> INTRODUCTION a fascination with imagination   > THEME PARK MAGIC inspirational rides and attractions   > A PHANTOM PLOT UNFOLDS a 2003 test from Disneyland ideas   > THE HAUNTING BEGINS five years of Halloween, 2004-2008 > BACK FROM THE GRAVE 2010-2011 with new technology   > A 2013 RESURRECTION a mix of new and age-old effects   > DAWN OF THE UNDEAD 2014 show, part one   > THE ZOMBIES EMERGE 2014 show, part two   > A CHANGING CONCEPT 2015 show, part one   > BUILDING PNEUMATIC FIGURES 2015 show, part two   > ROLL UP, ROLL UP! 2015 show, part three   > INTO THE TUNNEL... 2016 show, part one   > MAKING MONSTERS MOVE 2016 show, part two   > TO HELL AND BACK 2016 show, part three   > SHARPENING THE SENSES 2017 show, part one   > A MAGNETIC ATTRACTION 2017 show, part two   > THE BIG EXECUTION 2017 show, part three   The first Halloween Experience         On Sunday 31st October 2004, it was curtain up for my first Halloween display! I hadn't considered what name it would have, but then my nan said to me during the preparations "What would you call it?...Halloween Experience?" and I thought "that'll do nicely!" So that's where the name came from! We had a packed house of about twelve of my family that night, as by coincidence, my cousins' family had come down from Eastbourne to visit!     Several people were assigned pivotal roles... I was in charge of hall lighting and opening and closing the front door; my cousin Jenny was head of handing out sweets; my uncle Richard retained his job from the previous year (CD player operative) and my uncle Tony had the crucial job of firing the smoke machine for a few seconds whenever he heard someone tap on the door. Visitors would now forever become affectionately known as 'punters' - something that we still always shout whenever we see people coming up the path! The smoke machine in question had been a birthday present that year - I'd spotted it in the Maplin catalogue. I thought it would be a brilliant idea to insert this under the bush by the porch, and when people knocked on the door, they would find themselves surrounded by a light, eerie mist. What actually happened was that Tony held the button down on the remote for far longer than necessary, so the effect our visitors received was much the same as being stuck in the chimney of a Flying Scotsman. By the time I'd opened the door, all we could see was a wall of smoke! Somewhere in there were our poor punters, who by now were probably having serious respiratory issues. (I don't think we'd have got away with this in more recent years!) The popular myth of my nan waving her arms to clear the smoke and accidentally whacking a four year old in the face is still unsubstantiated (but it's true as far as I can remember!).     This fog overload helped to provide some of the funniest moments we've ever had at Halloween, even to this day! My favourite memories include a parent who found the sight of her children being completely engulfed in smoke absolutely hysterical; the famous yell of "Smithers! Release the hounds!" from Richard; and also the wearer of the most curious costume of the evening, who, when questioned as to what ghostly persona they were portraying, turned out to have come as "a waiter off the Titanic"!       In other technical news, I had replaced my previous, somewhat artisan approach to creating lightning with a more automated method - a 4-light sequencer unit, but with only two blue 60W reflector lamps inserted. When the thunder sounds went off, I turned this on, and as it was sound activated, we got some nice bright blue flashes of lightning, with no Maglite required. (I've used this sequencer for every Halloween show since - it still has the original lamps in it!). Outside in the garden we had a few nice features, some of which were inspired by Blackgang Chine. Having seen one used in the park's The Weather Wizard attraction, I decided to install a mirror ball in the porch that would give some nice blue, ghostly reflections on the walls. I'd also bought one of those silk flame effect lights, that hung on a chain from the porch roof. The music that I used in the garden was from Blackgang's Rumpus Mansion. Perhaps not very scary-sounding, but I liked it as it matched the sort of mystical feel I was going for. There was a big sign I made which contained a rhyme taken from the lyrics of 'Grim Grinning Ghosts', the song performed by the singing busts in the Phantom Canyon section of Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris. I positioned a small UV tube light underneath this, making the white letters glow in the dark. It was a very simple and gentle display, but we had around 70 people come to the door, and everyone seemed to like it. We'd had a blast doing it too - it was one of the funniest things we'd done! It just had to return the following year, bigger and better!     See the first display with this clip of footage recorded in 2004 (.mp4, 10.1mb)     Watch us smoke out some punters with this funny clip (.mp4, 18.1mb)                                                 Finding a method of movement...         When the next year came round, it became obvious to me that the big thing missing from the display was what I'd so enjoyed seeing in all the theme park attractions I'd visited - things that moved! Motorised figures and props - there had to be a way of doing it! Of course, this was 2005, and back then I clearly didn't have the sort of motors and control equipment that were used in such rides available to me, so the next best thing was to use K'Nex and cardboard! My Dad's job at the photocopier and printing suppliers meant that he could bring home the most fantastic cardboard boxes - ones that the huge machines were shipped in and then ordinarily disposed of, but which I could then cut up and make into various figures and models!  The cardboard was about 10mm thick and very strong - perfect for building props for Halloween!     