Projects – Life Intrigued

A Haunting We Shall Go

I can no longer deny the concept of miracles as October has definitely had a number of them. From managing to pull off the haunted trail against all injury odds, the weather holding off long enough for almost all of our trail guests on the second night and the stunning fact that with all the happenings this month, we still managed to continue our self-enforced quota of 6 posts per month (with this post). A big help from Brad on that last one who has actually been on assignment himself practically this entire month. The date of the annual haunt is definitely the pinnacle of the year, but the national day of spook is just a small step behind for the year’s excitement. In honor of team orange and black, thought I would show you a few of the sights and sounds from our big event starting with this year’s recap video my partner in haunt Paul has once again created to memorialize the effort and provide an incentive for those that were unable to make it this year.

Hit the jump to see a few more images taken before and during the haunted trail event.

Haunted Trail 2024 – The Dark Woods

Halfway through the daunting task of getting through the Haunted Trail of Fears recap for 2024. Admittedly, a bit late in the year getting to this as the next one is only 2 months away. All good things take time I guess – or more accurately push the tedious stuff of as much as possible ha. My fingers are finally recovered from part one of this series. If you want to check out the behind the scenes build process and see some of the trail in daylight, pop back to the previous post (link here). Need to mention that we were light on our picture taking after the sun went down for the 2024 event. I think part of the problem was absolute exhaustion from the late hour issues that were covered in part one. We did get some and I’ll share those now.

Here’s my partner in haunt Paul posing at the start of the trail. The 12′ Inferno Skelly was added the previous year, but we did pick up a few of his minions to assist in its quest to terrify our guests – I am sure the fact that Paul is smiling is not helping his cause ha.

Hit the jump to see more of the after dark sights on the 2024 Haunted Trail of Fears.

Trail of Fears 2024 – The Clearing, the Build and then the Panic

Ever have those things just hanging over your head that you just never seen to get time to address? Some of those are due to not wanting to deal with a painful grind to get it taken care, some you just know are going to be a rabbit hole of issues once you pop the top and then there are those things that just take time that isn’t there. That is the case with this series of posts. I am once again delinquent on the recap of our annual haunted Halloween trail. The 2024 Trail of Fears was held the last weekend of September – we are nearing almost a solid year behind and now this year’s scarefest is just around the corner. I don’t mind getting behind on my photo queue, but don’t want that to happen on the haunt front as we use these as references for the next year (what went right, what went wrong, how we go bigger – normal postmortem activities). If there is one advantage to being laid up, it’s being able to address the busy work. Brace yourselves, we are going to burn through your browser cache in these posts!

Hit the jump for a behind the scenes look at how this event all comes together. They say it isn’t work if you enjoy what you are doing and without question we live for all things orange and black!

Project: That Boy’s Got Some Stones!

Howdy everybody. This year’s haunt projects are starting to heat up in preparation for the annual Haunted Trail event. Due to my current medical condition, the event has been pushed back into October to give me time to at least get out of the boot phase of the ankle recovery. Even with the extra month, still going to be a push to get everything done in time..as they say…”the usual” ha. While tossing ideas around about this year’s batch of new tombstones, it occurred to me that I had not featured last year’s set. So, without further delay, here were the 2024 Haunted Trail tombstones courtesy of the Intrigued Haunt Department (link here).

Tombstones for Halloween Haunted Trail 2024

Hit the jump to get a behind the scenes look on how we created these new Trail of Fears Cemetery additions.

Project Wolfie: Part 3 – The Polishing

This has been a busy week, but we have finally made it to the third and final post of Project Wolfie, one of the new signature props for last year’s Halloween Haunted Trail (link here). If you missed the previous posts, feel free to get caught up on the first phase, The Shell (link here) and The Shaping (link here) before tackling this final phase, The Polishing.

Last we left, the Wolf shell was finally patched, smoothed and ready for paint.

Project Wolfie - Halloween Haunted Trail 2023 Prop

Of note, it took until September 22nd to get to this point – a long journey having started in the middle of November! Unfortunately, I was now in full panic mode. There was still plenty to do to make the prop ready for the trail and there were only 8 days left before the event. It is hard enough to get everything done on the trail for the props that were already completed and any precious spare cycles were going to be vacuumed up getting this monster good enough for our guests to view. Spending a year on a project and not making it out for the night of haunt would be very disappointing.

Hit the jump to see if Wolfie was able to make fright night!

