# Haunted Chair



## Holy Cow (Jun 6, 2019)

Hello,
I'm new here, and I'm really excited about finding this site. I love all things Halloween, and I'm always looking for new ideas. 
I'm looking for some advice on a prop that I would like to set up, and I'm hoping somebody might be able to share some ideas. I'd like to set up a chair or something that I can move using a remote. For example, I'd like to be standing on one side of the room with the 'unsuspecting target,' and then hit a remote button without them knowing, and have something on the other side of the room move. I've been trying to figure out how to make this work with a table chair, sliding away from the table, but this may be too complex. So maybe a book falling off a bookshelf or something like that. I don't want to use any string or wires, but would rather have some kind of mechanical set up.
Any suggestions? Am I being too ambitious?


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## Hairazor (Mar 13, 2012)

WELCOMESTIR


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

Welcome to the forum, HC! I've moved this thread to Tech Terror - best place to get advice on how to move things:jol:


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## Hauntiholik (May 17, 2006)

I use a windshield wiper motor on a rocking chair to make it rock. Maybe you could use that with a remote to power it on and off?


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Welcome to the forum. Project seems do-able, but you need to be pretty creative and resourceful. If I had to move a chair...without strings, levers, slides, etc - I'd probably start with a chair having decently chunky legs. In a minimum of two legs (if you want to preserve the 'sliding', or all four legs if you want easier movement, you could probably hide a small worm-drive motor and add a rubber wheel.










This motor is listed at 1.2 x 0.8 x 3 inch... so if you could find a chair with a ~1-1/2" square wooden leg, you could carefully hollow it out and conceal the motor inside.

This would give you the 'driving' force. Batteries and electronics could be placed under the seat of the chair and possibly a small arduino as the 'brain box' to drive it all. Up to you if you want remote by bluetooth, wifi, motion sense, infra-red, etc. If you get really fancy, you might even be able to drive individual motors to get the chair to turn, 'run away', 'chase', etc.

Keep the scene a bit on the dimly lit side and add some ambient noise to cover the whirr of the electric motors, and the chair could seem truly possessed!

Obviously if you want to move something like a recliner or easy-chair, then hiding motors becomes much easier - but would also loose some of the effect, IMHO.

Good Luck!


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## Holy Cow (Jun 6, 2019)

Awesome ideas!! Thanks for the input!


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## MBrennan (Sep 22, 2008)

Welcome Foolish Mortal!!!

If you want to just make a book fall off a shelf (or something similar), you could use a car door lock solenoid (with some sort of remote) to just push it off the shelf. Of course you will have to go "reset" the prop every time


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## fontgeek (Jul 24, 2006)

You can do a remote control to activate a camshaft linked to a book (or books) to have them slide partially in and out of a bookshelf. For the chair, if it's a rocking chair, then I think that Corey's solution will work well for you, if it's a four legged chair (stationary/standing) you need to make sure that your moving that chair doesn't tip it over, that would cause you to have to upright it after each movement, and would potentially expose your methods of movement. Depending what the chair is standing on, you could use other methods to move it, things likes subsonic transducer, if it's on a raised wood floor, something like a "Buttkicker" would "thump" the whole room. With a solenoid, you may have to do something to mask the sound of the solenoid when it's activated, maybe something like thunder, the sound of rats scuttling around the floor, etc.


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## rkkcarver (Sep 22, 2014)

you could use a linear actuator and maybe some drawer slides. Check out Fright props


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