Haunted House Halloween Handbook

By Jerry Chavez

Book Overview

Every October, schools, civic clubs, scout troops, little leagues and charity groups of all kinds sponsor Halloween "haunted houses" as fundraisers. But where do they go for good information on how to do it? How to make the rotting corpse that scares the bejeebers out of everyone or the demonic knife-wielding doll or the living, beating heart that visitors swear is real? And what about the mundane details (e.g., permits and insurance) that make the haunted house a profitable and safe venture? Where does one find out about that?

All aspects of the successful haunted house are covered here. There is good information on site selection, logistics, design, security, budgeting, sponsorship and volunteer management. This is followed by detailed, descriptions of many inexpensive illusions for your haunted house; each is accompanied by illustrations that further explain how to make the effect successful. Floor plans, advertising flyers and design worksheets are some of the sample materials included.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0786403756
• ISBN13: 9780786403752
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Length: 148 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 8.5" x 11.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Got me started, hard to stop.

I've been building a haunted house with a church group for maybe 5 years running. The youth won't let me stop! Every year I get a call asking if I'll help with the haunted house, both from the participants and the patrons. Everybody loves it! OK, so the book doesn't provide dimensioned engineering drawings, and it maybe a bit vague. Working with a youth group, it's perfect. They often only need some general thoughts, and they can run with the details. There are a lot of ideas for content posted to the internet. Chavez does a reasonable job of educating about what to look for in those ideas, so you look for ideas that are safe, provide a reasonable effect, and for a reasonable price.

Spootacular!!!!!!!

A great book for the motivated home haunter, great ideas and scenes that can be built on a budget. Your not going to put any haunted house out of business, but you will be the hit of the neighborhood. You need to have a creative mind to go along with the concepts presented, this a guide not a by the numbers book. If you are like me and work on Halloween projects all year round, you will enjoy this book. If you want so some cute wood cutouts to put in the yard, this book is not for you.

If this book doesn't spark your imagination...

The 'HHHH' was designed for haunted house enthusiasts who are brimming with imagination. It's written like a sugar cookie recipe to be dressed up with any kind of toppings or mix-ins that the reader can concoct. If the book is followed step by step it would produce a simple and effective charity haunt, but mix in a healthy dose of creativity and the sky (or grave yard) is the limit. Anyone who can't pull a beautiful haunt from this book is severely lacking in haunt talent and needs to leave haunting to the professionals.

Good ideas for the dedicated Halloween enthusiast

This book seems targeted at someone that is planning to help build a medium scale haunted house for a charity event. It does this very well, describing the essence of what is scary and why, as well as all the steps required to create a safe and profitable haunted house on schedule. The author focuses on how to do first rate effects on a third rate budget though the use of innovation and imagination (and most importantly, his experience, which he shares with you). Most haunted houses are just stupid, because the designers build something that sounds like it would be scary, but does not really scare people. This author understands that people going to a haunted house want to be scared and he describes the essence of the subtle differences that transform an effect from eliciting a yawn to invoking a scream.I have been building haunted scenes in my home for (gulp) thirty years and have produced medium scale haunted houses for charities, but I still learned a number of things from this book. The books includes plans, instructions, parts, and suppliers. The author (I learned after reading the book) builds ?low? cost scary effects where are superior in scare and lowest in cost, of any I have seen. The book does not quite give enough specific information to build these for yourself, but it does cover a lot of other stuff. If you spend more then $150/year of scary stuff then you qualify as a Halloween nut and you should buy this book.This book isn?t (alas) for everyone. This is for true Halloween enthusiasts willing to spend tens of hours, days, or even months preparing for a scary event. If you want tips for making your home a hallmark Halloween showcase, this is not the book for you.

This book is awesome!!

every year my friends and i do a haunted house in our friend's garage. we needed some new fresh ideas and this book helped greatly!! this book is easy to understand but makes it easy to have great professional looking haunted house ... even in your friend's garage :)