Bates Haunt 1998

This years haunt was the culmination of many years of experimentation. I decided to do a theme this year, and chose spiders. We made a giant spider web in the front yard with strobe lights. Put a giant spider on our roof made out of garbage bags ironed together stuffed with newspaper, and another hiding on the corner of the giant web. My standard thunder with synchronized lightning, and music set the proper mood. In the trees we also put strange animal noises.

To enhance my normal grave stones which I had made out of Styrofoam for a full fledged haunted house a few years before, I added my version of the pepper's ghost illusion... The disembodied head. It's actually more based on the old console video games like Centipede, that would reflect the screen in the glass. My brother Jim played the head by sitting in front of a black background with black over his body in front of a camera inside our house. This camera's signal was sent to a TV set I didn't care too much about, sitting in the graveyard.

The best thing was the fact that there was also a camera in the ivy with the signal on the tv in front of my brother so he could basically video conference with the visitors.

I added a cd player eject motor to the window skeleton to make him subtly move up and down.

When you walked into the house we blocked off the hall and directed the visitors into the living room. On the ground we put old carpet upside down to make a tough protective, and interesting surface. In the 15 foot tall living room we had built a scaffold with black plastic making a long black lit hall. At the end we put our signature treat trap door with the glow in the dark hair sprayed hand giving treats.

When they got the treat and turned around we dropped 20 spiders from the ceiling hung at various heights and positions. Before the spiders dropped we turned on a sound effect of everyone in my family chanting chchchchchchcchch, and some red lights. Halloween Haunt Spiders Disembodied Head Pepper's Ghost

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• Halloween
• Haunt
• Spiders
• Disembodied
• Head
• Pepper's
• Ghost

[EricStrifflerVids]

Sorry I meant to continue that comment haha.

Did you just have someone hold the strings and let go or did you have it set up to do that on it's own?

I loved how fast they came down and how abruptly they stopped!

[datbates]

Thanks they worked great, and the bounce stop at different heights really got people. The wire canopy which held the spiders had a bit of bounce to it which was cool. We used family member automation. No servo control back then ;-)

[EricStrifflerVids]

Hmm did you have them all attached to one big board or something? How did you build what they were all attached to?

[datbates]

We just made a scaffold with 2x4 walls with plastic, then crossed the top with heavy duty wire with occasional loops that interconnected into a messy mesh of wire to hold each other in place. then all of the strings got concentrated from their various locations through a single wire loop at the top of the scaffold. the resulting bundle was tied in a loop and hooked on a nail.

[datbates]

It was like a few hour project. We did the same thing 2 years ago at my work haunt up inside a lift out ceiling, so I know it wasn't a fluke, but there are friction challenges that need to be watched for... ;-) Oh, and tangles suck!

[xxackhorsexx]

Lol, nice work!!

[photovoric]

looks good, turn down the brightness on whatever you are using for the peppers ghost, so the black areas dont cast light :)

[EricStrifflerVids]

Hey how did you do the spiders?

[swimfaniij]

wow

[braneden]

looks like a good time