Halloween - Haunted House - 2009

[MadScientist126]

whoa, nice mad scientist dude, scary but, duh, i love mad scientists!

really like your haunted house! spooky spooky spooky! love it!

better then my neighbors! you have the best! :)

[trey314159]

@MadScientist126 Thanks a lot! Check out our 2010 video to see Boris as the long-suffering husband to Esmerelda the witch.

[ianreviews]

epic



[Extremehaunts]

Very nice set up i just completed mine

[trey314159]

@Extremehaunts Thanks! We just finished setting up this year's haunt last week, and had our first two nights open last weekend. Post a video of your haunt!

[achmed51803]

@trey314159 i got one sunday any tips O:

[trey314159]

@achmed51803 Sorry, just got your message—very busy! I hope your haunted house went well. We had a good turn out, about 360 people on Halloween night, and over 500 total. That's down from last year, but it was quite cold, and we did less advertising than last year.

[achmed51803]

@trey314159 oh cool :D

[TheBritishWop]

Really cool haunt ma'am!!!! I hope mine is as good as your's! :3

[trey314159]

@TheBritishWop Thanks! This video is two years old now. We just finished getting ready for this year's haunted garage.. Friday is the first day we're open. Every year we build a few things, buy a few things, and have a great time. As long as you have fun, you are doing it right.

[TheShayanShahifar]

what state is this in

[trey314159]

@TheShayanShahifar We are in Maryland, in the suburbs of DC.

[AlexSalinas1324]

this haunted house is the best ever my neighbors have been doing haunted houses for a long time but never this cool

[trey314159]

@AlexSalinas1324 Thanks! It's a lot of fun but a lot of work.. we try to do something new each year, too.

[airsoftkillercade]

This is amazing! the best is th bottomless pit, that is cool. how on earth did you do that? PLEASE respond! we are making a haunted house this year and i would love to have a pit like that one. very cool haunted house, not one bad thing about it.

[trey314159]

@airsoftkillercade The basic trick is to have a mirror at the bottom, and a one-way mirror at the top. Some people have used one-way mirror film on plexiglass, too. Google "halloween bottomless pit" and look for the halloweenpropmaster site for ideas. Good luck and happy haunting!

[airsoftkillercade]

@trey314159 thank you i cant wait to try it.

[GothicDorothy]

Not bad, but you really have to forgo the plastic walls. Makes the whole thing look far cheaper than it is. Some great effects and props though.

[trey314159]

@GothicDorothy Thanks for the feedback. We like the plastic wall coverings—and they look much better in person (without a bright light on them) than they do on the video. The actual physical walls are plain black plastic, so the "scene setters" are an upgrade. They aren't so shiny in real life and make a decent backdrop. If you can suggest something better that's relatively cheap, easily stored, and reusable—and covers hundreds of square feet—we'd very much like to know about it, though!

[mrpjbiddy]

creepy well done 

[HPstupefy]

Love it! But this year try having some people jump out of dark places, that really scares people!

[trey314159]

@HPstupefy We can't get anyone to commit to being an actor in our haunt, so we can't have anyone jumping out to scare people. We're open 4 or 5 nights, for 2.5 hours each night, so it would be a pretty big commitment. I'm hoping to bribe our kids with 5 pound bags of candy in the future, but now they like running around the neighborhood too much.

[evilportrait]

That haunt is amazing!

[trey314159]

@evilportrait Thanks!

[Scaryladyvideos]

Your haunt is incredible! Bet the kids were scared to go through. The Beloved is beautiful and the bottomless pit is something I may have to add to my haunt. Great illusion. I'm Terra from HalloweenForum saying, "Great Haunt!"

[trey314159]

@Scaryladyvideos All hail Terra! If you think anything in my haunt is even kinda good, then Terra's videos and tutorials will rock your world! I wish she lived in my neighborhood; then I wouldn't have to do anything for Halloween *and* every Halloween would be twice as awesome. We used Terra's plans for the Beloved tombstone, and it turned out very nice (the hardest part was finding a dress—that, and the hair!). Thanks so much for the encouragement, Terra! It really means a lot [fanboy squeeee!]

[Scaryladyvideos]

It would be great if we were neighbors. I'm the only one in my neighborhood to go all out for Halloween. It gets kind of lonely..heh.

[ProfessorEggflesh]

@Scaryladyvideos - I would love to be YOUR neighbor! I'd be buggin' you several times a week until the point you would have to pretend you're not home! LOL!

[Scaryladyvideos]

heh. Well, if you irritated me too much you'd just become one of my props ;)

[ProfessorEggflesh]

Amazing and very inspiring!

[trey314159]

@ProfessorEggflesh Thanks!

[ValacorDruid]

That is very awesome! I was thinking of doing a haunted house.. And have my dog be apart of it lol.

[trey314159]

@ValacorDruid Thanks very much for the kind comments! Would your dog tolerate being in a haunt? I suppose it depends on the dog. One of our neighbors has a little poodle they bring through the haunt each year (they carry it) and it seems fine. I suspect most dogs would not like the lights and sounds.

