2013- Day 185- "Master...The Plaaaaaaans"

Here it is Ghouls! This year's layout. The theme as mentioned is the Haunted Hotel. Traffic flow is from the right entrance indicated by the arrows. Guests go through a back alley. Lots of thunder and lightning effects. Now this year we have something special planned. Stairs! Just a few, but in order to pull off the illusion of entering through a back storm door and also to effectively merge with a video projection onto the door, we had to put in about 3 steps. This creates some interesting scare options. Now the video projection is extremely effective and will consist of a ghost figure walking down the back stairs of the "hotel" to greet the guests! This is indicated by the yellow lines. the guests go up the steps and open the door. As soon as they get to the door, the ghost disappears, they open the door and enter a space where the flooring is slightly elevated due to the steps (indicated by the hatched area) This isn't too big a space, but will have to be engineered obviously for stability! While in that space there will be ghouls grabbing at their feet, an appearance by a bloodied peppers ghost and perhaps a cameo appearance by our friend from last year, the corpse! After that they enter the main event! A hotel lobby will be really detailed with down lighting, a front desk and a zombie bell hop to greet them and guide them into the "tower of terror" elevator. We basically will move the elevator from last year to occupy the space which was used by the crypt. Several upgrades to the elevator will be made and guests will be in there a little longer. Notice since this is a "service elevator" they will enter and exit through opposite doors. They exit into a "dot maze" which will be completely disorienting and include walls ceiling and floor! Probably 2 actors will be in there with dot suits. We will also re-employ the highly successful drop-panel as shown. Finally when they find the way out, they enter the vortex of course! So that's it! Other details of note are the expanded work space in the center for actors and other ghouls, the control room which is in the same spot as last year and the peppers ghost which is just 180 degrees oriented from last year, but because of the elevated space, we may decide to use a portion of our mud room as a back drop to also include the popular corpse chandelier!!
Stay tuned and thanks for reading!

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 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 Zero- Halloween is a definite GO!

Well congratulations Ghouls! We survived Frankenstorm with not too much more than an inconvenience. I can't believe it's actually going to happen. After 2 years of preparing this build, no question this is the most spooktacular ever! I promise to have pictures and video over the next couple of days. It's just too crazy right now getting things done at the last minute, but I have tested extensively and had plenty of time for that. It's going to go very smoothly. Believe it or not I am actually going to need a ghoul helper in the control room! Never had that happen before. We also have an actual entrance door to the haunt with light and sound while the guests wait to go in! Today's schedule calls for taking some tarps off of the vortex, connecting the end of the haunt to the vortex, putting up some more webs, obviously cleaning up, putting the night crawlers on the corpse (don't forget we have some high schoolers who think they're real tough and nothing can scare them!), more testing and a couple of run throughs before the guests arrive. Much more to come. Stay tuned and Happy Haunting to Ghouls everywhere!

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 14- Vortex reloaded!

The vortex frame was powered up today.No problems. The rotation rate is about the same. 6-7 rpm. This seems to be a good rate. Not too fast and not too slow. The last items will be the fabric, lighting and this year hopefully a real set of stairs entering and leaving. We'll see what happens. Only 2 weeks to go! I know it's the same every year now for 3 years but it's always a great feeling when we get to this point and know it's going to work again. Let's face it ghouls, the vortex is what everyone is waiting for!

2012- Day 25- Corpse arms road show

Completed corpse hands and forearms. Don't worry about the apparent hand to forearm width difference. The collars will hide those transitions!

