Winged Demon How-To

Here’s the finished result of making my winged demon (or reaper).

The best part of having this haunted house is coming up with and building the new props each year.  A few years ago, I had made this guy with a broken, cheap blow mold skeleton from Spirit Halloween Stores.  Both legs and one arm had broken off.  So for a few dollars, I had bought the wings (part of the Wicked Fairies Costume Collection) and the black fabric and I made the first version of this guy, Demon 1.0 you could say.

He’s served his purpose these past few years, so we wanted to update his look and add something new.  We added red LED lights in the eyes to give him a sinister look.  I also added another layer of black gauze and repositioned the existing black cloth to look more like clothing.  No one wants to see a naked demon, now do they?

First things first, making the actual demon from a cheap skeleton.  Step 1:  Determine if you want him to have legs or not.  In our case, since the legs had already broken off, we decided they were not needed.  I had to repair the broken arm with hot glue (lots and lots of hot glue).  Now instead of both arms dangling freely, one one is able to.  The other has a fair amount of glue holding the arm into the shoulder socket, and then a fair amount more glue holding the elbow joint together.  Step 2: Apply the cloth and gauze to the skeleton.  I glued pieces to the top of his head to make it look like he is wearing a hooded garment.  Use your imagination and as much cloth and gauze as you want.  Step 3:  The wings are for an adult to wear.  They are from the Wicked Fairies line (I think).  They go onto a person via straps that come over the shoulder and wear similar to that of backpack straps.  I simply put them on over the “clothed” skeleton body as if I were dressing a person.  You can see the straps going across his chest in the picture below. You may have to readjust the clothing around the wings to make them work, but you get the idea….

Step 4:   Add the hanging wires.  To hang the demon, we took picture wire, made a loop to go around the neck portion of the spine, pushing the ends of the picture wire through the layers of cloth and out the back.  We also added another loop in the same fashion around the middle section of the spine, just above the pelvis.  We can then adjust the angle at which he hangs, depending on high high up we hang him.  This also gives him more stability and doesn’t let him twist or spin.  Step 5:  The Eyes.  I cut a hole in the back of the skull large enough to get a hand inside.  We bought LED lights and a battery cap (9 volt) at Radio Shack.  I made slits in the eye sockets where I wanted the eyes to be, pushed the LED lights through the slits, connected the battery cap to the lights, and Demon 2.0 is done!

I know I went through the instructions pretty fast, but there really isn’t much to this prop.  It’s amazingly simple to make with just a couple of hours worth of time and maybe $50.  Please feel free to email me if you have any questions about the how-to.

If You Build It, They Will Come…..

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All the plastic has now been hung and we are ready to start hanging and refurbishing the old props.  We’ve purchased most of what we need for what we are now calling “The Butcher’s Chamber” – aka “The Intestines Mobile”.  On it’s way to the house as we speak are several pieces from BuyCostumes.com to complete the Butcher’s Chamber.  Last night we took a trip into or local Spirit Halloween Store (yeah, we have one in town now – no more trips to Stockton or Modesto!) and ended up spending $75 in more props (an arm, leg, hand and foot).

Click on the pictures above to see the progress with the plastic.  I’m working on a how-to to make a winged demon (or reaper) from a cheap, broken plastic blow mold skeleton from Spirit.  As soon as I get that completed, I’ll post it for y’all to give it a try!  Happy Haunting until next time!

Let the Construction Begin…

We’ve had the plan of what we want to do this year for the haunted house for a few week now.  We’ve gone looking through every store here in town to get ideas for new props or for ways to improve those we’ve already made.  Now it’s time to start putting all these together, roll up our sleeves, and get to work!  So yesterday, we spent the day cleaning out the garage.  Not my idea of fun, but it needs to be done in order to have the haunted house, I know…..

After a trip to our local dump, the garage was spiffy and neat and ready for the blackout plastic to be hung.  As you can see in the pictures, we’ve got most of the outside walls covered, with the exception of the garage door and the water heater.  We’ll cover the garage door today after we take the garbage cans out and into the backyard, and the water heater will have to wait until Halloween night as we don’t want to block it off right now because of ventilation reasons.

So the plan for today is to finish off the outside walls, hang the interior walls, and start setting up the masterpiece of the house this year, the ‘Intestine Mobile’.  We need to make sure that we have plenty of room for what we want to do. 

This is when it starts getting fun!  Props start going up.  New ones get made.  And we can start to get a clear vision of what the haunt is going to look like.  As weird as it seems, after a certain point, the haunt starts to really develop on it’s own.

More pics to come once we get more done.  Stay tuned….

