FIRE:

THE EFFECT:  As you approach the house, the upper windows seem on fire.

HOW IT WORKS:  We lifted this effect from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride in Disneyland.  During the ride, there is one part where the Pirates are pillaging a small town, and the town is on fire.  Captivated by the great fire effect, we called Disney and asked them how the effect is achieved.

The answer is surprisingly simple but effective.  They used white sheets fastened into window frames.  The sheets are stapled at the tops of the windows, but allowed to flow freely at the base.  By placing a fan directly beneath the sheets, a billowing effect is achieved.  The last step is to add both orange and red light, lighting the sheet from below.  This light, combined with a billowing sheet, gives the illusion of fire in the window.

Unfortunately the light in the picture above doesn't do the fire justice, and our effect isn't nearly as good as Disneyland's, but we like it anyway.

MRS. BATES:

THE EFFECT:  You walk by Mrs. Bates, and you hear the psycho theme play, lighting flashes on her face and thunder rolls.

HOW IT WORKS:  A LOT of credit for this effect goes to Allison, who found this fantastic chair as trash.  Although her first thought was to use it as an electric chair (and we still might someday), it has worked perfectly as Mrs. Bates' chair.  The rest is based on a motion sensor.

The sensor sees your movements and triggers an mp3 file to play.  We play this file through the rock speaker you see in the picture below.  Right next to the rock speaker, with the orange lightning bolt, is an audio converter.

This converter is sensitive to volume and raises and lowers the voltage of whatever is plugged into it (in this case, that spotlight shining on Mrs. Bates) based on what it hears.

The end result?  When someone walks by, the psycho theme plays and thunder rolls while lightning illuminates Mrs. Bates.

FLYING GHOSTS:

THE EFFECT:  As you look at the graveyard, slowly, behind the scene, you notice ghosts flying out of the graves into the air.

HOW IT WORKS:  We lifted this effect from the graveyard scene at the Haunted Mansion in Disneyworld.  Using a holiday movie projector (purchased at Target) we project ghostly images onto a gauzy screen, which Lesley is sewing in the above picture.  The screen was just black tulle purchased at JoAnns.  We sleeves into the screen by sewing the edges and closing off the top.  We then slid the sleeves over some poles which we mounted, and...

Voila!  A ghost screen.  At night, you can see right through it, but the tulle is thick enough to catch the ghost images and show them as you walk past.  It's a subtle effect which we're still working on.