Category: Projects

Nightmare After Christmas – Pt 1 of 2

Hope everyone had a safe and merry Christmas or related celebration!  Thought I would continue my end of year stat pad .,..err, I mean Haunted Trail of Tears recollection posts.  If you recall on Christmas Eve I pulled a Tim Burton and provided insights into what it takes to bring our annual Halloween event to life,  All that hard labor is for a relatively few hours of entertainment for our friends and family.  That and Linda says it satisfies my Halloween obsession for a couple of months, well at least weeks.  This lights out tour ended up being a large post.  To keep your browser’s image cache from burning up, I’ve decided to break this into two parts.  Probably will keep the dialog to a minimum and focus on the images we took after the guests had left and just before that damn rain let loose.  Flip the switch off on the moon and queue the scary music, it’s time for a haunting!

Our trail started with Paul’s new blow-up dragon.  As mentioned previously, it was too big and too new to subject it to the woods.  A perfect way to start, tame enough for the children yet still impressive to see in the blackness

Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Mr, Spider once again greets our guests as they begin the journey down to the bottoms

Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Hit the jump to see the rest of the pictures from the first part of the trail.

Continue reading Nightmare After Christmas – Pt 1 of 2

New Stones for the Haunted Graveyard

Welcome to the first installment of the Halloween 2018 Haunted Trail of Tears Project Posts.  For those of you not familiar with my “addiction” as my wife refers to it, we host an annual Halloween cookout.  One of the main elements of that cookout is a haunted trail we set up in through our woods.  It is quite the event and has grown to epic proportions over the years.  My friend in haunt Paul and I tend to go overboard on our favorite holiday.  You might get the impression this is something that is thrown together in a week or so near Halloween.  Truth is, this is a 364 day a year activity.  Paul and I are constantly working on new decorations for the trail throughout the year.  The day of the cookout is simply the time when all our friends get to see what we have been squirreled away in our labs building all year.   During the next couple of months I am hoping to go through some of my new builds for the trail.  Keeping with tradition, I will also be posting about the overall haunted trail so  you get a better feel for just how labor intensive this is.  One of my projects this year was to improve our grave yard with some new headstones.

Project Head Stones for Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

How scary is that!  Pretty happy with how my stones turned out this year and figured I’d walk you through all the steps it takes to get one err.. three of these babies ready for the trail.  From a materials perspective, the base of the stones are made out of 2″ foam insulation.  A 4×8 sheet of that stuff is ridiculously expensive for what it is (~$22/sheet depending on the quality you get).  Look for sales and the 11% off at Menards events to bring that price point down a bit.  You should be able to get a number of good sized tombstones out of a single sheet.  One sheet yielded 5 for me – one from last year – link here three intricate stones and then the second from the left is just an extra from the remaining piece (if you look close you can tell is was left over from cutting out the cross).

Project Head Stones for Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears 2018

Hit the jump to see how this year’s stones were made!

Continue reading New Stones for the Haunted Graveyard

The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017 – Part 2: Soul Crusher

Well folks, today we officially close out the Halloween 2017 blog series.  I wanted to get this done before Christmas arrived and thanks to a quick check with the calendar it looks like I am coming just under the wire.  To be honest, there is a good reason for the delay thanks to trying to wrap up all the prep work on another series I’ll be introducing very soon – as a foreshadow, if you do not like birds you are going to be seriously disappointed.  I’ll try to break that up a bit with some other topics, but I am not going to pull punches on that – it is going to be hard uppercut of feathers coming your way.

Hope I didn’t scare you with that foreshadowing, because I’m saving the nightmares for THIS:

Scenes from the The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Yes folks, it is the second part of the legendary Trail of Tears Haunted Trail.  In the last post I took you through the first part of the trail (link here).  I purposely broke that post off at the point where the trail content delves deeper into hell.  Just in case you are new to the trail, my friend in haunt, Paul, and I set the trail up to be scarier the farther you go along the trail.  This gives parents and the faint of heart the opportunity to drop tail and head back for the safety of the house.  As with the previous post, I am going to let you enjoy the photos we took right before tear down (about 2am) rather than go into much detail.  Rain was coming fast preventing us from really taking the time to get the good low light camera out – luckily we were able to make a quick run through with the cell phone and capture what we could,.

