Thread: Escorted Haunt Prop Idea

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Hello All - My wife and I took a trip over to St. Augustine, FL for a weekend of R&R and went to one of the many Ghost Walks that they offer. During this walk I had 2 ideas for props that could be used for escorted tours through a haunt (graveyard, etc.). Our guide encouraged everyone during the walk to take as many pictures as they could since some people have caught images of ghosts and blue orbs and whatnot that no one else could see. Also, during our tour, the guide used a flashlight to point to things of interest. My ideas are based on these two aspects. Let's look at the second aspect, first - pointing out things of interest. If you were to place a light-activated relay board out in the "field" and the guide used a laser pointer to point out things, the guide could activate a prop or sound card by hitting a hidden sensor. This would allow them to coordinate some effects with their stories. Now the other aspect... capturing images on camera. Using the same light activated relay board, you could have it so that the flash from a camera would trigger the board to activate a high intensity blue LED for just a split second - just long enough for the camera to catch it (blue orb). I think, based on our ghost walk, that the flash of a camera would distract people enough that they would not notice the momentary flash of a LED, but you would see it on the photograph. Another iteration of this would be to have a Pepper's Ghost (I think that's what it is called) setup with a projector that would flash an image onto a tilted piece of Plexiglas when it was triggered by the camera flash. My guess is that you would probably have to have the projector on all the time and use a quick shutter controlled by the relay board to flash the image. Might be a good use of the small LED projectors that are out there... Does anyone think that would work? Do you think that the flash of the camera would wash out the image? I'm going to throw together a board tonight so I can start playing with this idea. I'll let you know what I find out... Jeff

sounds interesting

You know how this may be done, just think of a projector and doing hand puppets. You have a dark scrim and then somewhere between the flash and the scrim you place a ghost silhouette in the dark. Its an inital thought but somehow the flash from the camera would light it up on the scrim? and then it would be away. With a controlled walk it would be easy.

That is certainly a good idea. Thanks!

Well, I got a board built and it works great for the "Blue Orb" picture idea. I have the board designed such that when you turn it on, it self-calibrates to the ambient light. If the sensor senses light just slightly higher than ambient, it will trigger the relay for 50 mS. I have also added a pot so that you can prevent it from being triggered again for up to 5 minutes. This means only one person will get the "money shot" and they will not be able to figure it out. Adds to the realism, it think... I set it up across my back yard and I was about 30 feet away when I took the picture. I have attached before and after pictures. The blue flash is not really noticeable by eye, especially if you are not looking directly at it and not expecting to see one - the flash of the camera is enough to distract someone... If I can ever afford one of the LED projectors, I'm going to give that a try. Jeff

Blue Orb 1 picture by jwheat058 - Photobucket

Blue Orb 2 picture by jwheat058 - Photobucket

I'm new at this posting of pictures - hope this works...

That's really cool!
Very innovative! I did a ghost tour in St. Augustine several years ago and loved it! I want to do more of them.