I will admit, I forgot how much work it is to get these Haunted Trail recaps out. Feels like an endurance race but instead of legs you move yourself along with your fingers on a keyboard. Fortunately, it gives me a big boost of Halloween adrenaline to keep me motivated while I’m working on new props in the lab for this year’s event…which is coming up waaaaaaay tooo fast. So far, I’ve made it through the prop/build phase (link here) and the day walker tour (link here). Turn the lights out, it is time for a walk on the darkside.
Hit the jump to experience some of the sights and sounds of our annual Haunted Trail.
Welcome to the second part of our three part series on our 2022 annual Halloween Haunted Trail event. In the first of the series, we covered the behind the scenes work that goes into putting it all together (link here). It is difficult to capture the extent of the trail due to the darkness (there is not a lot of ambient light down in the valley), so we always like to take shots during the day ..also allows those that are easily scared to get a bit more of the experience. Will focus more on the new stuff and items that could be easily missed in the dark. This year we had a new entrance to the trail!
Hit the jump to start the day walk of the Haunted Trail of Tears 2022.
Okay, this is getting absolutely ridiculous. It is now 9 months since our annual Haunted Halloween Trail event and I still haven’t published the traditional walk-thrus. I am constantly reminded of this every time I try to make a reference to it in a post and I’m unable to find a link to it. Well, that procrastination ends today. Being open and honest we just got back from a 4 day agility show in Michigan. Translated – 20 minutes of activity during the runs and then a whole lot of waiting around in between. A perfect time to plow through the heavy load of images and get the posts prepped for publish. All I need to do now is add some word decorations and we are good to go…without further delay, here is the first of a haunted three part series – the prep and build.
Hit the jump to read all about how this mess above all comes together for our epic haunt.
Well, it has been one hell of a month leading up to our favorite holiday. Our annual haunted trail, the 100K attempt, the prediction race at a local cemetery a few nights ago and the rather sad news covered in the last post. Through all the ups and downs we finally made it and can now relax and enjoy a day devoted to all things that go bump in the night….and day…
My haunted trail reaper had a growth spurt this year – decided to add over 3 feet to increase the scare factor. Although not shown, the son of Nyx has an animated lantern and thanks to a flea market find earlier in the year, now has a real scythe. Then there is the flaming pumpkin tradition. Nothing sets the mood for horror night better than 3 feet of flames spewing out the top of an evil Jack-o-Lantern.
Some like to look at clouds and let their imagination flow…me, I prefer flames. The shot above is one of my favorites from this year’s haunted trail – like a Rorschach test for the inner demon, everyone sees something different. I personally see the face of the devil hiding behind an upside down cross. Might be therapy in my future..although this was a bit ominous.
One of the tombstones that immediately caught my attention in the Sturtevant Haunted Farm cemetery (has my initials). It just occurred to me I have yet to introduce you to one of the creepiest haunts in all of Illinois. If you are not faint of heart, hit the jump for a quick look at some of the scenes awaiting you at that location.
Have a Happy Halloween everyone – let your spook flag fly high!
As promised, hit the jump to see some shots from this year’s visit to Sturtevant Haunted Farm in Walnut, IL
In the previous 3 installments of the pumpkin arch project, I’ve brought you the details behind the creation of the pumpkins (link here), the structural arch support design (link here) and recently the fabrication of the supporting arches (link here). Now that all the major pieces are finished, it is time to put it all together and bring this concept to life. At this point I was feeling really good about the progress. Except for some minor glitches it was shaping up to look amazingly close to the original idea. The Haunted Trail event was quickly approaching and any major changes at this point would be difficult to fix in time. To help tamp down any lingering concerns, decided it was time to do a test assembly.
Hit the jump to read more about this year’s signature addition to The Haunted Trail of Tears.
Thankfully Brad is taking care of the wild side of Intrigued while I try and recover from a mighty beat down. Not really up to going through my image catalog to find, process, upload, prep and then think of something clever to say about the creatures that are targeted for that sister site The images for this Halloween project were already ready to go, so I just need to give some narrative on the elements of the build …sooooo much easier (and these I can do from the couch with bags of ice on my legs ha). Just to bring everyone up to date, we’ve covered the following so far:
Pumpkin Creation (link here) The Arch Support Structure (link here)
Now if you look at the revised sketch, you will notice that the plan includes two columns to support the pumpkin arch.
Admittedly, there was a quick thought of making the guests limbo under it, but Linda gave me the quick, hard, no uncertain term “No” response on that one. I let her think she swayed me, although there was a critical design consideration of having to get my UTF under it. This way she gets to tell the story to her friends that she kept them from having to get their butts dirty hehehehe. Anyway, I needed to build two columns and I basically used a lot of the same approach used in the Gargoyle platform (link here). That column turned out really nice and, therefore, no need to deviate too far at this point.
Hit the jump for a behind the scenes look at the columns supporting our new entrance to the Haunted Trail of Tears
We are back with another post covering the creation of this year’s signature piece for the annual Halloween Haunted Trail of Tears event. If you recall in a previous post (link here), I took you through the making of the pumpkins themselves. Although a key component of the overall scene, there were still a number of parts that needed to come together to realize the vision from the original quick sketch.
Hit the jump to see how this early sketch of the arch started coming to life.
Hitting the non-wildlife side of Intrigued hard this month. I have way too many projects waiting in the queue and need to keep pressing if I ever want to see above the waterline this year. Priority one is to at least get through the Halloween related posts before we get deep into setting up this year’s Haunted Trail of Tears. There are always at least two haunt projects in the works here which always draws one or two strange looks from the service people that come into the house for one reason or another. The regulars are used to it by now and some have even started giving me feedback on the finished props positioned around the basement. The new ones have a very worried look and waste no time getting their tasks done ha! Today I thought I would bring you the latest addition to the collection.
I call him Toxic Spidey and is an elaboration on a store bought skeleton spider my nephew and niece gave me for Christmas this year. They know my sickness, I mean affinity for all things scary. I am really fond of this new wave of props that have been coming out that focus on skeletal structures of smaller animals and insects. Note, they do give us quite the chuckle when they keep the cartilage features like ears – this spider is slightly truer to reality although thankfully larger than the ones we see out in our woods.
Hit the jump to see how this lifeless prop gets a brighter life.
Life Intrigued 