Haunted house design – HANDLING LARGE AREAS

Title: Haunted House Design – Large Area

Author: Paul ” DragonMaster ” Pendragon

Article:
HANDLING LARGE AREAS

Part of the House of Pain Haunted House is a school gym. And as
always large areas can pose a large problem for Haunted
Attractions. The basic reasoning is this – in a seasonal haunted
attraction the event is constructed several weeks before
Halloween and after Halloween needs to be taken down. This
results in temporary walls and a lot of plastic which is used to
try and control traffic flow and seal off areas.

The problems with large areas of temporary walls and plastic is
that often they start coming down as soon as they are put up. In
fact at the House of Pain we had scared vistors push, tear and
in other ways make an exit thru areas of plastic and temporary
walls.

In our second year we came up with an idea which worked real
well for us. We used the gym area and constructed a hall of
doors. This six door octagon not only took up a large area of
the gym but gave us ways to confuse the visitors and lengthen
the stay in the house. The second advantage of having this
octagon constructed in the center of the gym area is it could be
used to stabilize and strengthen temporary walls so that things
basically stayed together.

If you look at the graphic the vistors came off the gym stage at
area 1 and proceeded down the hall into the octagon area where
our actor was hiding in area ” A ” . Hallway 3 was basically a
dead end with graphics, the visitors then went thru a door to
area 4 where they were taken thru a ” backstage ” area and
around thru area 5 back into the octagon where the guide was
attacked by the actor leaving the visitors to go out into area 6
and into a tight maze to the exit.

Using the Hall of Doors and the various ways in and out gave the
visitors more time in the gym area and lengthened the stay in
the house. It also gave us a lot of different areas to hide
actors especially those who came in just for the night and
didn’t have a great costume.

There was a cover on the octagon and several of the tunnels
giving vistors a closed in feeling which added to the
disorientation and kept them in the gym area before entering the
maze and exiting the house.

The Hall of Doors was constructed using pegboard ( or you can
choose any cheap plywoof or tile board ) , 2 X 4 studs and cheap
doors found at yardsales, discount stores etc. The doors were
painted black and the walls covered with scene setters. It was
lite with one black light in the center of the octagon and then
the halls were lite with black lights and decorated with
graphics.

You can find out more about the Hall of Doors and other areas of
the House of Pain Haunted House at
http://www.pendragonscastle.com/houseofpainhauntedhouse

Paul Pendragon http://www.pendragonscastle.com

Can dogs sense the supernatural? – Part 6

Dogs can’t sense the supernatural! After all they are simply ‘dumb’ animals and we humans as ‘higher order’ beings, surely would be able to sense supernatural entities before and better than they could. Or so I used to think…..

During a trip to Lancelin (Western Australia) last year, my husband, myself, our 1 year old toddler and our Golden Retriever Toby, encountered a supernatural entity. It was not a shy entity either! It made it’s presence known in a number of ways. It was a tricky entity that scared all of us but most of all Toby!

From the moment we arrived at our rented holiday property strange things began to happen. My husband took Toby through the downstairs granny flat and Toby began whimpering. That night we left him in the garage where he barked and barked. After fairly sleepless night, we came downstairs only to find all of the doors that we had shut and locked the previous night were wide open. The owner assured us that there were only two keys and she kept hers in the safe.

The next day, my husband had to return to Perth on business, so my toddler and I were left at the holiday house alone. I put my toddler down for a sleep and decided not to shut the door as his room was a little warm. I plonked myself in front of the TV and, with Toby at my feet, started watching a video. About ten minutes later, Toby’s hackles started to rise and he began to growl at something in the direction of my toddler’s room. As I walked down the hallway, I could see my boy asleep in his crib, then the door slammed shut. Toby, who was bravely cowering behind me, fled howling back up the hallway. I knew that this entity wanted to separate me from my child but I was not going to let that happen. Grabbing the door knob, I shouted “That’s my baby! Leave him alone!” The door handle turned and a gust of wind rushed past me. I grabbed my toddler who was now very upset, and ran back into the lounge room. Toby was hiding under the lounge chair. My husband returned to the home a few minutes later. We decided not to stay another night.

There has never been a happier dog than Toby when we decided to leave. So much for the theory that animals are ‘dumb”. Toby knew about the entity from the moment we arrived. He has never again barked all night or hidden under lounge room furniture and I truly hope it stays that way!

Reflections: Living in a haunted house – Part 3

Yes, I live in a haunted house. And it isn’t the only house that has been haunted on this property. The house that was here when I met my present husband was an older house, occupied by his mother. At the time, he lived in another house nearby, on the same property.

Soon after we began seeing each other, he told me about Maw calling him on the phone late one night and waking him out of a sound sleep. When he answered the phone, she told him he needed to turn his music down, because it woke her up. He asked her to repeat what she had said, and then told her he didn’t have his radio on. She didn’t believe him at first, because the music was still playing, but then it stopped. She thought he had been playing a joke on her but had turned the radio off, so she hung up and went back to bed.

But the music started again, so she called him again. He had already gone back to sleep, but got up and walked over to her house. When he came in the front door, he couldn’t hear anything, but when he went toward the middle room, where she quilted, he began to hear the music. It was coming from that room!

I never heard the music, but several other members of the family have told about hearing it. However, since we moved into this house a little over five years ago, I have also heard sounds that are unexplainable. The house is built right over where the old house sat; it burned to the ground after she moved out of it. My computer room is near where her quilting room was. I sometimes hear unexplainable noises here, such as doors opening and closing or footsteps coming about two to three feet into the house and stopping.

However, most of the time, when I hear noises, I am in the kitchen, further back in the house. Many times I have heard the front door open and close and heard footsteps walking several steps into the house. But when I go to see who came in, no one is there. Occasionally, too, I have heard the rocking chair rocking, and gone to see who is in the living room; no one is even in the house except me. In the past year, though, I have also begun hearing those same noises while I am in the computer room. When I check, no one is in the house except me. And my husband isn’t anywhere near the house!

I am glad that our ghost seems to be friendly. Of course, there may be more than one of them, but we haven’t had any problems with them/it. Some people get scared if we mention our ghost, but we have no problem with it. At least, it hasn’t wakened us up playing its music too loud – yet!

Poetry: Haunted houses – Part 10

Haunted

Faces covered’n

thick leather,

masks without openings

for eyes or ears.

A Scream won’t find voice.

A hand pulls a semi

to aim the heart and maim the head.

Bullets filled with radio actives

for repeated death inhibit resurrection.

Sweating and diarrhea in profusion

arrests good blood counts.

Certified death of a woman.

She appeases the masters,

wakes from slumber to find

this torment not only fictive

abstraction.

Right there in her lot

are shadows cast all day,

despising rotating sun.

Windows rattle.

This house is haunted!

Keys don’t turn full revolution.

Enforcement walk the apartment

with doors locked and bolted.

Doors sublime,

part for entry like Red sea.