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Making a triumphant return was the plastic wrapped wall panel. This is the foundation of the Haunted House. I ripped 2x4's in half (Thanks Jim Irven!) and made the panels with the cut edges facing inward. This gives a factory (rounded) edge to the outside so the plastic doesn't tear and so that it isn't a hazard to folks. |
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After years of experience at Jim Viau's (the Original Terrorbite), I was challenged to use such a small space effectively. I settled on having the entrance on to the right side of the doorway (looking out) and the exit on the left, along the workbench (seen here.) |
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With a maze to start off, we wound them back into the rear of the garage to the main room. The back wall of the main room was in line with the right side of the door to the kitchen. We had a hinged, spring loaded wall panel that served as a passage from behind the scenes into the HH itself. |
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After the main room, visitors turned right, passed through a curtain wall and walked out along the workbench. We covered the work bench with leaves and had an object moving around under the leaves. Very effective for those afraid of small critters. |
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Back to the panels: I simply laid out a square pattern on the floor, glued and end-screwed the tops and bottoms onto the verticals. I then glued/screwed the 3/8" plywood triangles you see here. These are set back about 1/4" from the edges of the frame, thereby revealing less of a sharp edge for the plastic. I knocked the edges off everything before wrapping with plastic. Not shown is a center cross member for center strength (bumps, etc.) and rigidity overall. |
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So, once the plastic (6mil, black) was on the frames, it was time to assemble the maze. With the overall height at 80", the garage door could go up and down unimpeded. The maze was just a back-and-forth series of turns over a short distance. Nice with lots of fog and darkness. |
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Here are the outer sides of the maze. This side forms the exit hallway as well. Another nice feature of using prefab panels is that you can simply stand them up and screw two together as a corner and you're up and running. With panels 4 ft by 80 inches, made this way, the light weight but relative strength made it easy to build by myself. |
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Here is the view looking up at the maze exit from the far side of the main room. The idea was to shield the visitor's view of the main room until the last moment. |
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Here's the control area behind the main room. The wall on the left is the back side of the wall visitors would face in the main room. From this stool, I could move the candy container back and forth remotely (by wire), talk into the amplified voice box, activate the fog machine (switch on the wall), activate the main strobe light, monitor the two web cams and/or play sound effect via the computer. |
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We still had the screen house up in the back yard, which was a perfect staging area for the staff. Since Jim Viau and family weren't having a Terrorbite of their own (first time in 13 years!), they came down and worked in mine! I am thrilled and deeply honored to have the Master himself come down from Salem, New Hampshire and bestow his hauntedness upon us. |
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I made this little platform so that someone could lower props, run a video camera, shout profanities (not really) from on high. It didn't really work too well, but I think the idea is sound. I ran out of time working on other things. You can however see in this image the wire for the web cam (on the top of the wall) and the USB flylight (coming from the back of the PC). Two innovations that will certainly be used again. |
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I built that little ladder/stair to last. I will certainly reuse most of these components next year. In fact, all the panels went into a storage rack in this corner hanging from the ceiling to about the top of the black cabinet on the right. |
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This rather atmospheric shot gives a good idea of the way this looked during the "show". Remove the work light (above and right) and all that's left is the ghostly illumination of the keyboard by the flylight. As with any HH, lighting is everything. |
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Speaking of lighting, here's the other side of the control room wall. The table (bottom) had the jack-o-lantern (pictured) as the candy container. When someone would reach for it, I would hit the strobe (top) and start moving the jack-o-lantern around. Scared 'em good! Note the web cam. I didn't get many satisfactory images from this cam during the Haunting. This is an area that I will need to improve. I had this and another cam streaming live video and still images during both nights. I think a momentary bright light is needed for good cam shots. |
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Here is some of the 1x3 bracing that I used to criss-cross the top of the Maze. It served to strengthen the entire structure but also worked well as a place to hang fishing line. Nothing fancy, just line hanging in the hair and face of visitors. Feels creepy. |
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Here's one of two motion detector assemblies I created. I just used a surface mount power outlet box, a flood light motion sensor replacement assembly and a duplex outlet and faceplate. I used a heavy extension cord as the power pigtail and mounted it all on a piece of plywood. This makes a very flexible activation device for special effects. This one started a strobe light (upper left) pointed at the mirror. This was inside the maze. |
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| I didn't think to record any of the webcam streams. Oh well, it can only get better next year! | |
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