Halloween 2010
Well, it's been a tough season this year. We got rained out last year, and it wasn't just a little rain. It poured! The result is that a number of my props were damaged or destroyed. I didn't feel like fixing anything for a while, then it was too hot to work in the garage. I really got started in September and accomplished a great deal.
The first thing I fixed was the “Cat in the Box†prop. I had purchased a shipping container over the summer with the hopes of using it like the Mystery Box the Zombie missions on Call of Duty World at War (it's ok if you have no idea to what I am referring). The box was too big, but it was almost perfect for the Cat. After cutting the door in the end, I installed the "guts" of the Cat prop in the box. The whole prop fits inside, and I installed a removable wall to block off roughly half of the box for storage after Halloween. I may need a fork lift to move it....
The second project was to fix the Frankenstein head in the glass ball. I had attempted to modify it to be triggered remotely, but it wouldn't fire until someone touched it. That one just sat in the yard last year. This year I used a relay switch from Radio Shack to take the place of the built-in motion sensor. Now I can trigger the prop with a little 110v power.
My sister's friend Kevin brought me a coffin from a haunted house in Atlanta a few months back. I knew I could use it, but didn't know how. I was passing through Target's Halloween decorations early in the season and found inspiration from a plastic skeleton. I drove around with the skeleton in my front seat for about a week (it was fun to see the expressions on the faces of the observant). I installed a wiper motor to open/close the coffin door, a sound system to play the audio stored on a Radio Shack recording module, and another Radio Shack 110 v relay to trigger the audio. When triggered the door opens, the voice speaks, then the operator closes the door. I'll try to get some video of this prop when it is setup in the yard.
I still wasn't ready to start bringing up my other props for testing/repair, so I started on a brand new prop. I used an existing prop that was fairly well documented on the Internet as a model. It's a skeleton (hands and head) stirring a giant cauldron. The cauldron is the bottom 2/3 of a 55 gallon barrel. A wiper motor mounted in the bottom of the cauldron makes the stirring stick go around. The hands are made from heavy wire and small PVC so they can "grab" onto the stirring stick. The body is mostly 1.5" PVC with a second wiper motor turning the head back and forth. The audio is from a little MP3 player and a computer speaker set (speakers and subwoofer) installed inside the body. A small fog machine will sit behind the body and blow fog through another 1.5" PVC pipe up into the cauldron, which is lit with green LED's. This may be one of the biggest props I've ever built. There are room for enhancements next year, but I'm satisfied with how it looks so far.
The Rack failed testing because the audio didn't trigger at all. The old mechanism triggering the audio is a set of parallel wires that are connected by a perpendicular wire that hits them when the rack stretches the body. It seems the wires corroded (probably from all the rain last year). I tried sanding them down, but it just wasn't working the way I wanted it to work, so back to Radio Shack for another 110 v relay switch. I bypassed the old cross-wire trigger and the audio works beautifully now. The Rack is ready!
The "Twitcher" doesn't have audio, but it had apparently shook itself apart last year. I replaced a few missing bolts with cotter pins, but I'm not satisfied with the "action". This one is ready for now, but I'll either rebuild it or replace it next year.
The Grave Digger needed some minor adjustments, but that only took an hour or so to complete. It should be ready to go. The Talking Skull worked flawlessly, so I just set it aside with the Grave Digger and the Rack.
The upgraded drill I bought for the Electric Chair seems to be holding up. It passed the initial test without a problem. The Lawnmower Man passed the testing as well.
The Sit-up Coffin worked mechanically, but the audio was unreliable during testing. It basically used the same kind of cross-wire trigger as the Rack did previously. So, back to Radio Shack again, only I found that I had already purchased their last 110 v relay switch, so I travelled to a store a bit farther away (in Huntersville). Once I bypassed the cross-wire trigger, this prop worked perfectly.
The Vomitous prop is not normally tested prior to Halloween as it is just too messy to test. However, I did change out the power supply this year. I have been using a car charger to power the 12 volt water pump, but it has always made me nervous. I don't like using such a nice (and powerful) battery charger for Halloween props. I had ordered some 12 v DC wall plugs from eBay (3 at roughly $6 a piece) a few weeks ago, so I used one of those. The motor comes on, so I think it's ready.
The talking plastic skull I introduced last year was less than ideal. I basically just shorted out the motion sensor so that it would play whenever it was given power. That's nice when you can hear it speaking, but with all the screaming/squealing/crying kids in my driveway, we couldn't hear it at all. I pulled the skull apart and cut the wires to the motion sensor and hooked them up to another Radio Shack 110 v relay switch (from a third store). In case you haven't already figured it out, I found this $10 part to be tremendously useful in making reliable audio triggers. I've gotten quite good at soldering the wire connections as well, so these mechanisms should work for years.
I felt a moment of panic this morning as I realized I had mis-counted my "triggered" props. I've counted and re-counted numerous times and I think I'll be ok. I have switch boxes for 10 props (two 4-switch boxes and a 2-switch box). That's exactly how many props I have ready this year.
It's Saturday, October 30, and I'm nearly finished getting ready. I've brought all of the big stuff up to the garage. I still have 6-7 bodies in the basement to bring up, but they're safer where they lay. I've setup one of the tents in the backyard and moved the columns up to the driveway. The big fence pieces are in the backyard, ready to come upstairs.
It's 11:20 pm; time for a quick update.
We had roughly 1000 people come down the driveway this year. Everything went very well. The weather was great, the props held up most of the night, and no one was hurt. Our neighborhood paid for some Police Officers to help direct traffic and protect pedestrians (thanks Overlook Security Committee and CMPD).
In the end, three props failed completely during the night. The Frankenstein head in a ball never really worked (second year in a row), the Rack popped an air line, and the Electric Chair body shook it's head loose (completely off by the end of the night).
We started setting up around 9 am this morning and were finished by 3 pm. The first trick-or-treaters arrived around 5:30 pm (way before dusk). We cut the power on the generator around 9:30 pm and had everything down and stored in about an hour. I'll probably have it put away by Christmas.
I'm beat and have to get up in 6 hours, so that's it for tonight.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.