Mummies Make Excellent Monsters for Haunted Houses or Home Haunts
Mummies are underrated monsters and do not get the credit they deserve. That creepy creature from ancient Egypt wrapped in dusty bandages captures our imagination. I recommend trying a mummy theme if you own a haunted house or if you turn your own home and garage into a haunt. The public will love your haunt and tell their friends and family about “that awesome mummy haunted house.”
Mummies are odd movie monsters and haunted house creatures to me but ones that really should be used more often. The public likes mummies as shown by many mummy movies throughout film history. Also, mummies’ ties to ancient times make them more interesting than simple haunted house actors with fake hammers and kitchen knives.
A mummy as a movie monster was first introduced to movie-goers in The Universal Studios’ film The Mummy (1932). It starred Boris Karloff. He played Prince Im-Ho-Tep, an ancient Egyptian who was mummified and comes back to life in modern times. The interesting thing about the film is Karloff is only seen bandaged as a mummy briefly when he returns to life. He looks like an older man throughout the rest of the movie. But, the film brought the concept of the mummy as a horror monster to life. And he kept coming back like all good monsters do.
Universal Studios made many more Mummy films and Hammer Film Productions started their own Mummy series of movies. Hammer’s first Mummy film, The Mummy, starred Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. It was in color, which was exciting to fans in 1959 when it was released. This time around, the Mummy is named Kharis and not Im-Ho-Tep. Of course, the Mummy came to life again in the more recent series of Mummy films starring Brendan Fraser. No doubt, people are primed for a mummy-themed haunt.
There is another benefit to creating a mummy-themed haunt besides the popularity of mummy films. With a mummy theme you can have consistency in your haunted house. Picture it, Egyptian symbols throughout the haunt, actors dressed in bandages, mummy hand props scattered throughout the haunt, and lifelike snake props slithering about. Also, you can decorate your haunted house with many Egyptian sarcophagi. A sarcophagus was a type of coffin in ancient Egypt – a perfect decoration for your haunt.
Yes, filling a haunted house with sarcophagi would be helpful to haunted house owners and scary to patrons. Like coffins, sarcophagi are perfect places for actors to hide and leap out at customers as they tiptoe through the haunt. A perfect way to set up an Egyptian-themed haunt is to line an entire room of the haunted house with many sarcophagi. Place dummies in some coffins. Place real actors dressed as mummies in other coffins. I guarantee you will get good startles and screams from your patrons when the real actors jump out. People will love your haunted attraction and visiting it will make Halloween memorable for many customers!
I hope this article has given you some new ideas for your haunted attraction. Again, I encourage you to try a mummy theme. The Mummy films have the public primed for a “mummy” haunt and just the d?�cor itself would be eerily amazing.
