As of yesterday I actually got started on this years Halloween projects!!  I know, I know too little too late probaly but I feel good about it...lol!

We went to got the wood we needed to get our new castle walls built, and built 5 out of the 9 we need already!  Not a cool new prop or anything like that but it's a start and that's all that matters at this point!  We got the fabric to do up our wolves too, doing the animated reindeer conversion to a sitting howling wolf, should look pretty cool when done.  Then I have to get moving on the pirate ship, UFO and dragon...Only a month to go I can do it.....

.....I hope.

These are the only two pictures that I had the chance to take while working the Fright Fest NH haunt earlier this month...

I'm the good looking one in the middle...lol!

That is the costume I wore for 5 hours straight.  It was brutal hot in the building nevermind in the costume.  It was fun though, spooking never gets boring...

A fellow New Hampshire haunter, Eric from Haunted Overload http://www.hauntedoverload.com/main.htm emailed me about another group of haunters in NH, Fright Fest NH http://www.frightfestnh.com/index.htm that are running a fund raiser this weekend.  They’re looking for people to come help out in running this event at their haunt to play the spooks for one night.  I was pleased that Eric had thought of me and sent the email about this, what could be better than Halloween in June?  C’mon, I had to do this!  So tomorrow night 6/15 I’ll be heading up to Nashua NH to see what the Fright Fest set up is all about and find out what I’ll be doing on Friday night for the actual event.  This should be a good chance to make some more Halloween contacts and have some fun at the same time.  I will post again and let you all know how this goes and what the haunt was like.

Please check out the links to these friends sites when you can!  Eric’s setup for Haunted Overload is incredible to say the least!  I can’t wait to see the Fright Fest haunt in person!

See Ya!

Paul

Man I'm really getting sick of the rain we've been having up here in NH.  I haven't been able to get anything started on my dragon prop because of this weather, it sucks!  I have to build a frame for this thing and think I won't have room to do it inside correctly.  So outdoors is the place but it's very wet right now and has been for weeks.  Maybe sometime this Sunday I'll be able to start laying out some stuff and get my lazy ass in gear, before I know it it'll be OCtober and I'll be in the same boat as last year....WAY BEHIND!!

Hope all of you are having a better time at any new projects you have going together!

Well, since I've seen DeathTouch getting so much stuff done already I've decided to at least get some things into the planning stage.  I have been inspired by some stuff I've seen him do and antoher haunter here in NH.  We have a few somewhat major projects to get going on, new pirate ship area, new UFO, additional walls for the castle, the ever elusive "Pepper's Ghost" and a dragon prop to beat all dragon props this side of Universial Studios...

I have a good idea about most of these and I will start work on them as soon as I can, I will have to in order to actually have any for Halloween 2006.  I will keep you all updated as to the progress, or lack there of...and will definaltey have photos as I go along...

Finally had a chance to get this done, only a couple months late....lol!

Our Pirates will be getting a new ship for next year, I hope.

The guy was hanging arounf deep in the woods...

We added a bridge over our stream this year, we may have spilled some

bad stuff in there, not quite sure where the glow came from...

Our hall of doors, we had some surprises in and around these this year...

The graveyard out front, the Headless Horseman keeps an eye on the place...

The electric chair, this will get some upgrades for next year...

The "a frame" creature, he needs some real help for 2006, his eyes are about

the only thing that'll stay the same...

Julia's Banshee, he kept our guests on the right path deep in the woods...

The Badseed, he'll go back to a "live" gag in 2006, he just stood there this year...

I'm so late posting this but here goes.  We had around 250 or so people come through our haunt over two nights, more or less the same as last year.  We raised about $145.00 for breast cancer research, not much but it's better than nothing.  We had a ton of people say they couldn't wait for us to run the haunt, said they'd been last year and will be back next year too.  It's great to hear that people like what we're doing.  We had a lot of help this year getting setup and running the haunt, that helped a ton!  Wasn't nearly as crazy getting ready for guests as last year was, hopefully it's even easier next year.

We extended the haunted woods further into the back yard.  The new path went out over a little stream that runs through our property.  My cousin and I built a bridge over it and most guests loved it, some turned around and didn't go any further...LOL!  We have a ton of plans for new gags for next year and have a few new people interested in helping out.  With any amount of luck Fitzy's Fright Fest 4 will be bigger and badder...

I will post pictures very soon...

