The Gardner's put a little more effort into decorating the house for Halloween than most. It personally gives me an opportunity to express my gadgety side.
The Gardner's put a little more effort into decorating the house for Halloween than most. It personally gives me an opportunity to express my gadgety side.
This is a shot of the house from a year ago. The biggest attraction is the flying ghosts above the door. The still photo doesn't do them much justice but I can't find my video tape of them to make a QuickTime movie. When I find it, I'll get it on line. I used 4' black lights to illuminate the ghosts which are painted day-glow yellow. They cast a lovely green glow in the black light. There is a second black light below to bring the doorway ornaments to life.
The setup above won us the neighborhood Halloween decoration award for 1994. This year I added a few pieces but I don't have photos yet to put on line.
This is the pumpkin that I carved. I can't take all of the credit. It is based on one of those template books that you transfer onto the pumpkin.
To the left of the flying ghosts in the top picture you can see a coffin with Herman Munster in it. I actually made this coffin as a costume for myself to wear one year. It's hollow at the bottom so my feet can stick out. Cloth straps run over my shoulders to hold it up. Because it is constructed of a light weight, fir wood frame with cloth wrapped around a stapled, the whole thing really doesn't weigh that much.
The top portion (from the waist up) has a thin plywood layer over the frame to allow me to add padding. This way, I could create the dimpled effect by pushing brass tacks through the padding and into the plywood. The door is curved in the front to add to the realism and it is hinged on one side with a hook latch on the other. I can easily step in and out while it rests on the ground. It has proven to be a versatile prop for much more than wearing.
Here is a little piece on how the ghosts over the front door fly. It really is a fabulous effect that is hard to appreciate in the still photo above. Anyway, this fan hangs just inside the palladium window on the front of the house (you can see it clearly in the top picture). The swivel mechanism in the photo allows the fan to pull on the line without it getting twisted up (It's a small bolt run through the ring of a small eye bolt. Several nuts on the bolt allow it to be firmly attached to the fan without binding the eye bolt. Fishing line is then tied to the threads of the eye bolt.) The angle the line takes down to the pulley
on the bottom of the top part of the palladium window is steep enough to miss the lights that hang on the bottom of the fan. With experience, I learned that if I didn't use a fishing pole line guide for a pulley at the turn, the line would get knarled and not move smoothly after a few days. From this pulley on the window sill, the line goes back up to the ceiling above the window over the front door. The ghosts then hang off in different directions from this main actuator line. The ghosts are store-bought and are simply cut outs from thin, cellular packing material. The weight of the ghosts is enough to pull the line back as the fan blade comes around. By installing a three speed electronic fan controller at the wall mounted fan switch, I am able to adjust the fan's three speed switch and the wall three speed switch to find a combination that works well. Medium on the fan and hi on the wall gets it started and then medium/medium keeps it going at a nice pace.