Haunting Your Yard!

I’ve been sitting blogging on my personal blog and Halloween came over me a bit, so I hopped over here. I have the window to my office barely cracked and a breeze is blowing in. It is making a creepy sound….so it reminded me of Halloween, and of Halloween sounds. One of the most important elements of Halloween is the sounds, the music – creating the atmosphere. What we do wouldn’t be half as good if we didn’t have the scary Halloween sounds such as howling, screaming, heartbeats, etc., being pumped through the speakers in the graveyard. There are a lot of cd’s out there that you can use to accomplish this effect. Be careful not to get cheesy ones. Sometime you won’t know until you buy it, but generally they aren’t too expensive. If you get a crappy one, you generally aren’t out too much! When I created my voodoo bathroom, one of the most important things to include was music. It set the tone. I got my music, Ti-Roro & Ti Marcel (Voodoo Drum in Hi-Fi), off the internet a few years ago. It’s not just the drums, but the chanting as well. No one would use the bathroom. Now in the house and in our garage scene, we usually have something else playing. Our favorite choice in Halloween music is hands down Midnight Syndicate’s cd’s. These are more music set to a scary backdrop. We have always found them at the local Spirit Halloween Store when they open for the season. These are some of the best scary Halloween sounds on the market. So Halloween music and scary Halloween sounds is something you don’t want left out of your Halloween haunt. I have always found that the more subtle, the better. If you have a specific theme you are going for, try and find specific music to fit. Even the smallest of sounds can make the biggest of difference!

Halloween 2007 almost didn’t happen. We were so busy dealing with our little side business that it seemed like the last thing we needed to be doing. What ended up happening was that it turned into a nice distraction from everything else going on.

We had big hopes that another new, large “something” would be added. That didn’t happen. What did happen was new tombstones were made and other things, such as the pillars, were redone. Dylan made his first crypt – the above ground sort of burial plot. It was really the first time he’s done a project completely on his own. He’s old enough now to be trusted with the various tools it takes to cut and carve the foam.

He did a pretty good job and his final product turned out nicely.

The garage scene almost didn’t happen.  But we decided to go ahead and do something – but just use props we already had.  So we went with the mad scientist theme again, but went a bit more gory than we have before.  We had bodies in body bags hanging from the ceiling (interesting story regarding where we got the bodies, but I’ll save that for another post), beakers and body parts, etc.

Once again we had a party.  This year I went all out in the voodoo bathroom down in the basement.  Surprisingly, no one wanted to actually use the bathroom.   They all seemed a bit freaked out.  This was really one of the best areas and I have to figure out this year how to incorporate it into the outdoor thing – maybe the garage will become a voodoo room.  I think the thought of the unknown is really creepier than blood and gore.

This is an example where attention to detail makes all the difference.  I will write more detail about this in another post to give ideas on how to go about doing your own voodoo bathroom.

Halloween night last year was one of the few times where the weather was perfect and everything came together.  For our fog chillers to work (a contraption we make to cool down the fog after it is released from the machine) we need to get the fog colder than the outside air.  When this happens, the fog does not just disperse, but it rolls along the ground.  If there is no wind, it is one of the coolest effects you can have in your graveyard.

Last year all those pieces came together – no wind, perfect temp – I wish we could have captured it better on camera.  This year our goal is to do a better job of that.  I have a friend who is a professional photographer and I hope she can give us some good advice and tips this year on how to accomplish that.

So that brings us up to date!  From here on out we’ll write about how we are preparing for 2008, and also some information on how we built and put together some of our props and scenes.

Halloween 2006 was the first year we added a moving prop! She is usually referred to in the Halloween world as a Flying Crank Ghost, or FCG.

She really is an amazing prop. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the best of pictures of her in 2006 – we really seemed to drop the ball in the picture department in general and we lost some pictures due to a computer crashing.

We had built a whole mineshaft with walls that I created using chicken wire and papermache that were made to look like cave walls. I think I spent almost two months working on those walls. Some had bones that were made to look as if they were embedded in the stone. Some had dynamite sticks (made out of toilet paper tubes) sticking out.

It took multiple layers of papermaching, then painting a base coat, then adding some other effects to make them look aged. They looked okay in the daylight, but looked great in the darker lighting.

We also had prop skeletons in the cave and panning for gold pans, rocks, railroad tracks leading out of the cave, etc. We even went to the trouble of buying a bird cage, aging it, and putting a fake bird in there, upside down, so that it seemed as if the gases had been what took all the miners.

Right now you’re probably thinking, “Boy, I’d love to see pictures of that!”. Well, I would too – but they all seemed to have gotten lost in the later computer crash. All I ended up with was pictures of the building processes.

One cool new prop we made for the front porch was a skeleton wrapped in spider webbing.

That was nice hanging from the ceiling of the garage for a few weeks until we started decorating the outside.

As usual, it made all of our neighbors wonder about us.

I don’t want to say 2006 was a bust because it wasn’t. I was our best year up to that point. I just don’t have the pictures to prove it!

Oh well. Onward and upward as they would say…..

I’m going to attempt to give a basic “how to” of the process of building our pillars for our graveyard fence. There are a lot of great ideas out there on the web – different ways to build pillars. Some which are made of foam and very lightweight. We would eventually like to redo ours.

First off, one of the biggest issues we have here in Colorado is the wind. We can get hurricane force gusts coming off of the mountains. This makes prop building more difficult as we always have to think in terms of worst case winds and build things and set up things in the graveyard with that always in mind. We don’t want our props to end up in Kansas!