My brother Ron got me the smoldering ghoul below.  It comes with a fogger attachment to give it a real burning effect.  I still need to pick up a fogger for next year, but it looked sufficiently creepy on its own!

Scenes from the The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Thanks Ron!

Scenes from the The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Hit the jump to see and read a bit about the rest of the props on the 2017 Trail of Tears Haunted Trail.

Continue reading The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017 – Part 2: Soul Crusher

The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017 – Part 1

Happy Halloween Everyone!  Oh, I seem to be a bit late on this one.  Let’s go with Nightmare before Christmas – yes, that seems much more appropriate.  I’ve taken you through all the new props and even walked you through the build process.  What I have not done is actually taken you through trail itself – well, at least give a glimpse of the experience.  There are too many decorations to take you through the entire trail, so just going to touch upon what we were able to capture before it was all tore down that night.  Thanks to everyone who contributed to the gallery.  We were so pressed for time this year that we didn’t get around to taking the camera through – next year hoping to have a 360 experience thanks to new technologies that are hitting the market.  Until then, we’ll go old school.  Not going to comment too much so enjoy the shots.

Paul’s giant pumpkinhead towered over the start of the trail – remember, the trail gets scarier as you go.

Scenes from The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

New this year was the Minion blow-up.  I picked this up for Linda since she is always referencing their memes.

Scenes from The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Hit the jump to see the rest of the first half of the Trail of Tears!

Continue reading The Haunted Trail of Tears 2017 – Part 1

The Trail of Tears 2017 – The Prep

The decorations are all put away and all of this year’s Halloween prop tutorials have been written and published on the blog.  There is just one more thing to put a bow on this year’s Trail of Tears Haunted Trail – the walk through!  Oops, to be more accurate there are just three more things to do. The trail itself has grown so big that it takes two posts to get through it even covering just the highlights.  In addition, I like to add a behind the scenes post just to give a feel for what goes into this whole ordeal.  This is that very post.  Unlike last year (link here).  We really didn’t get a lot of pictures during the prep phase – mainly due to the fact we were incredibly busy trying to get everything ready to go.  Thankfully, my brother Ron, my friends in Haunt Paul and Brad along with another good friend Sung (not a haunter, but gracious enough to help us out in our time of need) all helped get this pulled off.  My help came the weekend before to get the props put together, batteries tested and inserted, the extension cords laid out on the trail and Ron completed all the heat sensor circuits for the new decorations.  Like last year, the basement was completely full of props by the time we got everything put together.  This included all the new Posey frames that needed to be dressed!  Linda was also insisting our mess (as she referred to it as) was out of the basement.  Didn’t exactly meet her goal, but thanks to everyone’s help, we moved 90% of the trail props to our staging area in the external garage – imagine an entire stall covered from front to back, left to right with Halloween props.  The one shot I did find from the garage on build day was late in the process and most of the items were already hauled out to the trail.

Behind the Scenes on the Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

One of the tasks that was delayed way too long was finishing up the Zombies.  Brad and I had talked a long time about what to do about properly lighting theses new props.  The lights were attached to the back, but without something for those beams to bounce off of, the glowing silhouette effect wouldn’t materialize.  One Idea was to put black sheeting behind them – attached to a PVC frame so they would free stand.  Our initial tests of this concept didn’t pan out as well as expected.   Brad came up with the idea to put silver (furnace) tape behind it and fold it out so it would extend past the cutouts and reflect the light that way.  He also taped up most of the first one until we ran out – had to drop by Home Depot to pick up a few more rolls that Ron and I put on less than two hours before the guests were scheduled to arrive (cutting it way to close).

Behind the Scenes on the Haunted Trail of Tears 2017

Hit the jump to read more about how our annual haunted trail comes to be!

Continue reading The Trail of Tears 2017 – The Prep

Project: Gonna Need Therapy

If nothing else, you have to agree this blog hasn’t been home to cobwebs as of late.  I can now officially say this is the last of the Halloween Haunt 2017 tutorial posts.  It has been fun going back through the build process that has pretty much spanned and entire year starting soon after last year’s Haunted Trail was picked up and put away.  Today happens to be the day all the Halloween decorations are officially packed and stored away for this year.  If things go as planned I’ll start on a new set of props starting … wait for it … next week.  That cheer you just heard was from me, that equally loud groan came from Linda.

