> 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 experience returns for 2013!     Following another two-year break, the Halloween Experience returned again, refreshed and re-imagined with new technology! For 2013's 'Trail of the Tormented', I wanted to focus on enhancing the theming and look of the display with some new and more elaborate props and illusions that would hopefully entertain and spook visitors.     How it started...again...     In August 2013, I visited Blackgang Chine with my nan and my uncle Richard. We visited Rumpus Mansion and as we walked through it reminded me of all the stuff I used to build for Halloween, and the ideas that I got from this attraction. When we got back that evening, the topic came up in the pub, and I thought "actually, we could do it again", and that was it - the planning started! Rumpus Mansion and Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris would again be big sources of inspiration for the new display. Also, I read about the construction of The Haunted House at Alton Towers, which opened in 1992, and was later converted into a shoot-em-up zombie ride (Duel) in 2002. Renowned theme park ride designer John Wardley came up with the original concept, in collaboration with Keith Sparks and his team at Sparks Creative Services. The original ride was enormous, not dissimilar to Phantom Manor in terms of scale, and took riders through various haunted rooms, where they encountered ghoulish apparitions such as demons and poltergeists, as well as skeletons and giant spiders! Some of these effects would inspire my own creations for the 2013 display.       Setting the scene...     This year I decided to theme the garden as a big graveyard, with a number of tombstones where ghoulish monsters would be rising from their graves. In early planning stages I had imagined this occupying a small area of the garden, however it eventually evolved into completely surrounding the spaces occupied by the other animated scenes. Several skeletal figures were positioned behind or in front of the tombstones; these were lit in red to give an imposing, fiery effect. There were nine tombstones in total, which gave an excellent look to the whole display and also helped to hide speakers and lights from view. The tree at the back of the garden was lit using blue LED lighting, giving a spooky backdrop to the other lighted effects.       > To the right is a layout map for the 2013 experience (click to enlarge). It is in my typically scribbly style (!) but it was useful to decide how I wanted the main areas to be laid out. All the main effects and props, including the Pepper's Ghost effect (described below), the witches and the axe scene can be seen in the diagram.                                                         Sounds from beyond the grave...               I held onto a few favourite effects for this year's show - the skeleton in the centre welcoming the visitors, the thunder and evil laughter in the porch, and also the background music, heard at the Boot Hill cemetery part of Phantom Manor. This time however, this music was extended to include a section of ghostly wailing and moaning, as well as the haunting female singing (that of the ghostly bride character from the attraction) that had been heard in previous experiences (2008, 2010 and 2011).     With the new witches scene, however, a brand new sound was required. I remembered a section of Rumpus Mansion, where three hags are cooking revolting recipes and cackling at visitors, and I thought that something could be done with that sound. So a new track was created, mixing in the hags' laughter with rumbling and bubbling cauldron sounds, to match the intended illusion of the witches creating a spell; smoke would rise from their cauldron and their 'potion' would glow and change colour at the appropriate moment. I found a great sound for another scene I had come up with, which would feature a banshee-type figure leaning over a chopping block while a boggart chops her head off with an axe! I had been trying to think of something creative to do with the new tree stump in the garden (the remains of the eucalyptus tree that was removed in 2012), and eventually an idea came to me... it would make a great chopping block for my axe-wielding characters!                                                           Lighting design       I chose a similar mix of lighting as I'd used in previous years; mainly PAR 36s and PAR 16s for spots, and then several LED PAR 56s for larger colour washes and colour-changing effects. I used ten PAR 16s and two PAR 36s, mainly for lighting individual figures (including the axe scene, the green skeleton and some of the tombstone ghouls). A strobe was mounted up in the tree by the entrance, to provide the initial lightning effects as visitors entered the garden. There was also another light that produced a ghostly 'rippling' effect over the tombstones and bushes. The image to the left shows some of the lighting positioned in the centre of the lawn; the red PAR 16 and strobe were for the axe scene, while the blue LED PAR 56 was used to light the tree at the back of the garden.                                                     