Painting the Church Cross Prop

When I tested out which faux wood method I was going to use, I had given the foam board a coat of flat black paint. However, Hector Turner and a couple of other people recommended I actually use a dark gray color instead.

It's always amazing the palette of colors that I have available and stored away, but I had a gallon of dark gray paint -- North Sea it was called -- and used that to give the crucifix prop a base coat of paint. It really does draw out the detail of the "wood."

Creating a Faux Wood Grain Effect

There are many ways to get a faux wood look from rigid foam insulation, and I apparently suck at them all. However, I try out three different methods and think I've come up with one I like best that will work for "carving" my crucifix prop.

At a Cross-Roads

With the mannequin form and paper clay hands drying, it's time to work on a different prop for the haunted walk-thru: the large, inverted crucifix that will hang from one of the walls in the church scene. A real wood cross would be too heavy to hang, so I'll make it out of glued up planks of rigid foam insulation.

Getting' Busy With a Mannequin

Maybe it's the ravages of time eating away at my brain, but though I've been saying I need to get under my porch into my prop storage to dig out there mannequin forms I'll be using for the next prop body, the porch isn't the only place I store props. I have a shed loft too, and I really need to better organize how and where I stow things away.
But in the latest Bleached Bones vlog, I locate the forms and get to work using one as the base for making a prop body for the second parishioner prop in the church scene for my haunted house walk-thru.

Check it out and let me know if you've got any ideas for down and dirty prop bodies.

Review: Headless Horseman Attraction

Last year I went to the Sleepy Hollow haunt in Tarrytown, NY. It being the home of the original horseman tale I was expecting a lot. It was totally crap and I couldn't recommend it to anyone.

This year I went to Ulster Park, NY, a little further up the Hudson River (okay, a lot further) to visit the Headless Horseman Hayride & Haunted Houses. I've heard a lot of great things about this attraction and I set my expectations bar pretty high, but the actual event simply blew them out of the water. This is a ridiculously detailed haunt, and while $32 a person sounds high-priced, with some of the best props around it is well worth it.

Headless Horseman is actually a haunted hayride on top of a series of haunted house walk-throughs. They say there are 7 houses, and maybe some of them ran together so I didn't realize I was actually in separate haunts, but I did see three distinct areas.

The hayride
If anything, the hayride was maybe the "worst" of the lot, but that could be because I just don't like hayrides. I don't find them scary (admittedly I'm not scared by much) but they just don't have many startles or me. Of course, the rest of the hayride participants seemed plenty startled by a lot of the scenes, so don't let my word sway you.

The sets were richly adorned and perhaps I was distracted looking at all the props. Funny, but as we would pass by a graveyard I spent a lot of time looking at the tombstones to see if they were Styrofoam or not. Some of them were so real looking I would have thought they were real.

The trail you ride along is a mile in length and it was very dark. Living in an area with lots of light pollution, I forget just how many stars there are in the sky. But that gave the actors plenty of opportunity to hide in the shadow and jump out for scares, which was effective for many on the trip. The props were well done (they could have spent a little more time on the train engine) but even by itself the hayride was worth it. Your are brought through a number of sets of small village scenes and various vignettes which tells the story of an old, abandoned jail and the convict that still haunts it.

The Haunted Houses
At the end of the hayride you're let off at the Lunar Hotel, a creepy looking motel, even from the outside. When I saw the line waiting to get in I though it was going to be an arduous wait, but the line was kept moving and was at most 20-30 minutes long. Not bad at all.

From there, you moved into the seven haunted houses and it's simply one terror after another. To be honest I can't remember how long it took us to go through it, but for the two young teens I had in tow, it must have seen like an eternity. They were thoroughly terrorized by the experience and the 14-year old was reduced to a sobbing mess who actually peed her pants at the scares that were unleashed. The 13-year old was hyperventilating from fear.

The set designs were awesome. They were rich in detail, fully thought out, wonderfully acted, and even gave me a startle or two. Of course, I was going through trying to absorb as much detail as I could but it was sensory overload. There was just way too much to take in.

After what might have been 3 or 4 of the haunts, you're given a brief respite as you exit and have to walk about 10 yards into a haunted corn maze. Here some of the props could have been beefed up as the actual mechanics were completely visible and no attempt was made to hide them. But people jumping out of the corn provided some good scares.

Soon enough, though, you were back inside what looked to be a greenhouse of sorts and some science experiments gone awry. And the terror started again. It wasn't long before the 14-year old was sobbing again with her head buried in my coat. Hey, at $32 a pop, she was going through all the haunts!

