Ravensgallow Manor 2011

**ezekiel** · 11-07-2011,06:12 PM

All year long I had been saying I wasn't going to do anything this year. That with our current schedule we would have no time to improve on last year's display let alone even have time to drag out what we already had made. Also we had no budget for new purchases. Well when September rolled around the Halloween bug hit me and I was determined to set it all up and make a big change ... build a walk-through haunted house in the garage ... but there was another roadblock aside from the lack of time and budget ... our garage was a disaster of epic proportions!!! There was sooooooooo much cleaning, purging and garage sale'in that had to be done that I wasn't sure if we could accomplish everything in time for Halloween.

Well by the first week of October we were finally done with our garage sale and I think around October 5th we started pulling out Halloween props and construction on the garage haunt. We tried to reuse as much from the last years as possible but still ended up doing a ton of new building. Most everything used is re-purposed from things that other people are discarding (fence panels, mirrors, frames, doors, etc). In all I think we spent under $200 on Halloween this year ($50 of it was screws). Not bad considering we built a 16'x25' haunted house in the garage.

This year we setup a trick r' treat area with a photo-op separate of the driveway which had the entrance to the garage haunt. The photo-op area had a concealed drop panel in the backdrop which caught many guests by surprise ... it is shame we weren't able to catch any video of the scares in action.

In our haunted house we went for more of a creepy atmosphere, definitely no blood and gore. We had a drop panel scare and an opening trunk prop to go with our actors coupled with the atmosphere which was more than enough to unnerve nearly every guest. We had several guests fail to make into the garage portion of the haunted house and even a few guests who collapsed into the fetal position. Overall we had a blast operating the haunted house and would really like to do it again ... but I just wish I could figure out how to stop those darn teenagers from running through the haunt when they get scared? Thankfully no one got hurt.

Here is a daytime video of the trick r' treat area ... the video was taken the day after Halloween so several things are missing, but you get the idea ...
http://vimeo.com/ravensgallow/hallow...11-tot-daytime

We are working on getting the video for the haunted house portion uploaded but area restricted to one upload per week ... so more will come later.

Here are some shots from this year ... more on our website and more to come later ...

2011 was a great year! Looking forward to an even bigger 2012!

**Rynnye** · 11-07-2011,06:17 PM

It looks fantastic! I absolutely love the idea of the drop panel in the photo op. I'm sure that made for some priceless pics! Great work!!!

**Garthgoyle** · 11-07-2011,06:24 PM

Great job, ezekiel

**Muffy** · 11-08-2011,11:05 AM

Oh it would have been horrible not to get your decorations up! Yes we sometimes go through that feeling of not wanting to do "it" too but then we chicken out a few days before halloween. Your place looks great & I'm sure everyone had a goodtime.

**ezekiel** · 11-08-2011,03:35 PM

Thanks for the positive comments ... by the way forgot to mention that for our haunted house we were taking food donations for the local soup kitchen. We collected over 80 food items totaling 118 pounds. Next year if we actually advertise beyond just our sign hanging above our mailbox I think we could raise much more (and run the haunted house for more than just a couple hours).