I have bit of some news today.  I don’t know how legit this is, but I got an email from a lady representing HGTV that wanted to come to my home and film my haunt this year.  Like I said, I am not sure if this isn’t just spam but I thought I would reply.  You just never know now a days if people are pulling pranks.  She goes on saying that HGTV is producing a new show this year called "What's With That Really Haunted Halloween House?" with host George Grey.  It is a spin off “What’s With That House?”  So, I thought I would contact her and see what is up.  I will keep you informed if anything plausible happens.  It might be kind of cool if it is.

George Grey

Since I had time this weekend to work on the witch, I drape the cloth on her, just to see what it might look like.  Also messed with the motors to see if there would be any problems.  Of course the hood doesn't want to stay on.  I might have to do something different like attach it to the head in some way or form.  The face is still under work.  My wife still has to fix the face and then she will apply latex.  I need to do something different to her cloths, but what?  Maybe muck it up a bit.  So, here is a picture of the witch as of last weekend.  I can't wait to put this out.  I have already had people driving by with big smiles on their faces.  So, I think the witch is starting to shape up a bit.  As you can see, I took this picture after a rain storm, so the witch looks like a wet puppy.  I had her hair dropped over her face.  Now it is just stuck to her face. LOL.

Whoohoo.  Download.com accepted our Halloween Toolbar for download. 

Check it out:
http://www.download.com/Halloween-Toolbar/3000-2379_4-10572668.html

I just about got my groundbreakers done.  I only made three this year.  Still have the 5 from last, so that makes 8.  The witch is almost done, just need a few finishing touches.  Maybe if you are good I will provide pictures.  LOL.  Here is a picture of my groundbreakers.  The guy on the right still needs some work, but almost there.

This weekend wasn't as prosperous as I had hoped.  It rained all weekend and we had family issues that needed fixing, so that kind of killed the weekend work.  I did find some cloths for the witch and I worked on some more radio voiceovers for my Halloween radio, and I have another ground breaker that I am working on.  Here is the latest picture of him. I call him Herb.  My wife is going to kill me for getting glue on the table, but I bought another one so it should be good. LOL.

Well, I had a little trouble with the light controller.  I found out just a little too late that when you are writing macro and don't include delays then the controller will continue to run the program but won't allow you to update the program.  Which really sucks.  So I had to break out another controller that I had, and download the program to it.  This time I put delays in it.  It worked ok.  Needs a little work on some of the fade ins but I think I will get it work.  The other control will have to be sent back to be reprogrammed there.  Here is a short video on my progress on the lights for the witch.

It was another busy weekend.  While I was waiting for my power cord for my transmitter, I was messing around with some audio tracks that I was going to use to broadcast as a station id.  I am getting help from a professional who does this for Christmas broadcasts, so yes it will cost me a little bit of cast.  But not much.  This is his first attempt at Halloween, but he is doing a fine job.  I got the first one this past week and was adding different effects on it, just to see what it would sound like.  Here is a same of a station ID that I was messing with.  The music is from Virgil’s CD.

www.deathtouchhorrors.com/Welcome2.mp3

As you can see by the picture below, it was a really busy week.  I started working on my Pumpkinrot scarecrow, I got the witch’s hands done; along with part of the body, the motor was modified a little due to mechanical problems, testing my light controller with the cauldron’s lights, making sure the ladle doesn’t hit the witch in the head, and I got done with a corpse seen in the picture below

So today I got an email that the Transmitter has been shipped.  I am trying to add a few plug-INS to Winamp so it will act like a DJ.  Then I can throw a whole bunch of songs in Winamp and let it be my Halloween Disc Jockey.  It should be cool if I can get it to work.  If not, back to my wireless speaker, which I normally sit out in the yard.

I also started construction of my Pumpkinrot scarecrow.  I bought some wood and I built the stem on the head yesterday.  Still needs painting.  But I am hoping to get this project done soon.

Starting on Friday I started construction of my witch for the cauldron.   Also bought some amber lights from Romans; they now have their Halloween and Christmas stuff up.  So far, I have the main frame up and the motor is part-way working.  It still needs a little more.  My wife even pitched in and helped with the Witch’s face.  She found my stash of clay and went to work on her.  She really looks cool the way she has the face.  Sorry, no pictures.   I was so busy this weekend I didn’t have time to take any.

A few years ago I had a Transmitter from Ramsey that would broadcast my Halloween music for people to hear when they were looking at my display.  Well my dog kind of made it not work any more.  If you know what I mean.  I was trying to save up to buy another one but it doesn't look like it is going to work out.  So I did the best next thing.  I bought a Belkin TuneCast II Transmitter.  Now you are thinking that there is no way this tunecast is going to reach out that far, so the passer bys can listen.  Well, that is true if I didn't modify it to work.  There is a hack for the Tunecast that will allow it to broadcast 300-500 feet.  I have a couple of friends who did the same thing and it worked great.  So, now I am going to do the same.  It will be cool to be able to have the radio station again.

I'm sitting here thinking of all that has to be done and all that is on my plate.  Here's how I see it:

1) I need to write to the businesses on the three corners about a block from me to get them to agree as they did last year to donate their parking lots for our haunt.  Due to zoning, this is the only way we will be able to have our haunted attraction here.  I need to stop procrastinating and do that this week.  In fact, I AM going to do that this week.

2) We are going to be airbrushing our makeup this season.  That means less masks, less messy grease makeup and happier actors.  I purchased a Paasche Airbrush along with an airbrush compressor from Harbor Freight.  I've had it for a week, but have only practiced with it once.  I need to get a wiggle on learning how to use this as August 30th we will be debuting our creature makeup to thousands of baseball fans at Raley Field.  I have yet to receive the airbrush makeup I ordered, but he said it should have been shipped the last part of last week.  If I don't receive it in a few days, he will definitely be hearing from me.

