The walkup view to this year’s Halloween haunt was pretty dramatic with UberGim towering almost 16 feet high – At that height he could actually be seen from a street over!. We also played with alot of competing spilled-light which made for some interesting shadows and hues
UberGrim in all his glory! A grim reaper prop of this size is something that I’ve personally wanted to do for a few years now. In the original plan his arms were supposed to move up & down and his hands were supposed to be articulated so that he could appear to grasp at the tots. But hey, you can only do so much in 16 days of setup!
As the walkup view showed we have two sides to our Halloween graveyard and the tots have to walk through the center of it in order to get to the entrance of the haunt. We haven’t really added any new props to the graveyard since ’05. Had lots of ideas but always run out of time. Guess maybe there’s an overhaul coming in a future Halloween!
We usually don’t do too much in the way of matter splatter but this year we wanted a working guillotine and there’s no getting around it -they are bloody. In fact this is by far the most gruesome halloween prop we’ve ever made! In spite of this I have to admit that we had fun with it as the tots went by!
The Torture Room! To offset the gore we thought we’d put some dark devices of torture across from the execution props. The two related scenes came together nicely to create one frightening Halloween scene. Somehow in the hetic mayhem I completely missed taking any pics of these scenes under their Halloween lighting.
“Get Your Palms Red!” at our Fortune Tellers – It’ll only cost you a couple of years to find out your future! Here’s a scene that we’ve used over the years. Some years we leave them in storage and other years we drag them out. This year was the first time these two props had seen the light of a Halloween moon together since 2006!
The Wolf Reader. Everyone enjoys a good spooky Halloween story and our WereWolf prop is no exception as he relaxes beside a fire in his haunted library reading a dusty copy of Agatha Christie’s “HALLOWE’EN PARTY”! This prop and scene did not get fully developed due to time running out.
Haunted Books. Every good sitting room needs a collection of books to read! Even though we could have made our own haunted book props from paper mache or distressed other books to look old – we like using authentic things in our Halloween haunt and these old books fit the bill perfectly.
Also new for this year we built a Zombie Lounge! Basically a room with a short couch and a couple of chairs in it where we had several Zombie props sitting or standing around. This handsome chap was waiting at the exit of the lounge hoping to get his rotten fingers around a trick-or-treater on Halloween night.
Also in the Zombie Lounge, this stumpy zombie with the “dead eye” stare, was one of our favorite prop creations this year. Of course among all the reanimated dead there was plenty of room for scare actors and we lost count of the Halloween howls from the victims who didn’t notice the difference until it was too late to do anything else but scream!
Our Sinister Scarecrow was a store bought Halloween prop that we kicked up a notch! A new set of shredded clothes made him more creepy but mounting him to a pole on a hinge made him one of our best scare tactics of the year. Leaning back in a recessed alcove to start, he would lean forward unexpectedly as tots passed by. Some actually dropped to their knees in terror!
Vamparilla was also a new creature of the night this Halloween. We bought the head and hands then made the body out of matress foam. Next we dressed her in a dress made from two pieces of curtain with the edges spray painted blue. Some old painters plastic was used as krinlen to puff out the bottom of the dress. Overall we were happy with the way she turned out for a 2 hour prop build. Click Here to see how we built her!
Another new prop for this Halloween was the Haunted Organ. We picked this baby up as a curbie – Free! This prop is definitely a work in progress as you may have been able to tell from the unfinished pipes. Our original plan called for two rows of pipes and the pipes themselves need a second angle hole cut into them for steamy to escape through. Also it will eventually play automatically on a cam & have a creepy organist.
Hope you enjoyed the photos we picked as our top 13 pics for this season. See our “ALL PICS OF 2009″ category for many more Halloween pictures. And keep an eye out for upcoming How To articles on these props.
Thanks for Looking.Cheers ScreamingScarecrow.
i have enjoyed your haunt photo’s, & hope ours will continue to get better & bigger as time passes.we live in a small town &need a little extra fun every so often.
Hi Becky,
Thanks for taking the time to comment! We love getting feed back!
I’m sure your Halloween haunt will develope over time as ours did! Just remember to keep it fun!
Here’s an article about slowly building up ones Halloween Home Haunt over time – you may like this read…
http://screamingscarecrow.com/halloween-home-haunts/halloween-home-haunting-across-the-fourth-dimension/
Wow, are you kidding me? This is some awesome stuff. I am seriously impressed. Keep up the awesome work.
Thanks Heidi for Dropping by and having a look! We are always glad to hear from people who visit our haunted little spot on the net Happy Halloween!!