Nightmare Ridge
May All Your Dreams Have Screams
2010 Props
This prop uses a bargain basement Barney skeleton scrubbing a head on a washboard; when setup on Halloween the barrel is full of colored water (either bright green or red). The barrel will have a large label on it indicating the product name “Flesh Away”. The entire prop is powered by a wiper motor that pulls the head up the washboard, with a weight attached to the other side of the head that pulls it down. The head itself is a mask of a Styrofoam head with some additional great-stuff foam for a tighter fit for the mask. The Styrofoam head was drilled out and a piece of PVC was glued inside, the PVC was then attached to a bar attached to the drawer mechanism in the washboard. The washboard is made out of redwood that was assembled to support the drawer mechanism so it can slide back and forth. The skeletons hands are attached to the head, wires through the center of the head hold the hands in place. Look at the photos for a copy of the sign that appeared behind the prop.
Wrinkle Away was conceived after Flesh Away an obvious related product offering. The mechanics went together very quickly the harder part was trying to figure out how to make a flesh like accessory, we found a section of Naugahyde in the remnant section of a fabric store and a cheap mask that matched. We did our best to make them look reasonable (much better at night). Refer to the photos for the sign that appeared behind the prop.
This prop was inspired by more sophisticated (and expensive) walker props sold by the Scare Factory. I liked the idea and wanted to see if I could create a simpler, far less expensive version. I have two videos one of the prop under construction but operational. It lets you see the moving parts to get a sense of how it works, and a finished version of the prop.
The prop uses a very basic walker and light weight rebar to support the prop itself. On the back of the prop I mounted a heater fan from the Goodwill. The heating element was removed but the metal fan and the motor work fine. I turned the blades of the fan so it would not blow very hard but put a large bolt and nut through one of the blades to force it to vibrate; the goal was to get the prop to shack, it does but it is hardly noticeable. I will need to re-visit that approach in a revised version. A wiper motor in the chest powers the movement. It uses 1/16 wire rope (i.e., light-weight cable) to pull the legs up, gravity and the weight of the legs cause them to drop back down. It uses a second cable connected to the back of the neck to pull the head back. The head itself is mounted on a spring which causes it to snap back in place. The arms and legs use black pipe insulation to provide some thickness to his limbs. The torn off lower legs where done using a corpsing techniques with nylon stockings, latex glue, and an airbrush to try and match his complexion.
The Granny Rocker prop was built following the concept as shown on the ScaeFX site (thank you for the great how to). The change that I made was to put the vertical board at the very back of the bas and mount the motor to that vertical board. This allowed Granny to sit farther back in the rocker. Hope to have some how to photos and notes up soon.
We were happy with our witch prop the mechanism and cauldron design was copied from ScareFX (thank you again!). We used a good quality mask, we made the eyes, and painted (thank you Cory) some cheap HP Dementor prop hands. We had a pretty good audio to go with it, traditional shakespear chants and a few other witch chant snippets (nothing cheesy).
Scully Skeleton was an interesting experiment using the Pico-talk skull that moves his mouth in sync with whatever audio you provide. The eyes automatically provide random movement. Unfortunately we did not get a video of this the night of as the setting was excellent. Masterpiece Theater style sitting next to an out door fireplace. Several times during the evening I found guests sitting there listening to stories. The stories a collection of short Edgar Allan Poe stories read by Basil Rathbone. It went over well. The skeleton we attached it to was a blow mold $19 dollar special with a few touch ups, and some Goodwill clothing.
The Blood Wall Fountain provided a large creepy prop that folks had to walk under. Essentially a 2’x6’ fountain with 6 veins of blood running down the face. Since the surface had a slight angle to it the blood would run versus drip down the face the effect in person was great. In the video it is more difficult to see the movement, in person you could easily tell.