3) Speaking of Raley Field and not hearing from someone...

I've left several messages for the head of marketing of the Sacramento River Cats, our baseball team.  He and I had agreed that I would call him the first of August so that we could finalize our plans for August 30th.  I've left him two messages last week and he has yet to return my call.  I'm getting a bit concerned....

4) The two avenues we thought would be certain to bring us a bus to put on our haunted trail have gone cold.  One has completely closed and we doubt the other avenue will come through.  So, I'm doing all I can by putting up ads in hopes that someone will have a bus that they can either loan or donate to us.  We begin building August 26th and we must have the bus in place by then or forget it.  Once the walls go up, it will be impossible for any vehicle to pass to get to the back for the trail.  I'm getting so desperate that I'm even thinking about having my son in law park his big klunker of a car to replace the bus.  We will have the front, side and back windows concealed by black material and view the from the backseat to the front concealed by a black curtain.  Each person will have to crawl in the back seat and exit the other side.  A monster will be in the front seat behind the curtain, of course.  This could be a great scare since it is in such close scaring quarters.  However, it will definitely slow down traffic and I'm not sure the fire inspector will approve it.  Oh, well.  We'll see.....

5) We bought 600,  22" glow necklaces as a fundraiser to get items we need for the haunt.  We have yet to be successful with selling them.  I'm going to our drive-in on Tuesday and see if they will give us permission to sell them there.

6) As I mentioned earlier, construction begins August 26th.  The haunt will go up much quicker this season as we dont' have to build the walls this year for the expection of a few and we have an actual construction team this time around.  Two guys on our crew who build for a living have friends they say owe them favors and will be happy to pitch in and help.  Wooohoo!  I'm hoping they will have it up and solid in four days.  That comes out to two weekends.  That will leave us with four weekends to get all scenes, decorations and tweaking together before Media Night on October 6th.

There's so much more on my plate that I could write about, but I'll keep it for another day.

So, how has your day gone so far?

PEACE

Emp

I did a lot of work on the cauldron Friday, Sat, and Sun.   A lot of painting and detail work.  I also got the motor working with the witche's ladle.  I didn't get to paint all of the ladle yet, but it will be done soon. If you look at the rings on the cauldron notice what is holding them.  Yes, I made hands to hold them.  The look ok.   I also started work on the witch's head, which will look like the Pumpkinrot witch.  You can guess that this witch will be a combo of ScareFX's cauldron and Pumpkinrot's witch.  The best of both worlds.  Here is a photo of what I got done so far.

This weekend my wife and I were invited to a hearse BBQ.  I must say it was good eats for all. For hearse drivers they sure can cook.  There were a few haunters there beside me.  That would be the 1st picture below.  Donna.  I forgot her haunt name.  Sorry Donna!  There are also a few links to some pictures I took while I was leaving.

Also this weekend I had time to work on my cauldron some more.  I added hands to the sides which will hold the rings for the chains.  Now, I know the rings are a bit big, but I will fix that.  I also bought a few more foam skulls for the front.  ScareFX is never going to produce another prop after see what I did to his awesome witch prop.  Well, you know me, I can just copy it with messing with it just a bit.  Of course, wait till I get the witch on there.  Then tell me what you think.  LOL.

First Picture

2nd Picture

3rd Picture

4th

5th

6th

Picture of cauldron

Tonight I started working on the cauldron's base, which is a few 2x8s.  But I ran into a small problem.  The screws that I bought to hold it together were just a little bit small.  It didn't get put together.  I did, on the other hand, put some foam skulls that I bought on the front of the cauldron.  Next I am going to make latex fingers for the cauldron's handles.  I think it might look cool.  Here is a night shot.

Also, Larry from Halloweenforum has started up www.sinisterspace.com.  I had to sign up. It is pretty cool.  Check it out.  My sinisterspace is http://www.sinisterspace.com/Deathtouch

I have been busy...busy...again/still.

Recently launched http://www.SinisterSpace.com Social Community for the Halloween, Haunt, Goth, etc communities.

Spending time working, dealing with community issues, enhancing things and doing what I can.

My girlfriend makes sure I take a little time for relaxation too.

This weekend I worked on my scarecrow for a little bit and my animatronic witch's caldron.   I didn't get an updated picture of my caldron, but here is the start.  You can guess my wife said something about the nice black ring on the patio.  Oppss.  Crap!  The first shows that I had a few gaps in the top foam piece.  Well, as I was at the home hardware store, I found a larger piece.  Oh, goodie.  The piece just about made it all the way around, but I was able to fix that little problem.  You maybe wondering what those little pieces sticking out on the sides of the caldron.  Well, they are from work.  They are a fire detector cap.  They did have larger ones, but I went with the small cap.  I thought it did ok; I might have to make sure they are glued down right.  I also started working on the motor that goes inside.  I almost got it done.  Will have to show you it working some time.

For anyone that noticed, Hauntforum has another contest.  This time the scarecrow contest. Already members have started working on their scarecrows, so I thought I better start on mine.  I kind of ran out of time today, but the picture below show the early workings of my scarecrow.  I know, it doesn't look like a scarecrow.  I am working on that.  It will, I promise.

Update:  Witch Caldron:  I think I need more black paint and I need to fill in gaps on caps before I move on.

Yesterday I got an email from a DragonLady Sue about a new Halloween internet broadcast that talks about all things Halloween.  Like making tombstones, home haunters, music and sound effects, and etc.   I was able to tune in last night, and it really was good.  He was talking about how the term Jack-o-latern came to pass and etc.  You will have to check it out if you have time.  You can listen to it on his site or download it free on Itunes.  Check out the site.

CreepCast Radio