Thread: Sausalito City Haunt 2011

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Unfortunately the only pictures that came out were the ones I took with the lights on, but here they are. This is the haunt for Sausalito CA held in the ground floor of the city hall building. The walls are of black plastic held up with binder clips clipped on a hanging ceiling. We were open Sunday and Halloween and we reportedly had about 150 visitors on Sunday and 250 on Halloween itself.

Here is the gypsy at our front door.


Here is our entry hallway. We had a flickering floor lamp and some of those scary pictures that change according to what angle you look at them.

Here is room 2, the vampire room, where an actor (actually a Sausalito Parks & Rec Department director) with Vampfangs Scarecrow brand fangs told visitors the rules of the haunt.










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Here in the next room, the "skeleton surprise room". We had a PicoBoo AC which triggered some lights (including a strobe) and a series of Disney scary groans and screams.

These are Walgreens skeletons hanging over the walkway with fishing line. Hard to capture it but it was really effective. You walk into the room in the dark, a passive infrared sensor is triggered, and BAM! you realize there are skeletons all around you with lights and loud screams.

The next room was a spider hallway which was lit with black light. On the walls are spiderwebs made with string tied together and dipped in bleach-alternative detergent so that it will glow in black light. On the ceiling is a mechanical inflated spider figure. On the wall is a blucky who was unlucky with his spider encounter.

The fourth room is a mad scientist lab. The centerpiece is a steampunk machine that I discussed in this past thread:

Frankenstein steampunk machine

Around that machine is (to the left) a machine with a strobe light inside and (to the right) a machine with gauges and a flickering light inside. These are just painted cardboard boxes with lights inside. The "windows" are covered with wax paper to let the light through.




We had a mad scientist (no picture unfortunately, but the actor was my wife) who would try to activate a monster by throwing a knife switch. This would fail, and as the scientist apologized to the audience the monster would come to life and threaten them. This is a recreation picture of the monster.


It's a mask (called "Man Created") and gloves from Zagone Studios. Really good stuff. The mouth moves with your mouth. I was the monster and it was a lot of fun. I got right into the faces of the guests and most people froze when I did it.

That was scary but the next room was the height of the haunt. It is a peppers ghost effect where a human changes into a werewolf. The entry room is in black light. You can see the werewolf viewing "tunnel" to your right beyond the railing.



Here (with the lights on) is the chair in which the human sits. Note the yellow spotlight at the bottom of the picture.


There is a big sheet of plexiglas between the human and the viewer and this is at 45 degree angle. To the right around the corner is an identical chair with a person wearing a werewolf costume. This picture is peeking around the corner to the right at this second hidden chair. See the other spotlight at the bottom of this picture which can illuminate the other chair.


It's hard to show with pictures, but the human would hit a button, music would come up and the light on the human would fade away while the light on the werewolf would come up, making it look like the human turned into a werewolf. The effect was made with a PicoFX (a machine that is pretty much custom made for peppers ghost effects -- it's pretty idiot proof) and the music I used was from the Legend of Sleepy Hallow with some wolf howls thrown in at the end.


Link describing a pepper's ghost effect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepper%27s_ghost

The werewolf wore another Zagone costume (the mask is called "Howl-o-Ween") with a moving mouth and with furry gloves. Here is a re-creation.


Our two actors for this effect (husband and wife) had a great idea, the human would wave their hands at the wrists as the transformation began and the werewolf would be doing the same movement as the lights cut to them. I was in my Frankenstein costume all night but the rehearsals I saw of them looked great.

Great job , looks like a lot of fun . Any video of the Werewolf transformation ?

The last room just had a witch and a cauldron with fog coming out of it. It's hard to tell with the lights on, and I cut the coals completely out of this picture, but below the cauldron is the "hot glowing coals" effect that is discussed so often on this forum. I made mine the same way that the person in this link made theirs.

Glowing "hot" coals ...

I built a tripod-like stand op top of it and we put a cauldron on the tripod which had green lights and runs on fog juice.

I took some video of the werewolf transformation but it came out all black unfortunately.. light level too low.

That was a really nice haunt there Graveyard Gus. Nice space to work with. I didn't realize you guys did anything like that. Wish our little city did something like what you did. Too bad the nighttime video didn't come out. I know how that goes with low light and cameras; missed a few shots I wanted myself. The skelly room sounded really interesting in the dark. Another thing I would have loved to have seen was your pepper's ghost. I could see where that would be hard to film though. Man you guys really went all out with the lighting and effects though.