Carrollton Texas Home Haunt

One of my first props.  I built these with 3 layers of Styrofoam insulation and then painted them with a latex elastic roofing compound.  This sort of rubber coated them and allowed me to spray paint them without eating away at the Styrofoam

The pillars are a wooden frame on the inside with brick paneling.  The top and bottom are removable for storage.  They were made from Styrofoam sheets attached to a wooden frame and coated the same as the tombstones.

Pretty basic prop.  The clothes were from a thrift store.  The real key here is making the body look real and not just stuffed clothes.  I created a duct tape double and wrapped it in plastic bags to make it weatherproof.

This prop is basically a duct tape double with a PVC frame on the inside. The vest and arm cuffs are made from some leather looking fabric and just tapped or stapled togher.  The button and belt buckel are duct tape.  It was ll pretty cheap and really looked good.  Unfortunately I had a lot of problems with the PVC frame and constantly had to cut him open over the years to fix the joints

This one was pretty simple.  Just a PVC cage with a skeleton propped up inside that I could hang from the tree.  This was actually suspended by running a rope down through the corner tube and back up the opposite side. This meant that I didn't have to secure each piece of PVC. They were held in place by the weight of the top and I could take it apart easily. However it also meant that I couldn't set it on the floor. It had to be suspended.

I like this one a lot better than the traditional scarecrow. It's just a straight wooden shaft with a cross piece for arms.  Then drape some torn fabric over it and add a pumpkin head with a light inside. I had this for many years with only minor modifications to it. I also added a fake cornfield with actual corn tied to rebar stakes.

I spend a lot of time designing this prop. It's 12ft tall and made of 4x4s. It's also heavy. The blade is an actual aluminum plate attached to the bolts on the weight. It comes down pretty fast and it will hurt you.  The upright section detaches from the bottom for storage. Sadly I didn't have a place to store it so it had to sit outside and after a few years, the wind knocked it over and it broke in half. But I made a new one that was even better. 

This is actually my second coffin, but way better than the first one. Getting the angles cut correctly on the sides was a huge pain. I use a long piano hinge on the lid which didn't really help anything and after a few years, I removed it and just had the lid sitting off to the side.

I repurposed my first scarecrow into this guy. I made it even better by putting a bucket inside the chest cavity.  Then I mounted a wiper motor with an offset weight. This caused the body to sort of move back and forth like it was still alive.  I added some bungy cords to the legs so they would 'bounce' a little while it was moving. The final effect looked really creepy. 

When I did the inside of my house for a Halloween Party, I knew I didn't just want to add decorations.  I wanted to transform the house into something different.  I made these dungeon wall by cutting out each stone from cardboard and painting them. They were all numbered and attached with Velcro to a plastic sheet hanging from the ceiling. The torches had flicker flame light bulbs that plugged into the outlets below. The door was a sheet of paneling attached to a wooded pop-in door frame using real hinges. Other than the small hooks in the ceiling, the entire thing went up without any damage to the walls.

After a few years of the dungeon theme, I changed it to a slaughter house theme. I used a roll of paper drop cloth for the walls and stapled thin lattice strips along them to make it look like an open framed house. Then I splattered red paint all over it. The weapons were cut from an aluminum plate and the door frame are actual wood that snap into place.  The side pieces hold up the top and it's all wedged tightly so it doesn't fall.  I also made a body bag and hung it on the wall. The room was a big hit at the party.

This was something I just threw together to see how it would look. I was pretty happy with how it came out.  The arms are PVC pipe that comes out of the picture with torn black fabric over them.  I tried a few time to improve it, but it never looked any better than this.

This one was not my idea, but I loved it and wanted to make one of my own.  I scratch built the crate and then added an old garage door motor on the inside with a cam that would bounce the lid up and down. I could set the motor off with a hand held remote control. This scared a lot of people.

So I bought this latex skin that goes over a standard Bucky skeleton. It comes in pieces and has to be attached with spray adhesive. I went a little farther and used some blue paper shop towels to cover all the seams. I also opened up the mouth so I could expose the teeth.  I covered the whole things with the latex roofing compound I used for the tombstones.  It worked a lot like Paper-Mache but much more durable.

Once I had the corpse completely covered, I used different colors of wood stain and a small spray bottle to make the whole thing look rotted. The stain was a little too shinny, but it looked perfect at night. It came out great, but if I had to redo it, I would skip the latex skin and just Paper-Mache the whole thing.

This was the walkway up to my front door.  I hung lattice panels along the open side to enclose it better.  The hanging skeleton has some black rods connected to the arms. An actor could sneak behind the lattice panel and move the arms as the kids came up to the door.  I scared everyone with this. No one expected the skeleton to move. So simple and so effective.

A daytime shot of the front of my house.  I scored some old corrugated roof panels that I hung over the garage door.  I had an old school security camera setup outside with a video monitor in the garage where I could watch kids approach. The end panel could be pushed out so once the kids got close enough, I would jump out and scare them. The metal panels made a lot of noise which made it even better. 

This is what kids would be greeted with when they came to my house. The little kids would keep on going, but anyone who dared to come to the door was fair game. One mother even ran away and left her child behind. 

The axe blade was cut from an aluminum plate that I could drag on the ground for an added scary effect. We had a lot of fun on Halloween.