2013- Day 201- We're baaaaaaaack!

What! Kmon now Doc,...it's still April! Yes of course it's only April. That's why we are getting started now! Actually there are a couple of practical reasons for starting now. One is my work schedule has gotten a lot busier so I will have to spread things out to be certain it gets done on time. The other is that this may be the last year of the Halls. It's not definite, but very possible. Very likely we will be relocating within the next year or so. My oldest is off to college. She was the original inspiration for this whole thing when she was back in the fifth grade! Anyway if this is in fact the case, we want this year to be the most spooktacular ever, so of course it will take more time.
Believe it or not Ghouls, I am still taking down the crypt from last year! We basically have not had a garage for about 3 years now. While I am doing this I promise to post the long overdue tutorial on the crush wall. I know a bunch of folks have been asking about that.

This year we will have a similar layout for the traffic flow. The theme is basically a haunted hotel. Guests will enter first a dark "back alley" with thunder and lightning overhead. They approach the back entrance of the hotel where they actually have to go up a few steps to the door! A ghost can be seen through the door window as they approach and she is walking down the steps inside. Just before she gets to the door, it opens into a room where there will be a bunch of scares, peppers ghost effect (one last time), etc. Then the guests will have to go down a few steps to the main hotel lobby where they are greeted by the zombie bell hop! He will guide them into the "tower of terror" elevator (based on the disney attraction) The elevator is basically the same concept from last year. We will have them spend a little more time in there and there will be much more actor participation. They will exit the elevator and enter  the "dot maze". This is just a souped up version of the well-known "dot room" which is a room with fluorescent dots. A couple actors are dressed up in dot suits and totally blend in to the surroundings until they move forward! We did this a few years ago and it works very well! Highly recommended. Anyway this is a great transition to the vortex of course which they will finish up with.

So that's a quick overview! Much more ahead, and thanks again Ghouls for reading and following!

2013- Day 359- Final notes

There's no question we took it to another level this year! The amount of detailing was unprecedented. Of course we had the extra year to work with but everything seemed to flow very well despite the complexity of this year's build. The entrance door was huge as we noted earlier. The drop panel was a great scare and will be used again. Overall very little damage to the haunt. A couple of pictures were knocked off in the entrance hall. The elevator was a smash hit! I recommend the moving panel as it creates the most realistic sense of motion. The ghost worked better than I thought but we had the technical problem with the light on the back panel going out. It was perhaps a little too much to have people see the ghost as they were exiting the elevator before going into the crypt. The concept of changing sets for people going into and then out of the elevator through the same door was a little awkward but we did make it work, sort of. The crypt and crush wall were tremendous! The wall held up much better than I thought. Interestingly, many people did not even see the corpse because for some reason they were looking elsewhere!
And now some thoughts going forward for 2013:
1) The drop panel is a definite keeper. We will re-employ it somewhere else
2) The elevator will be rebuilt in a slightly different way
3) More will be done with video projection. The snake effect was very interesting, somewhat effective, but again the problem was that it had to be very brief because it was a floor projection where people were walking into it.
4) We're going for the peppers ghost 1 more time! We have to abandon the moving ghost because we just don't have the space for it.
5) The crush wall worked great, but I think we are going to rest the crypt theme for next year.

That's it Ghouls for 2012. Thank you all for reading and following. Stay tuned for the "Halls of Doom" 2013. The next build will be the most ambitious yet!

2013- Day 360- More from the "Halls" 2012

Entry door details

Daytime view of the newly created haunt entry door

One of the great things we came up with this year was an actual entry door to the haunt. Rather than just a barrier of cut up black sheeting, we built a foam door with 2x2 back frame that could be hinged on one of those garden archway structures. We've had that sitting in the yard forever and have used it for the entrance but never actually put a door in it. Adding a colorful animated prop on the front with some spooky mood lighting and a motion activated sound device really gave this a superb professional quality to it. The younger kids had something to look at while waiting in line. It was really like waiting for a Disney ride! This is definitely our permanent door as I do not think we can improve on it. We added a ghoulish looking hand prop as the door handle and would ask which guest was brave enough to open the door!

The "Halls of Doom" are officially open!

Putting it all together!

The aftermath: checking for any failures and damage after the show

Behind the scenes: the control room hours before the Halls open!

2013-Day 364- An amazing show!

Welcome back Ghouls the day after! I can't even begin to describe the spooktacularness of the haunt this year! I'm just going to present the movie and you be the judge. We had many actors and helpers who did a tremendous job. Special thanks to Dave and John in the Mansion hallway who did a phenomenal acting job. John was the first ghoul you see popping out of the drop panel.  Dave was 'The Count' who gathered the guests and led them into the elevator, unsuspectingly. Steve was the ghoul who was in the elevator already as the guests entered. Dave H was our videographer and 'crypt keeper'. Maddie was our ghost who you get a brief glimpse of exiting the elevator. About an hour before the show I was testing the elevator pulley and it broke, so we had to have 2 guys raise and lower it manually (Thanks Max and Mike) My son Ben and I were 'behind the curtain' as it were. Ben was the crush wall operator. Everyone helped to make this a spectacular show. Thank you all! I will post more images etc over the next few days. And then.....we plan for the Halls of Doom 2013...I mean what else Ghouls!

