. EVERYONE would scream. He even made a teenge girl pee herself. It was GREAT.


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## Death Master (Jul 1, 2007)

Joker, I made the hammer unit out of a solid piece of round stock, attached to a lever and air cylinder.


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## Revenant (Mar 17, 2007)

tobmaster said:


> We have over 16 pneumatic startle props, animations and other things....yet the best scare in '07 was a 12 year old kid wearing a grim reaper costume. He would stand in the corner and wouldn't move. Then just move a bit. EVERYONE would scream. He even made a teenge girl pee herself. It was GREAT.


"Boo" is good but subtle RULES!!


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## Evil Queen (Mar 8, 2008)

One year a friend of ours dressed in a ghelly(sp?) suit and my wolf mask and would bark, growl, howl and chase a bone out into the driveway. This one teenage girl kept running away from him, as she and her friends were leaving he sneeked up behind her and barked, she ran screaming all the way to the end of the block.


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## Lilly (Jun 13, 2006)

Same as darkside ..my hubby used to scare the crap outta kids wearing a wolfman costume hiding behind cornstalks..that's when we used to get ToTr's
I liked to just stand in the yard dressed in reaper costume...They would get rreal close to see if it's real then I would scare them ..its funny


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## naberhoodhaunts (Mar 29, 2008)

joker I'm new to this site but i have two scares that worked very well. first and very simple, get ten glow in the dark jason masks. hang eight on the walls of a very dark room. Then have two actors wearing black, wear the other two masks.Masks should be hung at different levels around the room. leave some space for the actors to stand in between. Use a strong black light to charge the masks then turn it off when victims come by.
Second we dressed my brother-in-law in a Santa costume bloody of course, made the room up with a dead Christmas tree and black and orange string lights. we had a table with a bunch of presents on it. one of the presents had his sons head in it. still attached of coarse. his head was in the biggest bow. two or three smaller ones on either side. the fronts of the boxes were cut so you could open them like a door. Santa would tell the kids as they came through to pick a box and they would get a surprise. well of coarse the always will pick the big box. as they opened it the head wuld scream. head was all bloody too. very good scares!!!


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## RAWR (Apr 4, 2008)

If you use and old can put pebbels or stones in it seal it up then you have a great ratteler that scares the pants of people


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## Valleyscare (Aug 31, 2007)

Also, I'm working at a haunted house this fall. Any tips on how to get some scares?


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## BoysinBoo (Dec 10, 2007)

Cable tied two airzookas to a post behind black plastic. One low (kid height) one high (adult height) 

Let the first one go on the TOT. He screamed and leaned back into mom. She said, "It's okay honey it's just pretend..." That's when I hit her with the second one. She screamed, "Oh $%*#!" Then realized the TOT was there and said, "Oh S%*#, don't say that honey." 

I laughed for like two minutes straight. I missed I don't know how many scares. I couldn't even breathe form laughing so hard.


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## St Dracula (Apr 12, 2008)

The best one was probaly standing above the porch with a chainsaw and swiping at their heads.


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## eanderso13 (Apr 10, 2008)

*Good scare*

One that worked very well for me last year wasn't all that "big", per se...I had a wooden coffin I had built and propped up against the house right along the path the TOTs had to come up, and stand in line on, to get their candy.

I put a corpsed bucky in there and had bored a hole in the back and installed a smaller air cylinder with a wood block as a "push pad" hidden behind the corpse's back. I attached the solenoid to a wireless trigger, and carried the remote around with me. So at my discretion I could make this seemingly static prop pop out at those standing in line as they got close to it, inspecting it. It wasn't far it came out, but it was quick enough, and unexpected enough to scare the begeezus out of most people!

Also, it didn't happen all the time, so no one in line who maybe had seen it happen, knew if it was going to happen again when they were next to it.