[northrad]

Congrats!! Glad to see someone else picked up on Pecos...I blocked that user from commenting on my channel after seeing the trend too. I think it's a made up account because there's no videos to that user account. I wanted to see what a jerk would make to slam others so much?

[nbrandt8]

I reviewing the video several times I see a lot of good work went into the garage and yard, but it lacks unifying elements. A lot of the objects don't appear to relate to each other like the sphinx and the werewolf, which just adds to the confusion. The same goes for the placement of the objects like the bats and spiders(webs). It looks like "Oh, were should we put this, here's a corner". Maybe an approach of less is more would be better. Good luck next year, and ignore the negative comments.

[trey314159]

Thanks nbrandt8 for the comments. I think the editing of the video may have made things look more jumbled than they were. I had to trim the video mercilessly to get under the youtube size limit. There were actually 7 or 8 rooms with dividers in between, so the spiders, for example, were in their own small room. I can't find anyone willing to be an actor in my haunted house, so each vignette has to stand alone, and there's no unifying story. (Alas.)

[trey314159]

Perhaps pecos5150 is in the contest and not doing well and feels it's unfair. I know we got a head start on views because we put the video up a week before anyone else (because we were open the week before Halloween to drum up visitors by word of mouth). I think the PotC video is going to win, though. They've been gaining visitors at a steady clip and have recovered from the drop in ratings we all got when the contest got into full swing.

[asterixzero]

I think the creativity in all the entries has been fantastic. The entire reason for having contests like this is to allow home haunters to see each others work. This has been a success. However, it is unfortunate that some people have felt it necessary to attack others rather than celebrate their own successes.

[pecos5150]

Wow this is nothing but a bunch of Wal-Mart crap wrap up as a haunt! Really a blow up spider! Next year I'll just video my morning movements and submit them! This home haunters contest is just a pile of shit!!! If you win for this it proves that social networking is alive and doing well! Good Luck!

[trey314159]

I didn't put this up to win a contest, but to share with friends and family across the country who couldn't visit for Halloween. Winning the contest would be nice, but it's not the goal. You are entitled to your opinion, but you missed the point. The average age of kids in our neighborhood is under 10; if it was too scary, no one would come and all the work would be wasted. As for the Wal-Mart put down, read the info; we built a lot of the props. Some are store bought, but none of it is crap.

[howtohaunt]

Love the floating ghost over the tombstone--nice combination!

[trey314159]

Thanks much! that was one of our favorite parts, too. Building the tombstone was the biggest project this year.

[ONENIGHTOFTERROR]

Cool it's always nice to see other Yard Haunters in Maryland. Keep up the good work andGoduck on the contest!

[trey314159]

Thanks! We unfortunately live in a little corner of our neighborhood and don't get much traffic by default, so we had to try to advertise by word of mouth. Also, our haunt keeps us so busy we don't get to get out and see other haunts in the area. :(

[panache101]

animatronics are too expensive and unscarey, you have some pretty cool other props however

[trey314159]

Thanks. We like the animatronics exactly because they aren't too scary (our target age is 8-12, but we gets lots of 5 and 6 year olds) and they look good (meaning realistic) from a distance. We get too much wind in our area to have much outside, so the witch helps draw people in.

[stargazer637]

i love your house its awesome

what kind of lights r u using to make lightning

effects like that?

i'd love to have that for my house

[trey314159]

@stargazer637 Sorry not to reply sooner! The lights for the lightning are yard lights you can get at Home Depot. They're plugged into a lightning controller. It takes input from a CD player (playing thunder sounds). When the thunder crashes, the controller powers the lights to match. A mono controller (w/ thunder CD) is $130 at MonsterGuts. They have stereo and 4-chan, too. The stereo effect would be cool, but it was too expensive. Google lightning controller or lightning effects to find others.

[pamstergazelle]

That's awesome!! I am sure all the neighborhood kids love it. Someone in our neighborhood does this too - their garage, their back yard, their front yard.... It is so popular that kids have to be limited in the # of times they can go through because the line is crazy!! Sounds like you are getting there too. Very cool!

[trey314159]

Thanks for all the great comments! We've been collecting props for 15 years, so that spreads the expense out a bit. We also build a lot of the props (see the description), which makes the expense more of a hobby than just for a few nights around Halloween. tdexter is right, it isn't really scary. The kids in our neighborhood are fairly young on average, usually 10 or younger, so we weren't aiming for particularly scary. Update: over 4 nights, we had about 490 visitors! Triple last year!

[hardyzrulz390]

it looks awesome happy halloween

[tdexter7272]

cool but not scary but really cool

[dogcat96]

pfft yeah but wen you get their im sure it will be scarey...

[Yewtoobnube]

Wow, fantastic job. I am very impressed. I'll bet you are the hit of the neighborhood.

[sspangler55]

holy crap!! ya'll spent a lot of money on this.. I LOVE it.. I wish I could do this!!

[Jerribear97]

Looks very creative and fun! =D

[pyrothomas1]

nice pretty cool

[summer1582]

Very cool! Happy Halloween!

[etzysa]

This looks great! I am looking forward to going on Friday =)