This is the plan of the haunt. Guests enter the mansion hallway, enter the elevator, go down to  the crypt level, exit the elevator and see the ghost apparition, then enter the crypt and exit out through the end hallway where we had prop heads hanging and actors jumping out. Finally the vortex! Use this map as a reference for the video!

2012- Day 3- The Show Will Go On!

I think it looks OK for us. The brunt of the storm is looking like it will hit fairly well south. Basically just rain forecast for Wednesday. I had a couple of the actors over last night to review their scripts. One is stationed behind the drop panel, one is the 'Count' who will greet the guests in front of the elevator and will manage the sliding wall in front of the crypt door, and the third is the video operator who will work the snake projection image. Today I am having the elevator operator over. He has one of the more difficult jobs, namely pulling the elevator panel up and holding it there for several seconds until the guests leave the elevator. I did have to hire someone to do that! Once your haunt reaches the level where you need to start paying people to do jobs, maybe it's time to scale back? A bunch of weatherproofing steps also need to be taken today for the vortex ahead of whatever we get from the storm. Lots of testing over the next couple of days. I hope to have a bunch of pics and maybe some video.

2012- Day 5- 'Frankenstorm' or not

We are going to continue to move forward and prepare to run this build whether it happens on the 31st or not. Last year it was rescheduled for a week later but we were out of town. So I suppose if cooler heads prevail we can rationalize that it will happen but we're not sure when. I don't think there will be snow this time based on the latest forecasts. The question is the wind, how much, will power be out and for how long. You can't make this stuff up Ghouls, but we can't control it so we're moving on with the finish. Not much left to do. There is a foam entry door we need to set up, lot's of weather proofing between the garage and the vortex, one more sound byte for the ghost area, some last minute tune-ups for the vortex, mostly light-proofing and dot painting on the fabric. Finally we need to test everything over the next few days and go over the key actors and workers roles this weekend.

2012- Day 6- Storm threatens the show for second straight year!!

Major storm approaches from lower right heading north

I'm hoping this is just a bad dream Ghouls. The forecast grows worse every day. I suppose the only potential good news is the worst is expected for Mon-Tues which means there is an outside chance it will be improved by Wed. If the town does not call off Halloween obviously we will still run it. If there isn't much wind by Wed we might still be able to run the vortex. I really can't believe this is happening for the second straight year. Might have to rethink this whole operation if it gets scrapped again due to weather. Very depressing situation right now.

2012- Day 9

Vortex with fabric installed

Exit hall framed out

Steps going into the vortex- finally!

Another welcomed addition this year was a set of steps going into and coming out of the vortex. This also added stability to the bridge. The exit hallway was framed. Overall I think we're doing well at the finish here. The exit hall should be finished in the next day or 2 and we should be able to start on the entrance door. I anticipate many hours to test everything.

2012-Day 10- Scenes from the upgraded Mansion

Entrance hall. Notice the 'real' webs! Skeleton and stacked books prop with chandelier a little further back.

Chandelier view from the foyer

Ghouls, this was a huge upgrade from last year! We got rid of the cheesy scene-setter sheeting and replaced it with foam 'wooden' panels you can see on the right. Probably the biggest breakthrough this year was use of a web gun to create the webs. I'm telling you this stuff is amazing! Here is an instructional video from Haunted Props that explains how it works. These webs look and feel like the real thing. We installed the chandelier at the back of the hallway.

2012- Day 11- Air cannon reloaded

Almost the final countdown yet again! We finished putting the fabric up in the vortex. It's holding up fairly well but a couple of the sheets have shrunken a tad, maybe 3/4", so we taped the ends with masking tape and this enabled us to safely stretch it over to staple onto the end hoops. The chandelier was finally hung! Hopefully a video soon. And today's item, the air cannon, was re-installed as shown. I had a similar video last year. I am a complete pneumatics newbie, not counting last year since we never actually got a chance to use the darn thing! A garage haunt is not an optimal venue for serious pneumatic props, but this is different! It is actually fairly easy to operate and very compact. This is the one we're using. Apparently the price has gone up since I bought mine, but again, if you are not an expert in the area of pneumatics I would not try to build one from scratch! Major safety issues here Ghouls. The other component of this set up is of course the air compressor which you will need as well. I'm using an 8 pound Husky brand. If you have never used an air compressor before there are some key issues to be aware of. The big one is the power drain. As I mentioned last year I tried plugging into almost every outdoor outlet we have and was blowing fuses right and left. You are going to have to use an indoor outlet and find one that works by trial and error! We will have to keep the tank inside the garage, but this year I have designed a large work area so there will be plenty of room. Make sure you keep that in mind! Also these things make a ton of noise while the tank fills. Thankfully the cannon does not require a ton of pressure and it looks like one fill should last at least an hour or more. We could refill the tank during the short intermission if we have to. Finally make sure you close the drain valve on the bottom of the tank if you have previously opened it! Last year I opened it before storing the tank, forgot to close it, and tonight I was trying to fill the tank for about an hour and nothing was happening! There was nothing in the troubleshooting directions about it. Somehow I figured it out!