I have to work on the road this weekend and here at an old colonial inn in New England. This place could easily be a haunt. It would be perfect! Huge rooms with 30 foot ceilings and hardly any sunlight coming in here. Very few people here. Lots of empty space. At any rate I decided to bring the materials I'm using for the corpse chandelier. Today the rest of the latexing was finished for the hands and forearms. I had to shorten the forearms from Merlin's original design because I don't have as much space in the mansion hall. The hand to forearm transition will be hidden by the collars which I did paint but have not yet attached here, so you will not see the edge of the pvc against the hand like you do here. Tomorrow I will paint the extremities a nutmeg brown color. One thing I found was that in order to make the forearms look more realistic they have to be  a little wider at the base. I used the cotton balls but also added tissue wrapped around the base to hold the cotton in place after applying the latex. You can then use a toothpic or pencil etc to draw in the tendons and tissue planes

2012-Day 26 Latexed corpse hands

Corpse hands after latex application

Now we're starting to see something! This definitely works. You take some cotton balls, break them up and use them in combination with the latex to produce what you see here. Lots of fun! Although as I mentioned earlier, it does take time. Give yourself at least a half hour per hand. The latex takes a couple of days to dry. While it's drying you can pinch the surface and do some molding to create wrinkles.  Get a quart of the latex here. That should be enough. Merlin says in his directions (see last post) you can use carpet latex. I would get the real stuff. I don't think it will cost you any more. Looks better and cleans up with water very easily. Next we will do the forearms and paint. Monday is a holiday and we should be starting to put the canopy up for the vortex. More work planned for the mansion hallway as well. Have fun Ghouls! Getting down to the wire now!

2012-Day 29 Corpse chandelier update

One of the 6 corpse hands which will  be connected to the chandelier base

The final October schedule is under way. Corpse chandelier must be hung and entrance hall done by the 15th! As I mentioned in an earlier post I found this prop idea on the Monster page of Halloween project links.  Please bookmark this page Ghouls! There is a ton of cool stuff on there and there isn't any reason you necessarily have to reinvent the wheel as it were! Be forewarned this prop is taking a lot longer than advertised! Fairly cheap to make not including the candles, but a LOT longer than a couple of hours. Give it at least a couple of weeks. The hand shown here probably took about an hour by itself. The directions are clear enough. They can be found here. Thank you Merlin! When you make them be sure to familiarize yourself with a hand skeleton and understand there are multiple bones. Four segments for each except the thumb which has 3. The longest segment is at the bottom called the metacarpal. The rest are called phalanges. Notice the relative lengths of the individual digits and how the long finger (3rd finger) is the longest, index and ring are approximately the same length and small finger (fifth) is the shortest. Model your hands after your own. That's the easiest way to get the lengths right! You can get the bic pens at a dollar store for a couple dollars.Remove the pen portion, then cut the plastic tubes to match the lengths of the finger segments like you see here or in Merlin's tutorial. Take pieces of wire hanger and slide the segments over it. Use a 1-2 inch by 4-5 inch PVC piping to install the fingers onto. I used a hammer to flatten one end of the PVC. You don't have to crush the end totally. Just flatten it enough so you can drill 5 holes across the top. Start with the thumb hole on the side about 1" down from the end and use about a 1/8" drill bit, then drill the other 4 holes across the top about 1/2" from the end. You want the thumb hole set down and on the side a bit. Attach the digits by sliding the end of the wire into the holes. You can bend the end of the wire inside the PVC to stabilize the digit in the rough position you want. Then take your duct tape to secure them. If you are running wire through the arms make sure to leave an opening in the end of the PVC by the palm of the hand. Don't close it off with the tape. I have to wait and see if I am going to need an actual conduit to get the wire through the arm to the center of the chandelier. I don't think so. Finally if you plan to have the hands hold the candles you should cut the tape in the webspace between the thumb abd the index because you will need to bend that thumb way down eventually.

