# Haunt out on the Patio



## waldiddy (Aug 4, 2008)

2010 will be our 3rd year w/ a walk-through haunt for the neighborhood. I like utilizing my patio & arbor, but the wind & rain from last year just about killed me.

here's my photostream .. arbor pics are towards the end: http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/

You can see from the pic how open the arbor is. I really don't want to frame the thing in again. What I do have in the backyard (visible from the side) is a fairly substantial graveyard. You can see in the picture part of our backdoor and the plan this year is for people to enter the house through that door and go straight through into the garage.

So, I'll probably wall off that little section in front of the back door, but leave the patio/arbor open w/ a graveyard bordering it. I've got a cool life-size toe-pincher wooden coffin ... and can maybe use a Dracula character for it. Another idea I had was a living statue that would suddenly lunge at ToTs.

Your input is kindly requested. You guys are great and I appreciate any ideas you might have.


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## Ryan Wern (Dec 3, 2009)

I'm using my patio this year too


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## waldiddy (Aug 4, 2008)

Incidentally, here's a potential layout for my garage this year:

Haunt :: 2010layoutv1.png picture by bricksword - Photobucket

Each square is 1'x1'. At first glance, the rooms seem kinda small and there's a lot of them. I might be better off with fewer and larger rooms. Any suggestions out there?

I don't really have a theme in mind. I was considering a relatively simple haunt featuring the classic Universal monsters - Wolfman, Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein. Are these too tame? I dunno ... they're certainly iconic, and I know as a kid, they scared me.


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## Ryan Wern (Dec 3, 2009)

A central theme helps add to the overall effect, but IMO it's not a must. Just make it creepy as hell and it won't matter what the theme is. I used very dim lighting, flicker lights, black lights, and strobes in mine with lots of stuff that hung from the ceiling and lots of spider webs. The front room represented the the theme I was shooting for, but the first room had most of the detail, so THAT idea stuck in the ToT's minds. Get what I mean? Overall, create a scary atmosphere and you won't need a theme right away. Remember, play off peoples' most common fears. Tight spaces, the dark, bugs, etc.


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