2012-Day 16- Rolling update

Vortex bridge reassembled!

Chandelier nearly complete. One arm needs to be reattached.

The vortex bridge assembly was completed yesterday. I had a friend come over to help and we finished it in just over an hour! No significant degradation yet of the wood components now in the 3rd year of use. Next we will test the motor and put the fabric up. So actually the vortex is right now a little ahead of schedule. The rest of the haunt is getting there but I think we're a couple days behind. The chandelier is about 90% done but we had a glitch with one of the arms coming off after the glue failed (see image above). The problem is the inner pvc is also glued and when you screw the arm into it, it might actually increase the stresses on the glue. So far 5 out of 6 arms look fine. We do have a 'plan B' which is to use wooden dowels instead of pvc which can be screwed into the base rather than glued.

2012- Day 19 Hoops done!

Attaching arms to the base. You can drill an extra hole in the base to run the wires through.

All 3 hoops reassembled!

It took 3 days to get the vortex hoops back up. Not too bad. We have the system down pretty well by now. Last thing will be the bridge and of course testing with the motor. Be careful though with the windy weather. We left one side of the canopy open to make the hoop assembly easier but this allows wind to get in there and potentially lift the other side of the canopy like a sail. That did happen with one significant gust! Meanwhile progress continues on the chandelier. A couple of arms are seen here attached to the base. I glued the arms to the base with some loctite cement and also used 1 or 2 screws per arm which allow for extra fixation into the pvc inner tubes.

2012- Day 21- Chandelier update

Corpse arms complete with collars. We will have to add the chain links to the collars in the next few days for the final installation!

We're working on putting together the pieces finally! The arms are done. You can see a couple of them here holding the candles. It is possible, Ghouls, to bend the fingers into a fist once the latex and painting are totally done. You might have to add a drop or 2 of glue to hold the candle in there depending on how the fingers can bend around it. Now you might have to touch up some paint around the knuckles after positioning the fingers but I think I will do that once the chandelier is actually hung. The collars are easily screwed into the forearms with a single screw after predrilling. You can see how they effectively hide the connection between the hand and forearm like I mentioned earlier! Two additional challenges if you wind up doing this. One is how to connect the arms to the hexagonal base which you can see toward the upper right of the image. I decided to overengineer the construction to increase the durability by first routing into the wood a depth of maybe an inch or so, then gluing a short pvc segment into it. This way I can screw the arms into the pvc as well as glue them into the base. The original design by Merlin has an additional collar on the other end as well as the wrist. My arms had to be much shorter because of space and I wanted people to be able to see the forearm detail so I left out the additional collar. The other design consideration is the electrical wiring. I bought the candles already wired, so these paired wires (one positive, one negative) can be fed through the pvc from the base of the hand out the end of the forearm pretty easily. You don't need an extra conduit to stick in there.

2012- Day 60

School's back in session. Halloween decorations are already out. It's beginning to look a lot like our favorite season again Ghouls! Lots to do this month. We will start on the chandelier this weekend. Pepper's ghost effect will be finally tested, sound installed and the front entrance hall will be renovated. Probably we'll get the web gun out, re-install the air cannon and set up the work zone for the ghouls who will be behind the scenes as it were. What I am hoping is by October, the only things left will be the vortex, exit hall and entrance door. This will give us plenty of time for testing which this set really will need. There are just too many things happening to have it run smoothly without many run throughs!

2012 Day 69- Elevator light and X10 revisited

The sequence for the haunted elevator goes like this:
1) Elevator door ghoul (actor) waves his hand toward the doors to open them. I can see this gesture from the control room monitor and at that moment I can open the doors using the pulley bar. Of course there is a sound bite!
2) As the guests enter the elevator, the overhead light turns on. This is a red LED which I can operate using an X10 remote (see video)
3) Once the guests are inside, the 'door ghoul' does have to manually close them. The overhead light turns off so it is pitch dark, a weight drops onto the elevator making a loud clunk with enough force to shake the elevator a bit, and then there is a sound bite scream.
4) Right after the scream, the back panel light turns on showing the moving panel only and along with the light there is a creepy laugh as the panel moves simulating the elevator going down to the crypt level.
5) Once the crypt level is reached, the overhead light turns back on and the doors reopen!