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 81 -Flicker candles

We're busy making the crypt upgrades. I did manage to pull some vines and some creepy looking twigs etc from the yard. I also did one coat of gray on the crypt ceiling. We'll see if that takes out the shine.
I have everything for the chandelier except the mask latex. Looks like I'll have to go online for that, but we will have to make the thing first. It looks very involved. I don't know how these guys can say this takes only a couple of hours! One of the keys, Ghouls, is obviously the candles. We are all looking for the ultimate candle that looks real but isn't! Now I know there are some Wizards out there that can do these from scratch. I am not a Wizard. I'm more of a mad scientist. I am going to concede the candle making and instead I found these things called Rosco candles , "indistinguishable from real flame". OK well let's not get carried away, but so far, and I have been looking for a couple of years now, they are the best I have seen. They come wired and you just connect to a 9 volt power source. Here is kind of what it looks like:

2012 Day 88- Crypt upgrade plans

I did happen to be at Disneyland earlier this summer and believe me I am taking mental notes every time I have the opportunity to go out there! All of the props and sets are carefully analyzed. I don't mind the lines for that reason. It gives me plenty of time to think about possibilities! This year it was the Indiana Jones ride that showed me the way to making the crypt more tomb-like! Of course Ghouls, the hanging vines! They're everywhere! So while the vacuform panels and the fake stone as well as the corpse are all great, we can definitely ramp things up. The ceiling needs some work. I mistakenly put the shiny gray side of the foam boards facing down so when painted black they were still shiny and we didn't have enough time to do anything about it. Well now we do! We need to repaint the ceiling a neutral earth tone and what I plan to do is go outside in the back of the property and gather up a bunch of twine, which we do have incidentally, then hang that in various areas around the crypt and from the ceiling and paint those as well. That will make a huge difference as well as the webbing created from the gun! I think it will be amazing when it's done!

Current state of the crypt ceiling. Foam boards painted black but way too shiny. Needs some work!

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

Day 360- Postmortem, holiday sign-off

Still can't believe it happened. Yesterday we took down the vortex and canopy. No damage from the storm.That's great of course, but I think all of us here have been kind of walking around in a sort of empty fog. I can't think of any other way to describe it. I keep thinking it's a nightmare I haven't woken up from and when I do it will still be October. Apparently the town did reschedule trick or treating to this Sunday! Well first of all we will be away this weekend. Secondly I think the only chance you have is October 31. That's it. Halloween is that day and not a day after. Now everyone is preparing for the holiday season. So that's it Ghouls. I will call it 'The Curse of Xmasland' which led to the cancellation of the haunt for the first time in the history of the world!
Let's put it to rest and forget about it and look forward to next year. That will be the best haunt ever since this one would have been. As we were saying it will be the same exact build. I will investigate the possibility of using a motor to drive the elevator panel next time. We had planned to have someone do it manually with the pulley but it will make it a lot easier to do it right if we use power. Also we will spend more time on the front hall, add more dimension to it and a couple of additional scares if possible. Overall I think it was an ambitious plan that we did a nice job on. Both the crypt and elevator turned out better than expected. The moving ghost will have much more time to be tested, and if I come across a bigger piece of glass we will definitely use that. Obviously we can't wait to get started again!
Thanks all for reading, have a great holiday season and stay tuned for the next installment of 'Xtreme Garage Haunting' 2012 next Summer!

Day 364- Nightmare before Xmas

Happy belated Halloween everyone! Hope all you goblins and ghoulies had a great show! As far as our haunt went.....it didn't!! The Halloween Snow Storm which was a freaking disaster, came into New England on Saturday night and killed a thousand hours of building, planning and anticipation for what was going to be our greatest haunt ever! The forecast was for around 4" or so...add about a foot to that and that's what we got. Trees down everywhere, power out for days and I was out there every couple of hours getting snow off the canopy covering the vortex! We also had a pine tree go down about a foot away from the canopy! I was a complete wreck over the disaster unfolding,  but perhaps there is a good side to all this. While we did get everything done barely in time, we really weren't ready. Lot's of things had to be fine tuned we didn't get a chance to do. Now that this happened, we are simply going to do the exact same build for next year! That should give us plenty of time to get it right and take some of those last minute throw down areas to the next level! We can certainly make a few improvements to the design, and we know with certainty that the vortex can be quickly reassembled. This will definitely free up some budgeting for next year. And thankfully no precious assets were destroyed by the storm. If any of you decide to use a canopy, make sure to duct tape all the connections!. This is what saved us from the snow loads collapsing everything. We might have an additional post or 2 before the holiday sign-off and there might be a how-to page on the elevator. Haven't decided whether to do it this year or not. One really good thing also is that a lot of stuff I can save intact so both the take down and set-up will be way easier and less stressful. This October was probably the most stressed out I have been during a build. The level of detail and complexity was intense as you could probably tell. So not all bad that we have another year to perfect it!