Unfortunately I didn't get to see the last haunted house because it was about this time that my wife realized she lost the car keys. Having ridden a mile long hayride and walked through a maze of haunted attractions, she had no idea where she lost them. While police and security at the attraction were excellent and beyond helpful (they even walked with my wife back through some of the haunts to try and locate them -- I was jealous since I would've gone just to get another look at the props, the hell with the keys!), it was of little use. So a $200 cab ride back down the New York State Thruway later, I found myself heading back up there with a spare key to pick up the car.

The story had a happy ending (of sorts). As we pulled back into the lot, security informed us they had actually found the keys. They were in the corn maze and my wife realized that was where she had pulled out her cellphone to call her cousin and tell him what a chicken his daughter was. Well the joke was on her (me) I guess.

Regardless, it was a haunt well worth the trip and the cost (minus the cab ride). Now haunters would be familiar with a number of the props Headless Horseman had. If you've seen any of the Transworld videos posted on the forums, you'd quickly recognize a couple of them. For example, the Pale Night Productions zombie attack was there as were some of the werewolves feeding. Cool stuff nonetheless.

From what I understand of the haunt, the owners invest heavily in their props each year from the proceeds they make. You can definitely see it.

If I can provide any tip (other than hang onto your keys), it would be "go early." When I attempted to buy the tickets online, it showed the date (October 2) was unavailable. So I called up and found out that they still had tickets available, but it was around the 9:00 p.m. time frame. Innocently enough I asked about walking around the midway while awaiting our start time and the woman said we could do that and if we wanted to get on the ride early we could probably do so as well. I then asked about getting there early enough for the 7 p.m. opening, and she said yes we could probably do that too.

So we ended up arriving around 7:00 p.m. and it took about a half hour to get the tickets, but we made it through security quickly and went right over to the hayride and got on without any problems. The lines were very short then. When we came out around 9:30 or so, which would have been around when we would've picked up our tickets, the lines were exceptionally long at that point. I wouldn't have wanted to wait then.

Security is tight at Headless Horseman (the signs say to leave your weapons in the car!). They have security patting you down and wanding you with metal detectors and the local constabulary there as back up. No flashlights, cameras, lighters, cigarettes, or backpacks are permitted in the attraction and they make you take your offending items back to your car if you try to get in anyway. I saw that happen several times.

That makes for a safe environment to enjoy the haunted rides and houses. So I can't recommend this attraction highly enough. For all that you get, and considering what other haunted houses charge in comparison, $32 a person is very cheap. Now I need to go back again to fully enjoy the show -- but I'll hold onto the keys.

Most-Haunted Houses?

It being October and all, everyone wants to get into the spirit of Halloween. Even real estate website Zillow.com has published an article on the country's Top 10 Haunted Houses.

The first house they cite is the Winchester House, located in San Jose, CA, which they claim has been "certified" by the U.S. Commerce Department as being haunted. It is one of two houses in California with that distinction, the other being the 10th house on the list, the Whaley House in San Diego.

This intrigued me that the government was going around labeling houses as haunted, but I could find nothing on the Commerce Department's website. Seems the earliest mention of it (that I could find anyway) was an article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer from 1996, which was actually an Associated Press story. Wikipedia even cites this article as the source for the claim. They say in the 1960's Commerce designated it as haunted and their registry includes 29 other places.

As I suspected, it turns out this is not true. According to a blog post on Haunted Jaunts, there is no such listing. They point to another article that appeared in the Tuscon Citizen which debunks the certification story. Interestingly, the Whaley House itself has a link to the PI article on its "In the News" page, which initially made me think it might have been true. If they're including it, then it must be, right? No doubt they're not about to kill a source of possible business for them.

Yet other sources I read cited the certification as being from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now that I could believe. They're in the business of promoting business so if they came out with a list of "official" haunted houses, that would make sense. Alas, not even the Chamber site has any reference of haunted houses on it. This seems to be one of those stories that continues to grow in the telling.

The second house on the list is the Lizzie Borden House in Fall River, MA, and no real introduction is needed as to why it might be haunted. The other houses on the list include:

3. LaLaurie Mansion, New Orleans, LA
4. White House, Washington, DC (yes, that White House...good ol' Abe Lincoln is said to stalk the halls)
5. Franklin Castle, Cleveland, OH
6. Sprague Mansion, Cranston, RI
7. Chambers Mansion, San Francisco, CA
8. Myrtles Plantation, St. Francisville, LA
9. Stranahan House, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

The one house Zillow purposely didn't put on the list was the Amityville Horror house in Amityville, NY. As you'll recall from my previous post on the subject, I never did buy into it that the house was haunted. Now I read that the haunting was all just a fiction created by DeFeo's lawyer William Weber and the Lutz family.