Project Wolfie: Part 2 – The Shaping

Welcome to the second part of Project Wolfie, one of last year’s signature props built for our annual Halloween Haunted Trail (link here). If you missed the first post of the 3 part series, you can take a look at that here. In that initial phase I built the shell of the wolf out of foam board around and inner PVC core. Now it was time to take the 2D template below and refine the blocky 3D shell.

Project Wolfie - Haunted Trail 2023 Halloween Prop

This phase was the most exciting and absolutely terrifying at the same time. There was a significant amount of time invested just to get to this point and now I was getting ready to start cutting it up so to speak. Art and especially the field of sculpting is one of those skills that was always just a bit out of reach – unable to fit it into my curriculums and aftwards never found the time with work and other activities. I have drawn since I was a kid and once this project popped in my head, started spending my spare time watching sculpting YouTube videos. Most of those tutorials were what I call additive – starting from a blank and building up material to the final product. Wolfie was the opposite scenario in that the material needed to be removed. In hindsight, I probably should have spent more time on “carving” tutorials. No glory for the timid, time to jump in.

Hit the jump to see how this phase turned out!

Project Wolfie: Part 1 – The Shell

I have been procrastinating on this series of posts for far too long and time to “bite” into it and get this off the to-do list. I worked on this particular Halloween prop for over 12 months and a bit disappointed I didn’t get it completely done before the big reveal at our 2023 Haunted Trail (link here). This isn’t the first time I didn’t get all the finishing touches on a prop in time – quite frankly, I am surprised it doesn’t happen more than it does. When an idea hits me, I rarely know what is completely involved. In the corporate world I had to know the ins and outs of a project before I ever stepped in front of management asking for the big bucks. On the Halloween front it’s pretty much dig in and figure it out as you go. Dream it and then iterate through the design and build phases until it looks like the vision. In this particular case, it all started when I looked over and saw this figurine sitting on a shelf in my den. If you are curious, it is part of an X-Men Wolverine scene.

That vision put me on a long journey to bring an entire new class of prop for the trail. With big projects come lots of design trade offs, execution mishaps, head scratching and compromise. I’ll try to keep you moving and gloss over some of the dead end roads, but it is still going to take some time – like three posts worth of time. As all my projects go, they are primarily meant for fellow haunters to learn what went right and hopefully accelerate their own projects.

Strap in and hit the jump, this is going to be fun!

Haunts to Eleven – The Build

We are beginning to believe that Arizona must be cursed in some form. As I’ve commented on previous posts, we were supposed to start our migration south right after Christmas. Sorry to say that didn’t happen. Two years in a row we’ve tried to make it there and for an equal amount of times – stymied. Fingers crossed this is only temporary this year and we’ll be on our way soon – last year we had to outright cancel our December trip out there. Decided to use the unexpected time to do a little tidying up around the Intrigued Headquarters. When the staff is away, the boss gets to play ha. The office is quiet, no spreadsheets that need filling out, no requisition approvals, the performance reviews are all wrapped up and thankfully no post holiday party legal issues to smooth over. Figured it was a perfect time to for a little after Christmas haunting.

Yes, it is time to finally get the Haunted Trail 2023 recap out of the way. These are mega posts and although the trail is the highlight of the year, I dread the work that goes into getting all the pictures ready for the post. Clear your browser image cache ‘cuz we are gonna fill it up again. Hit the jump to see all the work behind the scenes that is needed to put this event on every year.

Project: Halloween Overhaul

We are back with another new prop walkthrough from this year’s Haunted Trail. You have heard the expression of lemonade out of lemons, well, today’s post is a Halloween take on that saying. Let’s start by revealing the final product out on trail.

By the way, we saw the results and decided to make two of them…well, that is technically a stretch of what really went down. I’ll explain after the jump.

Project Drop Dead Legs

Sitting here relaxing after a long day of trying to get the Haunted Trail back into storage – heavy stuff is taken care of now, so it shouldn’t take too many more days. In between this effort I have actually been able to get a couple of easy 5 mile runs in as I try to get the crust shook off from the ultra race a couple of weeks back. My running coach (aka Brad’s wife) has ordered me to take a couple of days off to let the body heal. I am physically (maybe more mentally) unable to just sit and relax which means it’s post time! Been trying to focus more on the Mothership this month to appease the less “wild” side readers out there. Cannot think of a better time to tackle another Haunted Trail prop project.

Hit the jump to learn all about how this giant spider (and his brother) came about. Note, you are forewarned as these posts get into the nitty details and until I get proficient at the video format I’m stuck with stills…lots and lots of stills.

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