Ok every good haunted house needs a graveyard, we usually use ours as an entry way to the rest of the house, it usually consists of a frontgate with and archway. I wont go into making the gate because most people have an idea of what a gate looks like (if ya dont...email me ill try to help ya) We first decide on a pathway through the graveyard, once that is done we fill our graveyard with a 2-3 foot deep blanket of leaves.Remember to keep your path visible to your guests, we use 2 strings of orange colored christmas style lights on each side of the path but that takes away from the dark atmosphere of the room.
Next we pick out spots in the yard for our "zombies" usually 2 to 3 people will work, weve even done it with one, but the more the better. We clear spots for then to lay.
The other things you can do for atmosphere that we have done is, hung a strobe light above the center of the room set on the lowest setting so it flashes once every couple seconds kinda like lightning, with sounds of thunder and crickets,bugs,crows in the background.
THE EFFECT:
Before your guests come through you bury your actors in the leaves make sure that they arent noticable, in other words make them match the surrounding level of leaves (NO BIG LUMPS)
As your guests enter the room the walk down the path, the leaves make a rustling noise to there left, then there right, and straight ahead....there only option is to move forward, as the do the first hands reach up through the leaves then another set, and another....they move forward faster. The actors start pulling themselves up out of the leaves...they move very slowly toward the guest falling in behind them....pushing then toward the exit.....finnaly they emerge safe from the graveyard....and on into more danger!!! hahahaha
