Product Description All aspects of the successful haunted house are covered here. There is good information on site selection, design, security, budgeting, and volunteer management. This is followed by detailed, illustrated descriptions of inexpensive illusions for your haunted house. Floor plans, advertising flyers and design worksheets are some of the sample materials included.
Got me started, hard to stop.July 22, 2006 6 out of 6 found this review helpful
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!!!!!!!June 27, 2006 5 out of 6 found this review helpful
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...June 6, 2006 3 out of 4 found this review helpful
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.
Basic instructional book at best.July 31, 2005 8 out of 14 found this review helpful
Very basic book that MAY be helpful to a home haunter, but if you serious about producing a haunted attraction, this book will be of little help to you. The book's drawings are simplistic and the description of props is somewhat vague, however, there are some basic technics that can utilized to create certain effects. The book's discussion of the finances of a haunted attraction is very limited and unimaginative. The use of actors to replace mechanical activation of effects is prominent in this book which leads me to believe that the authors financial skills are lacking( Labor cost & insurance are monumental hurdles in any haunted attraction). In general I would reccommend that you save your money on this one, the internet provides most of information in the book "free for the asking".
You've got to be kidding meNovember 14, 2001 17 out of 48 found this review helpful
I just wasted abou 30 bucks on this book. i hope I can getit back too. If you are serious about wanting to make a haunted house that is scary, don' buy this. I think this book is for people that ar trying to make their house look cool on halloween or whatever. It talks about running an actual haunted house event, but like I say, if you are serious, this is just not even helpful. The most important aspects of operating a haunted house are just outlined briefly in the book. Most of the book concentrates on building props and masks. It dosen't even make sense on most of it. Why wouldn't someone just buy masks and create the haunted house like they wanted too? i found ONE idea out of the whole book i liked. As far as knowing how to get one started I'm right where I began. In my opinion, you just have to try to get a haunted house in order by your own insticts, because I learnt the hard way, books can't do it!
