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How To Build A Haunted House

_crypto

_crypto

Wanderer of the Wastes
Joined
Nov 21, 2001
Messages
48
Location
Junee, NSW
Does anybody know of anyone who has set about to create a 'real' haunted house? I once joked with a friend that I would like to obtain various items from haunted houses and incorporate them into a house as we built it. My friend responded that my kids would forever be complaining about the walls bleeding and other strange occurrences. Still I wouldn't mind trying to obtain small objects from a range of haunted houses. I may well whip up a web site soliciting donations of objects from haunted houses. I'll keep the board posted if I decide to do this.
 
Ok, you need a large house on a hill, eerily lit from the back as to cast the front in shadow. Around the house you need dead trees and a graveyard, lichen covered and old. Random statuettes adorn the overgrown garden. At the end of a long winding path you need some big heavy iron gates chocked by brambles and left un-oiled to give that distincitve groan.

What you now need is a seldom-used road near the gates and underneat the tarmac and emp that can be detonated as to immobilise any cars passing that way on a cold, rainy winter evening.

Possible additions include an old telephone with the wires cut not far from the emp. This should be in full view of the house so you can prepare the master bedroom and dress appropriately for your guest. Cape, gel on your hair, antiquated clothes... the usual.

I also suggest you keep a long table set and some ready-meals in the kitchen that you can pop in the old microwave to have a 'mysterious' dinner awaiting for your guests.
 
You need a collection of creepy looking china dolls and/or a ventriloquist's dummy.
 
You could always cheat a bit and add some stuff from here ...
 
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Hmmm, put my name down for the Rotating Upper Torso Zombiette and a couple of Corpse Pushups. :)

Sounds like the MB on a Saturday night! ;)
 
This could get expensive. You'd have to hire staff.
You know, the hunchback with a lisp, the hard-faced housekeeper, the incredibly tall man with a square head.
They won't come cheap...
 
the hunchback with a lisp, the hard-faced housekeeper, the incredibly tall man with a square head.
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You've met the ex and his parents then. ;)
 
An oubliette cellar with a haunted painting in it might be a good place to start.
 
You people are so unsubtle. All you need is a lonely, winsome child. They'll soon start talking to their new "friends". ;)
 
Folklore tells us that to create ghosts, all you need is some dead folks with a grudge.

So you just need to assemble a group of innocent peeps on your house, take an axe, a nice, shiny, sharp axe, and swing it, and kill them.

Kill them.
Kill them, all.
Kill them all.
KILL THEM ALL.
KILL THEM ALL.

........erm.......
 
You beat me to it escargot. I was going to suggest that you choose a house with floorboards that easily come up or a section of eerily dark cellar that we can brick up bodies/nuns/annoying family members.
 
:laughing:
This is what we criminologists call a menage a deux. :cool:
 
Couldnt you start small, maybe throttle a hamster or suffocate a Goldfish say?

Or maybe dig down a bit and find some of those cavemen haunting the subsoil. THey would provide a talking point for Sunday Tea.
 
maybe you could create a ghost like the famous "Phillip"
 
I believe Richard Wiseman of the Uni of Herts wanted to create a haunted house based on his research after they finished the Hampton Court Palace project.
 
If anyone really wanted to I reckon it'd be fairly feasable. Buy an old and large mansion-esque grand house type thing, and fit it out with 'haunted' furniture and other such items that are either form other haunted houses or are themselves spookified.
 
Make sure the house you buy/ build is on a graveyard, preferably one with the headstones removed to annoy the residents. And the house must have an old attic with a few chests of old clothes and photo albums in it.
Maybe you should make the electricity supply a bit dodgy too, so that the lights will go out occasionally.
Oh, and hold a few seances and either don't dismiss the spirits, or annoy the hell out of them so they get angry.
 
IRC low frequency sound can make you feel uneasy in a building and give you a feel of being haunted.

