Love haunted houses, hayrides, corn mazes, or any kind of haunted attraction? This is the place for actors, full-time seasonal employees, and haunt enthusiasts to discuss the haunted house industry.
The reason I’m asking is because I want to do a creepy Christmas room in my haunt this year. Complete with a killer Santa with a chainsaw.
I wouldn’t normally consider this a problem if most of the visitors would be trick or treaters. You know, children.
My mom isn’t really for the idea, but she’s not forbidding me from it either. As she knows how much I love Halloween. Speaking of that, I’ll admit that I often forget how scary some things can be to children. That being said, I don’t want to seriously scare anyone. I want to keep Halloween fun.
I had a scary Santa in my haunt last year. Only he was just a Santa mask on a plastic skeleton. The kids seemed to be fine with it. Then again, he wasn’t a real person with a chainsaw.
So, I want to keep the killer Santa idea, but maybe tone it down a bit. But I usually like to keep Halloween scary regardless. Ideas?
Also, when would you consider a home haunt to be “too scary” in general? Especially since kids are exposed to so much now.
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Something I loved one year was a person was doing a haunt u the street from my mom's house. They had walkie talkies and would let them know the age range of the kids coming in o they could pull back a bit if the kids are younger. My 8 year old had a very different experience from my one year old. Yes, my daughters first haunted house experience was at 1. She thought the glow in the dark lights were cool and the actors were cool. The clown scared her a bit but he let her touch his mask and see that it was a person. She was fine after that.
I don't think there is too scary for a home haunt just that there might be kids of various ages and you can act in different ways based on the kids ages.
We did this one year when we had someone in costume doing a jump scare - we had a code word to let them know if the kids approaching were fair game to scare the hell out of (teenagers) or littles who should be met at the entrance with a wave and a friendly greeting. Worked great and everyone had fun.
I thought of a haunted Christmas idea years ago for our home haunt. My wife vetoed it saying that while it is a great idea, she didn’t want us to be responsible for ruining Santa for all the neighborhood kids.