Day 35- Peppers ghost redux

As promised,we revised the peppers ghost effect in zone 4 and it does seem to work! To remind our ghoul visitors, an explanation of the effect can be found here. As you recall when we tried to set this up a month or 2 ago, we were not successful because I tried to use plexiglass. There was way too much distortion. See the post from August 1. Fortunately, a similar size piece of glass was found for about $15. I used foam from an old hot tub cover (the same one I used to make the stone 'slabs' for the entrance hall) A slot was created in the foam at the top to slide the glass in. A square hole was then cut through and through. Finally a 2x2 frame was created around the foam. See the images above. The entire frame was then suspended from the ceiling and the glass height was then adjusted. I secured the back of the frame with one screw to stabilize the glass at the 45 degree angle necessary for the effect. The 'electric chair' is then illuminated with red LED which you can see in the top image. I have a small stool in the fx box area (where the actor will sit) in the second image from top. You can see in the images, the actor area which has the stool illuminated by a white light LED (second image from top again). The yellow border of the stool can be seen projected through the glass, again, angled at 45 degrees, onto the chair in the top image! An actor will APPEAR to be seated in exactly this spot although he is really sitting on the stool pictured in the second image from the top. Confusing? This is the pepper's ghost effect! Now again, once the guests get close enough to the glass, I will dim out the projected image and the actor will sneak out into the end of the zone 4 hallway to effect the scare. From here on out the rest is fairly simple and is just a matter of lighting adjustment and covering up the frame and other areas with black sheeting and/or paint.
Just remember for those trying this at home: USE GLASS, NOT PLEXIGLASS

Day 38- Crypt details

Finally the first laying down of the 'dry wall'! This is really what we're waiting for: creating the scenery- fantasy , mystery and imagination! It just happened that I came across an old hot tub foam cover and it occurred to me that I could break it up into 'slabs' and create fake stone for the crypt walls! I had planned to just use the black sheeting like I always do but this somehow just came out of nowhere. These things will happen to you. As you're thinking about how you're going to make things more interesting, it's like magic how new ideas like this just pop up. I spray painted the 'slabs', then used both glue and nails to secure them to the wood frame. Although I didn't have enough to totally cover the walls, it will be much darker than shown here and the change in texture is very striking as you go from slab to sheeting to vacuform. It greatly enhances the illusion of more depth and space!See for yourself!

Day 42- Crypt panels installed

The entrance hall, zone 1, 'The Crypt' is taking shape. We installed 3 vacuform panels, each about 3 x 4'. For those of you who don't know what they are, here are some examples
They are pre-molded wall panels made of 'ABS plastic' which is like a thin fiberglass if I were to describe the feel of it. They create a 3-dimensional xtreme realistic effect which can be a variety of themes. Probably Disney uses these on a much bigger scale. If you check out the examples above you can also see they are not cheap. I looked everywhere. Even direct from the manufacturer, unpainted single wall panels are close to $200. We got these 3 half wall panels for a little over $200. This is why we are only using them in the entrance hall where there will be enough light to see them. They do require a wood frame for mounting. You can drill small holes in the corners for screws.

You have to admit this looks pretty amazing and definitely worth it! Now remember this is under normal light. It's not going to be this bright. I hope to show a preview of what it will REALLY look like soon!

Day 49- Vortex update

Meanwhile the vortex project is continuing. We're a little behind schedule. What I am hoping is to have a structure we can actually test in the next couple of weeks. The 'half-hoop' assembly is complete (see image), so we have 6 of those which, again, will be assembled outside into 3 complete hoops. I did finally find some bike rims, which you can see in the background of this image. There is a lot of stuff people don't tell you about with respect to these projects, but if it weren't for the web I would not be able to even try! The hoops do fit in the rims but there is no room to spare. The experts say I might have to buff the edges down once I finally get it going. My carpenter friend suddenly got busy with a bunch of new jobs, but he still says he can finish what we need here. Next we will need to wire the gear motor so it can be tested. No I don't know how to do that either! I promise to have a special vortex page for this whole thing if I ever pull this off!

