HH 2003: The Beginning

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This was the first haunted house Steve and I built. It wasn't the best, but we were just beginners. We worked our asses off to build an electric chair execution scene and it was pretty awsome! There was a shoddily built chair, a metal helmet, and big knife switch and a strobe light. Dickie Howard was the executioner, and Marc DeFayette was the executionee (person getting killed). It was a good scene, but the general construction of the rest (and the lack of stuff in general) made it something less than desirable. There was actually one part where the wall had fallen down and I had to repair it just as a little 5 year old kid came in, I took the opportunity to go "boo!" that kid ran Full speed back out the entrance!.

We dont have any pictures from this haunted house, this was before I had my digital camera and we didn't even bother to take any pictures with a normal camera.

Then only mechanisms that where incorperated where on the electric chair scene. The helmet had a light bulb atatched to it that would glow whenever the big knife switch was thrown. The knife switch had a contact on it that triggered a relay that controlled a plugstrip. The helmet lamp and a strobe light where attached to this and they would go on when the swtich was thrown. There was also an upside down iron under the chair with a nozzle above it. Dickie would push his foot down on the soda bottle filled with fog juice and it would spray on the iron and vaporize. It was supposed to make the body look like it was being fried, but it didn't work soo well and wasn't noticable. The other section of the house wasn't even worth mentioning.

We did sound from the middle of the house (we where still using black plastic painting tarps for walls that made a void in the middle of the garage). The sounds where played by Steve's computer into his PA amp and some PA speakers. An eerie track played continuously and the operator would cue up different sounds to play randomly.

I wish this could have been more of a learning exercise for us, but I never felt I learned anything but how not to run a haunted house. The most important being that this will take more financial backing than you would think. Each peice may be only a dollar, but there may be 100 of those peices. Secondly, actors are wonderous! Cheep and efficient, they may only ask for food, yet do many tasks that would requre more engineering to have an automated device do. And third, plastic tarps make for horrible walls, use them sparingly.

7/22/05