# best scare for 2009?



## charlie (Jul 9, 2007)

What was your most effective scare this year? Details and videos if possible!

The jury is still out for me as I review all of the footage (I'll post as soon as I'm finished editing!).

charlie


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## Psyc0 Walrus (Sep 1, 2009)

my most effective scare was my new drop panel! i made a 14 year old boy scream like a 5 year old girl and he was about 8ft away from the panel hahahahaha


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## joker (Sep 25, 2007)

My 52' hallway with 4 drop panels worked very well this year, but I need to review the video footage before I call it the best scare(s) for 2009.


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## jdubbya (Nov 6, 2005)

Toss up right now between the fcg puppet scare, or the actor in the gillie suit sitting in the garden. He took people totally off guard and virtually blended in with the bushes so he got some great screams. He didn't jump up but just moved ever so slightly and made this low throaty growling noise, not unlike Chewbacca.


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## Warrant2000 (Oct 8, 2008)

When the lights went out on the zombie run, the screams began!


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## trentsketch (Jul 27, 2009)

I took a huge risk on building the wings of my Jabberwock that really paid off as a great scare.

Everything else on this beauty was fully wired and papier-mached, except the wings. The wings were weather-treated newspaper adhered to a wooden frame on top.










That meant that the wings were moving in the wind and the rain. I wish I had a video camera that could have survived the downpour to capture it. Somehow, the wings actually looked like they were flapping. It was glorious.

Here's how the scare would work. The fog machine was set off inside a blacklight prop a few feet away from the Jabberwock. The ToTers would come up the path, lured in by the flashing, glowing lights. This brought them right up to the fog machine. I shoot out a nice cloud of fog from the remote control, pushing them to the Jabberwock.

The Jabberwock wound up well over 6ft tall at the highest point, but the wingspan was over 10ft. The angled head flashing down on them combined with the subtle wing movement you couldn't see as well from the street and the occasional tilt of the entire structure, designed to rock in case of severe weather conditions, elicited quite a few screams from older ToTers and parents, too. Little ToTers mostly opted to go up the actual pathway right next to the Jabberwock rather than walk directly in front of it; some still screamed.

It was like introducing the fog machine all over again. A naturally animated prop, if you will.


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## bozz (Sep 27, 2006)

*Kill all spot lights on my trail !*

Last scare of the night and after hrs. with my very specail neighbor on my 1 acre backyard trail. All my trail lights work off my remote control button in my pocket. My guest enters the cedar woods trail I then kill all the lights and now he's in total darkness with one of my actors just a few feet away packing a fake chainsaw ready to pounce on him. After that scare I powered back up and let him get down the trail a little to my next actor and killed the lights again.......lol. After he got back to our garage and we blasted him with the leafblower hanging above in my attic. He said he had seen anuff movies to know when the lights go out.........its never a good thing and something bad is gonna happen.........ha ! Loved it..........need to do that more next year........really ups the scare factor a few notches.


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## bozz (Sep 27, 2006)

*Pics*

Few more pics


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## dasjman (Sep 10, 2008)

I was too busy to follow people through the haunt, but many kids commented that the little television sprayed with blood and showing static (thanks to the end of analog signals) next to the skeleton girl freaked them out the most. So basically, the last minute addition that I threw in worked better than the stuff I spent hours working on!

Also, the day before Halloween, the kids down the street were walking from the bus stop after school and they asked me if I would stop building scary stuff.


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## RavensHollow (Nov 3, 2009)

For the first time this year I was in the big scare room and it worked out to be a great double scare. I'd get them when I stepped up behind them when they were looking at the skull display. I think what really scared them was dragging a shovel I was carrying along the concrete which made a wonderful noise. Then I'd tell them before they left they would have to get in the coffin I had in the room, when I opened the lid one of my wonderful actors would scream and cry for help. I had adults as well as children freaking out over that. One teenage boy would not stop saying "That is just wrong!"

I also had an actor sitting on a cot staring blankly at a static television in wonderful creepy makeup. One teenage girl who came through at least 7 times told her friends, "This is the guy who's going to give me nightmares." I'm not sure you could get a better compliment!


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## Creeper (Nov 7, 2008)

Freak-in-a-cage! It was my grand finale and sent them running out.


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## The Creepster (Sep 18, 2009)

When I told them that one day you will have to get a job and earn less then the cost of living OooOOOoOOOoOoo...works everytime


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## nixie (Sep 17, 2008)

I don't usually go for big scares, but we got a bonus one this year. My brother (in skull mask and cloak) just happened to park himself on a bench by the front porch to watch the ToT, and just couldn't restrain himself from jumping out at the bigger kids. My favorite was when a mom told her kids, "oh just go up there, you know that thing's not real..."


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## Dark Angel 27 (Sep 11, 2008)

nixie said:


> I don't usually go for big scares, but we got a bonus one this year. My brother (in skull mask and cloak) just happened to park himself on a bench by the front porch to watch the ToT, and just couldn't restrain himself from jumping out at the bigger kids. My favorite was when a mom told her kids, "oh just go up there, you know that thing's not real..."


*cue evil laugh* mwahahahahahaha!

i would have loved to see that!


