This is the Arch, made by Ironman, we won as the Grand Prize of the Halloween-L Video Contest for Best Haunt. |
Here's the guillotine that was made by Bob-O. Will now be in our dungeon. |
Our Yard before the build begins |
Another view of the yard & house. |
A light up plastic pumpkin,repainted & re carved. |
Nighttime picture of a monster in our front cemetery |
Glowing ghost in Front Cemetery |
Angel statue on a tombstone |
Plastic skeleton in the tree out front. |
This is the fence/gate where you go into our back yard. We've added a facade & a foam *dungeon* door. I love that door! |
This is just to the right of the gate, that's our carport. Now the crypt, where the FCG goes in place of the reaper that's in there now. |
Fire & water. A cool prop Dustin just built. He made the flame cauldron & the *Mucky* skeleton has a fountain in it. It will pump red water & will be in the *Green House Room* |
The maze walls in my back yard. This shows the back of the garage on the left & some of the house on the right. We also now have a door in the back of the garage. Basically, folks will walk through the gate, through the back yard & into the garage, coming back out in our driveway. |
This is our not quite finished Electric Chair. |
The cemetery in the front yard of our house lit up at night. |
The view of the maze from our deck. |
Cemetery during the day. In the front yard, this shot shows the front of the house & where the office is. |
The facade. This is our garage. You can see the carport on the left. We have a 2 car garage that last year was the whole haunt. We fit about 4 rooms in there. |
Entrance to the Haunt. Door was made of 2" foam, carved & painted to look like wood. |
View of the greenhouse, as you first enter. |
*Mucky* Skeleton sitting on a *stump*, which encases a Fog Chiller (Patterned after Deathlord's Fog on the Rocks). |
Our *Big Mouth* (Thanks 2 Scary Guys!). |
Manual Rattle Coffin & Corpse Jumper. |
The Sewer Hole that Dustin originally made for his play *Guys & Dolls*. |
A view of one of the maze halls. Fishing line hanging to brush on people & Lit with Blacklights. |
The Dining Room, you can see some of our Ren Faire Decor on the walls. & Another *Mucky* in the Middle. |
Dining Room. Best Picture of the Table & the Skull Chandelier I made using Skulls that Upier cast for us. The skulls on the *guests* were made by Randy Schirmer. |
More Dining Room |
Here comes the bride.....BOO! Yet Another *Mucky*. |
Our Grim Organist & the Stained *Glass* windows I made. |
Our Portrait Hallway. |
Portrait Hallway & a False Door. |
Hostages in the Nursery. |
The Evil Dolly. |
A shot of our *new & improved* Electric Chair, hooked up with rope lights & a strobe to a fake breaker panel. |
Lights on, no flash, no fog yet. |
Our *Bob-o-tine* & Trick Cage. |
Here's our Flying Crank Ghost in the crypt. |
The Lab, with no victim & with just the Blacklight on. |
Myself, your Hostess, Witchypoo. |
Night Shot of the cemetery with the fog cooler activated. |
Our Skeleton FCG. A cheap imitation of Gore Galore's prop. |
The Drop Panel in the Portrait Hallway. |
Our Spider Victim in the Library. |
Toby Hemker as *The Mummy* in the Library. |
Jay Cockrell as *The Werewolf* in the Trick cage. |
Sierra is our fabulous screaming Lab Victim & Debbie Cockrell as the Lab Assistant. |
The Finished Facade, with our Que Line. Ready to scare! |
We had the most fabulous Halloween to date! Opened, almost on time
Friday night. All the kids showed up on time & helped with all the last
minute details. We got them all in makeup & costumes & shooed them out
the back door into the haunt, so no one could see them. This was the
year with the best build crew (that is, those who actually bothered to
show up) & the best actors we had! There's a few that are seniors that I
asked to come back from college for us each year. I hope they do. Our
#1 actor, Jay Cockrell, is a sophomore & was one that just showed up on
our steps last year just before we opened & was the best kid we had.
I've now *adopted* him with his mother's blessing (who by the way was our
Demented Nurse in the lab- Guess it all runs in the family).
The line was getting long, all the way to the sidewalk & down a ways.
Folks lining up & getting excited. Folks always Ooh & Ahh over our
cemetery & the Flying Crank Ghost that we have set up in our carport
*Crypt*. Both have fog & great lighting. Always a big hit. Over all
this, we played The Hedstroms *Clive Manor* throughout the haunt. We
wanted each room to have it's own music, but we didn't have enough
speakers, or boom boxes. Clive Manor was the best choice to have played
for the whole thing, all the way through, with no editing.
I have to say I was a bit nervous still, as there were lots of things
that weren't done in time (as usual) & wished for an extra week to get it
done. So, we let the victims in...
You enter the big dungeon door we made for the gate & into the *green
house*. We have vines & rope hanging everywhere & you first see the
skeleton fountain with a flame cauldron, then you see a skeleton with a
lantern sitting on a stump with skulls (Fog cooler), a monster mud reaper
stands close & lots of gargoyles & heads rolling around in here. On the
left if our Big Mouth, which got lots of scares.
After a short tunnel, you enter into the Cellar, where we have a corpse
in a cabinet, a coffin wrapped in chains (that rattles) & a jumping
corpse. All was manually activated by an actor dressed all in black.
The Rattle coffin scared quite a few.
Next we have a bit of maze where we had an actor in a scary mask floating
around. In this maze we also have a Sewer Facade, that will next year
have Rats & cave eyes in it.