The cool thing about the Zillow article is that it links to the listing for the haunted house. The Winchester House (from the descendants of the maker of Winchester rifles), is estimated to be worth some $2.2 million. The Franklin Castle, just $267,000. Wanna make a bid on a haunted house?

Speaking of haunted houses, look for my review (hopefully tomorrow) of the Headless Horseman Haunted Hayride & Haunted Houses attraction that I visited on Saturday in Ulster Park, NY.

A Creepy Bit of Nostalgia

Yesterday I wrote about a part of New Jersey's "haunted history" in the 1970's that led to the rise of haunted attractions at the Jersey shore. That brought back to mind another haunt, the Gingerbread Castle in Hamburg, NJ.

The Castle didn't start off as a haunted attraction. In fact it was a children's park built well before our brains were addled by instant gratification and digital excess. Ahh, simpler times. I think I might have gone here when I was very young because when I returned a few years ago there was a very real sense that I had seen it all before.

Now that it has fallen into a state of disrepair, the creepiness of the site is enhanced that much more. And it was a perfect setting for a haunted walk through which someone obviously hit on. About three years ago I found that it had been converted into a Halloween haunt and it was truly an enjoyable one. You walked through a lot of the original castle, though much of it was closed off. Even so it was a pretty extensive haunt and the actors did a good job out of scaring the bejesus out of people. That's why when I returned the following year I was surprised to find out it had closed down.

And that's how you find it today. Abandoned, dilapidated, with all the signs of the grandeur it once held, but now all silent -- perhaps even scarier than if it was a haunt again. Here's a YouTube video I found that shows a little bit of what it's like today:

And that reminded me of yet another fairy tale park called, appropriately enough, Fairy Tale Forest in  Oak Ridge, NJ. Now this park I had gone to as a child and had very fond memories of it. So when I moved to Oak Ridge with my family in the late 1990's I was very excited to take my own children. Well, all I was able to say was it wasn't like I remembered it, though it was exactly like it was back then. Nothing had changed, except it was much more rundown.

Here's a video of Fairy Tale Forest as it is, having been turned into a self storage facility:



It held fond childhood memories, but it had fallen on hard times and kids today just don't appreciate that sort of amusement that required the use of one's own imagination.

Rich

New Jersey's Haunted 70's

New Jersey was fortunate to have had a brief period in the mid-1970's to the early 1980's when haunted attractions were a major hit in the state. What started with Brigantine Castle in Brigantine soon spawned the Haunted Mansion in Long Branch and then the Haunted Castle at Six Flags Great Adventure.

According to an online history, Brigantine Castle's demise began after the seaside community limited the number of charter buses that could bring in tourists to the Castle, as well as restrictions on advertising. When a summer storm damaged the underinsured attraction, the owner closed the Castle for good in 1984.

The Haunted Mansion was born after its owner had visited Brigantine Castle and asked its owner for help in building one in Long Branch. If you view the commercials for the two attractions preserved on their individual history sites, you'll see the similarities in the promotion (even including parts of the same video). At its height, the Mansion would attract 100,000 people a week. The haunted aspect of the attraction was toned down in 1985 when the pier it was located on was dubbed "Kid's World."A gas leak in 1987 caused a fire that burned the Mansion down to its pilings.

This "golden period" of haunted houses came to a tragic end in 1984 when eight people perished in a fire at the Haunted Castle Six Flags attraction and building inspections became more strict. Built in 1979, it was destroyed by fire in 1984.

There was apparently a fourth attraction called Castle Dracula in Wildwood, but I have no recollection whatsoever of it. It opened in 1977 and also met its death as a result of fire.

Although I remember the first three attractions, it was only because of their advertising. I may have seen Castle Dracula ads too, but it doesn't shake any of the cobwebs in my brain. I never actually visited any of them, since unlike many fellow haunters, while I enjoyed Halloween as a kid it wasn't an obsession of mine until, oh, last year.

One of the ads at some point said "...and Renfield and his spiders." I'm thinking it was Brigantine Castle, but I can't find any confirmation of it. Does anybody else remember this? I recall them showing Renfield sitting in a cell shoving spiders into his mouth.

Now none of these places approached Disney's Haunted Mansion (but then again, what does?), but it seems a shame that for a state that had a brief, shining moment in permanent haunted attractions it really has nothing to show for it now.

