Making Gideon Hackles Proud

This year's "Greeter" prop at our front walkway on Halloween night will be "The Chiller". The Chiller is composed of a matching Trick-Or-Treat Studios mask and hands and two different colored robe costume parts. The Chiller is holding a ghostly blue candle lantern for some visual interest. Our Greeter props are basically the guardians to the entrance of what we call "The Gauntlet" in our haunt at this house. It's our ~ 25 foot long walkway that goes from the top of our driveway up to our front porch. In the spirit of Gideon Hackles, if you can brave our haunted gauntlet, then you are rewarded with a treat (this year a full sized Kit-Kat bar and mini box of mystery flavored Ghost Dots). Most trick-or-treaters brave the gauntlet and earn their treat, but over the years several have stopped dead in their tracks at the Greeter and decided to take a pass on our house on All Hallows Eve.

Gideon Hackles

Getting Ready For Setting Up Our Haunt

We put these two props out today for a very good reason. Both the ground stake and hanging bride and groom skeleton props were purchased right after Halloween 2013 on sale for our 2014 Dia De Los Muertos themed haunt. The ground stake bride and groom skeletons were used for our altar prop. The hanging bride and groom skeleton prop? Totally forgot we had purchased it and it sat tucked away in a storage tote in our basement for many, many years before we rediscovered the prop. Oops! These props will work as little accent pieces for our Haunted Mansion inspired ghost themed haunt this Halloween and we wanted to put them out now before we forget all about them again!

Ghostly Blue Skeleton Props Get A Done Stamp!

A grand total of 6 of these custom painted skeletons have been made for this year's haunt.

Ghostly Blue Skeleton Prop Modification

Finally got around to making a prototype "Ghostly Blue" glowing skeleton. The prototype currently is a coat of matte white spray paint over your common 5' tall skeleton prop with an initial coat of Montana Cans UV-Effect transparent spray paint over the white spray paint. We only used half a can of the UV-Effect spray paint and still need to put on a second coat for a more intense effect under black light, but we're getting precisely the effect we wanted for this year's haunt. In daylight, it's your typical bone colored skeleton. We included a side by side photo of a "before" skeleton with the prototype "after" painted skeleton for comparison.

Halloween 2024 Already In The Works

Halloween 2024 is going to be a "Haunted Mansion" theme. The 3 ghost props we ordered on sale from Halloween Express arrived today. Very happy that there is a volume dial on them that can be turned down to "no sound" so that just their blue light up eyes can be used. Not sure exactly where we're going to use them next year, but most likely they will be "Ghost on a Post" props along our walkway.

Ghost Prop Resurrection

Our circa 1999 Spencer's Gifts ghost prop made its last appearance in our yard haunt in 2019. At that point it was being held together by lots of hot melt glue and after that Halloween it was returned to the nether regions from whence it came. While shopping around online for some good deals for Halloween 2024, we stumbled upon what appears to be a revamp/resurrection of our beloved ghost prop. The price was reduced so drastically at Halloween Express ($35/each) that we ordered 3 of them. Unfortunately it's not just the prop's eyes that light up, it also plays eerie organ music and says things, so unless there's a sound on/off option or a way to modify it, we may not be able to use all three of them with the eyes on at once. Unless the cacophony of sounds coming from all three of them eerily works. Regardless, these are fine looking ghosts "as-is" (actually better than the original) and meet our haunting aesthetics/requirements.

Glowing Eyes Apparition

In our 2019 ghost themed yard haunt we used two different apparition masks on our mannequins "as-is". The eye holes on the masks are lined with a see-through black mesh to hide the potential wearer's eyes. We thought for our 2024 haunt theme revisit that it would be cool if we lighted the eyes using specific color LEDs like we've done for some of our props in the past. While doing some online searches we stumbled upon "Cyberpunk" multicolor LED clear acrylic visors that were intriguing, especially for well under $20/pair. We had to give them a "proof of concept" test and here are the results:

Swamp Zombie Skeleton Prop First Version

This is a great example of why home/yard haunters start early on their Halloween props and projects. We want to have a couple of "Swamp Zombie Skeleton" props posed around the maple tree in our front lawn for this year's haunt. The plan was to adorn them in green creepy cloth and faux vines and moss, but thought "Wouldn't it be cool for them to have an eerie fluorescent glow to them?" based on some Baron Samedi/Voodoo art we found online that inspired the color palette for lighting this year's haunt. So this past weekend a mixture of Mod Podge glue and neutral fluorescent green and aqua pigments (look white under normal light) was applied to one of our 5' tall plastic skeletons. While it definitely has presence, it looked more "Haunted Mansion" ghost than "Swamp Zombie Skeleton". Great concept for a ghost themed haunt, but not sure yet for this year's haunt theme. Next test round will be painting another skeleton with various Rust-Oleum matte camouflage colored paints. Part of the trick from a photography perspective is to have a convincing looking prop in both daylight and at night that fits the theme. One of the nice things about the Mod Podge mixed with the neutral pigments is that you can go over any base color and still maintain the bulk of the base color underneath, so that may be test round three. A matte polyurethane finish coat is required to protect the Mod Podge glue from rain exposure.

Last Looks Before Halloween

We worked on the final costuming for the mannequins and props and did some lighting tests since it's only one week until Halloween. Only major thing left to do really is carve the pumpkins next week.

The Ghost On The Post

Painted one of our cornstalk/skeleton stands from last Halloween white and mounted our 20 year old ghost prop on it so we can stand it in front of the garage on Halloween night. Bought the ghost way back in 1999 on sale at Spencer Gifts after Halloween.

Halloween 2019

Halloween 2000

Halloween 2008

Crunch Time, Only 3 Weeks Until Halloween

With Halloween only 3 weeks away, we're in the "Last Looks" phase where we're trying to iron out any "wrinkles" we discovered regarding some of our haunt ideas and implementing any changes while we still have time to test them out. One of the problems we discovered was that the digital projector and holiday FX video bundle we purchased from a big box retailer in 2016 turned out to be really subpar in quality. We never got around to testing it out because it wasn't something we had planned on using for the haunt themes we had planned for the next few years. So a couple weeks ago we unboxed it and tried it out. The projector output brightness was poor, the projected image was next to impossible to get a sharp focus on, and the included videos were not true HD resolution. This was to be the "main attraction" effect/prop for the haunt, we planned all the other props and lighting effects around this one concept. So we were going to skip it altogether, but because we didn't pay a whole lot for it at the time, we decided that conceptually the idea would work with a better quality projector and higher resolution FX source video. So the new projector still needs to be tested out. Another concern was that the one standing ghost prop we are going to put on the front porch may be too monochromatic looking under the blue LED porch lights we are going to use. So another last minute expenditure was spent on adding some red LED lights as eyes so that when covered in its otherworldly veil will have a little more visual interest to it. Constantly trying things out in a dark garage and basement making sure things look good. Also working on mounting one of our oldest props that we purchased way back around 1999 on sale after Halloween from Spencer Gifts on to a 8 foot tall post. We're calling the prop "The Ghost on the Post". And still have to make decisions for this year's outdoor Halloween sound track! Thinking Nox Arcana this year instead of Midnight Syndicate. Home and yard haunting is not just throwing a few decorations outside for Halloween, it's more like serious stage and movie set design.

Mini Mausoleum Keeper

After a two year hiatus, we assembled the Mini Mausoleum in the garage today and tested it out with our old wraith prop inside it with the black light tubes. It's going to need some more detailing inside with creepy cloth and perhaps some additional contrast lighting, but so far, so good.

Ghostly Skeletons Sitting On The Roof

We decided to put up one of this year's yard haunt's display ideas early because it wasn't something we had done before. Initially had planned on using our 5' tall skeletons, but they proved to be too big for this application, so we had to quickly go out and buy 3' tall ones and stores are already starting to run low on Halloween decorations. We did find one more 3' tall skeleton at another store to fill in the center spot of the roof line display since these photos were taken.

Zombie Turned Into Ghost Prop

A plastic ghost mask we bought on sale after Halloween several years ago and some spider web lace fabric we've owned for many years and we transformed our standing zombie prop into a ghost prop for this year's haunt.

Zombie Prop's New Wooden Base Stand

The leg mounting pipe welds on the original metal wire base for our 2012 Spirit Halloween zombie prop broke when we were putting away the props after Halloween last year. We made a new wooden base for it and used PVC pipe and a couple Spider Hill Props universal mounting bases to insert the prop's metal pipe legs into. We will be dressing it up as some sort of ghost, wraith, or spirit for this year's haunt. It's already 90% of the way there "as is" with the extra layers of costumes we've thrown over it. Maybe a new mask or just a sheer veil over the head and give it a "Done!" stamp.

Halloween 2019 Theme "The End?"

A little teaser for this year's yard haunt.