Then there's an Flying Crank Skeleton in a hallway with Glow 3 D molds &
a scare. The scare is in the wall, covered in black plastic with the
actor just standing outside of it. So it looks like the wall is flat &
continuous, til the actor jumps out.
A few more twists & turns & you're in the Haunted Dining room. We made a
great skull chandelier in this room & decorated with Paintings, Ren Faire
Hangings & swords & shields. The table was set for 3 corpses, with
glasses, plates, etc.... The *food* was great stuff, bugs, & body parts,
with a severed Head as the main course. The *head* being a real actor &
the table a trick table so the actor can jump up at the folks walking by.
We had a fake exit door here that got folks. Exit really being behind a
curtain.
More maze... la di da... Oh another FCG.. or is it? Ack! It's an actor
dressed as a FCG! Another turn & your in our music room. Organist
(without the FCG motor we wanted), a bride (no groom, not enough actors-
darn), & the way cool stained *glass* panels I made with Thunder &
lightning machine behind them. Another turn & you're in the haunted
portrait hallway. The blue fabric we used glowed as well, so this room
was BRIGHT! There were old doors we used in this hall, to give the folks
the idea that one might open up & someone scare them. Nope, but another
*Stained Glass* panel dropped & BOO! He he he, got them good! He said
he heard someone say they wet themselves here.
Then you entered into our Library. The desk all set up with statues &
books, the corpse sitting at the desk all covered in webs with 4 Flying
Crank Spiders dangling from above. The windows were boarded up & you see
a bookshelf (was supposed to be motorized to have the books go in & out
by themselves)& a crate with a mummy in it. How to get out? Eeek! The
mummy came to life & folks can't find their way out! Then, the mummy
pulls the bookshelf aside & it's a hidden passage. It was in this room
we had 2 confirmed pees.
You are now in the Nursery/Dot Room. Here we had a boom box that played
Keeba's Nursery music. CREEEEEEEP- EEEE! I got the bassinet made from a
basket, like someone suggested, & painted up a baby doll all evil
looking. We had bars set up like a mini dungeon & in there was a
carriage, toys, rats, & a high chair with a Mr. Thrifty in it. At the
bottom of the bassinet we had a wagon with a bunch of skulls in it.
folks saw all this & never noticed the Dot Person. Dustin hates the dot
room idea & has wanted to get rid of it before I ever put it up. But,
when you ask each person what their favorite part of the haunt is, they
all say, *the room with the dots*. Next year I want to add a Jack in the
Box with a giant sized evil clown in it.
You then go down another long hallway (Saturday night we got fishing line
up & had it dangling in here), you make a turn & you're in the dungeon!
We had a live actor in our electric chair, a set of stocks with a skelly
in it, a werewolf cage, & the guillotine.
The actor in the Chair never moved until everyone was almost past him.
The werewolf cage was a trick cage that fell forward & stopped just short
of the people walking by. So they got a good 1, 2, scare going.
We were worried for a while about the werewolf. I wanted him to look
realistic & not use a cheesy mask, so I invested in some Cinema Secrets
woochie stuff & we did up his face. The Scarecrow Shredder fangs we
bought didn't quite work out. Wish I'd have set them on him earlier in
the week, so we used really cheesy fangs, but they worked good enough in
the dark. I was also worried about his hands. I was going to just do
makeup & hair with spirit gum & add fake nails, but luckily just a week
before Halloween, i was at my Cousin, Jennifer's, wedding & bumped into
an old friend, Paul. Paul owns Darkside Studio
http://www.darksidestudio.com/ . We got to talking about all sorts of
Hallowen stuff & my love of FX makeup. He told me to come by anytime &
he'd teach me stuff & we could hang out. Plus, he loaned me a VERY cool
set of Werewolf hands!!!!!! I'm getting me a pair of these, as well as
about 5 of his masks for next year. OK, I exaggerate, I really want it
all, but will probably get 2 masks this year & maybe one a year.
You then enter into the Lab. The lab had all sorts of glow liquids in
various lab jars/bottles, with tubes & what not going all over. We have
2 plasma balls on the shelves, along with skulls & body parts. One of
our Haunters, Clint, loaned us a Jacob's Ladder from the Career Center!
Whoo Hoo! The sizzle & zap from it was a great attraction!
Our first night we had a great kid named Korey in the table as the
victim, he was pretty good at *playing possum*, while the nurse (drenched
in blood), played with the props & squirted the folks with water from the
IV she brought (a real life nurse, she got us some way cool stuff to use
this year), Korey then came to *life* & scared the pants off of people.
Saturday night, he traded places with someone & played the Zombie & we
had a girl, Sierra, play the victim. A much better choice! Both played
Zombie & Victim the BEST! What a screamer! Wow! My ears are still
ringing.
You go through a doorway & there's a Reaper, who looks fake, but jumps
out at you, then you exit out the door. Here we had the donation table
with our Coffin Donation Box.
All told, Friday we had about 500 people & $220 in donations, Saturday,
around 120 people & $140 in donations! Wow! Everyone was amazed, happy,
& scared. I don't think I've heard that many screams, ever. What a way
to warm my little black heart. Everyone in town was very pleased & it's
been the talk of the neighborhood. I can't wait to hear all the feedback
& am Very excited for all of you to see the video this year. I think we
surpassed ourselves 200% this year.
I hope everyone's Halloween was as fabulous as ours!
