The haunted house crowd is a notoriously creative group of Halloween set and performance artists. The sheer number of haunted houses that pop up all over the country every year should stand as a testament to our dedication to all things spooky, thrilling, and delightfully pretend. Millions of people come together in costume to spook or get spooked every year in these barns, homes, and transformed community centers turned professional haunted house. Every year the haunted house teams come together to make an even scarier and better-designed tour than last year, incorporating new techniques on old set pieces, new horrifying acts with the same actors behind the masks.
Make it Chilling This Year
One thing that's somewhat incongruous with the holiday is that many haunted houses heat up significantly with all the equipment, focused lights, and people getting scared under one roof. Scary experiences should be cold, chilling in fact. You want your customers shivering in their boots, and not just from fear. For at least a few of your rooms, the scene is better served by a damp disturbing cold which can be easily created with an awesomely simple tool. All you need is a little
misting fan.
Repurposed and Perfect
Misting fans are a technique often used in theme parks, restaurants, and vacation spots to keep their customers cool when the ambient temperature is over 85 degrees outside. You've probably encountered misting before, either when vacationing or at least at the grocery store. It's what they do to keep the vegetables fresh. Just like those cucumbers stay cool, you can literally steal the body heat of your haunted house guests by using the same technique repurposed for your chilling scenes of horror and madness.
How Misting Fans Work in a Haunted House
Fortunately for your setup time, misting is incredibly easy to understand and get into place. All you need is a hose, a nozzle, a fan, and maybe a few pipes if that's how you want to position the nozzles. When the water flows to the nozzle, it is dispersed into thousands of tiny drops of water. The water actually grabs heat out of the air and takes it to the ground. It also settles on the skin of your customers and pulls the heat from their skin, much in the same way a clammy sweat might which effectively simulates the effects of intense fear. Your customers will shiver when they pass under the misting, but if it's light enough they won't even notice the cause. It will just get.... colder.
Preparing the Set
Misting fans are a great way to chill your haunted house customers, but it's also important to remember that those droplets of water will land on anything within the nozzle cone and anything your customers walk by or touch afterward. Make sure to prepare your misting-adjacent sets with non-water-soluble paints, including the makeup on your actors or you risk unplanned melting effects. As for the customers, this is a great time to start a bloody footprint trail as the bottoms of their shoes will be wet by the time they're through the scene.
Bring something new to your haunted house this year other than the usual scares, costumes, smoke machines, and sound effects. With misting fans, you can control the temperature in your rooms, cause a clammy chill to run down the customer's spines, and cool off overheated costume actors after the show. Whether you're setting up in a closed asylum, a warehouse, or an actual cornfield, misting is an excellent way to
add a chilly new feature to this year's haunted house. Have a spooktacular business season!