Bloody Butcher Intestines Product Review

Here’s a perfect example of what a VERY good photographer can do to make a crappy product look good.  The two Bloody Butcher Intestines we purchased for the haunted house arrived yesterday from Skeleton Foundry, and boy, are we so unimpressed and disappointed with our purchase.  If it wasn’t going to cost us to ship them back to Skeleton Foundry, they’d have already been back on the truck and gone.  But as it so happens, we’ve already paid $11.00 for S&H the first time (non-refundable) and will most likely have to pay another $5 or $6 to send them back via Fed Ex.

We had read a review from another website on these and the guy just went on and on about how realistic they looked and felt.  Not sure how and why he would know what human intestines feel like (and really don’t care to find out either) but unless it’s a completely different item that he’s talking about, I think he may have some mental stability issues to work out.

The ONLY good thing to come out of this, is that now hubby and I have an idea on how to make our own.  Rolled up and crumpled strips of masking tape…..  Yup, that’s what we just spent $40 on…..  We’re not happy campers to say the least.  But, now that we know we can make our own and have them look just as good as the purchased ones, Home Depot better look out….  We’re coming for their tape!

If you’ve come across this blog because you were Googling the Bloody Butcher Intestines in hopes of finding a site that has them stocked, do yourself a favor and forget about ordering them online.  Invest instead some time in some how-to’s to make your own.  There are a few good one’s out there:

• http://www.ehow.com/how_4469313_make-fake-intestines.html
• http://www.instructables.com/id/Great-looking-disgusting-intestines-for-horror-f/
• http://www.budget101.com/halloweenpdf/ht11.htm

For an overall rating, I give these only 1 skull out of 5 and this is only because they are usable and we will use them, and that’s only because we’ve paid so much for them already.

Getting New Ideas From the Movies

    

      I have an abnormal obsession with horror movies. I LOVE THEM! I can watch blood and guts splatter across a screen all day and never tire of it. This was not always the case, however. When I was a little girl, I was plagued by horrible nightmares that would scare the bejesus out of me. I couldn't even watch movie trailers on TV or I'd get nightmares. Then about 7th or 8th grade, I discovered Stephen King. The first book of his I read was 'The Stand' followed by 'It' and I was hooked. From then on, the nightmares went away and I couldn't get enough of the scary movies. And there's no better time to watch the horror flicks than Halloween.

     This year for our garage haunt, we've taken some inspiration from the movies (see picture). Since I'm now unemployed, I have PLENTY of time to watch all the horror movies I can and plan what hideous things we're going to do this year. While scanning our local cable's FearNet movie directory (visit Fearnet.com to see if it's available in your area), I stumbled on 'Autopsy'. I read the description and it peaked my interest. The movie itself has a decent plot, however the amateur acting sort of killed it for me. On the other hand, the effects and gore were pretty good, good enough to keep me watching. And am I glad I did. The scene depicted above came onto the screen and I literally held my breath for a second. In that moment, I knew what our showpiece for the haunted house was going to be this year!

     As soon as the movie was over, I went online and started locating all the items we would need to recreate what we've now dubbed as the 'intestine mobile'. Finding the intestine props was easy enough. Both FrightCatalog.com and SkeletonFoundry.com carry the 'Bloody Butcher Intestines'. And as far as the rest of the severed body parts, both of these sites, as well as many others, carry arms, legs, hearts, brains, and various other pieces of fake flesh. The actual body on the table will be easy enough. You see, for the last few years, hubby and I have had either a half body (bottom half with legs) or a headless body on a table with guts and various removed organs and parts arranged around the table. We need to up the ante, so to speak....

     Hubby came home from work and I immediately turned on the TV and showed him the scene from the movie. He was just as excited as I was about it. First of all, neither one of us had seen anything like it before, anywhere. And because of the obscurity of the movie, we doubt very much that those visiting Halloween night will have seen it either. I'm kicking around the idea of rewarding the visitors a full-sized candy bar, if after they go through the house, they can correctly name the movie that it's based after. But I'm not really sure how morbid that may be in reality. (If anyone reads this, I'd love some feedback on this idea. Thanks!)

     We're still up in the air over the other props this year. The grand design has been set, however. We're going bigger this year then ever before. This year, the people (I'd say kids, but over half of the people we get to go through are adults - we've earned a pretty healthy reputation in our neighborhood for our haunts) will come through the front door of our actual house, down the hall to the garage entry, into the garage and through a short maze to the garage side door, down the side yard to the front gate and back outside. We're also going to be employing the help of a few of our neighbors' teens and I've started putting the word out at my college that we need a few more actors. This will be the biggest haunted house "production" we've staged yet. And I'm hoping like heck that we can pull it off!

     Once the actual building and setting up of the props gets underway, I will be posting pics and how-to's here. I've also talked to one of my instructors from school about setting up video this year. Since I run things out front of the house, I miss all the scares and funny moments inside house. I can hear the screams, of course, but I want to see them scream and get scared. So.... If the video works out, I'll also post those here after Halloween night, so stay tuned.....

Until the next post, happy reader..... God bless and have a wonderful day!