October 2nd 2007

I was reminded today that I am long overdue for an update to this website.  I've been a bit busy and have been neglecting quite a few things since I started working full time on my latest Halloween project...

What would you do if someone gave you the opportunity to work on a haunted trail and haunted trailer, offered to pay you, buy all of the supplies and gave you creative freedom to do whatever you wanted?

Well, you'd probably run screaming, but that's exactly the kind of thing that I live for, so I am really enjoying the opportunity.

The trailer is an older 12 foot wide by 55 foot long singe wide.  It's set up at the back corner of a corn maze just off the edge of the woods.  The haunted trail winds through the woods, comes out near the trailer and then goes back into the woods again.  The trailer is going to be roughly in the middle of the haunted trail.
The haunt was partially built when I arrived, but there was no plan for a good portion of the trailer, so the first job I had was mapping out the existing walls and deciding what to do with the remaining area.  I am not a big fan of long mazes or square corners, so there's quite a few odd angles and interesting rooms to explore. I will do my best not to ruin the haunt for those of you planning to come and pay a visit, so I will show some of the things I am working on, but I will not give a turn by turn tour of the haunt or show any videos until after Halloween.  If you are really desperate to figure it out, you can try to read my floor plan sketch - it looks a bit outdated <grin>
There's not a lot of great pictures of the inside of the haunt since there's not a lot of room inside the haunt to take pictures that would make any sense unless you've been there, so... The picture to the right shows the door room which is roughly in the middle of the haunt.  There are 14 doors in the oddly angled room.  most of the doors have surprises behind them and only one of the 8 doors leads to the second part of the haunt.  I'm willing to bet most will not pick the right door the first time... I'm glad that we decided to do a door room, but I am kind of sick of hanging doors.  Thank goodness I'm done.  This room gets a coat of bright white paint and a generous dosing of glossy red before it's done.

Today we painted about half of the walls inside the haunt.  We used up 7 gallons of flat black paint in the process.  We still have about 7-10 gallons worth of painting to go.  I have to turn my attention to the pneumatic props, sound and lighting this week, so Al will be continuing the painting.  I will be spending a lot of time under the haunt fishing wires & hoses to the control room and various other hidden areas of the haunt.  There will be a good mix of live actors, remote controlled pneumatics and automated scares - it should be fun for all ages and fit in nicely in the middle of a haunted trail.