On a more fortean approach use a OuiJa board, or get Dennis Acora in he can find ghosts anywhere.;)
 
Make sure the house you buy/ build is on a graveyard, preferably one with the headstones removed to annoy the residents
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Or dig'em up, piss on'em and rebury'em face down, like the petshop owner did in Southpark. :eek:
 
Or dig'em up, piss on'em and rebury'em face down, like the petshop owner did in Southpark.
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Escargot, I forgot about that episode....most amusing.

I would love to live near a cemetary though. I enjoy walking through old graveyards and reading the headstones. I'm sure that living next to one would increase your chances of ghostly visits.

IRC low frequency sound can make you feel uneasy in a building and give you a feel of being haunted.
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If I was electronically minded I would create a low frequency sound generator. It would be interesting to experience the effects that it generates. I wonder if many people have purposefully generated these sounds to experiment with their effects.
 
crypto said:
I would love to live near a cemetary though. I enjoy walking through old graveyards and reading the headstones. I'm sure that living next to one would increase your chances of ghostly visits.
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I live near three, two of them church yards inside the actual villages, and one, my favourite, an old one deserted and in the forest itself, overgrown and abandoned, it's great. Th echurch there is disused and no longer has services in it, but whenever I look at the padlock it's obvious that it's been recently opened. A cause of much wodnerment to me that graveyard, it's not on any of the lcoal parish records either.
 
I was reading the latest issue (sep 04) of "The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction" and there is a short story set in the future where this woman uses people's spirits to decorate houses. They have special electronics that magnify the spirits so that they can be seen. I thought it was a pretty interesting idea.
 
I have a great story about history of my house that I love to share with people at parties (previous owner killed herself here).
I wonder what would happen if you made up a story that some horrific event happened at your house and then invite people to stay the night with you and see how many of them "experience" your haunting!

BTW - living in my rather spiritually active house, I do beleive in ghosts, I just wonder how many people would get themselves all freaked out and let their imaginations run away with them - you could wind up with some really interesting stories! Maybe its a little mean though :)
 
That would be interesting Maymay, and I'd say that would definitely be me, some-one who lets their imagination run riot.. But, disapointingly, whenever I've been to an allegedly haunted location, I've only once ever even suffered a bad feeling ( which could have been caused by anything really, e.g. an illness). I think I become too determined to see or hear something, and never do. :(
The only times I have, I've been unaware, head in the clouds, thinking of something else.
 
As has been mentioned, low frequency sound can make people feel spooky things.

Elephants communicate continuously in low frequency sound.

Get elephants.
 
and for those who like spiders, get some so they can build big huge thick dusty tatty webs on and round the chandeliers in every room, and across doorways. (will take a few yrs for you to get the right effect tho, so be patient!)

you also need at least one broken creaky window shutter on the outside of the bedroom windows. (nice effect when its stormy).

fit a few big broken pipes in to the house (if possible?) for strange low wailing/moaning noises, when the wind blows in the right direction.

"ancestorial paintings with lots of shadows" where the eyes are painted very dark that "follow you" as you walk abround.

(or you could use "machanical eyes" fitted behind the painting, set up with a motion sensor that will follow you! (watch, listen to your guests scream!!!!!) )

maybe a few pet rats (only dark coloured ones may be used) to run lose (for the authentic scratching noises behind the walls)

lots of victorian stuffed animals in glass cases.

and dont forget lots of very dusty dust sheets. theyre a must!!!!!

happy hauntings ;)
 
https://medium.com/s/in-the-dark/how-to-build-a-haunted-house-20d6a06e0b04

Is it possible, as some denizens of the Burned-Over District believed, to build a haunted house?

That may not be was weird as it sounds. Well, actually, it is as weird as it sounds — but hear me out anyway.