Rich

Review: The Haunting of Sleepy Hollow

Last night I went on the haunted hayride in Sleepy Hollow, NY. I went with high hopes, though I'm typically not a fan of hayrides. Usually it's a bunch of chainsaw wielding people trying to scare you, which it doesn't, but that's why I had high hopes for "The Haunting of Sleepy Hollow." It would follow the supposed last run of Ichabod Crane as he was chased by the Headless Horseman. As that's always been a favorite tale of mine I thought it might be interesting to see how they adapted it.

The attraction starts at the town's high school, and the organizers had actors in period costume entertaining the crowd. Period costume, yes, but zombified! Certainly within keeping of the Halloween flavor, though the four zombie girls dancing in the center of the gymnasium was interesting. They didn't actually dance, but danced as zombies might. So it was a little bizzare to say the least. They also had a tall witch on stilts who took pictures with those in line.

So let's talk about the line. The attraction opened at 6:00 p.m. but you were forewarned that the hayrides wouldn't begin till 7:00 p.m. We arrived at around 6:50 and while there was a good crowd already there our position on line was about the length of the high school's basketball court. On the way there we had seen about six haywagons roll buy with about 10-15 people in each so I figured we'd have to wait about a half hour to go. Not ideal, but not terrible.

Well it wasn't ideal and it was terrible. We ended up standing in line for a good hour and a half! It seemed to go in spurts. After the first half hour of going nowhere or only inching forward, we suddenly surged ahead and got to about mid-court. I figured we'd be going soon, but that's where things bogged down. We didn't move more than 10 feet for the next hour. Even the VIP line (or RIP line as they called it) was going nowhere. I don't know what the delay was but it became interminable. It was really a horrible time and the music they played was either too loud or had the bass too high because the tunes played were barely discernible. Loud, static-y, bass-filled music while waiting on a line that didn't move for an hour and a half was not my idea of fun. I pitied the people who arrived at around that time as the line had wrapped around the basketball court and was now at the entrance to the gym. I can only imagine how long they'd be there.

Just as we were second or third in line to go next, order seemed to break down. The guy at the door allowed a group of 16 to go through then three people (two adults and a small child) that had been trying to creep ahead all along somehow got in front with a "We're with them" line and was allowed to go ahead. That didn't sit well with my wife or the woman behind us and they started complaining to the doorman who I sort of felt sorry for. He looked like he genuinely didn't know what to do. But then he left his spot at the door and went outside. So now the line started pressing up against the door and it looked like it would just be a mad dash for the exits with everyone elbowing their way to the front.

My wife went outside and complained again to the doorman who was talking with another event organizer. They ended up calling a police officer over who agreed those three line jumpers wouldn't be going ahead of anyone at which time I was allowed to jump ahead along with the woman and her family behind us. They squeezed us all into a wagon (with the group of 16) and the three who tried to go in front we delayed. They had been outside but I think the officer must have escorted them back in because they weren't on any of the wagons.

It was bound to get ugly because there wasn't enough space inside, the police line tapes they had set up to corral everyone was too flimsy and when one kid stepped on one the whol thing fell down. I wish I oculd have seen the mess that resulted in the aftermath.

Spolier alert!
Once on the haywagon, cramped as we were, I was willing to immerse myself in the haunt, even with the light rain that had begun falling. It was a ride of a few minutes to get to the old cemetary and it was then that I noticed a creepy woman sitting in costume right across from me holding a book. She said nothing until we approached the cemetary and then turned on a speaker that played haunting background music. She began reading what was the background story for this ride.

I really wasn't prepared for their interpretation of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow. They did say it was a "unique" and "twisted adaptation." I should have been forewarned. Vam-pirates? Really? The story had to do with how some vampire pirates had landed in Sleepy Hollow, cut off some heads (including the Hessian horseman's), took a necklace from his wife (I think) after beheading her, but somehow lost it. It was only found later by Ichabod Crane who ended up giving it to Katrina Van Tassel. That apparently irked the now-Headless Horseman who pursued Ichabod.

Okay, that was bad enough, but despite a ride through the cemetary no landmarks were pointed out. This was supposedly the same route that Ichabod Crane had run in the story, but at no time was that highlighted during the ride. Further, because we were driving through an actual cemetary, proper respect for those buried there was otherwise maintained. Which meant no props or lights were visible. Interesting, but since you could barely make out even the headstones, it was just like we were taking a ride in the dark (in the rain) with a woman reading us a preposterous story.

At some point we cross a bridge. Now even though I believe the original bridge Crane was said to have crossed no longer exists, they could have made some reference to the bridge. Heck, most people probably wouldn't have even known it wasn't the real one. It would have made the trip at least more relevant to the whole legend.

