TIME TO HAUNT!!!

I have been asked to help put on a Haunted House for Relay for Life to raise money for the American Cancer Society. I have never charged admission to my haunted houses in the past. Normally I ask for Canned Food donations for the Homeless Shelters or Pet Food for the Animal Shelters. I am very honored to be able to help raise money for an awesome cause. I lost my Dad and many other close friends and relatives to Cancer so I can't think of a better cause. Plus I get to do something I love in the process. Now that I have a location it's time to get down and dirty. As I am planning out all of the details and specifics it's time for my favorite part. Prop Building is my favorite part of the process. Yeah you can go out and buy these fantastic props that move and talk and vomit but a person can quickly spend a small fortune on very little. The idea of taking everyday items and creating some great props for a fraction of the cost and making them yourself is what I preach. I had big plans for this site in the beginning but many things happened that caused me be occupied on other grown up stuff. Once my haunted house outgrew it's location I pretty much had to give it up. But now that I have got my mojo back it's time to go to work. Since most of my original props were either trashed or loaned out and never returned I am going to start from scratch. That is fine with me since now I can post my progress and tutorials on here as I have promised for a long time. In the next few weeks I will be showing how I make Body Parts from spray foam insulation as well as building a new casket and many other things. I only have 7 years of ideas that have been waiting to be used. So if you are reading this and you have any questions or something you would like to see me build just leave a comment or drop me an email. Until next time!!!!

5 EASY TIPS TO SPICE UP YOUR HALLOWEEN PROPS

If you are like me you finish your haunted house then go around and try to make it just a little bit better. I have came up with a small list of five of my favorite add-ons for my halloween props. These are little add-ons that can be done in a few minutes and are extremely cheap. The first and easiest is to hang pieces of fishing line from the ceiling at different lengths. This is works best in rooms or hallways that are kinda dark. It feels like you are walking through spider webs. Just staple or tie them to your ceilings. You would be surprised at how effective something so simple can be. I like to hang these everywhere in my haunt. The second tip is to use blacklight paint. You can get about six bottles of blacklight paint in six different colors at spencers gifts for about thirteen dollars. This stuff is the perfect thing to add to props. You don't have to go crazy with it, just use it to touch up props. I use the yellow or the green on bones and skulls. Yellow is also good to imitate moonlight shining on branches. I have a box full of crows that I have used from time to time. I painted their feathers with the purple, their beaks orange and their eyes with the red. They look extremely awesome under blacklight. My third tip is to take a bunch of dark colored paints and mix them up in a bucket of water. Then take a bunch of cheese cloth and soak it in the water. Now wring the water out of your cheese cloth and let it dry. Once it is dry it will look old and dirty. You can rip it up and drape on props, make tattered curtains or just shred it and drape it from the ceilings. Tip number four is to cover the floor of your haunted house or just a few hallways with dried leaves or peanut shells or anything that will crunch. Just make sure that you use something that people can't trip over and fall. Styrofoam packing material also works well because it has a weird texture, the only downfall is that it will usually glow under a blacklight. My fifth and final tip is what I call body bags, These make some super cool Halloween Props. These are very easy make depending on how many you make. If you have small room or a hallway that needs a little something this is perfect. Take a large trash bag, about a thirty gallon bag will do nicely(use the hefty ones). Next get some one gallon zip loc bags(once again get the good ones) fill one bag with water, seal it then put it inside of another zip loc bag for a little extra protection. Now put the bag of water in the bottom of the trash bag and fill the bag with wadded up newspaper or something similar. Then just tie the bags and hang them from the ceiling with rope or wire. Try to keep your bags close together so that people have to push their way through them. Also hang them so that they are about chest high on an average sized person. When your victims push through them the bags of water in the bottoms feel very nasty. I used this trick a few times with great results. These tips work great to fill a hallway or dead spot, plus they are a very cheap and effective way to improve your haunted house.

