How-To Create Epic Halloween Homes!


It's always a pleasure to see people decorate for Halloween. They get more inventive every year. But, upon occasion, a home is so over the top that it is "epic" and that is what this post is about. These are homes done up by people who don't just worship Halloween, but are willing to prove their love. This demonstrative behavior is greatly appreciated by the horror-loving public. 


Here's just some amazing finds out there that are truly EPIC!



















GUIDELINES

If you want to go for an epic home haunt - consider the keys: 





Theme



Pick a theme and stick with it. A mishmash of unrelated things is just scattered and confusing to the visitor. If you go graveyard, go ghosts and skeletons, ravens and headstones. If you go pirate, go ship, skeleton crew, pirate costumes, pirates, and treasure chests. Just take that theme and run with it. I suggest a theme you love a lot because then each year you can reuse your items with a few changes, such as making a graveyard filled with zombies one year or skeletons the next.






Size/amount/proportions



  Either oversized items like a gigantic spider or turning the house into a huge scary face, or use tons of an item like enormous amounts of spiders or pumpkins. This is what puts the "e" in Epic!






Focus



Help the viewer know what to focus on by putting spotlights on items, grouping things together, or making them move. The darkness is as important as the light because it creates an infinite scariness. Sometimes, something just barely lit makes the mind fill in the rest, like when you're in bed at night and see your jacket hanging on the doorknob and think you see a monster.






Motion/Lights/Sounds


Use of animatronix, soundtrack, sound effects, light shows, and projected images. We are a visual people and sometimes we just want to see things like we do on computers and TV with lights, motion, and movie-like themes, music, and sounds. 



AtmosFX is a great company and you see their DVDs for sale in Spirit Halloween. They have added a new projection video possibility to make Halloween Haunts truly haunting! These guys are epic! You can get ghostly images, 80s slasher in your window or on your front door, Jack O'lanterns, and my personal favorite - zombies - 





Cheap materials

This does not need to be costly. In fact, tomorrow I have a post going up about how to make cheap decorations. 

Thrift store sheets - great for tea staining and tattering

Cheesecloth and fabric stiffener - Ideal for making shapes like ghosts.

Cardboard - don't underestimate the ability of cardboard to be cut and duct taped together into structures, shacks, UFOs, and cut into shapes and painted black to put in the windows with back lighting.

Colored bulbs - Just replace the lights within and on the porch with colored or flickering bulbs.

Sound - simple ipod with speakers in the window playing a thunderstorm and some flickering lights. Simple and cheap. 

Leaves - gather as many as you can and litter the yard and steps with them.

Scarecrow - look at Jeepers Creepers 2 and see what comes to mind, or the beginning of Johnny Depp's Sleepy Hollow.

Styrofoam and flour/water combo with house paint - turn this into headstones with shaping, covering in flour/water mix to harden, and using simple house paint or cheap 99-cent acrylic craft store paint. 

There will be more specifics tomorrow on cheap and easy decorations! You will be amazed! 


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