Before I get to the new ideas, better close out my signature piece from this year.  I first must give credit to Graves of the Groves for giving me the inspiration for this project.  I watched a video of his for a $20 Haunt project – a yearly competition where you submit your best decoration for under $20 dollars.  The link to his video for Hacked in the Box is here.  Now, I will say the $20 contest is a bit of exaggeration.  Things you already have or ability to re-purpose often do not get included in the cost.  If you do not have those same pieces laying around or do not have the skills to complete a specific element in the prop build you quickly find you are beyond the $20.  Now in this particular instance, I was so far beyond $20 bucks it isn’t funny – some of that due to design choices, some due to not having the patience/skill he has and well, quite frankly, a whole bunch of screw ups.  Let’s start with my concept.
Project Clown in Box - 2017 Haunted Trail Signature Addition

That is my drawing on my whiteboard after an idea session with my friend in haunt Brad (over lunch of course).  Pretty simple, box with a pole sticking out of it, some coil to look like a spring, a clown head on the top and a base that would allow a wiper motor to rotate the shaft in a circular manner.  Brad had the idea to put teeth on the lid.  You might also note the handle on the side – just kind of sitting there not doing a whole lot.  By the way, that wiper motor alone cost more than $20 on Monster Guts.  Now a shot of the final product out on the trail – yes, I have already enlisted the aid of a therapist.

Project Clown in Box - 2017 Haunted Trail Signature Addition

Hit the jump and I will take you through the build process.  Unless you are normal and hate clowns, in which case, you should probably cut and run about now.

Continue reading Project: Gonna Need Therapy

Project Give Myself a Hand

And then there were two.  That’s right, only two more Haunt tutorials left from our Trail of Tears Haunted Trail.

Project Hand Molding Halloween 2017

Today’s featured tutorial is how the above prop consumed my life for almost an entire year.  It was a well known joke last year that many of my Posey frames were sans hands.  Some of that was just running out of time before the big event and needing to get the Halloween props out on the trail as quick as possible.  To my credit, I did put empty gloves on a few but they admittedly looked pretty hokey.  Where I wanted to be this year was full on hands that not only looked like proper appendages, but were poseable.  As you can tell from the above picture, I was able to accomplish this of sorts.  Problem was it took me about a year to get through the process and ended up costing a lot more than I ever expected it to.  When all was done, I probably could have bought hands off the Internet and been money ahead (ummm no probably there).  The fun is in the journey and I can definitely say I learned a hell of a lot about the molding process.  It all started with this large box of Alja-Safe.  Definitely expensive (this 20lb box cost me ~$140), yet a lot of fun.

Project Hand Molding Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to see how this product comes into play and the rest of the process to make Posey hands.

Continue reading Project Give Myself a Hand

Project Witch Replicate

I am beginning to realize where all my time went this year.  I had forgotten just how many new projects went towards this year’s Haunted Trail until I put all the images together in order to make these tutorial posts.  Another thing is perfectly clear, I need to take more pictures during the build phase.  I tend to get wrapped up in the project and forget to snap pictures at key progress points.  This is one of those times.  I’ll have to talk you through some of the interesting design choices – will make it a point to do better for next year’s efforts.  Living in the now, welcome to another Halloween 2017 project.  This one was more of a challenge than a new concept.  I saw a decoration for sale in one of the high end boutique Halloween catalogs.  You know, the ones that have a few unique items if you are willing to mortgage your house.  In this year’s catalog, there was a ring of 6 witches, with light up globe heads.  The cost for that decoration – ~$190.  Of course this was deviously disguised since they showed the ring of 6, but sold them in a set of 3 so it looked half the price. Oddly enough, Oriental Trading Company came out with a similar idea in the $160 range (now on sale for ~$120) again, implying more but sold in 3s.

Witch decoration from Oriental Trading Company

It was a pretty cool decoration, but paying that much for cheaply made props just seems like a complete waste.  The other aspect of this was being fairly tame on the scare side so it could go on the early part of the Haunted Trail.  That side hasn’t been getting much love the last couple of years and wanted to give the younger guests something new.