THE ULTIMATE HALLOWEEN PROPS | COMPRESSED AIR

The ultimate addition to any of your halloween props is compressed air. There are places selling air cannons all over the web for hundreds of dollars. I on the other hand would rather find something much cheaper. Fortunately for me I have access to a large air compressor in my shop where I normally have my haunted house. My air compressor has a large tank that will power all of my air needs. Now I know not everyone has access to an air compressor, but maybe you know someone who has a portable compressor they will loan you. You can also buy small air compressors for fairly cheap, usually around $100 to $150 dollars. You may think that isn't very cheap but you will get years of service out of it so I think it is a fair investment. Other alternatives are cans of compressed air, or portable air tanks(around $30 bucks). I don't like canned air because you don't get much of a blast and they are fairly expensive since you will need a lot of them. Portable tanks will give you the pressure you need but will eventually run out. I still have not found anything that works as good as an air compressor.

The uses for compressed air are numerous. You can use it to add effect to your existing halloween props or as a stand alone trick. A popular use is to build a corpse and mount it on a piston that is mounted in a casket. When someone steps on a switch on the floor or if someone if controlling it compressed air will extend the piston and the corpse will jump out of the casket. Now with the right sound effects and say a strobe light this is a very effective scare. Of course this project is a bit more complicated. I will try to touch on it in another article. I personally get good results out of a good old blast of air. I simply run my air hose around to a good spot in a narrow hallway and cut 2 tiny slits in the black plastic wall. Then someone stand behind the wall with the nozzle stuck through the bottom slit in the plastic. The top slit is for the person to see through. Now when people walk by just blast them with the air. The cold air along with the sudden noise will scare just about anyone. I use this usually in a hallway that is empty or to narrow to do anything else. It works great for filling dead spots. I try to keep the hallway as dark as possible, this makes it that much more unexpected.

If you want to take the above mentioned trick a little further then try this. Take a 16 or 20 ounce water bottle, the narrow ones work best and cut the bottom off of it. You can cut it in half, it doesn't really matter just play around with it. Now slide the end with the opening onto the air nozzle. Make sure the end of the air nozzle is flush with the where the neck of the bottle widens out. Next tape the bottle onto the air nozzle with duct tape. Now take the confetti of your choice, I usually just shred up paper into tiny pieces and fill the bottle. When you blast the air it will shoot confetti all over you victim. This is only one example, PVC pipe works extremely well. The smaller the diameter, the more direct pressure you will get. Another method is to make streamers out of paper or thin plastic and glue to the inside of the bottle. Then just stuff them inside the bottle and blast someone with them.

These are just a few suggestions on the uses for compressed air with your halloween props. Remember just be creative and keep safety in mind so everyone can have fun at halloween.

EASY BUILD CASKET FOR YOUR HAUNTED HOUSE

Every good haunted house needs a good casket. Caskets are one of the most versatile halloween props you can have. They can be used for a good scare or as a piece of scenery. Today I want to show you a very easy design for a coffin that is effective as well as easy to build and will last for years. This coffin is constructed out of 1" by 12" pine boards. Unless you have a bunch of these lying around you will have to by them,
But that is the only wood you will need other than a piece of plywood for the bottom. You will also need some inch and a half wood screws, some small hinges, a piece or 2 of small rope or chain and some stain or paint. This project will require a power saw, a drill with a screw driver bit, wood glue and brushes or rags for your stain.
Now I am not going to post any dimensions because length and width will depend on what suits your own needs. This casket is based on the old toe hugger pine box caskets. I have included a rough drawing to give you an idea of what it looks like, hopefully I can add some better pictures soon. Now once you have your dimensions start by cutting out the two end pieces. Next You will need to cut the sides in two pieces, to make the angles in the sides. Once all of the pieces are cut, join them with wood glue then fasten them with wood screws. Now I use half inch plywood for my bottom. Simply lay the plywood on top of your frame and trace the outline. Now just cut out the bottom and fasten it to your frame with wood screws. Next you are ready to build your lid. I simply take two 1 by 12 pine boards and lay them on top of my frame side by side. Then like the bottom trace out your pattern and cut them out. Next take some of the scrap pine boards and cut out 2 brace for the lid(they are shown in the drawing). Now apply some wood glue to the bottom of your braces and fasten them to your lid with wood screw. I bout three small brass hinges at a hardware store and used them to mount my lid on my casket. Next I took a piece of nylon cord and stapled one end the the inside of my casket and the other end to the inside of my lid so that the lid would only open to a 90 degree angle. The last step is to apply paint or stain to your casket. I used a gel stain in a cherry color to give it an antiqued look. Since pine doesn't take stain very well without preparation it gives it a neat look. Now you have a very nice halloween prop that will last a long time and didn't cost a fortune. If you want to dress it up a little more you can go to a home improvement store and buy some handles for cabinet doors and mount around the sides, or some brass or stainless steel trim pieces. I hope this article inspires someone to build some nice halloween props.