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## ScreamingScarecrow (Oct 1, 2008)

So many scares... which to choose!
Actually we had tons of scare tatics but my favorite this year was my nephwe (whose first time it was helping us) came up with on his own an entire monoluge while he was working the guillotine which was inside UberGRim belly!
He did such a good job that the Tots were just engrossed by him until I slammed the coffin door with a bang behind them! They always jumped out of their skins for that simple ploy!


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## waldiddy (Aug 4, 2008)

Our best scare was our last, the drop panel. Here's a pic I've linked to before, right after I built it. This thing got a scare from nearly everyone.

Instead of a portrait, the panel is a 'chalkboard' where visitors can vote if their experience was scary or not. I got this idea from someone else on here, can't recall whom.

DSC01561 on Flickr - Photo [email protected]@[email protected]@http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2481/[email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]@[email protected]@6f9e28a4b3

I'm thinking of using this again next year, but with a twist. We get a lot of repeat visitors, so I may add a small panel close to the floor where a 2nd actor can reach for their legs or something.


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## The Archivist (May 31, 2009)

This year's best "scare" was from a neighbor. Of course it wasn't REALLY a scare but the screaming that did emit from their house was pretty good. Her son returned home from Iraq without telling them. I happened to notice him when he got out of the taxi, so I figured something good was about to happen especially with the big evil grin on his face!


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## lewlew (Mar 15, 2006)

Dark hallway lined with corn stalks. Part of the wall holds a small room with an actor and a pressure pad controlling a strobe. Actor steps on the pad, strobe comes on, he comes screaming through the corn, Tot's make a Tot shaped exit hole in opposite wall. Too funny. Simple but oh so effective.


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## nixie (Sep 17, 2008)

Waldiddy- do you have a video? Please tell me you have a video, I would LOVE to see that!


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## lowdwnrob (Jul 2, 2008)

My daughters wanted to scare people this year so since she was dressing as a dead Ragedy Ann doll we made the shed a doll room. With the door open you couldnt see inside until you got right in front of it. We had a bunch of dolls we tore apart and painted up with a strobe over the door lighting up the room. Her and her friend both dressed alike and both had a doll. They would stand there motionless and then would jump forward at the people and scream do you wanna play and run towards the TOT's. The kids would scream and so would the parents. Not bad for a couple 9 year olds.The people were going acroos the street where the other girl lives to TOT talking about how scary the little girls across the street were. It was great.


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## Revenant (Mar 17, 2007)

Best responses we got was in a kitchen scene where another clown and I would double-team them. I would hide behind a big evil clown dummy, people would pass it and go down the hallway. When the hall jigged a bit so they couldn't see behind them, I'd sneak out and creep up behind them with my horn. They'd turn the corner into the kitchen scene, and Sherry the Screamer would do the drop panel and hit them with a piercing, bloodcurdling Hollywood-grade scream. The people would scream and jump back, look behind them, and there I'd be, honking and jumping up and down and laughing crazily. When the timing was just right, people went out of their minds. You wouldn't think a person could negotiate the corners of a maze so quickly.


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## DieTodtenReitenSchnell (Nov 13, 2009)

I think this year it was our walk-through (to-scale) Guillotine that dropped a few feet. It has a real blade, that's probably actually made of better metal than they had back when. The mullion (wooden part that holds the blade) slides up and down in a channel. When the mullion drops it looks like it is going to come all the way down, but the channel actually narrows from 1 1/2" to 1 1/4" part way down. It's hard to tell visually that this has happened, but for sure it gets stuck and won't come down any farther. We also have a rope that catches in the pulley at the top. There is a "slice" sound effect from a nearby speaker. People won't go near it let alone through it, but you can't continue without it, and it doesn't always drop.


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## ubzest (Jul 1, 2008)

oops sorry, I am a dope!
=


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## ubzest (Jul 1, 2008)

*some of our scares*


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## NytDreams (Sep 10, 2009)

We got a few scares but I think the best one was one of the simplest. One of my daughter's friends is awesome at Halloween, he was dressed in a black cloak, black clothes with a skeleton like painted face and carried a fake scimitar. He'd cling to the shadows around our driveway and lurk behind tot's who passed by. One adult was going through with his young son and our actor started following like a shadow until the guy saw him, then he absolutely bolted down the driveway and left his son behind! We laughed soooo hard....


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## Dungeon Keeper (Sep 25, 2009)

One of my best scares last year was of a girl in a group of about 8-9 older teenagers. Why do they always think they are safer near the back of the group??
I have been a warewolf the past 2 years and roam about and spend most of my time in the graveyard. I saw them coming though the graveyard and scared half the group as the faced the 8ft reaper opposite me by gust giving a snarl and they turned and screamed as I stood a foot from them sending them scampering into the hallway ahead.
The one girl in the rear of the pack was especially scared so I went and waited for them to exit the hallway into the open air again. They all exited and I put my hand in the last boys face and gave him the Shhhh sign with a finger over the mouth followed by a thumb across the neck sygnal. I then took his place right behind the scared girl and walked in his place for about 10ft right in her periferial. Finally I gave a real low slow snarl and she slowly turned her head and there was a muzzle less than 4inches from her face where she thought her security person was. Her scream allerted the rest of the goup who turned and gave yells of thier own. She nearly collapsed but mustered up enought enrgy to throw one of her friends between her and I.

Classic!!


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