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## ubzest (Jul 1, 2008)

One year I was just standing outside of the torture chamber in plain view. the line had gotten abit behind and people were backed up. as it happens I was standing there, how could I scare anyone!? so I just ushered people in. a young girl was holding on to her mother and and looking around at the decorations in the 'hallway' we were in and all of a sudden she spotted my shoes and I saw her look me over from bottom to top and when she saw that I was a real person.. she just opened her mouth and about a second later came the scream from the bottom of her soul! That was my best scare ever, I almost felt bad for her, the funny thing is I just started laughing cause it was soo unexpected! I was standing right there!:googly:


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## ghost37 (Jul 30, 2008)

We have a graveyard with a bridge, tombstones, leaves on the ground and bottomless pit. The one year I made a leaf blanket by sewing fake leaves on brown fabric and I had an actor lie on the floor beside the bridge under the blanket. When the "victims" started to walk on the bridge the actor jumped out or lightly touched their ankles and they freaked. The other year I had someone jump out from behind a fake tree and scare the "victims" when they were looking down the bottomless pit from the bridge. That worked pretty good.

We also have a hellevator, which seems to be a good scare and a dining room table with a hole cut out of the center and an actor put their head in it to act as a centerpiece. When the people walked by the table the actor would move or say something. Lots of screams!!!! The table was in one of the first rooms, and a few people turned around and walked out of the haunt because they were freaked out too much!!!!


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## Spartan005 (Mar 13, 2007)

One of the best scares we had last year was also one of the easiest to set up, and I happened to be the actor. The guests would basically walk around a corner to find an almost empty room (there were some decorations and skulls lying around) with a coffin leaned up against a wall. Basically I just stood in the coffin all dressed up with some newspapers sticking out of me here and there... I also tried some different poses to make myself look like more of a dummy. It was probably the funniest thing in the world, watching all of these people cautiously walking passed me guessing if i was real or not. Then finally once the first person goes "Aw he's just a dummy" I would pop out and scare the **** out of all of them. 

From that one spot over the course of 5 nights, I made 14 children cry and one 20 something year old woman actually fell back into the wall behind her, taking about 50 feet worth of curtain with her lol


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## The Rotten Pumpkin (Mar 28, 2010)

We had a 6' tall hallway, very narrow, with a strobe pointed into the guests eyes at the end of our haunt last year. At the end of that hallway was a sensor that triggered compressed air to be shot down from the ceiling, both directly above the sensor, and about two people back. I told my actors not to go in there, to let the air do the work. That was a mistake.

I hid in there two times that night. The first time I decided last minute to run in there and scare this 14-15 year old girl who had gone through alone. Just after the air triggered, I jumped out. The scream could be heard throughout the haunt. 

Then a mom took here 10 year old daughter and 8 year old son through. Originally, the son chickened out at the entrance, but once he saw how much fun they were having, he wanted to go. So they got back in line. The kids were laughing, not scared at all. So I slipped on my jacket and ran into the hallway. I made the kid cry. Now he won't ever be so arrogant in a haunt EVER again.


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## medusa53 (Apr 11, 2010)

I have an outdoor haunt and one thing I've done is to make a large room out of black plastic with one entrance and one exit. When the group walks in, all they see is EXIT signs all over the walls with arrows pointing in every direction.We give them about 5 seconds to realize what they are looking at and then send in the chainsaw guy.About 15-20 seconds later,we have someone pull open the exit flap that has a string or rope attached to it ( to avoid being trampled ).The walls in this room stand at least 6ft tall but I once watched a little lady about 5ft tall jump right over the top.Be prepared to repair walls. Have duct tape and staplers handy.


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## bert1913 (Oct 27, 2011)

*headless clown*

i made a headless clown body with the body holding his head in his lap. i mounted this on a wooden stool with a 6" clyinder mounted underneath the stool. i hooked this to a picoboo f104 and programed a loud scream while the clown jumps up. i had this sitting next to my front door. lot's of screams.


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## post-mortem (Jan 22, 2012)

we do ages 14 and up only but we had a zombie who looked like a prop with scene lighting and he was posing. The group would pass watching and talking about how scary he was then all at once he breaks out of the wooden cage and chase them just to meet up with other zombies. They fell all over the ground screaming.


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