This week and into this weekend we will be getting our haunt into shape!  I really want to get the fence and Horseman up tonight if at all possible, shouldn't be any reason not to.  I will start getting other props ready to go out this weekend.  We're having friends and family over on Saturday that have said they'd like to help out this year.  I'm going to go over the whole layout of the haunt and see what people would like to do and take it from there.  I'm really hoping the everyone who's told us they'd like to help actually do, it'll bring our haunt up a level to have some more live actors involved.  If they do all want to do stuff I may extend the walk further into the woods too!!  I'll get some pictures of us setting up soon....

My brother Chris is having two valves replaced in his heart this morning, supposed to be around 10 or so.  My mother and sister have gone down to Boston to be with him.  We're all hoping things go well.  Thanks to everyone that's prayed for him the last week or so for us!!  I'll post with an update when I hear from my mother or sister...

Just found out yesterday that my younger brother Chris has a heart problem.  He's got fluid in his lungs and around the heart, guess they did some tests today and found out he's got a clot somewhere and a valve that isn't functioning properly.  They had in a local hospital in Newburyport, Ma and moved him a little while ago to Mass General in Boston.  Looks like he's going to have some sort of surgery soon, so any prayers that you all can send his way I would appreciate it a lot.  He's only 26 years old and is pretty scared at the moment...

Ok I checked in on my creatures eyes last night, planning on glueing in some more fiber and moving this project along.  Well I got down cellar and picked up the eye I had been working on and "pop", about 5 or 6 fibers fell out.  Even with the hotglue all around them they fell out, that isn't good!  So I tried to repair that with some Gorilla Glue, stays wet way too long and the fiber doesn't stay put when it's drying.  I moved on to JB Weld, that worked great.  I looked this morning at it and the JB Weld stuff isn't going anywhere so it seems and the Gorilla Glue stuff that was in place did dry pretty damn solid too.  This is taking longer than I wanted it to, but oh well....

Ok, I'm so far behind this year it isn't funny.  I did get going on the eyes for our new creature though, tried a wire frame first and didn't have good results with the fiber optic sticking with the screen, even with hot glue.  Here's one of those frames...

I have changed to the good old insulation foam instead.  I cut them out and had to poke holes through them for the fiber to stick in.  The fiber is end light style, meaning the light will come only out the end of the fiber, not the side.  I am going to feed the fiber into the holes and hot glue from the back....

It will be painted black and mount to a larger piece of foam to make the head of the creature.  If all goes right the only thing you'll see is the eyes staring down from 24' at you.

That green box is the light pump or driver.  I got 6 of them from work that were being thrown away by a customer, idiot!  They will drive any type of fiber optic cable, they have a color wheel inside that will scroll through the colors so the eyes can change during the night or I can leave it set on a color too...

I will get the rest of the eyes put together and take a video of them running, hopefully I'll be able to post it here so you all can see.

At the very least I've started...LOL!

Ok way too much time has gone by without getting anything done for new props this year.  I started to lay out the eyes for my new creature lastnight after putting Catriona to bed.  I made up frames for the eyes with some copper tubing and attached screen to them, I'm going to use end light fiberoptic cable to make the eyes light up.  I tried the good old hot glue gun to hold the fiber to the screen but it's just not strong enough.  Think I'm going to have to switch it out to the stiff insulation foam instead, think that will hold the fiber in place much better.  I'll try it tonight and if it looks ok take some pics and post them tomorrow...

Just posting a pic of myself and last year's addition to Fitzy's Fright Fest.  He took a while to build but got rave reviews from our guests on Halloween. 

Hello there Blog Crypt!!  I just signed up here and wanted to start off by telling everyone about myself and my haunt.  I have been into Halloween since I can't remember when, I love the time of year and the feeling in the air.  I started haunting my parents house back when I was 12 years old, nothing fancy mind you.  I built a cheap fence for the front yard and made up some grave stones, dressed up and scared the T.O.T's.  It only lasted a few years but when I bought my house in NH I had to get back into it.  Same thing started small and built from there.  Got some help from my wife and cousins and had a great time screwing around the first year.  We've now grown the front yard display into a full yard haunt complete with walk through the woods out back of our home.  Still have friends and family help us out getting things set up and running for the nights we're open to the public.  We run a free of charge haunt, donations can be made for breast cancer research if poeple want to.

As I get the hang of this site I will try to post pictures of the haunt and the new projects we have in store for Halloween 2005!!

See ya!

Paul