Johnny makes some amazing ghosts. Over the years I have watched John develop some amazing props. Lately he has started getting massive amount of movement from a single motor. These pieces rival the FCG or Flying Crank Ghost in form and function.
He also has started offering kits for his ghosts with very detailed instructions.
Wood kit -- $60: This kit will include all plywood, 2x4s A-D, 1x4s E-G, blocks #1-#19, and dowels D1-D18 as described in the how-to. All pieces will be pre-drilled and marked.
Complete Kit -- $80: This kit will include all parts in the wood kit, and all hardware described in the how-to, including Spiderwire and a TRW 58024E motor.
Every year there are a few new albums that come out that seem appropriate for spooky Halloween ambiance for your haunted house display. There is also the huge selection of .99 cent CD’s at your local drug store labeled “scary sounds”, but I am afraid to tell you that these gems won’t deliver much unless you are only using them when mixing your own tracks.
There are a few commercial artist’s that make ambient tracks that are well suited to use in your Halloween display.
Midnight Syndicate: “Dark music pioneers Midnight Syndicate have been creating Halloween music and gothic, horror, fantasy soundtracks for the imagination.”
My take on Midnight Syndicate is that some of it is fairly good. Some of it though is a bit silly sounding at times. All in all though I have a few of their albums and I have made quite a few mixes that I am happy with.
Rusty Knife and Virgil: I have a few CD’s and MP3′s from Rusty Knife. Dementia is probably my favorite. Really well done and creepy as all get out. If you are doing the whole haunted organ or Phantom of the Opera thing then definitely get Organum Effectus
Nox Arcana: I have 2 of their albums. Not really my thing.
So what to do for your Halloween display music?? In my opinion buy something from Midnight Syndicate for general ambiance. For specific stuff I like the Rusty Knife CD’s. If you know someone that is crafty in the audio mixing skills then hit them up and have them mix you up something special. I have done this myself using tracks and sounds from sounddogs.com and been very happy with the results. Although it is a time consuming effort. My 2008 Graveyard track is available here at Grimvisions.com
What about you? Do you have any favorite albums or tracks that you recommend for the holiday?
I have owned both expensive fog machines and cheap fog machines over the years. I have owned two Chauvet fog machines, they have both died. On one the heater stopped functioning. On the other I would repeatedly have to force a thin wire down the nozzle to clear gunk out of it. I eventually stopped using it. The output from the second one wasn’t that great anyway.
What I have settled upon for my display is a bunch of small 400-500 watt foggers that I purchased from Jeff at Frighteners Entertainment. I bought a case of him one year. I leave them full of fluid, Sometimes I fire them up in June and make sure they still work, not one has failed me yet.
Expensive fog machines are supposed to be real workhorses. My Chauvet was supposed to put out 20,000 CFM and be 1300 or so watts. That’s a heck of a lot of fog, it lasted me 2 years. It cost me around 120$.
The cheap fog machines cost me 20 or so dollars a piece and I have probably around 6 of them now. I put timers on them and place them strategically around the display and everything is fine.
Now that isn’t to say I don’t want something better someday. I have dreamed about the V-950 fogger. I have heard great things about it. Its is supposed to be a true workhorse when it comes to actually performing well and not breaking down.
Many years ago I got it in my head that I needed to add copious amounts of spider webbing to my Halloween display.
So I started looking around for a way to accomplish just that. I ended up buying a web shooter. This lovely device basically takes a large hot glue stick, compressed air, and spits our some quite fantastic looking fake spider webs. Now there are a few things to consider. If you live in a climate that is cooler in October, you want to get a web shooter that has a decent wattage heater in it, you need a air compressor with at least a 4 gallon tank on it (bigger is better).
I headed over to Minions Web and sent them an email. I ended up buying the Minions Webber CCL. Its an impressive device and quite durable, worth every penny. Using a web shooter is one of the best ways to make fake spider webs.
Several years ago I decided to add lightning to my Halloween display. So like many home haunters I decided to build my own and bought a kit. It just couldn’t deal with the amount of wattage I wanted to drive with it. The next year I-Zombie.com came out with the SC-1201. Now this thing can drive some serious lightning for your yard display.
It features:
The ability to drive 1200 watts of lighting.
Flip a switch and it becomes a dimmer unit. Basically the light inside your house flash/dim when the thunder rolls.
It will work with Halogen lights.
So if you are looking to up your lighting game come this Halloween head on over and pick one up. They last for years, Mine has been working flawlessly for 5 years and has been a great investment in my display. They do have units that can drive even more wattage and in stereo as well.
I did pickup a stereo unit from them eventually. The ST-2401 its can drive 2400 watts of lighting. It has the cool feature of running lightning on one channel and dimming on the other.
From their FAQ
Another unique feature of the ST-2401 is that by using our mono ThunderTracks and flipping the reverse switch inside the unit, one channel will flash lightning on the outside of a building, while the other channel is synchronously dimming (normally on) lighting on the inside. Asynchronous dimming is also possible using stereo tracks.