Making a real ghost!     Ever since I started the displays, there were effects that I had seen in other attractions and wanted to try and build myself, however it was impractical or too expensive to get hold of the materials needed to make them. This was something that I wanted to put right at the 2013 experience; there were two effects that I was determined to do - the first was the famous Pepper's Ghost!         Pepper's Ghost is an illusion which operates on the principle of reflection in glass. Using a simple setup, a translucent figure of a ghost or similar can be made to appear and disappear in front of a viewer's eyes. The illusion has its origins in the 16th century, first described in 1584 by an Italian scientist, Baptista Porta, as a way of deceiving an observer into seeing "...in a chamber things that are not". In 1858, the effect was developed by engineer Henry Dircks as a way of making ghosts appear. He named his illusion Dircksian Phantasmagoria. He used his demonstrations of this as his way of attempting to unmask what he saw as trickery performed by those who claimed they could contact the dead or summon spirits. Dircks later demonstrated this effect to inventor and scientist, Professor John Henry Pepper, who suggested how the glass pane on which the ghosts appeared could be angled downwards towards the audience. Dircks had already approached various theatres with the invention, but the requirement of raised balconies and unusual spectator positioning had discouraged them. With Pepper's alteration, this would no longer be needed; observers in ordinary seats would now see the ghost! In 1862, Pepper performed the illusion to an audience in his own lecture room, taking a scene from Charles Dickens's The Haunted Man and enhancing it with his new ghost. Having purchased the rights from Dircks for five hundred pounds (about £55,000 in today's money!), he then licensed the effect to theatres, where it astounded and baffled big Victorian audiences. At one such performance, even the renowned scientist Michael Faraday admitted his perplexity, eventually requesting an explanation as to how it was done. Pepper simply took the scientist's hand and bumped it against the invisible pane of glass! Pepper enjoyed revealing the effect's workings to invited guests, and allowing them to try it out! They could crawl into the darkened space at the foot of the stage and see themselves reflected as ghosts in the large glass pane above!       This modified version of the illusion was patented by Pepper in both his and Dirck's name in 1863. Dircks, however, never understood how Pepper's idea of the angled glass had enhanced his invention. In fact, he thought it had limited its effectiveness. Pepper made significant efforts to give Dircks his rightful credit as the true originator of the effect, but his name stuck. The illusion remains widely used in theme parks, theatre and beyond. The ballroom scenes at the Disney attractions The Haunted Mansion and Phantom Manor are the largest implementations in the world of the Pepper's Ghost illusion. Riders look at a 27 metre-long empty ballroom through a 9 metre-tall glass pane. Illuminated figures hidden above and below the riders are reflected in the glass; they appear as translucent ghosts inside the room.           Image credit: Disney       To create my own version of the effect, a ghostly figure (previously used in 2010 and 2011) was positioned in a curtained-off space behind the tree, out of the sight of visitors. A large sheet of perspex was then positioned opposite the figure, and angled towards the path such that visitors would see the translucent reflection of the ghost in the perspex. A light was then added beneath the figure, which would fade on and off during the evening, and... there it was! My own Pepper's Ghost! I was really pleased with how the effect turned out, with many visitors commenting on how impressive it looked. I spent time getting the lighting behind the perspex to look right, as I wanted to emphasise the transparency of the ghost; not enough light on the wall and objects behind the reflection would mean that this element of the effect would be lost. I added a concealed mirrorball in this area also, to provide a spectral, whirling light behind the ghost.     See the workings of the Pepper's Ghost taken at the experience, and the effect during testing in this clip  (.mp4, 10.2mb)                                                                         Continuing with the theme of making things appear and disappear right in front of visitors' eyes, the second classic effect that I decided to attempt is again widely used in both theatrical productions and haunted-house attractions.     