October 31st can be one of the most fun nights of the year. For some crazy reason, we just love to be scared out of our minds! Why not be the talk of the neighborhood and host a spook alley made right in your garage or RV space?
If you are considering hosting a spook alley, first you’ll want to determine the age group you want it to pertain to. Who are you going to entertain? If your street is primarily very little kids, you might want to tone it down just a bit until they grow up. Teens are a fun age and you can do a lot more in your alley to be scary.
Once you have an age group in mind, you can start by creating a layout of your spook alley. You may have three or four different stations or rooms to set up, so decide what those are going to be. One room could have a live head on a plate, another room, a Frankenstein’s lab, and Dracula could be there and maybe add a werewolf chained to the wall. Now you are probably wondering how we get the rooms, right?
A little lumber and black plastic sheeting will solve your problem. Make some crude framework and wrap the plastic around it using a staple gun to secure it. This will make your walls. Put them together so that it forms a maze of sorts. Really, when you are making it yourself, you can create large, elaborate alleys or create one to be done in very small spaces. (It will resemble office cubicles.)
After your layout is completed, you will arrange your props and actors throughout the spook alley. Use your creativity so that the kids will have to go around corners and wonder what is in store for them on the other side. Consider having a guide, maybe a hunchback or a man in a pirate costume doing his best cranky looking pirateimpression leading the way through. You can make it spooky, but not so terrifying that you make the kids run backwards into the walls, knocking them over. The point is scare their socks off, but just be cautious when jumping out to freak them out.
Be sure to have the sights and sounds of your spook alley be stimulating and feel realistic. Some people like to have actors play out scary scenarios. If you have a dead guy on a table and you intend to simulate a (pretend, of course) electrocution, you need the sound of the switch flipping and the electricity flowing as the man is shaking and screaming. Even small kids won’t believe your scary scenario if it your lighting and sound effects are sub par.
Lastly, after all of your work, don’t forget to have a great time and know that you can throw together a great spook alley just about anywhere! Another word of warning…your spook alley might turn out to be so popular, that the kids will demand that you just have to keep doing it every year.
Emma Rae Curtis is a costume/dressing up/makeup & accessories expert. She mainly writes about Halloween but also about all things costume and dress-up related.