FLYING HEAD PROPS ARE SIMPLE AND EFFECTIVE

If you are looking for something to add to an empty hallway, or a small narrow hallway I have the perfect prop for halloween. What I call the flying head prop is an ages old prop that is always effective. It consists of a head or large spider or whatever you choose that travels on a piece of fishing line. When your victims come down a dark hallway a head comes flying at them. It seems extremely simple, which it is but works everytime. I like to attach a small pulley at each end of the hallway. Then run you fishing line around both pulleys and tie the ends to create a continuous loop. This allows you to reel it back to the start point after each trip. Then I attach another piece of fishing line to the head and attach it to a stick or anything easy to hold onto. Try to run it high enough on the other end so that it won't get tangled on any of your victims. I like to build a false wall on the other end of the hallway so that someone can stand behind it and work the prop. I cut holes in my walls on both ends so that the head comes out of the wall travels down the hallway and disappears into the other hallway. A good way to enhance the effect is tie pieces of fishing line of different lengths to the head so that they hit your victims on it's way over their heads. Try to place the head high enough so that it won't hit anyone in the face. There are several ways to work off of this prop. You can cover the ceiling and walls with cobwebs and use a large spider instead of a head. Just be creative and use some imagination and this will be one of the simplest and most effective Halloween Props.

BUILDING YOUR OWN HALLOWEEN PROPS

The key to building a haunted house on a small budget is to use your imagination. Once you have a good idea about what you want to do in your haunt just look around you. See what you have lying around you that can be transformed into an awesome halloween prop. Old fruniture, Cardboard Boxes, Styrofoam or even old clothes can be used to make good halloween props. I live in a rural area, and people like to dump their junk beside roads or other places. I have found some of my best props in these dumps. Any item that you can dress up with some paint or cheese cloth can be useful. Best of all is the fact that these items are free. There are lots of people out there who will give you scrap wood or other materials that can be used. Don't look at something and think where will this fit, but what you can make it in to. I was building an electric chair a few years back and had everything but the top that fits over the persons head. I dug around and found an old enamel bowl and painted it silver, tapped a hole in bottom fastened it with a coat hanger. Then I touched it up with some colored electrical wires and it looked good considering what I used on it. It always pays to keep the necessities on hand. Spray Paint, black plastic, cheese cloth, spray foam insulation, chicken wire and cardboard are some things that are good to use on props. Most of these materials are very inexpensive, and can be reused. I like things that are reusable, like black plastic. I use black plastic for all of my walls and ceilings. The neat thing about black plastic is that after halloween you just roll it up and put it away till next year. Corpses can be made easily out of chicken wire and burlap cloth. Make a frame out of PVC pipe or scrap wood, then use chicken wire to build a body and cover the wire with old cloth or burlap. You can usually find some type of cheap burlap cloth at walmart. Then just paint or stain the cloth a dirty looking color, add a skull or head of choice and you have a corpse. Prop building becomes an art form in it's own. Props are usually very expensive to buy, you could spend several hundred or even thousands of dollars on a few good props. I will buy props if I run across something neat or something cheap, but I enjoy building my own above all else. Just remember when you build your haunt think about what you can create with what you have lying around, you will be surprised at the halloween props you can build with the stuff you already have.