The year we built them we were also on a tight budget. Well, we are always on a tight budget. If we didn’t watch ourselves we could easily spend hundreds of dollars each year on Halloween. That year a lot of new houses were going up close by – and dumpster diving was how we got much of our materials. If you shouldhappen to use that method of acquiring materials be careful to ONLY get materials that are IN a dumpster. Otherwise it is not free game – even if it’s sitting next to the dumpster.

So we worked with what we had – which was a lot of framing material. Some of which was perfect for building our pillars.

We built 2 tall, main entrance pillars and 4 shorter pillars. What helps the pillars stay upright being that they are so tall, is a couple of things. First, since they are attached to other pillars via the fencing, they are not stand alone. We also stake them with metal stakes to give them a little extra stability.

As far as fencing goes – we did not make it. There are some techniques out there that use pvc pipe to make some pretty realistic fencing. We decided to go with real rod iron. We were able to get pieces similar enough from a local recycling place. So storage and hauling them around can be quite difficult, but they are sturdy. One of the problems we have had is that up until this year, the elementary bus stop was in front of our house. The kids loved looking at our setup while waiting for the bus, but they had a tendency to “hang” on the fencing. Which is why we chose something more stable, and the pieces of fencing are screwed into the sides of the pillars.

To finish the pillars we did some basic painting. One great way to get large amounts of paint is to see what colors they have at the local home improvement store in the “oops paint” section. You’ll save a lot of money. We did not learn that until after using spray paint on these which is very expensive. We did gray first, then did touches of black and a greenish paint to give them a different look.

Since then, this past year, I redid the pillars. I did a different paint job in which I put black paint in a line, spray it with water, then do a drag with a paint brush. It gives things an older look (I use the same technique on our tombstones and on the mausoleum). This is an example of how they looked this year. They are not quite as dark overall but look so much better at night. I also added moss.

Now back to the original year we first built them. I have mentioned that we build most of what you see. There are some exceptions. We do buy inexpensive Halloween decor at local stores and usually modify them. So these skulls in a cage we got at Big Lots one year. I have since added moss to these as well. These hang from the two tall entrance pillars. It is the small details that make the prop in my opinion. The crosses you see on the front of the pillars were also purchased at Big Lots and have also had moss added to them to give an old feeling.

No matter how well you construct your props they will need touching up and repair just about every year. Moss is a great way to hide flaws and things that happen in general while being moved around and stored. Keep bags of it on hand – it comes in very handy.

So that’s pretty much how we built our graveyard fence. I will say, the rod iron does add an extremely realistic touch. If you have a way to get a hold of some and a way to store it, I would really consider it. Each year we seem to do a little something more to add to them, which is always part of the prop process!

Halloween 2005….the big addition that year was our mausoleum. It was quite the spectacle and a little, well, sick, considering we made it tall enough for Dylan or me to stand in. We also put our family name, Cooper, across the top.

Little big of lighting and a ghost hanging inside and it looked pretty cool.

We slowly made more handmade tombstones, and replaced the wooden ones.

The previous year was the first time we had done a “scene” in the garage, that is only on display Halloween night. It was very thrown together – last minute – but ended up being a big hit because we were able to have more interaction with our trick-o-treaters and the parents.

What we did was sit outside in our scene – that year it had been a mad scientist lab of sorts – and served hot apple cider and handed out candy.

In 2005 we stepped it up – a lot. We built walls to block off the rest of the garage and created a haunted saloon. It really turned out

great. We sat behind the “bar” and served the apple cider that year.

We had things down to the detail – the skeleton poker players dressed as cowboys with chaps, wanted posters that were aged, and the old timey jugs.

Huge hit, but we were beginning to have a storage nightmare. We had to go out after Halloween that year and rent a storage unit for our Halloween props. We weren’t just decorating the outside – we also decorate the inside as well. We were quickly running out of room!

I thought it would be fun to go back and show the progress our Halloween yard and set up in general has made throughout the years.

We started decorating for Halloween before 2004, but this is the first year we really started taking pictures – and admittedly, none are really great. Before that it was just a couple of handmade tombstones, made out of wood, that we stuck in the yard. 2004 was the year the graveyard fence was made.

This is the first year things got big – and it made a big deal in the neighborhood with the kids and adults. It was then we realized we might have gotten ourselves into a bit of trouble – we would have to get bigger and better every year…..

This was also the first year we started hand making our tombstones out of sheets of foam. Shane and a couple of friends were turning 40, so we made some tombstones specifically for those people.

One thing we did have fun with that year, but haven’t done it since because it was so difficult to keep up due to the horrible winds here in Colorado, is have a gravedigger in the yard. Shane had gotten a new toy that year – a welder – so he had welded a frame together that we then “dressed”.

He was a challenge though because we were constantly having to set him back up. Later we had even put a pile of dirt with him and a shovel and he held a lantern. The grass beneath where that pile of dirt sat for a month (we set up at the beginning of October) didn’t like that too much and we are even now dealing with dead spots in the lawn due to Halloween props sitting for a month.

One thing that adds a lot to the over atmosphere on Halloween night besides the lighting, music/sounds and fog, it some torches. We learned the hard way one year that the bamboo torches are not a good idea – one caught on fire and then caught one of our juniper bushes on fire. We were able to get it out quickly, thankfully, but after that we started using metal torches! It is something that is always brought up every year and joked about.

People might consider us a little twisted, but with our son’s birthday 2 days before Halloween, and Shane’s birthday on Halloween, well, it has become a big deal. We love Halloween.

The first year all we did was carve pumpkins. From there, it’s gone a little crazy. Our hope with this website is to chronicle our Halloween activities.

When we can we will give some tutorials on how we made some of our props and the technique we happened to use. If we can help give people some great ideas and help spark a little Halloween excitement that’s all the better.

Halloween gives us a chance to go completely overboard and be creative. Leave us a comment – we’d love to hear from you!