Happy Hauntings!

Welcome to our favorite day of the year! It is no secret we here at Intrigued enjoy the Halloween season. Although this holiday is continually under attack by the corporate Christmas greed, we will continue to push back and treat this day in all its haunting glory. Our Halloween related heavy lifting actually comes several months earlier as we prep and build out the annual Haunted Trail. We have found the weather is more cooperative at the end of September and allow us to bypass all the conflicts that seem to collide later in October (HS/College football, World Series, band competitions and, of course, other Halloween gatherings). The bonus is we get to extend the season’s festivities. Probably best of all, we get to sit back, stress free and enjoy ourselves on the actual day. As we do not get any trick-or-treater this far in the country, we head out for a nice dinner and then spend the rest of the night searching for (and rating) Halloween displays – an excellent way to get great ideas for next year’s trail.

Have a hauntingly good day, don’t eat too much candy, scare your neighbors and maybe catch a good horror show to cap off the evening. More importantly, continue to celebrate the day or it won’t be long before we’ll be seeing artificial Christmas trees in the stores at the start of the month – oh wait, we already do @#%@#%$@@!

Just to help set the mood, I grabbed a few shots from our trail to share. Apologies as I have not had time to properly process them yet. Hit the jump to enjoy!

We …. actually I should specify LINDA went crazy on The Home Depot website this year. She’s become a THD groupie and along with her nieces, watch their haunt related Facebook pages and website like a hawk waiting for them to release their latest Halloween lines. From a merchant perspective, outside maybe Spirit, THD stands horns and wings above the competition.

Our big purchase this year was their Red Dragon. Ron got the new controller made for it, but I didn’t have the chance to get the fogger hooked to the mouth this year. Definitely tops on the list for the off-season.

No haunt is complete without a Home Depot 12′ Skelie. Last year we picked up the Inferno version. This year we picked up three of the Mini-Infernos to add to the collection. Truth is we would have bought more of them, but we bought everyone our local THD had. Two went to Linda’s nieces and we scooped up the other three they had. By the way, that’s Paul, our friend in haunt that also made the highlight video in the previous post. He is over 6′ so it gives a feel for the relative sizes of the skeletons.

This year’s off-season was busy, busy, busy. Beginning days after last year’s trail, there were at least 3 or 4 projects in progress at all times. Linda was constantly on me as her agility training area in the basement was a bit of a mess. Part of that was due to the huge Gargoyle and in addition to that, had to keep up with tradition and build three more backlit tombstones for the cemetery. Very happy with how these came out this year. There was Helen A. Chipper (yes, that is exactly what you think the top portion looks like).

Walter Laugd was another addition. Hoping to add a broken boat and shells to this one to spice it up a bit.

The third one I didn’t get a good shot of out on the trail. It is in the video if you go back and look at that – Theo Geisel (Don’t Eat the Green Eggs) (link here).

Oh, did I mention we also picked up the traditional Skelie this year. That gave us a nice entrance to emerald forest when we paired it up with the Skelie our friend let us borrow. Yes, Linda even picked up the Skelie Dog – the marketers saw her coming a mile away ha. Her niece told her about the perfect sized tennis ball at Below Zero.

The mutant spiders were back this year and they even had new sound packs installed this year to give them an added effect. Our new sound controller design is working out well and hopefully a lot more of our static props will have audio added to them for next year.

The massive gargoyle was a bit mixed this year. I was working on this for basically the entire year leading up to the party. It didn’t even hit the paint phase until less than a week before launch. Basically ran out of time to get all the finishing touches done like the moving tail, head and wings. It was also supposed to be sitting on a 5′ by 5′ platform to make it more menacing. Still pleased with what I was able to get done as it took a LOT of work to get it to this point. Next year it will get the mechanics, a new (larger) head and more ornate wings to bring it up a notch.

As we are a wildlife themed blog, seems only fitting to highlight some of the critters that decided to join our Halloween fun. We start setting up the props days before the launch. Add in the two days of the event and then the multiple days to get everything pulled back off the trail and there is ample time for the locals to stop in and have a closer look. Caterpillars always take advantage of our darker materials. This specimen decided to catch a ride on the Gargoyle wings.

Note, I am not up on my Pillars, but if I had to guess that one is in the Tussock family. We do not mind the non-destructive creatures enjoying our props.

If you are going to volunteer to help with the trail, you better not have arachnophobia. We have all the 8-legged kinds and in large numbers. The most dominant one is the Wolf variety, also referred to in our parts as the Timber Spider. I find them to be well-behaved and quite tolerant of humans, although their large sized (easily up to the size of a quarter) and Tarantula like hairs give many a chill up their spine.

Now this little resident is an absolute pain in my ass. Cute as a button on the outside, devil spawn in the inside. We use a tremendous amount of extension cords throughout the haunted trail to feed power down from the house. No matter what we do, these diminutive asses continue to gnaw on the cords. Not sure who to blame more, the cord manufactures that continue to use soy-bean based insulation products or this little furball that thinks it is fun and games to nibble on them. This year Paul coated his cords with a deterrent liquid – absolute waste of time as I think they treated that as an appetizer.

Now for the best visitor of the trail. On the second night of the event, I was busy taking a group through the trail. Midway down the new switchbacks I stopped short and shined my light on the ground about 5 feet in front of me and just stood there silently. A few people in the group noticed what was in the light and complimented me on having such a lifelike prop. “Only one problem, that isn’t our prop”…”WHATTTTTTTT!!!!!????!!!” Good to know for future tours, some of our guests have Linda’s opinion of our slithery friends.

That Snake did more to put a fright in them than any of the props we had deployed. I was so relieved Linda had not come down with us on this tour or she would have likely pulled a hammie sprinting back to the safety of the house leaving our guests to fend for themselves the rest of the night. Ironically, it was likely the same type of Snake that nearly gave Linda a heart attack several year’s back (link here). We get a lot of the more common all black Rat Snakes around our house, but this Western Fox variety is a lot rarer. We stayed put until it opted to mosey on along off the path. With a little luck it will find one of those extension cord snacking devils to cap off the night of hunting.

Will call it a post there as I need to get working on this year’s pumpkin pattern. Take care everyone, embrace the night, stay calm and haunt on!

Happy Halloween from the entire Intrigued Family.