Sadly however, the weather wasn't on our side that year, and it rained heavily during the evening of Halloween. This meant that none of the cardboard pieces I'd made could go outside, and the display didn't really go ahead. But lots of visitors still came to the door, which really surprised me! The smoke machine also returned to provide some fun. The bits that were rescued from the rain of that year were kept back and added to for the next year's display. For 2006, I had quite a collection of wacky things - there was a full-size coffin with a lid that slid open as visitors walked past, a 13-hour clock chiming in the porch, and rattling tombstones, amongst other crazy props. One of my favourite effects was a floating candelabrum, which hovered around in the trees with no apparent support - a simple effect using a motor, pulleys and black thread - it looked great under UV light.           The movement for all of these props was done with K'Nex and the electric motors that came with it! The coffin (right) was my first ever effect to use a PIR motion detector to trigger. These sensors would later be used to trigger effects in all the displays right up to 2015! < To the left is a drawing from 2005, showing some of my early ideas for animating the prop!                                                   See the 2006 effects in this short clip (.mp4, 5.7mb)                                                                 I chose the main theme from Phantom Manor as a soundtrack for the garden, and some sounds that I recorded from Rumpus Mansion were also used, such as for the noises of the animated coffin. The display of moving props in a spookily-lit environment really captured people's imaginations, and around 90 visitors came to see it over the evening. The 2006 show was also the first one where my good friend Sam Turner collaborated with me on the project. I'd bumped into him at school the year before, and it turned out that he too was a lighting and sound fanatic, and had also built up a collection of lighting effects and audio equipment at home. I told him about the Halloween project and he wanted to be a part of it too! From 2006 to 2008, he worked with me on the design of the displays. At the same time, we started working together supplying lighting and sound for weddings, band nights and other stage events, something that we continued until 2013. Sam has since become a qualified electrician and now runs SJT Services, an events and electrical contractors. His collection of equipment is now vast! As a result, he still supplies me with much of the power and lighting equipment required to run the Halloween displays. I couldn't do it without him!                                                 Creating a scarier atmosphere...       For 2007, I wanted to try and make the whole thing a bit scarier, so we moved away from a display of brightly-lit quirky props, and instead went for a darker garden with some startling sounds and shock effects to catch people unawares! Bright lightning flashes and thunder sounds (another PIR trigger!) suddenly went off when visitors approached; a sure-fire shock that would become a recurring feature in future displays! I think the star turn from this year was a moving prop I built (again from Knex!) that dropped a skeleton from the roof of the porch when visitors came near! (It slightly traumatised at least two youngsters, I seem to remember…whoops!). It was triggered by a PIR sensor, and had its own sound effect (on tape!) which synchronised with the drop (most of the time…) and reset itself ready for the next victim (most of the time…)! Perhaps he was a bit ahead of his time... but we realised that we’d succeeded in making the whole thing scarier when we noticed that some of the younger visitors started running away back down the path when stuff like this jumped out at them!         See a short clip of the 2007 entrance effects, plus the skeleton in action (.mp4, 7.4mb)     We went with a similar theme for 2008. The porch had some blue reflector lamps installed in the ceiling that were connected to a four-channel chaser, set to audio activation. Then, when visitors came near (triggering a CD player via a PIR sensor in the process) some loud thunder sounds went off suddenly, and this in turn caused the lights to flash, giving a nice lightning effect. Earlier in the summer, I’d visited Disneyland Paris yet again, and from an idea I’d got from the Blanche Neige et les Sept Nains dark ride, I attached a piece of cut-out card to a 3rpm motor and fixed this to a PAR 36 spot – this gave the great effect of a big shadow of a claw coming down over visitors as they approached. Having become a Phantom Manor super-fan all over again, I used the theme from the Boot Hill cemetery area next to this attraction as the main soundtrack. Its haunting solo singing (from the ghostly bride of the story) really helped to create a scary atmosphere. I also included some of the Phantom’s evil laughter, (that of horror film legend Vincent Price), embodied as a skeleton looming over visitors in a tree above the garden!       As cutting edge technology for this year (ahem) we had our first flash memory sound effect, played from a circuit board with recordable storage that was completely non-volatile…except when it became volatile, and you had to re-record it. (This happened a few times - the cheap stuff wasn't as good back then!). The sound was basically a loud ‘bang’ noise that went off as soon as you entered the garden, which got many entertaining reactions from punters over the evening! By this time, I was at college (and partly using my electronics A Level as a great testing ground for circuits that I needed for this project!), and I thought it would be sensible to call time on the Halloween Experience, ahead of going to university in Southampton! But it was sad that it was finishing - what on earth was I going to do in October now?! I went to Blackgang Chine over Halloween the following year to make up for its absence! But I sort of knew that I would bring it back one day – after all, it was brilliant fun and people seemed to love coming to it! As it turned out, it came back a whole lot sooner than I'd expected...!