Halloween nears, and if you’re up for making your spooky night a little more crazy, technology can assist with options to surprise and spook out.
Technology can improve our lives, but it can also be used to be a little playful, something some seasonal events tend to invite. We’re not just talking about finding some savvy smart lights for a Christmas tree, but rather finding ways to make your house a little spooky to mess with people.
So what can you do at home, and what can you do if you decide to leave and go out? We have some ideas, and they won’t take much more than some gadgets you probably already own, and maybe a little time of your own.
At home
With access to power plugs and the ability to control your home like it’s a set, being at home gives you a lot more control in terms of what you can do.
Halloween’s creepy mood is something you can probably take the most control with using practical effects — figures, statues, and even the spot of fake blood — but if you want to use technology to make your home that much creepier, there are some choices.
Set the mood with lighting
For starters, you can use smart LED lights to set the mood. A haunting mood.
Smart lights can be controlled by your phone in different ways. The ones that offer multiple colours mean you can set them as red or orange or even a freaked-out purple or green, casting a different vibe on your home.
But not every smart light has colour, and you can still do something with that.
While some smart lights miss out on colour control, they should all support variations of brightness, and some may handle animations. It means you can lower the brightness to match the glow of a candle, and possibly animate it accordingly. Give your home the vibe of an old house decked with candles made from simple smart-lights around the home.
Projector against a curtain
If you want to take your haunting to a slightly different place, and you happen to have a projector nearby, pull down a curtain and grab some haunting scenes.
You can’t just use a horror movie because it’s been edited to actually be a movie. But you can find animations and looped video on YouTube, finding things such as “Halloween window projections” or spending a few bucks on something similar, possibly from Etsy.
Do a search on window projections and you’ll quickly find something worth projecting, handy when trick-or-treaters come knocking.
Speaker in the bushes
One of the easiest things anyone can do is to play spooky sounds, thanks in part to an assortment of spooky sound playlists. You can then use these with a speaker near your door, hidden nearby, or possibly in a bush somewhere.
Leave a phone or tablet running on loop with the speaker, and all of a sudden you’ve added to the vibe of your home upon entry.
Out and about
A haunted vibe at home is one thing, but if you plan on heading from door-to-door dressed for the occasion, you may want to use technology to make your Halloween more interesting that way, too.
Out and about, we have a couple of ideas worth trying if you’re keen to make Halloween more than just costumes and candy-laden chants. You can have a little more fun, and maybe confuse and bewilder others in the process.
Haunt your lolly bucket with sound
Wireless speakers have become so commonplace that you probably have a few lying around. If you have some that happen to be small enough, you may want to consider sticking them at the bottom of a bucket for your kids, and preparing a bit of a haunted bucket for them.
To do this, we need a bit of a script. Turn your voice into a horror movie and record yourself in your darkest, most creepy and haunted voice saying:
- Feed me
- Give me lollies or else
- I need more, more, more, and so on.
Think of more words and phrases just like that, turning yourself into a haunted candy carrier, as if the bucket storing all the sweets was suddenly enchanted and craved everything.
If you’re going to record this, consider recording it with a good 20 to 30 seconds of pausing in between, and then play the file on repeat to the speaker in your bucket. No one else will be doing it (unless they’ve read this article).
Freak out others with a walkie talkie
There’s a recent return of walkie talkies, and if you have one, you can use them to freak out others by giving something a voice that can’t normally talk.
We may have been a little inspired by Bob’s Burgers on this one, but if you have a couple of walkie talkies, you can place one inside a toy or part of a costume, and let someone else run point on making that thing talk.
