Sorry about the ShadowLair link. It seems that parts of his site are working, but the blog enteries are down right now. Here are three pics from his blog about his "Pillar of Pain". He built this for his 2007 party.
This is the pillar pf pain, in grey, ready for the party.
This is the pillar of pain with the panel open. He built it like a locker, so he could store things inside and add motors (but I don't know if he actually did aad any motors).
And here is a pic of the pillar during construction.
I wish I could tell you more about the pillar, but it's all in his blog. Hopefully, it will come back up at some point. You can still poke around his site -- most if it is working at the moment.
ShadowLair