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Halloween 2012
Well, here at long last are the photos from Halloween 2012. This year was a challenging one to say the least. In many respects it was our best year yet at the same time it was one of the worst and almost a complete disaster!
As always I had great plans to finish a ton of projects and start new ones but in the end, mostly due to the weather, only a few got done. One which I was really pleased with was a new and improved, permanent spider web for the front of the garage. In past years I had a store bought web which used to get all tangled in storage and even though I left the eye hooks in place it always took forever to straighten it out and get it hung. This year I followed an on-line tutorial to construct a frame to fit one of the open garage doors and crochet a spider web out of clothesline twine. Now it can be stored as-is and placed into position with a minimum of fuss. In addition I decided to move the spider scene closer to the front walk so the trick-or-treaters have no choice but to pass close by the giant spider enroute to the treats!
Again, as in previous years, as I packed away the decorations (or tried to dry them out!) my mind was already turning to next Halloween and the plans to make it bigger, better and more horrifying than ever! Here's to 2014!
Preparations & Setup
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My Daughter Becomes a Scare-Actor
My daughter really got into the Haunting spirit this year and although she went out trick-or-treating, she hurried back as fast as she could to help out as a full-fledged scare-actor! Her costume this year was the Hulk (Avengers was a big hit) but come Halloween she wanted to use the zombie costume I had picked up on sale so zombie-girl she was! She was great as a scare-actor. She was right into it and had a ton of fun scaring all the kids that came by - especially the teenagers! She would run back to tell me "I'm only 7 but I scared all those big teenagers and made them scream!!" My wife also got into the spirit of things as a Ghostly Lady!
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Weather Network & Super-Storm Sandy
The big excitement this year was that I was contacted by a reporter for the Weather Network and they would be coming by to film a segment for on-air broadcast in the week leading up to Halloween! The bad news was that this meant I needed to be 100% set up fully a week in advance! After working what seemed like around the clock for days leading up to the day of filming it seemed ready - not 100% but pretty close. The reporter came and filmed for about an hour - she was really impressed with the display and thought I would get a lot of interest with the Weather Network segment so we'll see if next year I can get some more media exposure.
Following the high of a successful TV shoot came the horrible news that it seemed that Hurricane Sandy was indeed headed our way and was expected to hit right on Halloween!! This was a disaster in the making. To make matters worse my TV segment got bumped for storm coverage and was never seen by more than a handful of people. Luckily it's available for viewing on-line or even I would have missed it. Over the next several days as the rain began to come down and the wind picked up I started taking more and more of the display down and piling it in the garage. By the time Sandy hit almost everything was taken down. I have never been so depressed as right then. So much for having it all set up in advance! I had great plans to work on the mausoleum and other projects since I would have had all this extra time. As it turned out the weather started to get a bit better Halloween day and so in a panic I ran around and tried to repair the storm damage (mostly to the cornstalks which all got blown down) and get the entire display set up again. Nothing like trying to do a week's worth of set-up in one day! By the time the light started to fade and the kids started to arrive I had done as much as I could do and was pretty pleased with how much I had accomplished. To the average viewer and the kids it would look great - only I would know what was missing or what I had had planned. Halloween night was damp but the rain held off and we had a great turnout of visitors, all things considered.
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The Scarecrow Comes to Life!
For this year I changed things up a bit and used the pumpkinhead I normally have on the scarecrow as a costume. I had planned for that when building it many years ago and made the hole in the bottom big enough to fit over my head but had never used it that way until now. It looked really great and I got a ton of scares as I would stand motionless in amongst the corn and then come up suddenly on someone as they passed by. Lots of fun! I also went out to a local cornfield one night to get some pictures - let me tell you out in a dark cornfield at night by yourself is creepy as hell!! Spooked myself good. :)
My brother came out and also helped out again which is always very appreciated and he did a great job as another scarecrow type figure. We had fun at the end of the evening clowning around as the Pumpkin Brothers.
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Halloween Night 2012
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Drying Off and Cleaning Up
With all the rain and wind from Super Storm Sandy clean up this year was very difficult. Normally I try and pack away as much as I can Halloween night and always take the following day off to continue the clean up. This time however, everything was so wet there was no way I could really put anything in storage as it would rot and mildew over the summer. As a result our garage was an even bigger disaster than it normally was and it took almost a week before we could park the car in there. That would be my mother-in-law's car - my wife had long ago realized she had lost her parking spot to the mausoleum and other props! :)
All-in-all it was still a great Halloween in spite of the weather and I'm already looking forward to 2013.!
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