# My Semi-Cheap 2007 Haunt: "Temple of Boo" (pics and vids)



## Toktorill

Hi all!

I was going to whip up a how-to for our 2007 haunt props, doing the entire thing like a walk through... sometime November 07'. Well, a lot of things happen in this hobby and we don't always get- or do- what we want. So it was put on the back burner. Now, with a new 2008 haunt just a week away from opening, I find myself with a few hours and a desire to get things on the net. So without further ado, here is a pictorial walk through.








The first thing to do is move everything in. Over the years we have gotten a collection of rubbermaid tubs (some even orange and black!) that we use to store everything year to year. Most of them go out in the garage, with fragile and sensitive things stored in the house.








Two of the tubs are used to store my latex masks. I own over 60.








This years theme: "The Boys'n'Girls Club and the Temple of BOO!". It followed the feel of the older India'na Jon'es movies. So of course we needed some vines. We made them with old wire and rope, with a quick mache' of strips of green tissue paper and white glue. Along the way we threw in a few plastic leaves. We made dozens of feet of this stuff- it went really quick and looked fantastic!


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## Toktorill

The vines were for the first scene: a Jungle. But what's a jungle without a tree? My beautiful partner in crime (wife) devised a very cheap solution- a tube out of cardboard, layered in triangles of burlap and brown paper. She worked from top to bottom, using white glue initially, but switching later to a few rings of packing tape for each level.








The top of the tree was made with tubes of cardboard hanging from the ceiling with nylon string, with more shredded burlap hanging over. We also had shredded green cheesecloth draped over the vines for spanish moss.








The first few steps into the haunt were over a bridge- these were planks torn off pallets, nailed down onto a solid wood bed. I will never, ever make anything with crates again. I could have made an entire prop in the time I wasted pulling rusty nails.

Besides the vines, we had a large "snake" to the right- made with spraypainted vent hose. A few prop heads were hanging here and there- they were tied into wires in the vines, which ran back to a hidden control room where a haunter could trigger the four or five automated props in the room. (There was also a giggling/shaking stitch doll in the head of the snake).

To the left was a grey tablecloth wall painted to look like stone. Well, as much as spraypainted tablecloth can. For about $2, its a pretty darn good wall. We put a few mirrors on the floor to give an illusion of depth down the side of the wall. I'm happy given this entire scene cost us about $20 in bought supplies.


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## Toktorill

Around the corner they find... a big chunk of cardboard! At least, that's what we started with. We took a large fridge box, hung it from the ceiling, duct taped it to the floor, and cut a door in it. We made the walls of the entrance go in a couple feet, to add to the "thickness" of the wall. For decoration we cut a slot at the top for a 2' foam skull (seen in the first pic), covered it in 3-4 yellow tablecloths ($1 each at the dollar store), added some tiki-themed faces painted gold ($5 ea), with a plastic chain dangling between them. For the chain I just cut a link in half and pushed some thick wire through, then shoved it through the tiki faces and cardboard, twisting it at the back.








Here's the finished entrance, with some vines thrown in for good measure. Getting the "Indy" feeling yet? 

Oh, a quick note about the skulls head-dress... I used more duct tape to hold it in place on the cardboard, and I just added a few more rings to frame it. Then I took black and red sharpie markers and drew little skulls and patterns around it. It ended up looking very, very cool.








In the entrance was a very small spider room (we all know what those look like), then your typical torture/body parts room. We were fortunate that our site had old display shelves and we made good use of them. In this area we also had some foam spikes that came out of the wall, pushed by haunters.


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## Toktorill

The patrons then head down a corridor, past some of our cheapest props, $1 wall scones! We bought flickering electric tea lights from the dollar store, and put them in a cone of brown paper. Then we stuffed in some clear red plastic (cellophane?). Very cheap, very fast.








And around the corner... oh, no! That hat! (dollar store) That whip! (almost a dollar store- a cheapo place called "San Fransisco"). Is it... Indy??? We painted a 1x2 black, and taped it on the bottom of our skeleton's spine. Then we ran a rope up to a pulley, then down to a haunter who then "woke up" Indy when the crowd was walking around his grave.








The next prop takes a little explanation. I based it off the "bottomless pit" idea: an endless hallway. I used a 5'x5' pane of glass, a 3'x4' mirror mounted in a wooden frame, and cardboard covered in yellow tablecloth. I made a cross-shaped "room" between the two.


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## Toktorill

Since this was just the way to get some use out of a storage room we were keeping some unused supplies in, I built the "floor" to extend to the doorway, which the glass was attached to. This also helped pull the tablecloth tight, to smooth out creases. We cut 2x4's the height between the real and fake floors, minus an inch, and screwed them into the real door to the storage room. Then we screwed another 1' piece of 2x4 on top of the first, offset a few inches above the floor. The 5'x5' pane of glass sat on this, with some screws in the walls and rope used to hold the top corners tight against the wall. When we untied the top and slid it to the side we could shove the fake floor back and have access, which was a necessity, since the back storage room hid our supplies- AND the only bathroom.








I only wish I could have taken a picture in the dark of how cool it turned out.  About the only thing that would have made this better was having a solid wall on the right, a visible "ledge" on the left, and pushing the right side of the mirror slightly further away than the left, causing the reflection to curve to one side. Straight on it was very entertaining, regardless.

For lighting, the hall leading up to is was completely dark. We also had reflective window tint on the glass to aid the 1 sided reflection. We had a flickering red light in the room, as well as a solid red to light it. It had a real "volcano" feel to it. Which led perfectly into our next section:








Our volcano room! We hung red tablecloth from the walls, and taped them to the floor.