Historian Robert Damon Schneck has noted that if one were to analyze the thousands of historical haunted house narratives, it may be possible to identify shared traits, such as architecture, layout, location, materials, positioning, history, foundation, and so on. Through computer analysis, would it be possible to graph a set of common characteristics and, hence, create an algorithmic or digital model of a haunted house? And then build one?

“The approach I favor,” Schneck tells me, “…would incorporate as many traditional beliefs about the causes of hauntings from as many eras and cultures as possible (e.g., building on land where some horrific event occurred, using material from the scenes of murders and suicides, particular places, etc.). It could also be done using theories that posit a connection between paranormal phenomena and states of transition, or the creation of conditions such as standing waves, in which people experience phenomena resembling hauntings.”

Could we take a Jurassic Park approach to haunted houses and actually construct or reconstruct one? I don’t see what could possibly go wrong…
 
I'm not sure how relevant this is, but IMHO it's worth mentioning ...

If I understand correctly, you're asking about how one would design a house that was truly haunted.

I'm at a loss to locate any suggestions on how to (figuratively) construct a house that will attract or generate "hauntings."

However, there's been a substantial amount of research and practical knowledge building on the subject of constructing environments that seem haunted (i.e., "haunted" attractions).

Some of these efforts are simply helpful tips for DIY designers, such as:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3037618...ow-to-design-a-truly-terrifying-haunted-house

In a slightly different vein, psychologists have deconstructed or analyzed the factors that make a given environment or locale "creepy" by way of triggering deeply intrinsic reflexes and apprehensive behaviors. Here's an example:

https://theconversation.com/evolutionary-psychology-explains-why-haunted-houses-creep-us-out-48209

I'm not sure the former category (the DIY tips) would help much in building an inviting nesting place for "hauntings", but the latter category (psychology-oriented) might provide some heavy clues to features and factors that recommend themselves for inclusion.
 
This might be informative, but (as noted earlier) it's approaching things from the perspective of simulating the experience or perception of haunting rather than hosting a real haunting. Still, there might be some useful or relevant clues in it.
The ‘‘Haunt’’ project: An attempt to build a ‘‘haunted’’ room by manipulating complex electromagnetic fields and infrasound

Christopher C. French, Usman Haque, Rosie Bunton-Stasyshyn and Rob Davis

Abstract
Recent research has suggested that a number of environmental factors may be associated with a tendency for susceptible individuals to report mildly anomalous sensations typi- cally associated with ‘‘haunted’’ locations, including a sense of presence, feeling dizzy, inexplicable smells, and so on. Factors that may be associated with such sensations in- clude fluctuations in the electromagnetic field (EMF) and the presence of infrasound. A review of such work is presented, followed by the results of the ‘‘Haunt’’ project in which an attempt was made to construct an artificial ‘‘haunted’’ room by systematically varying such environmental factors. Participants (N 1⁄4 79) were required to spend 50 min in a spe- cially constructed chamber, within which they were exposed to infrasound, complex EMFs, both or neither. They were informed in advance that during this period they might experience anomalous sensations and asked to record on a floor plan their location at the time of occurrence of any such sensations, along with a note of the time of occurrence and a brief description of the sensation. Upon completing the session in the experimental chamber, they were asked to complete three questionnaires. The first was an EXIT scale asking respondents to indicate whether or not they had experienced particular anoma- lous sensations. The second was the Australian Sheep–Goat Scale, a widely used measure of belief in and experience of the paranormal. The third was Persinger’s Personal Philos- ophy Inventory, although only the items that constitute the Temporal Lobe Signs (TLS) Inventory sub-scale were scored. These items deal with psychological experiences typi- cally associated with temporal lobe epilepsy but normally distributed throughout the general population. Although many participants reported anomalous sensations of vari- ous kinds, the number reported was unrelated to experimental condition but was related to TLS scores. The most parsimonious explanation for our findings is in terms of suggestibility.
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FULL TEXT: http://www.each.usp.br/rvicente/HauntProject.pdf
 
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