Kitty Litter Cake...

The first time my friend Shawn made the Kitty Litter Cake for our Halloween Party, it required some fortitude on my part to even try it. It looks sooooo real (gross) but it tastes amazing.

I don't know Shawn's recipe so I'm going to include one I found online. I do know the "cat poop" is actually melted tootsie rolls and looks pretty realistic.

Click here for the recipe. Give it a try at your next Halloween bash.

Flying Crank Ghost...

Flying crank ghosts (FCG) have become a mainstay for commercial and home haunters in recent years. I probably receive more comments on my FCG than any other prop I have. They are relatively inexpensive to make and can usually be bought for under a couple hundred dollars as well.

Haunt Project has some great info on FCG's if you are looking to make one. Click here to see several different designs for creating your own ghost.

Make your skeletons look their best!

Got some purdy white skeletons that you want to make a little scarier. Corpse them! This will give them an aged, decaying look that will really make the prop stand out.

At a basic level corpsing uses liquid latex (or some other glue-like adhesive), something to duplicate flesh, for example cotton strips or nylon stockings, and some dark stain or paint.

Bucky skeletons (these are the ones you see in anatomy class) can be found for about $150 at places like Bucky's Boneyard (www.buckysboneyard.com) or Ebay (www.ebay.com).

A less expensive option is the blow-molded, plastic skeletons called a "blucky". I've seen people turn these cheap, ugly misfits into horror masterpieces through corpsing.

I'll admit, this Youtube video is pretty cheezy, but it does an adequate job of walking through the steps to corpse a skeleton.

You want big, they got BIG!

I admit it. I like to look at props that I'll never (no way in hell) be able to afford (or even store). Some of the props being developed right now are absolutely amazing, but have price tags that make them sooooo hard to justify unless I open my own amusement park (not likely to happen).

Anyhoo, some of the new 2008 animatronics from Scarefactory are fantastic. They manufacture top notch props for commercial haunters (and rich home haunters). Here's an example of a Dinosaur that's new for this year. It's nearly $15K for the Dino and track, but if you are running a Jurassic Park themed haunt this year, you gotta get one of these!

Fog Chiller: Gotta keep that fog cold!

Do you have a fog machine, but when you use it people think your house is on fire? If so, then you may need a fog chiller. This is a device that passes hot fog through a cooling system. When you can get the fog coming from your unit to be colder than the outside air, the fog will settle nicely on the ground. Our course, wind, humidty and ambient temperature all play a role, so the same set-up could produce completely different results on different days based on these variables.

There are a ton of different designs and opinions on the best way to get your fog cold. A good website that addresses fog and fog chillers is Got Fog. Here is an article from their site to use as a starting point to build your own chiller.

"Filling the night air with menacing fog, which your trick-or-treaters must venture through and wonder what could be lurking within it, a fog machine is an absolute must for a truly creepy Halloween haunt or party. But there are times when you might want the fog to hung the ground rather than disperse through out the air. A perfect example would be for a graveyard scene in your front yard. Instead of filling the air, you want the fog to slowly drift over the ground, around tombstones and over burial mounds, or maybe you'd like it to flow out from under your porch or even over your roof.

Unfortunately, the very nature of how these machines produce fog makes this difficult, as the fog fluid is heated to generate fog which comes out hot and rises in the air. To discourage the fog from rising it has to be cooled down before it is released into the air. The general idea is to build a device that the hot fog enters and is cooled down as it passes through. A Fog Chiller. We designed our Fog Chiller to be easy to build, relatively inexpensive and be a completely self-contained unit that could be moved around as needed."

The rest of the article is here.

Movies: Fright Night...

I found a YouTube video tribute to one of my vampire films from the 80's.

If you haven't seen it before, Fright Night is well worth the investment of an hour and a half. This movie is an 80's classic!

Series: Favorite costumes of Halloween's past...

This costume was a big hit at our 2001 Halloween party. He's an escaped mental hospital patient named "Harry Buttinski".

Amazingly, my friend in the costume managed to stay in character all night (and it didn't really look like he's was trying too hard).

Pumpkinrot Yard Haunt 2007 video...

Pumpkinrot is probably the most well known creator of amazing Scarecrows. These go well beyond just carving a face into a jack o' lantern. The stuff he makes are like hideous works of art!

This video is from his 2007 home haunt, but his website has some great individual images of his creations over the past several years. He has developed his own niche and style with his props that many home haunters strive to replicate.

Take a look at www.pumpkinrot.com.

Using compressed air in your haunts...

Phantasmechanics has a great reference article on using compressed air to animate props. For any home haunter who is looking to take their attraction to the next level, adding a system capable of moving props quickly and powerfully is a sure way to create some great scares. A basic understanding of pneumatics is necessary, as working with compressed air can be dangerous if precautions aren't taken.

Here is an excerpt:

"Compressed air offers a number of advantages over electrical actuators for haunts, and has accordingly been used for many decades in dark attractions. The hiss of air accompanying a scare was a hallmark of the dark rides I grew up with. Utilizing compressed air is the most efficient method to produce sudden and startling kinetic effects. It is safe to use on damp ground outdoors, allows quick and powerful movements without the risk of blown fuses or overheating, and allows for the relatively simple construction of devices that would be expensive or impossible to duplicate using other methods.

The amount of force generated at the output of an air actuator (usually a piston and rod housed in a cylinder and connected to an object to be moved) by even a modest amount of input pressure can be amazing. If you've never considered an air system because it seemed too daunting, peruse this article and discover the basics. It may be just what you're looking for."

Click here to see the full article.