Sorry, no haunted house this year...

On Alyssa's birthday last year, my wife and I found out that we were going to have another baby (Bonner - born 6/22/08). I knew going in to this year that we would have our hands full so I decided to focus on fewer projects. If that wasn't enough, we also decided to buy a house in August. All of that combined meant that a large Halloween party was out of the question.

We do plan on a big party next year and I'm already itching to begin work on some new props.

I was able to build one large prop - the witch and cauldron:

Daytime

Nighttime

Additional pictures can be found here.

Here is a low quality mp3 of the cauldron / witch sounds that I use. If you are interested in a high quality version, contact me.

7000 sq ft plastic + 400 ft extension cords + 250 ft twine + 14 cans of black spray paint + 7 months of planning and building + 7 days of set up + 6 hours of tear down + 45 minutes of scaring = 1 happy five year old

This year's haunted house was 3 times the size as the first. It was a lot of work but everything worked out as planned.

New props for this year include:

• toe pincher coffin - I got the plans for this from Shallow Valley. It was really easy (and cheap) to make.
• metal cage - Another one from Shallow Valley. This is a great way to make a realistic looking metal cage very cheap.
• ship's wheel - My parents made my wife and I a wooden wagon a few years ago. It was beginning to fall apart so I salvaged one of the wheels for this project. I bought some wooden rollers at a craft store, cut them in half and stuck them around the rim to create a respectable ship wheel.
• cannon - Had an idea to build a cannon and lucked out on finding an 18" sewer pipe for my cannon. Follow the link for details on this prop.
• pillory - Made from scrap wood that I salvaged from my in-laws front deck after a remodeling.
• gallows - Another project created from salvaged landscape timbers.
• graveyard - Styrofoam, an exacto knife, a rotary tool and some paint were used for the tombstones. The fence is lathe strips connected with brads.

Additional pictures can be found here.

Started prepping for this year's haunted house which will be located in my uncle-in-law's barn. I've posted some pictures here. So far, the twine is strung to hold the plastic walls and a few strobe lights are in place.

This was our first attempt at a haunted house and I enjoyed every minute of planning and building this walk through. The map below shows the rough layout of all of the props and gives you an idea of the layout.

Click on the red arrows or the links below to view pictures from inside the house.

1. skeleton - The skeleton was our door greeting this year. It is a 3ft plastic skeleton that we dressed in some of our daughters old clothes. I used black yarn hung from the ceiling to hold him in place.
2. hallway - When you turned left, this is the view down the hallway. Spiderwebs hung from the ceiling and pictures of scary portraits are hung on the wall. At the end of the hall are our ghost bride and groom who are floating over the couch.
3. ghost - This is a close up of one of the hanging ghosts that we made. They were created by painting Styrofoam skulls with blacklight paint. We then stretched out a coat hanger and attached it to the bottom of the skull. The cloth on the body is shredded cheesecloth soaked in Rit whitener.
4. table - This is a table that we covered with a white sheet. The lamp and candles on the table were some that we had laying around the house. We used the table and sheet to hide our stereo that played our haunted house music.
5. dolls - These are two of my daughter's baby dolls sitting in my daughter's rocking chair. I took red finger paint and smeared it around their mouths to simulate blood. Their eyes are neon colored stickers that you can find at office supply stores.
6. deer and ghost - Another homemade ghost in front of three deer heads. The deer were already located in this corner so nothing special was done there. I did put neon stickers (like those used on the dolls) on the deer's eyes so that they would glow in the blacklight.

If you still haven't seen enough, here are links to videos of a 'daytime' walk-through and a 'nighttime' walk-through. I turned off the fog machines for the nighttime walk-through so that you can see the props (it's a lot scarier with the fog).

Additional pictures can be found here.