A Haunting We Shall Go

I can no longer deny the concept of miracles as October has definitely had a number of them. From managing to pull off the haunted trail against all injury odds, the weather holding off long enough for almost all of our trail guests on the second night and the stunning fact that with all the happenings this month, we still managed to continue our self-enforced quota of 6 posts per month (with this post). A big help from Brad on that last one who has actually been on assignment himself practically this entire month. The date of the annual haunt is definitely the pinnacle of the year, but the national day of spook is just a small step behind for the year’s excitement. In honor of team orange and black, thought I would show you a few of the sights and sounds from our big event starting with this year’s recap video my partner in haunt Paul has once again created to memorialize the effort and provide an incentive for those that were unable to make it this year.

This is the direct link if the embedded video doesn’t work on your browser – link here.

Hit the jump to see a few more images taken before and during the haunted trail event.

Not sure if I posted this previously or not, but each Halloween I try and carve a new foam pumpkin to add to the collection. Still trying to decide what this year’s theme is going to be, but last Halloween I went with a wolf carving in honor of Intrigued’s corporate logo.

For those of you that didn’t see this in an earlier post, our haunted tree Revenge made its second “debut” on the trail this year. Last year was a heartbreak after spending close to 8 months on it, a 25mph wing gust came through the valley and knocked it down a mere 10 seconds after getting it assembled – couldn’t get it back before the first guests came and ended up taking the arms off and just putting both halves on the ground. The damage was fixed a few weeks before this year’s trail and now completely restored to its former glory! Only seems fitting I was in a boot for this picture seeing how this tree was a result of clipping a root and breaking a bone during a run two years ago.

My niece gave me a skeleton Rooster to add to the trail last year. As we usually do with most of our store bought props, we decided to up the scare factor. I’ll be putting out a tutorial on our haunt channel as soon as I get a chance, but in short, we cut out the space between the ribs and added red LEDs inside. Next we added lighted eyeballs and topped it off with our proprietary trigger controller complete with haunting rooster-like sound pack.

Really happy how this turned out for relatively little effort. Nothing says Halloween more than an evil talking rooster ha.

Traditionally, we add new tombstones to our Trail of Fears Cemetery every year. There will also be a new tutorial coming on these, but for now, here are the 3 finished stones for 2025. We like to be sly and clever on our epitaphs, but this one was actually pretty easy to figure out.

Oh, should probably mention all the tombstones these last three years have been illuminated. I did make a tutorial on the ones we made last year if you are interested (link here). We made some updates on the inside of these for this year which worked out really nice – will post the video here once that is done. Here’s another of the new stones. The eyeball in the middle is actually animated, opens up, looks around while noting that it “sees you” which was a perfect match for the theme of this stone (did you figure out this one?)

Lastly is Stu. We found that the one above was generally more difficult for our guests to figure out, but the one below had some tripped up as well. The reference to a certain person on trial is more of a ruse with the true meaning..be sure and sound it out.

Did you get it? Will provide hints in the comments if you need them. These new additions really looked nice on the trail and helped to really improve the overall feel of the cemetery which is looking quite full these days and might have to expand its space on the trail.

Guess what people tend to do when forced to sit on their ass for 6 weeks while the ankle is recovering from surgery. If you said “buy ridiculous amounts of props online” then you are a winner. These two purchases from Home Depot were definitely a highlight of the trail this year. Pleasantly surprised how nice these were constructed and the sound packs were amazing.

Apparently the time off recovering didn’t impact my overall strength that much – still able to lift a 2 ton horse – they are even heavier when their insides are rotted ha.

The clown zone was a huge focus for this year’s haunt. They ended up getting their own section this year complete with a sign for the entrance. This was an early shot while getting everything set up (it was eventually packed with clown props on the left and right).

Again, another tutorial video coming, but that sign took Ron and I some serious time to build – right up to just a few days before trail. There is a hidden meaning in there that is difficult to show during the day.

You may have noticed there is something “wrong” with the spelling on the sign. In fact, that is by design as there are actually two signs in one. Again, this doesn’t work well in light, but the backlit sign spells out “CARNIVAL” For roughly 20 seconds and then sinisterly switches (at night you would not be able to see the cutouts to the right of the ‘I’ as they are not lit up).

Thanks to Ron’s circuitry, those cutouts to the right of the ‘I’ illuminate and the cutouts on the right side of the ‘A’ turn off to reveal “CARNEVIL”. A large number of our guests didn’t notice this at first so we will probably add additional sounds like an electrical short to bring their attention to the change. Have to say, for a concept that was evolving during the build phase, it came out incredibly well!

One of the annual tasks is building a guest favorite, the large pumpkin arch. We did put together a multi-part tutorial on how we made this scene if you want more background on it – and see it fully assembled (link here).

Fortunately for my ankle, last year’s switchbacks held up well over the winter so I didn’t have to do a lot of work on them before the event beyond expected trimming. This year we lined the trails with LED strings to keep people from getting lost or slipping off the down-slope side. Don’t want anyone to injure and ankle, we know how bad that can be! The pumpkin arches looked really nice on this part of the trail.

The witch coven was also another emphasis point for us this year. In addition to our standard witch ring, we added two new animated witches in the area, added frothy tops to our cauldrons and yes, here is where we added the evil Rooster. What is hard to tell from this shot is we put matching eyeballs to the Rooster’s in the cauldron so it looks like they were including “eye-of-rooster” in their poisonous spell.

Another phase 1 of ankle surgery recovery purchase was this pumpkin stack from Home Depot. I saw them last year at a haunt and planned to make my own for this year. Not having the runway to build the pumpkins, opted to just press a button on the keyboard and have one delivered. I might try to build a matching one for next year as the HD version looked good out there at night.

Revenge in all its glory. The lighted leaf garland nicely completed the dark coloring of the tree. Hit this one with some extra light while taking the picture just so you could see all the detail in the bark etc. If you look close, you will see reference to the “episode” that was the catalyst for its creation (again, many of our guests missed that sly addition).

The rain that came a few hours into the second night was disheartening, but everyone that came that night still had a great time and all but two were able to get through the trail before it really started raining. Unfortunately, the downside is all the props ended up getting soaked that night. Over the course of the next three days we managed to get everything out of the valley and into the shed. It will take another week or so before everything is dry enough to start packing it away.

My partner in haunt Paul and I celebrating another successful haunted trail! A big thanks to everyone that helped out this year, I am forever indebted to you. It is hard enough to put this on healthy, but throw in the petulant ankle and everything seems to double in effort.

Hope everyone enjoyed this quick look back at our signature event. There are plenty more sights and sounds from our haunted trail (it is nearly a mile long). Some we purposely keep a secret to not spoil it for our guests, but others will be coming out in pieces over time as we complete our planned tutorials.

Stay calm, haunt on!