# Our haunt: what worked, what didn't ...



## waldiddy (Aug 4, 2008)

We use a variety of standards, which includes a small walk-through haunt. We've got a TCT, FCG, head-on-a-table illusion, and a couple of Pepper's ghost effects. 

I'm beginning to suspect we've got a real ghost in our house. Last year, I extensively tested our props many times before Halloween, and our FCG broke first thing on Halloween night. So, this year, I redid the strings and again tested it for hours over many days before last night. Last night, it broke before 5 pm! Weird ...

For the first time, we used LED mini-spotlights for part of our haunt. Out of 6, 5 actually worked. With the rain & wind, we're lucky more didn't fail. But, these spots are awesome ... they really bring a haunt to life. 

I've got a TCT I built from a kit from MonsterGuts. I've got to take more care mounting a monster head to the rod attached to the cylinder. I rigged up a stuffed mask to hang from the rod, and it just got twisted around and didn't work right. The stuffed head needs to be pierced by the rod instead, and it's just a matter of sitting down w/ it and fixing it up correctly. 

Our dot room was a big success again this year. One kid, about 7 or so, had come to our house last year and asked if the man was still going to be in the polka dot room. "I hate the polka dot room!" 

Our last room had our drop panel. I've posted pics before from when I was building it several months ago. It worked beautifully! The front was a chalkboard where we visitors could make a tickmark to vote 'Y/N' for 'Was our haunt scary?' This got almost everybody who came through! It was great.


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## Anitafacelift (Jul 22, 2009)

Lol,.never thought of the chalkboard idea,.that's great! Ha!


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## Devils Chariot (May 23, 2007)

I had alot of things that we tested break on halloween, the peepr, one hand of firebringer, 10-15 led spots ( i think bad set of batteries), 2 foggers, a stereo, an mp3 player, and stuff I am sure i forgot about already. But none of the TOTs knew so on with the show.


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## Dead Things (Apr 4, 2009)

Just seems to be the way of it. The rotisserie motor for the stirring cauldron died, one of the hanging ghouls kept getting blown down, once ending up on the roof, and the Axworthy, which worked perfectly all month long, kept getting tangled, eventually having a catastrophic failure. I lost an air compressor, a fogger and an outdoor circuit that month as well. One interesting thing with a prop. I built Casa Fear's pneumatic zombie, the first of my props to use a prop controller and easily the most complex startle in my haunt. I had it set up so it was the first thing people saw. Almost 70% of the ToT's walked right past it while it was running, not giving it a second look. The delay between the sound and the movement may have been the reason. But I also think people around here aren't used to seeing these types of props. Some folks have static displays but I have only seen one other where somebody used an animatronic and it was an fcg. I watch alot of the videos haunters post and there are ToTs really spending time looking at the props and generally milling about. Here they race to the door and get the hell out of here. Will re-program the zombie for next year and see what happens.


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