Thread: Happy Haunting All

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Hello and happy haunting from Virginia's Eastern Shore! A small town volunteer fire department here, around July we start making the props for our haunted forest we do as a fund raiser. last year the money was donated minus costs for the most part to a fellow fireman who had undergone triple bypass surgery. Sadly we have a huge storage issue and use a lot of 1 time only props which i am hoping to change around to multi use props if we can find storage. CHEEP is a must for us, as a lot of our expensive items have actually been stolen the past sadly, and we have spent weeks on making props like an arch for our grave yard area that were destroyed by vandals. We welcome all suggestions and if anyone is close and wants to help, or go through feel free, as the time draws near we will post information on it, if you want. Its hard for us, when we only have a hand full of people who help build, and run it, we are lucky enough for the community around to come out and help staff it, and we have had our local high schools Drama club one year help on several nights for extra credit. Again, happy haunting, and thanks for all the wonderful posts, i hope you don't mind if some show up here in our small town!

Welcome to the forum! Any haunt is great, doing one for a benefit or charity is even better. That's a shame about the thefts you've had, sometimes I just don't understand people. If I lived in your town, you'd have 1 more volunteer. This is the best forum on the planet, and there are tons of great ideas on here that won't break the bank. Best of Luck to you and Happy Haunting!

thank you a lot! i am working on trying to get Lowes to come off of some pink foam insulation so i can start on the graveyard, even tho we cant put anything up till after the 4th of july when we do our fire works, which they launch from the graveyard lol. I am also working on building some fence, and thinking of retrying an arch way even tho i have no idea how they made the first one out of spray foam lol..

Hello and welcome !

Greetings from a fellow Virginian

Welcome in, firemanva! I'm hoping you'll find lots of useful information to help you out this year (and coming years).

I'd suggest looking up some of the work by one of our members, TK421 - especially his threads in which he describes putting together his Mausoleum and his Cider Shack.
Here's some links:
Haunted Hollow Mausoleum Build
New Cider Shack for 2009
The construction methods he uses are ideal for breakdown to a minimum space, and if you find foam to be either too expensive or not sturdy enough for your purposes, you could substitute cardboard for the foam, and still end up with good results.

The only issue i would have with useing cardboard is the props would be left outside in the weather pretty much untill the end of the event, which usually is a few weeks before halloween and the weekend of.

Exterior latex paint is a good sealer, as long as you cover every bit of cardboard (any little spot left unpainted will allow moisture in).

Check with Home Depot / Lowes / Ace Hardware / TruValue / OSH / etc, for any of their "oops" paint - seeing as your representing a fire station, they'll likely make it a donation.
I've had painted cardboard with wood frame support out for a month in beach conditions here in SoCal (heavy dew every night, and often rain as well), and it's survived rather well (I have it stored away now - never did see a need to throw it away, and I may have use for it again this year).

But I do recommend checking out those threads - great inspiration, if anything.

alright, sounds good with the cardboard then as something as a back up. thanks for the wonderful information!