The following video demonstrates operation of the X10 remote to turn on and off the elevator light. For a detailed explanation of X10 and how it works, you can see this post

2012- Day 71- More crypt work and video projection test

We tested the crush wall. No problems there. The rolling mechanism is actually smoother now that it has aged a year! The snake video projection was also turned on and that works fine as well. The concept behind video projection can be reviewed in this post from last year.
We will have things set up so that when the crypt door opens, the snake video will be on and as soon as the guests enter the crypt it will get shut off. An important point on these projectors is you can't stop or even pause them without having those annoying display signs appear in the projection e.g "pause", "stop" etc. thus killing the effect! I had to rig a shutter device which is shown in the second video. This can be operated manually by the "videographer". It will take some practice to get the flow down. First the shutter is deployed, then the video is paused until the next group is about to enter. Then before the crypt door opens, the video is unpaused and the shutter opens. Next the crypt door opens. I think I am going to have to write this one up for whoever is doing it! We'll call it the 'home haunting playbook'!
The following are a couple of videos illustrating the live effect:

This shows the crush wall basically fully deployed to a position about  half -way to the exit door from the  back of the room. More than enough to scare even the bravest of souls! Remember the corpse prop will have live night crawlers on it! 

2012 Day 92- Control room chaos!

Time now to make order out of chaos! I walked into the control room and confronted a literal bird's nest of cables, cords and switches. What! Where does all this stuff go and what does it control!!? The switches are nothing high tech. The extension cords plug into the switches which then plug into the strip. I do have an X10 remote which is used to turn on the crypt crush wall sound and light effects and I believe the elevator light and exit sound . First thing to do was turn on everything and make sure it all still works. And yes, so far so good! I tested all 3 cameras and no problem there. At least 4 sound boards are still functioning fine. Lighting for the foyer and crypt were also checked. A dvd sound system is set up for the crypt and this just replays 2 sound bytes over and over. We also have 4 pulley bars and 2 additional pulley ropes to reposition the  crush wall after it is deployed! Two that are shown here open and close the crypt door, one operates the crush wall and one not shown opens the elevator doors. Got all that Ghouls! Now I need to make a map of everything especially the switches etc to remember what operates what!

The basic control room breakdown. This is where all the action is!

DVD player sites on top of the monitor for Camera 3 - the Crypt. You can see the front of the crush wall recorded live!

Camera 2 monitors the inside of the elevator. You can see the X10 remote (small white box) sitting in front of the monitor.

This is the Foyer and also entrance into the Crypt as shown by Camera 2

2012 Day 94- Corpse chandelier

Our 'big' prop project this year will be the corpse chandelier. I have a chandelier prop that we have used in the past which does have a shake motor built into it, but it hasn't gotten a lot of attention. You can see that prop here in the top image. It's kind of cool, but I thought we needed something with a little more creep to it. I found the solution a couple of years ago searching through the 'Monster page of Halloween project links'. Those of you who are not familiar with this resource really need to investigate it! Don't feel you have to come up with everything on your own and reinvent the wheel!  Here at the 'Halls of Doom' most of the sets, props and effects are tweeks of  previously developed projects, many of which are found on the Monster page. One of these, the corpse chandelier, is perfect for the upgrade of the Mansion hallway we are looking for! I probably will not build the candles from scratch though.

2012- Day 114

The following is a brief tour of the Halls of Doom, again largely left intact due to last year's freak storm. This was unexpectedly creepy going in there to see what we left behind as we begin the journey to Halloween 2012. I may not need any fake spider webs at all! It was very dark in there as you can see.

2012- Day 126

We will get started very soon with the haunt restoration as I'm going to call it. Here is a rough breakdown of the schedule:
1) July- system check. We will go through each area and test all the lighting , sound etc, make sure it still works after sitting there for 9 months! We will also start on the corpse chandelier project. This will replace the one that's there now in the entrance hall.
2) August- 3 areas we want to address are the entrance mansion hallway, the crypt and the pepper's ghost area. I have some extra foam and now with the additional time there is no excuse for not making the entrance hallway  REAL! The pepper's ghost was never actually tested so we will need to do that. This will give us time to make any changes. We will need to add some sound effects to that event as well. Finally the crypt had some "holes" in the back wall that were never really patched up.
3) September- time to do work on the exit hallway with possibly a ramp leading up to the vortex, and the workers space as well as setting up and testing the cannon again.
4) October! This will be the time to rebuild our friend the Vortex, and this year I am hoping to really make the access to it seamless and completely enclosed! We are also going to create an appropriately detailed entrance doorway to the haunt.

So that's a rough breakdown of the "plaaaaaaaaaaans!"
Stay tuned