After cross the bridge we must have exited the cemetery proper because I could see lighted props ahead. Well, I could see until the pickup truck towing us stepped on the brakes every few seconds and then I was blinded. It was tough to see anything. The set was then various Halloween type torture props with actors in period costumes (again zombified) jumping out here and there yelling "Yaaah!"

Some of the props looked cool and a few of the tombstones they had set up and lit looked really good. I did notice a large gargoyle which I thought would look pretty cool in my own graveyard and there was a PumpkinRot-type character walking around. The leering pumpkin head was actually pretty cool, and standing about 8' or 9' tall was scary for some of the kids on the ride. I liked the effect until the actor turned and in the lights of the trailer I could see it the facade that had set it up: he was wearing a football helmet and had some sort of PVC structure underneath. It ruined the effect.

At the very end you finally got to see the Headless Horseman. Barely. He was sitting in the woods and eventually made it up to the road after the wagon had passed but it was so dark and he was all in black it was all you could do to see the (unlit) pumpkin he held in his hands. And then it was over. We pulled out into a residential street.

The funniest part was that one house along the road we now traveled on was decorated for Halloween and the owner dressed in a witches costume and stood on her porch as we road by and called out to us in a witchy voice while stirring a cauldron. Nice that at least one resident got into the spirit of the season and the event. I'm sure she was part of the official show.

In all, it wasn't worth the time or money ($20 a ticket) spent. The wait was too long, the backstory created was ridiculous -- I mean we're in Sleepy Hollow, hew to the damn storyline; you've got a town made for this! -- the part of the ride intended to build suspense didn't because it was simply pitch black, and the sets used were simply mundane Halloween ones. Even the big payoff, the Headless Horseman, was a disappointment.

It was all just too much to be able to recommend this haunt to anyone. Certainly not for $20 a ticket. Had it been half the cost it would have been fine and I might have even tolerated the long wait to go. But when you're paying high prices and forced to cool your heels for interminable periods, it was unacceptable for the level of haunting they brought.

I won't go back, I can assure you, and next year will go a little further up the Hudson River to another "Sleepy Hollow" haunt that holds the promise of a whole haunted village. At $30 Ulster Park, NY's, Headless Horseman Hayride doesn't sound cheap, but it seems to offer a far more immersive experience.

In short, avoid Sleepy Hollow as if the Headless Horseman still roamed the hills there.

Rich

Review: Macabre Manor in Keyport

I'm not much of a fan of haunted hayrides, but I do enjoy haunted houses (go figure). Tonight I went to Keyport, NJ, for a haunt called the Macabre Manor held in an old Jersey Central Power & Light building. And in case you're wondering because of the picture, there's no "Macabre Manor" sign on the outside.

Keyport apparently had just finished having a street festival and it was breaking down when I arrived for the haunt. There were quite a few kids hovering in the area and I was a little worried it was going to be overrun with their antics, but order was well maintained by the boys in blue who were on assignment.

Outside they had a fogger working up a good mist, but the cool October breeze kept blowing it away. A few actors worked the crowd, including the obligatory chainsaw guy (who did get the girls to scream a lot) and some creepy looking characters. They even had a kid zombie working the line. I liked the big-headed coachman with his razor like teeth. It provided good entertainment while waiting for the doors to open.

I was able to be right at the front of the line and got to go in first when the host looked for a party of two to fill out a group of six. The Manor is a one-level haunt (I was only slightly disappointed) but they offered good atmosphere, some excellent prop work, and even a good scare or two (not for me, but for my wife). I was pretty much engrossed looking at all of the props, trying to steal ideas.

I found the best part of the walk-thru to be the cemetary area, complete with dirt floor. They channeled you through a narrow corridor with some twists and turns, but the lighting (blue) and the scenery (some animatronics and one live actor to scare) was engaging.

The operating room was fun too. I'm sure I'm not revealing any secrets to note they had a live actor with his head and arms through a table where a torso with guts spewing out was on a table. The surgeon gave a nice little talk to the six of us, then proceeded to whack the heck out of the torso which sprayed us all with "blood." Good effect and had the three girls in the group screaming. The little kid who was carried by his father and had been a trouper throughout started bawling when that scene finished.

For just $10 it was a very reasonable price for the entertainment received. Speaking of entertainment, they gave a two-trick magic show as part of the haunt. While I wasn't sure if I should clap or not when the performance was over (I did), it was entertaining nonetheless.

In all, the Macabre Manor was a haunt worth visiting.

Rich