A scrim is a type of material that, when lit from behind, and with no light falling on its surface, has a transparency which allows the observer to see through it. When light 'grazes' across its surface, and with no light coming from behind it, it appears opaque. Evidently, by using careful lighting, this can be used to make ghostly figures (or indeed any prop or person) appear suddenly in front of an audience. For this reason it is popular in theatre and dark rides alike, where 'shark-tooth' scrim material is commonly used for its excellent transparency. For the display, I decided that I would incorporate a scrim into the porch's evil laughter and thunder sequence. In a scene from Phantom Manor, visitors look up and see a corpse and the ride's antagonist, 'The Phantom', in the rafters above them. This scene is hidden using a scrim and then revealed at the crucial moment via a lighting change. It was fun to create a little tribute to this scene by hanging a full-size rubber skeleton behind the scrim, which was then suddenly revealed to visitors, standing less than a metre away, in amongst the lightning flashes and thunder when they reached the porch! A brilliant effect!                                                       Bringing the witches to life           Building the witches scene was a fun process. It was a development of a scene from the 2011 experience, which contained a similar 'cauldron' (alright, a metal bin!) and a single witch. Having created an appropriate soundtrack, the problem arose that the audio contained two witches cackling, while I only had one witch figure. So that is the main reason why I decided to make a larger scene; I needed another witch in order to use the sound!       Having obtained a second witch figure, I then came up with the idea of adding a water pump such that one of the witches could actually be making spells - pouring 'potions' into the cauldron (my obsession with fountains and ponds has never gone away!). This effect worked really well, although only the most observant of visitors may have seen the water falling from the witch's bottle - a subtle effect, happening only for a few seconds, but an effective one nonetheless. The image to the right shows the witch with the bottle being tested along with the water pump. There are two pipes visible; the clear one is for the water (pumped from the black container that is also partly visible). The black pipe was used for bringing smoke into the cauldron from a machine hidden around the back of the scene.       Watch a test of the witch effects in this short clip (.mp4, 4.8mb)                                                       New animated figures                   In the earlier years of designing these displays, I never had access to professional motor equipment or anything near the standard of theme park attraction animation, so I had increasingly shied away from including 'home-made' motorised props, as they often could not operate reliably enough! However, for 2013, I came across a method which I believed could work well.     Having come up with the idea of using the new tree stump in the garden as the home of the 'axe scene', I set about considering ways in which this could be animated. At the same time, I had come across two figures that would be perfect for the setup; both were headless ghouls that would match the theme of the scene really well. In my search for suitable motors, I came across an old DMX light that had fallen into disrepair. This had two stepper motors that were used to move a mirror left and right, and up and down, in order to reflect a beam of light in different directions. I figured that if I could extend the motors' cables so that they could be mounted outside of the device, I could use DMX to move them, and then program them in the same way as the lights and sound.       Having successfully made a mount for the axe and the banshee's head, and counter-balanced both of them, it was time for a test. The photo above shows the original appearance of the axe scene, taking during a sunny testing session in September 2013. Here, the figure holding the axe is different to the one eventually used; I decided to change this as it looked odd having an already headless 'executioner'! The new figure also had a larger black 'cloak' and bigger hands, which made it easier to hide the motors and cables.       See the effect during its initial testing stages in this clip. The axe and head motors were yet to be synchronised. (.mp4, 7.3mb)                                           While it certainly wasn't up to Disney standards, I was made up with how it turned out! It was in some ways new territory for the Halloween Experience; the first pre-programmed, auto-resetting audio-animatronic! While the motors did squeal a bit after a while (although I think that was more to do with their age!), the effect held out and it was one of my favourite features of this year's show, while several visitors said how much they liked it too!     Visit the 2013 experience again...       Take a tour through the Halloween Experience 2013 with this walkthrough clip (.mp4, 21.3mb)                     October 31st 2013 - nine years since all this Halloween mayhem opened for the first time. So that meant that the following year would be the ten year anniversary! Something special would certainly be needed for that! Read on to see how everything took an un-dead twist for 2014!