# Stuck!



## lewlew (Mar 15, 2006)

I'm stuck for an idea for our haunt this year. I'm hoping you folks can help me with some ideas. 

Here's the setup: Our haunt theme is a haunted cornfield and cemetery. A farmer plowed up the old cemetery and planted his cornfield over top of it. Now the undead souls haunt the cornfield on Halloween night. The cemetery is set up in my front yard and in the adjacent driveway I have a couple of 10' x 20' canopies end to end. Patrons walk by the cemetery then into the old crone lair where our story is relayed to them (1st canopy). The continue on over a tilting bridge lined with corn on either side where spooks jump out at them through the corn (2nd canopy). They continue on into the carport where I have static figures mixed in with live actors as scarecrows. 

Here's where I'm stuck. They then continue down a 20' hallway. Off the side of the hallway and on the edge of the carport I have room for a 12' x 12' canopy. I don't want patrons to go into the canopy, just walk by it. For the last 2 years we had our FCG puppet in there with some static ghosts. Worked great but now everyone knows it's coming. What can I do with that space that fits our theme and still get a good scare? Ideas? HELP!

I realize pics would help but we got none last year (crappy camera). Thanks for any help.


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## crossblades400 (Oct 30, 2007)

Hm... well maybe for the ghost part, you could have someone hiding in the ghost part. Then when they just pretty much walk by, the actor pops out and yells at them with a chain saw. Im not sure, just a thought. Also seeing that its a cornfield, dress him up in hill billy clothes. Instead of the static ghosts, you could replace them with cornstalk to match the theme even more.


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## eanderso13 (Apr 10, 2008)

*Ghosts*

I saw a video sometime last year with a brilliant twist on teh FCG prop! They had an actor dress all in black, and made a stalkaround-style shoulder harness for the guy to which they attached an FCG-style marionette. They put him in the corner of a black room with just a blacklight. The actor would make the ghost move like an FCG as people came into the room, and then suddenly the ghost would lunge and swoop down at them!

I'll see if I can dig up the site, it was way cool! But that might be an idea...to lull people into a false sense of security by making them think it's just the FCG again like the years before. But then all of a sudden...


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## eanderso13 (Apr 10, 2008)

Here it is!

http://www.hauntershangout.com/home/FCGPuppet.asp


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## lewlew (Mar 15, 2006)

eanderso13 said:


> I saw a video sometime last year with a brilliant twist on teh FCG prop! They had an actor dress all in black, and made a stalkaround-style shoulder harness for the guy to which they attached an FCG-style marionette. They put him in the corner of a black room with just a blacklight. The actor would make the ghost move like an FCG as people came into the room, and then suddenly the ghost would lunge and swoop down at them!
> 
> I'll see if I can dig up the site, it was way cool! But that might be an idea...to lull people into a false sense of security by making them think it's just the FCG again like the years before. But then all of a sudden...


Yep! What your describing is the FCG puppet. That's what we've been using (to great success) for the past couple of years. We had one woman who sat right down in the carport and refused to get up until the ghost went away. I used that same link to construct mine.

I'd like to get away from ghosts altogether and go with something completely different. I thought about putting up cornstalks and having more actors come out of them towards the patrons but I've already have done that in our bridge room. Plus, after exiting the hallway they move into our corn maze with more live actors.

I just don't know what else fits in with the space. My alternative is to forget the canopy and just make it a long hallway.


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## eanderso13 (Apr 10, 2008)

Cool! It worked well for you? It seemed pretty sweet to me.

Given that you have a large room to use that you don't want people entering...I've always wanted to do something with theater scrim and lighting to make horrible things suddenly "appear" from the darkness. preferably very, very close to the patrons, who KNOW there was nothing there a second ago.


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## pyro (Oct 7, 2006)

got any pics of the area


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## jdubbya (Nov 6, 2005)

It's an idea that is done to death sometimes, but what about a scarecrow figure with a chainsaw at the end of the last hallway? The patrons walk past the final canopy, which could have some static scene, kind of quiet and eerie with lights and fog, and then WHAM! out comes a large pumpkin headed scarecrow with a chain saw screaming at them. Doubt they'll be expecting that!
Hey, btw, if you're going to retire the fcg puppet for a year, let me know. I'd LOVE to borrow it for a year, also to change out my scene a little bit. Maybe we can do a prop swap or something!


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## Revenant (Mar 17, 2007)

You've got this corn theme going... How about another "field" of cornstalks, but several popup (or slow rise-up) menacing scarecrows rising up at different times? Maybe getting progressively more "lifelike" and closer to the audience with each one?


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## Haunted Bayou (Feb 16, 2007)

Scissor prop that kind of blends in and catches people off guard by thrusting its ugly head toward them?


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## Indyandy (Sep 7, 2005)

What about doing something with the farmer? Maybe his bloody body stuck on a pole for disturbing the graveyard. Or his body under a plow. Or even have an actor dressed as the farmer being torchered and calling out to patrons. I am sure there is something you can elaborate on.


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## RAWR (Apr 4, 2008)

You have a first corn field already in your bridge room. spirts lurk around because there resting place has been destroyed. The field would look fresh and like a good harvest. In the undecide area there would be the same cornfield yet this time the crops are corpse like. someway you could change it so it seemed like the spirts found a new home within the crops. the spirts are the crops. the leaves make ribs or arms.

Instead of having the crops all decaying. there could be several scarecrows all alike. the spirts have become the scarecrows to find a new home. you could incorporate your puppet within it by making it look like the scarecrows. amoung the scarecrows is the puppet when a person passes by the scarecrow would swoop through or over the crops.


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## Verno77 (Apr 6, 2008)

The haunt story reminds me of poltergeist. Maybe, have a coffin sticking out of the ground and lots of body’s popping out around it. Or maybe it could be a mausoleum.


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## Revenant (Mar 17, 2007)

I like Rawr's idea of the corpse crops... look for Ghostesses Monster Mud entry from last year, "Pushin' up Daisy"... and do a search and look for "weeping tree", or "tree of pain" to see some of the wicked corpse-o-morphic trees people have done here. And something like Dave The Dead's Rising Spirits prop could be applied to crops... There are lots of ways you could incorporate tortured souls into plant life like corn and shrubs to make it look like the unquiet spirits are growing new bodies through the plants.

And maybe the dead or (better yet) dying farmer, up in the air, impaled on giant cornstalks with vines piercing through his body and posing him as the malevolent spirit crops make him into their new scarecrow!


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## lewlew (Mar 15, 2006)

Wow! Thanks for all the good ideas, y'all. They really give me some ideas to start on. I like the idea of a popup or scissor mechanism witha scarecrow but I don't know if my budget (both time and money) can withstand the foray into pneumatics this year.

I really like the idea of the tortured farmer. I am going to try a Pepper's ghost this year and was going to have the farmer as a central character there, but I think now I'll move it to this area. Kind of a final look into his torture before moving the patrons into the corn maze.

I think Revenant and RAWR have hit on a good idea with the totured souls entering the and morphing the crops. I'll have to see about turning corn shocks into props, spirits, etc.. Like Revenant, I like the Rising Spirits prop and Ghostess' "Daisy" prop could be modified for corn I think.

I have a bevy of live actors that I can use, so I would like to incoroporate them as well.

Thanks for all the great ideas!


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