Day 50- Remote scare deployment- Part 1

Welcome ghouls! It's now day 50! We get a little anxious when the school year starts as that means it's almost October....especially when you start seeing the Halloween decorations come out. Anyway, as things get further along we start to finalize our 'event planning'. How, when and where do the actual 'scares' happen? As an amateur hauntmaster in your average community, I don't have the luxury of dedicated actors who are as crazy into this whole thing as we are. This year Halloween is on a Sunday which is still a 'school night', so people are either going to school or going to work the next day. I'm lucky if I get a few volunteers to help out at the last minute. They are still critically important but a key component for a haunt like this is triggering light and sound at the precise instant of time to maximize the scare effect. There are 2 ways this is done. One method is through the use of some triggering device. Over the years I have realized that in an effective haunt, darkness is your friend. Therefore light activated or motion activated sensors are useless. Infrared sensors are not reliable as most of the time they will trigger randomly since IR radiation can come from a variety of sources. In my opinion, the most reproducible, reliable sensor in a dark venue is the mat sensor, i.e. pressure. We will get into that later. For now I want to discuss the other method, which is manual activation of light and sound using some type of switch. This is done in combination with night vision monitoring (shown in the last post). One option for remote switching on and off is a system called X10. This has been around for years. It's the same kind of thing some people use to turn on their coffee remotely, or other appliances. Verrrry simple. You can google X10 and it's the first thing that comes up. A starter kit will cost around $40. It comes with a transceiver that plugs into an outlet and a remote control pad. You can add other 'modules' to the system depending on your set-up. Look at the image above. These show the transceiver on the left and 2 other modules, with the remote at far right. All you do is set the the transceiver dial to 'A', plug it into an outlet, then plug the device into the transceiver. The transceiver is #1 on the remote by default. If you add additional modules, these will be 2,3 etc. These are set-up the same way. Set each module to 'A' on the bottom dial and number 2 or 3 etc on the top dial, plug the module into the outlet, then plug the device into the module. Notice one module says 'lamp' and the other says 'appliance'. They are made to handle different degrees of wattage, but for the purposes of the average garage haunt, there isn't going to be a significant amount per module, so it probably isn't critical which one you use (I think the lamp one is cheaper). However, if you need to set off a whole power strip worth of electrical devices at once, use the appliance module.
I have included a couple of video demos as well.

Day 58B- Live Haunted Halls part 2

Our second camera sits above zone 4 and will monitor guests coming out of the cave into the 'green mile' room where the Peppers ghost effect will occur. At the instant they enter, sound and light will be activated, then the ghost effect will be faded out at just the right moment!

Day 58A- Live Haunted Halls!

Now that the framing is winding down, we start putting up our monitoring equipment, lighting, prop drops etc. A couple of years ago I invested in 2 night vision cameras. Very reasonable price. For 2 cameras including a 5 year warranty, total was $167. Very easy to use. These are basically plug and play. They have a standard AC power plug and a single male plug that connects to your yellow port on your TV. There is plenty of length on the video plug to put the cameras anywhere in the garage I want. These have been in use for a couple of years now and have worked perfectly. I recommend this company for inexpensive night vision capability: www.palmvid.com
I like having the night vision option for manual scare deployment. This way you can see exactly from the comfort of 'the com' (command center) when the guests get into the very space you need them for your prop drops or sound/light effect or whatever you need to set off! The images here show you camera 1 which is in the entrance hall , where a few things occur when the guests come down this way. The camera resolution is excellent in complete darkness.

Day 58- Jail Time

Zone 5 which is the 'jail room' is shown here. The back part of the jail will be sheeted out eventually. I'm hoping to get 1 or 2 'prisoners' to hide in there and jump up when the guests come in.