A Geek's Halloween
October 31st tends to get me all tingly inside. It’s been said that Halloween is my Christmas. Not exactly true. I get giggly and go decoration overboard for Santa too, but Halloween presents a unique opportunity to be creative, or in layman’s terms, mangle my body in dozens of new ways in order to create home-made special effects.
Truth is, I’d been creating my own haunts for years, but after moving to L.A. and losing all semblance of a front yard, I fell out of the DIY spook game. This year is different. This year, I have a house, a sort-of-front-yard and 30 party guests to impress. So in the two weeks preceding the big day (which is actually Saturday, due to scheduling conflicts), I’ve done the following:
- spent no less than $200
- cut, sanded, Dremeled and painted 4 tombstones
- rigged up my own version of the endless rising ghosts, as seen in Disney’s Haunted Mansion ride.
- edited 2 sets of video for:
- a singing ghost face to be projected onto a large tree
- a talking, floating holographic-like skull
- built a fog chiller
- ordered 10 pounds of dry ice
- bought enough fake webbing to tent Trump Towers
- and scared the living crap out of my wife with a hanging fake plastic hand
All for one day. Can’t wait.