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## Toktorill

We also built small wooden stands to hold bowls, which had LED-lit ultrasonic misters in them. We wrapped those in TC as well, and soaked them with fluorescent paint. Lines were also painted on the walls, and "stones" were strewn about the floor, made by stuffing laser-print wrapping paper. The room was lit heavily in black light, with a red rope light on the borders of the walkway.








Like the endless hallway, the finished room was difficult to take a good pic of.  There was plenty of ooo's and aaaa's when we were taking groups through!








Hmm. Evil Temple. Mr. Hat 'n' Whip. Whatever could THIS be???


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## Toktorill

Please excuse the look of this prop. These were taken during teardown, after several days of successful haunting.

Our 7' giant boulder was a simple scrap wood frame with straight-mount wheels on the bottom, in a triangle shape. Through the middle was a 3" PVC pipe, from one side to another. The cardboard circles were cut to identical sizes (though you could vary this easily), with each having a circle cut in the middle to accommodate a small piece of 4" pipe that rotated on the 3".

Note: I didn't cut a circle in the middle- I drew a circle, then cut several lines through the middle from the outside, leaving me a pizza-cut center. I shoved the 4" conduit part way through, then rolled around everything with duct tape. That held very, very well for the entire life of this prop- all week!

I cut and measured several long "boxes", which I taped to the inside. These kept the circles from pushing together. Then I taped rectangles on the outside- these kept them from pulling apart. With enough of each, the structure was surprisingly strong.








Yes... I know. More plastic dollar store tablecloth. Hey, it comes in almost any color, its paintable, waterproof... and cheap!

The huge bonus for this design (besides costing about $10 after scraps) was the rolling effect. When its time to go, the haunter behind it spins it quickly, while pushing it slowly ahead. If someone just notices this (the boulder is lit when it starts rolling by a spotlight) it seems like its coming at them much faster than it is. The effect was finished off by a small mp3 player, which played a rumbling noise through an old wood-case amp, attached to 2 speaker towers, including 2 15" subs.








After the great escape is always the payoff.  Here's the cardboard beginnings of the treasure chests.


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## Toktorill

My favorite invention in making the haunts has got to be the vinyl/plastic wood grain shelf covering. I put as much on it as I could, leaving the edges bare- these I covered with classic silver duct tape. Then I took a black sharpie marker and drew in details: everywhere steel and wood met, rivets, lines and knots in the wood, corners where pieces of "metal" meet, scratches, holes, whatever comes to mind. Then I gave it a dusting of black spraypaint to highlight where shadows would be if these actually had depth.








The three chests I made each measured 2'x2.5'x4', and were open with a false "treasure" pile in each. We painted them gold, and threw in costume jewelry and all kinds of fake treasure. We wrapped the bottom of the walls with gray TABLECLOTH, and the top with a scene setter.








Did you see the secret door in that last pic?  Look again, its on the left side. The "exit" in the top left is actually a hiding spot for staff dressed as a mummy- who also holds a pull rope that opens the secret door. This is the tear-down view of the door from the opposite side. When mum pulls the cord (nylon works very, very well for this) it loops through the thick wire on the right side of the frame, then to the door. This pulls it open. See the black cloth mask hanging in the bottom left of the pic? This looks cool going up and down, yes... but its also weighted with just enough pull to close the door again. The string from it goes straight up to a pulley in the ceiling, then down to a wire in the TL corner of the door frame, connecting immediately to the door.


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## Toktorill

And finally the REAL payoff- the only kind of stick-your-hand-in-this you can get a kid to do nowadays! Every brave little soul that makes it through gets candy. Even the parents. Aren't we nice?








So, that was our "Indy" haunt. It turned out to be very, very popular- at times we had people lined up for half an hour waiting to get in. Good thing it was an old store in the mall!

















... And that's how we roll. Questions, comments, PM's all very welcome, though it IS a week until our 08' haunt opens so I'll reply when I can. I hope this inspires some ideas in all my fellow haunters with plenty of space but little budget. 

I have some walk through videos, but I think I need to spend some time video editing to brighten them before sharing. When I get them done they'll be in this thread!


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## haunted hollows

Wow, simply amazing. Great work I love the use of table cloths. Of to the Dollar store I go!!!!

Again great work I loved it!


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## aowright

Very cool! I love the volcano room. I would have never thought of that. Good job.


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## dynoflyer

Excellent job! That volcano room effect looks way cool!


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## Revenant

Wow! Nobody... repeat Nobody squeezes more bang out of a buck than you! Tok, you're one of my haunt heroes!

That Indy skellie made me laugh. It reminded me of a scene in Duke Nukem 3D... you're going through some vine-covered passages and caves under a temple, and if you find the secret cul-de-sac you see a rotted Indy Jones corpse stuck to a wall and Duke's voice says "Doctor Jones, I presume!" Always good fun to find the corpse of an iconic hero!


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## Toktorill

Thanks for the comments!  My wife was very happy to read them- she was the mastermind behind the volcano room.  She's such a hottie.

I got a little more time on the computer- enough to make a map!








ANNND, as promised, a video. Here's a lights-on walkthrough of the haunt. Please excuse the colour- I ran a brightness/contrast filter on it so you can see the dark parts a little better.

[nomedia="http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=TjpPX3ctnF4"]301 Moved Permanently[/nomedia]

Thanks again everyone for the wonderful comments!


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## Lilly

very nice 
I also like the volcano room


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