Killer Pirates – Haunted House Theme

Posted by admin on Sep 26, 2011 in Haunted House Theme Ideas | 0 comments

A favorite of many and a personal favorite of mine is pirates. I am a stickler for realistic and since I have read a ton of books and material on pirates I know that they were far from nice. I was actually shocked at some of the acts they committed. These vicious pirates are what will make for a great pirate theme haunt. Instead of your classical undead pirates that were made famous from the movies, take it the realistic way like with the haunted circus theme I discussed earlier in the theme’s settings category of this site.

Real pirates did not turn to skeletons or sail on ships that went under the water. They did however use various hand to hand weapons from swords and knives to hooks and ship tools to such efficiency that they were deadly in the hands of a pirate where they were just tools in the hands of some other sailor. If you were taken prisoner during a pirate raid you could expect to have matches put between your fingers and toes and lite on fire which was a nicer form of torture. A common act of piracy was to pin you to the ship deck with nails or ropes and then leave you there to dry out in the sun. Another more vicious version of this is adding in the cutting of the gut and the pulling out of the intestine which does not kill you but makes you suffer for a long time.

No haunted house would be complete without this authentic-looking Bloody Rustic Lantern. Guide guests through untold horrors by the glow of this vintage-inspired Halloween lighting. Also equipped for hanging. Battery Operated 3 AA. Batteries not included. Click The Image To Visit Our Affiliate Site! We get a commission if you purchase through this link.

So if you took these vicious acts into account you could have a pirate theme with some slaughter house style scenes within it. Through in the ships hold where prisoners and slaves were kept chained up but you could just as easily substitute cages with skeletal human figures. The ships hold also held cargo containing anything from stolen goods, barrels of supplies, coils of rope and rats. In a room based around the hold you could actually split it up to have several rooms, maybe one has a scene of a pirate torturing a slave/prisoner and then in another you could have rats but take it to a slight extreme buy just having them everywhere which freaks out a lot of people. The last room could just have a pirate standing guard over some of the loot or maybe a barrel of rum which could create an entirely different scene that you could make scary or use to add a bit of drunken comedy if done right.

Another great addition to a pirate theme is the ships cannons, you could have a section where they end up walking along the side of the ship maybe on the docks or something and then you could have the cannons go off which would be a great sound scare. And if you wanted to add the undead or creature style aspect to the theme you could have the bridge to get onto the ship or dock with the rope walkways and then they would go onto the dock and you could use low lying fog to create the feel that they are elevated up over actual water and if you did it thick and deep enough you could have pirate actors within the fog or even some tenticles that are animated and pop up out of the fog making it look like their is something within the fog.

As for filling out scenes for something like the pirate theme you want to think traditional and shipyard style. Crates, barrels and coils of rope would be everywhere as would spare sail canvas and lumber for hull repairs. Block and tackle would be another item you could use and if you wanted parts of the ship within scenes think about the ships wheel, the giant anchor and the crows nest along with the rope climb ways. Other room ideas are the captains quarters and the gun decks, then you can always do the upper decks with fight scenes where it is just complete chaos and your victims moving through it have no idea what to do.

This should get your gears churning on other ideas you could do. Rather you keep it real or take a turn to the fantasy side pirates are a great choice. In this case we have stuck to the ship but there are many other pirate themes you could do and we will talk more about them in a later article. If you decide to do a pirate theme based around anything we discussed here we would love to see some pictures and if you give us permission we would love to add them to the site so others can see what people have done with the information we put out on this site.