First task, design a pattern that would limit the amount of wood I needed to buy.  Assuming a 4×8 sheet of underlayment (same wood used for the Zombie Silhouette project link here).  With those dimensions, I could get three patterns out of each side as long as I kept the bases in the 2 foot range with a foot for the head width (2 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 on other side).  With those constraints, came up with this pattern.

Project Witch Ring Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to see how this witch project turned out!

Continue reading Project Witch Replicate

Project Posey Plunging Neck Line: Rise of Demons

I think I might be getting some tendinitis in my elbows from all of this typing as of late.  I will be relieved once all these Halloween tutorials are out the way and I can get back to my wildlife posts.  Suspect some of you are getting a bit upset with all the build projects.  Bear with me, just a few more and we’ll be set to close it out with the actual trail itself.  Let’s not get out in front of our headlights.  Today I would like to introduce the latest Posey line – the Plunging Neck Line.  Pretty clever there eh, I’ll explain the pun in a bit (and I meant it to be two words).

Went with two versions on the trail this year.   High Priest Demon.

Project Posey Be Bulking 2017

And Druid Demon.

Project Posey Be Bulking 2017

Last year I brought you the Westworld Line (link here).  This line doesn’t have the animation element (well, at least not yet), but it did fix an ongoing issue I’ve struggled with since the early Posey lines.  What to do about the neck.  It always seem like they stuck out too far and it just didn’t look the way I wanted it to (link here).  Finally got a solution to that problem in my updated line.  Might as well take you through the whole process for my two new Demons.  It all started with two masks I fond on Amazon.  Full over the head masks and fairly decent price point.  All I needed to add was a pipe to use as a neck bone and some tubing.

Project Posey Be Bulking 2017

Hit the jump to see how these two Demons progressed on their trek to make it onto the Haunted Trail!

Continue reading Project Posey Plunging Neck Line: Rise of Demons

Project Zombie Dancing

I am beginning to think it takes the same amount of time to prep and complete these Halloween tutorial posts as it does to actually make the prop.  Feels like I have been typing for days and still have a number of props to get through from this year’s Haunted Trail of Tears event. If I can’t take the time to give thanks to those who gave me inspiration and give back to the haunt community, then I should just pack up my motors and find something else to spend all my free time on.  So, today’s featured decoration that made its debut on our Halloween trail this year is my dancing zombie.

Zombie Animatronics for Halloween 2017

Typical for first year props, there were some difficulties with this on the trail.  Due to an unforeseen design error, we had to turn this prop off about midway through the night.  I’ll explain more on that towards the end where I’ll give some recommendations on improving it for next year.  First off, I need to give a shout out to two haunters that helped inspire this project.  The first is SoulsOfTheForsaken.  He put up a tutorial on YouTube showing how they put their animated zombie together (link here).  This was the base for my idea.  Then thanks to another tutorial also put on YouTube, I was able to leverage a slightly different linkage system and still get the motion I wanted.  Again, thanks to Hawthorne Manor Haunted House for their rotating skeleton video (link here).

First task was to get the Hawthorn linkage working.  Rather than go through the huge amount of design and build hours it took to get to this point, here is the starting structure.  Note the use of the cross connectors  at the top.  I leveraged the bushings approach used in my other PVC animations to get a nice smooth circular motion on the cross bar.  The 3D printed bushings allow the smaller 3/4″ pipe to stay centered and move fluidly through the 1″ cross connectors.  Now just needed to connect a 1/2″ pipe at the center of the crossbar.  This provides a pivot point to move about while the vertical bar is rotated from the bottom in a circular direction thanks to the wiper motor at the base.  I did put a connector on the down pipe so I could easily get it on and off the wiper motor arm – you do not want a lot of play in that or it will slip off – a straight coupler would have been fine, but had the T connector laying around, so just used that.  Lastly, I put a 1″ pipe U structure above it with the intent of that keeping the cloths out the mechanism and kind of mimic shoulder structure.

Zombie Animatronics for Halloween 2017

Hit the jump to read about how this new Haunted Trail prop came to be!

Continue reading Project Zombie Dancing