We had a small corner directly across from our Fortune Tellers booth and we wanted to fill it with a decent Halloween prop that was fast and easy to make but yet have a little scare tactic action.
We had bought a latex vampire head that had these crazy, messed-up, spider-type legs coming out from the back of it. At first we weren‘t exactly sure what we were going to do with it but when time ran short (as it always does) and we still hadn’t filled that corner with anything we did what any home haunter does we threw something together!
The First thing we had to do was fix the LED eyes on the vampire head. They were completely sticking out and looked ridiculous. So very carefully we cut slits in the eye which allowed us to push the LED light back into the eye – but not so much so it didn‘t “fall into“ the eye.
With that small tweak out of the way the next thing we did was cut out a shoulder body mass from an old foam mattress and attach that mass to a simple 2×2 piece of lumber. A careful slit in the bottom of the latex vampire mask and a little stuffing removed later and we had Dracula’s head on a pole so to speak.
Now back to those crazy spider-like legs, they wiggled & waved quite readily so we figured that it would not take too much to get them to move when a Tot was not expecting it – so that‘s what we went for.
We used a super simple technique to get our SpiderVamp prop to move. We screwed a hinge to the floor board and the ran a coat hanger wire from the 2×2 to scare technician hiding behind a tarp wall. A small peep hole allowed the scare technician to see the tots as they were coming thru and as they pasted the seemly static prop suddenly rocked back and forth causing the spider-like legs to flail startling many a haunt guest on Halloween night.
More Haunted Halloween Props by Screaming Scarecrow.
Thanks for Looking – Happy Haunting!.Cheers ScreamingScarecrow.
I have lots of silicon masks that i want to display in my yard, what can i stuff them with??? thanks!
Hi Francie, thanks for dropping by our Haunted corner of the web!
In the past we’ve stuffed latex Halloween masks with everything from crumpled up newspaper to “last year’s” balled up nylon spider webbing.
Both work well but if you’re using these masks as outdoor props you can use balled up plastic garbage bags for something quick and dirty that works.
Sometimes, for masks that we do not intend on wearing again, we’ve filled with great stuff foam but sometimes the shape of the expansion is hard to predict.
Just a note for outdoor Halloween decorating with stuffed latex masks:
If they get wet from the elements be sure to not store them with the stuffing inside. Remove the wet stuffing and dry out the mask before storage or it can get mildewed & mouldy or sour smelling.
Happy Home Haunting!
Cheers SS