So what did we do with no power and no haunted house on Halloween night! We played 'Nightmare before Xmas Monopoly'

Day 3- Winter storm approaching

Unbelievable! Last year we got hit with a rain noreaster but now it's 6-12 inches of freaking snow! I give up. The canopy is definitely NOT rated for any significant snow loads! So I suppose I will have to be out there every hour getting snow off of the roof. This will be interesting to say the least. Monday on the other hand is supposed to be fine weather wise so perhaps I should be thankful that we will have 2 days for snow removal!
Today we will see if in fact the cannon can be used this year. The end hall framing and sheeting will be finished off. This is going to be very quick and simple with a straight hall leading into the vortex, strobe light and hanging props. From the sides there will be a couple actors entering for scares. I hope I will have time for some video before the show begins!
We discovered yesterday after some testing in the front hall that you can't attach anything to the drop panel. I destroyed unintentionally 2 of my 'gortraits' trying to secure them to the panel. Unfortunately there is too much impact force for anything to last, so for now we will leave it as a blank black panel almost as though a picture has been removed, and the ghoul actor will pop his head out from behind the panel when it drops.

Day 20- Vortex reassembly begins!

I forgot how big this thing was! We got the canopy up pretty fast. This time we duct taped all the roof connections. That helped tremendously raising it up. This year I am going to try using segments of 2x4's routed out in the centers for the canopy legs.If you look carefully you can see one of them on the right. Last year we struggled with the legs constantly slipping out of the oversized rubber 'feet'. The legs were extended with 1 1/4" PVC piping to get the canopy up high enough for the hoops. It's a 10 x 20 foot which isn't quite tall enough without the extension. Please refer to the 'spinning tunnel that you walk through' page for additional details if you need to. We got 2 of the hoops connected as you can see! We're going to see how reproducible this system is after a year of storage! The reassembly is not too bad. We were able to store larger portions of hoops so we didn't need to start with single pieces. That saved some time. The biggest hassle are those T-nuts that sit inside the 2x8 connectors. Several of them fell out and had to be put back in. It took some work to get the bolts to thread properly.

Day 29- Elevator door pulleys and peppers ghost glass

Elevator pulleys for door opening were installed as seen in the video. If you look carefully you can see the rope to the right and left of the respective doors. The pulleys are placed at the ends of the door suspension beam, then the rope is routed to 2 sets of pulleys in the ceiling frame and down to a single 2x2 bar where the ends of the 2 ropes are tied. The doors are able to open simultaneously by pulling down on the bar. I just have to practice applying the proper tension to each end so they open at the same rate! Now the actor who lets the guests into the elevator will have to close it. No easy way to do that one remotely!

And now for all you peppers ghost junkies! We're back and better than ever as you can see with the installation of a full length glass window as seen from the elevator. When the guests come out of the elevator onto the crypt level, they will be greeted by the moving peppers ghost. I have a panel directly behind the glass consisting of yet another vacuform segment and some foam below which will be painted black. The ghost actor will be in an enclosed hall to the right of the glass. This glass window I was able to obtain from "freecycle'. Glass is expensive and this size is definitely not in the budget. Freecycle is a local Yahoo group where items of all kinds are offered for free by people looking to get rid of stuff they can't use. Check for the one in your area next time you need materials for your haunt!