The Glade 4.0

Well even if my life is going down the crapper that's no reason to not enjoy my favorite holiday. It actually helps me take my mind off of things.

So I have started on making some new things for the yard this year and working on my costume.

This is the first thing I have built the gibbet cage, it will hang from a post and I will have a corpse in it (or a skeleton if I don't have time to corpse it)




I built this last weekend, I took the cross off of the front since it didn't seem to go with it and I am staining it an espresso color right now.




And this is part of my costume (The mask at least) I am going to make a better costume to go with the mask, more panda looking. This was me at the Midwest Haunters convention in June.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

Very cool.

What does "corpse it" mean?

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Corpsing is making a skeleton look more like a body instead of a skeleton. There are many techniques, but you start with a skeleton and add either latex, plastic cotton etc. to it to give it that decayed flesh look. So instead of a clean skeleton it looks more like a decomposed body with skeletal parts showing.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

I never considered it but starting from a skeleton makes a ton of sense. Where do you get a skeleton on the cheap?

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Local graveyard...

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Cheap skeletons are a relative term. This year Costco has a really good one called the pose n stay ($37), if you can find them they seem to be going very fast. You can order them online as well.

There are different types the bucky - this one is used by medical students and schools and you can get the mistakes but they are still pricey ($180ish) There are also blow mold skeletons (bluckys) which you can find online or at stores like Target or sometimes Walgreens etc. ($40 - $50ish) and then there are latex ones that you can also find on line ($50 -$60)

This is a video about one technique by one of the best in the professional haunt business.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

I envy your creativeness Kil. Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday of the year, hands-down (Christmas has absolutely NOTHING on it). But I suck at creating things with my hands.

You look on target to have one badass halloween house!

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Thanks, but a lot of the creativity comes from others I just copy, the coffin plans came from someone else, and I found a tutorial for the cage. There are people way better than I am at this stuff.

The nice thing about building Halloween props is that they don't have to be perfect. If I had to do any real carpentry it would be condemned by whatever zoning authority was around but with this stuff the imperfections is what gives it character.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

I envy your building talents then, too. I am not handy in the slightest.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I just buy a bunch of crap at the local "Halloween clearance" store about a week before the big day. I am totally impressed by your efforts, Killuas.

Of course, my kids and the neighbors are always wow'd, but I realize that I pale in comparison to you.

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This cold and dark tormented hell
Is all I`ll ever know
So when you get to heaven
May the devil be the judge

Depending on how "fresh" it is, you might not have to do any extra work!

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"...the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" -Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have actually been contemplating starting my own professional haunted house. Been looking at the start up costs and potential revenues etc., also been looking for a location. Unfortunately 1 of the top 10 haunted houses in the country is here in town with another top 10 one just an hour and a half away, so the competition would be bad.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

Professional haunted house? Like the ones where you walk through and they grab at you?

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Yes! I worked at a local one a long time ago in high school and it was so much fun.

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I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face and, the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him, and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil

Hmmm let's see... What makes a good Haunted House?

I wonder if there are any Zombie inspired haunted houses? The ones I have been to are more Jason with a chainsaw type.

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Young women having the excuse (consciously or subconsciously) to scream and throw their entire bodies at the young men next to them, and as well as having an excuse to dress really slutty (witch, red riding hood, etc.). Young men willingly pay through the nose for that.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

^Sarcasm I hope.

The same thing that makes a really good scary movie. Build up suspense, keep it there as long as possible and then BOO!

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Yeah, 95% sarcasm.

A good haunted house or scary movie is a little different for most people. But most of it is something that quickly and easily allows us to tap into primal fear. For some people that fear is a realistic, psychotic killer. For others it's extra terrestrials.

For me, I'm a huge fan of paranormal and monstrous creatures. I get more out of a scary film or game the less I am shown the "scary thing." My brain does all the work for me, and it knows best what primal fears to tap into. I love the game Amnesia: The Dark Descent for entirely that reason. That game puts me on an extreme edge every time I play it. It, honestly, physically exhausts me to play that game (and I refuse to play that game without pitch blackness around me).

So my perfect haunted house wouldn't be a practical one, because there wouldn't be many (if at all) "jump outs" or elaborate showcases. No, it'd be far more effective to take me to an old, decrepit victorian house and tell me it was haunted and leave me there overnight.

But I suppose that if you crafted a really, really good build-up story to your haunted house it could almost be just as effective. People (especially ones like me) can't resist a good haunting story, even if we logically know it's not true. There is an amusement park near where I live and one section is dedicated to being an "Old Western" town. A rumor got started many years ago that one of the buildings was haunted and that the mannequins/dolls in the attic of one of the buildings inexplicably would turn their heads to look at the staff when they needed to go put/retrieve things in storage. Just that little story alone is enough to give people the heebie jeebies when they go near the building, even if their brain says it's obviously bunk.

So, that's my contribution. A good build-up story or rumor.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Make sure to put a hidden camera in

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Dream as if you'll live forever...
...Live as if you'll die tomorrow

Vivere Senza Rimpianti

Guys at 00:05 and 1:14 are totally copping a feel.

Great song though. It's squarely in the middle of my Halloween playlist. Ahhhh, back in the days when I actually liked Will Smith.

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Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!