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 95- Haunted Doors 2.0

Welcome back Ghouls! Last year we introduced the rolling door concept courtesy of my friend James Beach (Garage of Terror). This was a definite breakthrough as in the past we had major issues with doors derailing from floor-based tracks. Very bad! The suspended rolling door eliminates all of this hassle. I presented a way to open and close the doors last year remotely using a pulley mechanism. See this post to review the concept. Now James has a haunt that attracts mostly young visitors from what I understand. The guests for our haunt are much older, high school to adult. I had to make these doors a little more robust. Each door weighs about 25 pounds or so. The cost is around $15-20 per door: a couple dollars each for 2 caster wheels, a 2x2 for framing, 2x4 I beam. 4 brackets each about 99c and hardboard piece about 10 bucks. I present here details on the crypt exit door. This door will be controlled by an operator using a 2x2 handle. He or she can see through the one way window and will know when to open it!

Video demonstration of crypt exit door from outside and then inside the crypt! Notice how the mechanism is quite smooth. I put a 2x2 cube on either end of the track to act as stops. (see image below)

Components of a suspended sliding door 

You can add weight to the bottom if necessary as sometimes the doors will sway if not weighted down. The plastic on the right is there to prevent light leaks from inside the crypt

2x2 handle for opening and closing

Door is unmounted here showing the caster wheels bolted to 2 brackets which sit on either side of the 2x4 I beam (when mounted of course). You might have to drill an extra hole in the bracket on the bottom to secure the bottom portion. These brackets are very thin and easy to drill through

This is the inside of the same door as seen from within the crypt. I used a vacuform panel surrounded by pieces of foam from an old hot tub cover which when painted black look like old stone slabs!

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

2012-Day 136- We're Baaaaaaack!

Welcome back all you goblins and ghoulies from Halloweens past! We are BACK again for Halloween 2012! Can't believe it! The Nightmare before Christmas 2011 came and went..and we definitely survived. So now a couple of things. You will notice the posts have the year first before the day countdown. I thought this would make more sense since it is the 3rd (or is it 4th?) year of the blog. The next very important thing is to look at the images I have for you today. Anything "spooky" you notice about them? Yes that's correct! We never took down the haunt from last year! WHAT! I made a very strong case to the mayor of Halloween town. (Guess who that might be!) My take on it was this: I went into the haunt after the cancellation from last year's freak snowstorm. I looked at all the magical stuff we put together: The haunted elevator with it's detailing and intricate pulley system, the crypt room with the crush wall and painstaking paneling details, the pepper's ghost mechanics including the track we finally got to work smoothly etc etc. Bottom line was this: there was no way this could be taken down and put up exactly the same way. Does anyone think that Da Vinci could repaint the Mona Lisa EXACTLY as it was..OK a little exaggeration, but you get my point. Since we were going to do the same build anyway, it would have been a disaster to have to take this stuff down. It would never have worked. So my case was considered and the Mayor consented. Thankfully the winter was very mild as we did not have a garage!

Back panel of the elevator to the right

Crush wall. I did take down the exit door from the crush room

Entrance hall

And now it's back to work. Just because there was no take down does not mean we're finished. Noooooooo! It means we need to go one step further.
1) Better video coverage. I do have a new camera so we should have time to do this better
2) Upgraded mansion entrance hall. We have extra foam etc we can use and will replace the chandelier with one 'more appropriate'. Better scares for that section
3) Finish the crush room detailing. The back wall was not really done
4) The one capital expense this year will be a web gun. The store bought webs just don't cut it
5) Added sound for the pepper's ghost
6) A nicely detailed haunt entrance doorway with great fx sound and light
7) PLENTY of time to test and retest the whole set. No excuses this time

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'