Thread: Ghostly luminescent outdoor foot steps effect? (Haunted Mansion)

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I love the Haunted Mansion's sequential ghostly foot steps effect. Any easy, inexpensive way to replicate that effect outdoors for a yard haunt? Without people tripping over it? What could I use to get the foot step pairs to light up in time and in sequence like a ghost was walking along a directed path? Or would it be better to "rope off" an effect like this within a graveyard scene?

Ghostly Footprints
If you are handy with electronics, they members have hashed out the details to build something like what you're describing...

I wouldn't do it in an area where folks could walk; unless you have Disney-like resources and can afford to build a fiberglass pathway that you could house the electronics and support the weight of people walking on it as well.

I was actually just thinking about painting footsteps on my walkway with some kind of glow in the dark paint. Not nearly as cool as your idea, but ya gotta start somewhere, right?

Get the glowing footsteps and have a moving UV spotlight or a sequence of small UV spotlights turn on to "light them up".

If your UV source was strong enough you could build a rotating cover around it, something in the shape of a round of cheese with a nice wedge out of it. As the open end rotated it would allow the glowing footsteps below to illuminate. You could take it a step further and have the footsteps walk up to a wall have a ghostly figure then light up when the UV shone on it.

Thanks everyone. Wow, lots of other posts out there on this topic. Some of them 44+ pages long!

Anyone have a video and/or how-to tutorial of achieving the effect with either a moving UV spotlight or separate UV spotlights? That seems like the simplest way to achieve the effect. Cutting acrylic feet with special equipment, sanding, buying and programming circuit boards? Too complicated and labor-intensive for my taste and (lack of) abilities. Although I realize some people love the build process. Not me. I want the effect and I want it as simple and as quickly as possible.

For feet I figured I'd just purchase a bunch of cheap shoe insole liners and spray paint them with fluorescent paint. All I need is a shoe outline and not toes. Don't want to make it more complicated than necessary. Lots of other effects to work on.

What brand of UV spots are cheapest, and what's a cheap controller I can use?

Couldn't one also use a roll of 3 mil plastic sheeting, one pair of shoes or insoles, and some green fluorescent paint? Dip the shoe soles and make footstep impressions along the length of the plastic roll. If this works, it would be easy to pack and store after Halloween is over. The LEDs, acrylic, and circuit board stuff seems overly complicated. I don't have a workshop full of tools so I look for the simplest solutions possible. Also like repurposing "COTS" (Common Off The Shelf) stuff for props. Like maybe there's a Christmas light controller that could be used for the effect?

I built the Ghostly Footprints that Otaku and some of the other members from the forums put together a couple of years ago and they are a fantastic way to get footprints to walk through a yard. The link that Frankies Girl posted shows how they put it all together. With the prints, Board and LED's its not an inexpensive prop but it is very cool to see at night. As far as having people walk through the area that the prints are placed I have a fence that goes completely around my graveyard so I dont worry about people tripping over wires, airlines, zombies etc. I dont know if the person that made the footprints for Otaku is still making them or not but I know that the boards are still available or could be put together by Jeff by emailing him at jwheat058@gmail.com
and asking him for the ghoststeps board.

Originally Posted by mikeerdas

Couldn't one also use a roll of 3 mil plastic sheeting, one pair of shoes or insoles, and some green fluorescent paint? Dip the shoe soles and make footstep impressions along the length of the plastic roll. If this works, it would be easy to pack and store after Halloween is over. The LEDs, acrylic, and circuit board stuff seems overly complicated. I don't have a workshop full of tools so I look for the simplest solutions possible. Also like repurposing "COTS" (Common Off The Shelf) stuff for props. Like maybe there's a Christmas light controller that could be used for the effect?

At that point it might be easier to simply cut footprints out of fluorescent paper/cardstock/posterboard. I think it would be neat if you used clear fluorescent/blacklight paint so that the footprints only show when they're illuminated. As far as the lighting goes, however, I'm not so good with the programming/rotating stuff but there's plenty here who are!

a couple of years ago we took a clear plastic drop cloth and hung from our eve outside to hang down in front of a huge wall we have. We used glow in the dark paint that didn't show so all you saw was a wall. Then we had a string of strobe lights that we swapped out the bulbs for black light LEDs. We painted things like hand prints and messages so they would only show up as the lights flashed on. Does that make sense?

The effect of our "ghost wall" was way better than we expected. You could definitly do something similar.