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 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 80- Crypt before and after

We finished the crypt upgrades which were basically a ceiling repaint with gray and then gray speckled paint, followed by placement of vines onto, and hanging from, the ceiling. I was able to screw a couple of large roots into the ceiling frame and then secure the lighter stuff with twine. I think it came out pretty well. We will place webbing from the gun in there as well. Looks like we will need that foyer actor to also make sure people go in there, because I don't think they will want to now! It looks a lot more dense than it is. There is still plenty of room for at least 6 guests. I had to be sure not to obstruct the ceiling in the path of the moving wall.

Crypt ceiling before additions

Crypt after repainting and adding 'details'

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.

Day 95- Framing the back wall

Perhaps not as exciting as finishing the elevator platform but very important nevertheless. The 'back wall' of the map room is the wall opposite the entry door. Basically we want a fairly solid frame base on which the 'stone' and panels can be securely mounted. Last year we had a couple of walls break down and we don't want that to happen again! I used mostly 2x2's with a 2x4 in the corners and center. We will then cover this with black sheeting first to eliminate light leaks and then add the panels etc. The main detail we don't want to forget when we assemble this is we have to make sure we leave enough space for the crush wall movement in front of whatever details we add to the back frame. You can see in the second image split view showing right and left sides where we leave what should be enough space.