The Yard of the Living Dead

Jack-O-Lanterns 2017

2017-11-08T20:43:00.000-07:00

2016-02-13T22:14:00.001-07:00

Create a realistic tombstone from extruded polystyrene foam.

Step one:

Place foam sheet on the work surface and select a tombstone shape.

Draw selected tombstone shape onto foam sheet.

Use craft knife to cut tombstone shape from foam sheet.

Step two:

Select a good "tombstoney" font and print up an epitaph, making it big enough to fit nicely on the tombstone.

Place the epitaph onto the tombstone in a selected location.

Using a ballpoint pen, trace over the lettering of the epitaph pressing hard enough to leave an impression in the foam.

Using a soldering iron, "cut" the letters into the tombstone.

Step three:

Paint the entire tombstone with dark grey outdoor latex-based paint.

Using a slightly lighter colored outdoor latex-based paint, dry brush over the tombstone to highlight texture.

Step four:

Using watered-down black acrylic paint, brush inside the lettering on the tombstone, letting some of the paint drip and run down the front of the tombstone.

Using paper towels, wipe the excess paint from the front of the tombstone creating a weathered effect.

Optional: clear matte sealant may be applied to the tombstone for weatherproofing.

Yard of the Living Dead 2014 Part 1

2014-10-05T14:38:00.000-06:00

Preparations are under way for 2014's Yard of the Living Dead home haunt.

I didn't have time to make any new tombstones this year, but I needed to repair and touch up all of my existing tombstones. I pulled them out of storage yesterday and put a coat of monster mud on all of the damaged spots. When the monster mud hardened I put a coat of grey latex paint on all of the tombstones. When this basecoat dries I will do a black wash and then some dry brushing to add detail.

The fence is pretty much set up; I just need to hang the lanterns from the fence columns. I have plans to make some fence finials following Discozombie's tutorial on Haunt Forum: http://www.hauntforum.com/showthread.php?t=34715. We will see what time permits.

The only good thing about having to store my props outside is that they naturally accumulate real spider webs and debris that add to the creepy factor.

Jack-O-Lantern Graveyard

2013-11-10T16:13:00.000-07:00

I took some pictures of the final resting place of this year's jack-o-lanterns.

The Yard of the Living Dead 2013

2013-11-01T00:27:00.000-06:00

Here is a quick picture of the path of jack-o-lanterns leading safely through The Yard of the Living Dead this year.

...and so it begins.

2013-09-28T19:54:00.004-06:00

The 2013 haunt season has officially begun for The Yard of the Living Dead. I started setting up the display today. Nothing too ambitious; I just set up the cemetery fence and put out a coffin and a cross.

We are in a new yard this year so the setup will be slightly different.

A couple of new residents.

The Yard of the Living Dead 2012

2012-11-02T11:43:00.000-06:00

Here are a few shots of the yard on the big night. There were a lot of unfinished projects this year; but we saw a marked increase in the number of TOT's this year, so it seemed like a good year all in all.

This year saw my first foray into animatronic propmaking. The prop was a simple shiatsu spider victim. It is funny how home haunters who know about all of the amazing props out there can get a little embarassed about a simple prop; but the reaction by the TOT's is always positive. Here is a short video of the prop in action.

I Finally Finished My First Groundbreaker!

2012-10-18T11:48:00.002-06:00

Well, after an interminable amount of time stuck with "analysis paralysis", I finally got something new finished for The Yard of the Living Dead this year. I used tips, tricks, and inspiration from various sources on the web and the forums. This groundbreaker is one hundred percent homemade from the paper mache skull to the cardboard ribcage. Here are a few pictures of him in the garage.

I will get a few more pictures of him after he is placed in The Yard of the Living Dead later today. One thing I learned during the construction of this groundbreaker is that I suck at making hands, the thumbs especially.

One Step Closer to a Career as a Mad Scientist

2012-09-22T14:39:00.001-06:00

Well, I made something in the garage that uses electricity and I managed to not kill myself or burn the house down. Score one for me!

As stated in a previous post, I have two great stacks of styrofoam sheets that are waiting to be made into tombstones. I also was able to find these even larger sheets of styrofoam at another construction site only a block away from my house.

I used a handsaw to cut this cross and base out of one of the large sheets of styrofoam. Cutting styrofoam with a handsaw is very messy and limits you to only straight cuts. I want to be able to have curved details on most of my tombstones, so I needed to devise another method of cutting styrofoam; one that allows for curved cuts and preferably one that is less messy. I know that many haunters use a tabletop hot wire foam cutter. That project seemed a little daunting to me, so I looked online for a less complex version. I found a couple of instructables for handheld versions of the hot wire foam cutter that seemed fairly simple.

Most of the instructables for handheld hot wire foam cutters call for wood in the construction of the base. I opted to use a length of PVC pipe that I had laying around. I applied heat and bent the pipe to create the arms of the hot wire foam cutter. I drilled holes in the arms, close to the ends and inserted eye bolts fastened with wing nuts.

Here is a close-up of the eye bolt/wing nut assembly.

Another close-up at an angle.

I stole the nichrome wire from a hair dryer that I found at the D.I. and I used an A/C D/C power converter or "wall wort" also from the D.I. to power the hot wire foam cutter.

Here is a cose-up of the wires attached to the eye bolt. No soldering required.

This picture shows the power cables secured with cable ties to keep them out of the way.

Here is a chunk of styrofoam on which I have drawn a simple design.

Here is the finished cut. Nice and smooth and virtually no mess. I am excited to cut out some tombstone forms using my new hot wire foam cutter that I made by myself.

Long Weekend of Prop Building

2012-09-04T20:01:00.002-06:00

I am taking advantage of a long weekend to do some prop building in the garage. I mixed up a batch of paper mache for a couple of projects.

Here is the beginning of my first ground breaker.

Here are a couple of pumpkins that will be carved and corpsed.

I am also cutting down the rest of my bottles to make more Halloween lanterns.

I made another huge haul of foam sheets for tombstones while dumpster diving. The sheets on the left measure 24" wide and 40" tall. The sheets on the right measure 16" wide and 45" tall. All of the sheets are 2 1/2" thick. The two different sizes should yeild a good variety of tombstone shapes.

I salvaged 34 sheets of each size of foam. I could have brought even more home; but my wife would have killed me. This should be enough...for this year.

Tin Punched Lanterns

2012-06-13T22:07:00.000-06:00

I toss about 15-20 of these gold cans in the recycling bin at work every day. I decided to rescue a couple and try making some tin punched lanterns. I have put out the call on the forums for links to cool Halloween"ish" patterns. Hopefully I can create something worthy of The Yard of the Living Dead.

In Support of a Podcast For Haunters, By Haunters.

2012-02-16T18:17:00.002-07:00

I already have $100.00 set aside from my 2011 tax returns for my subscription. Check out this video summarizing the fan-based movement to resurrect Hauntcast.

A Brief Essay on the Versitility of PVC Pipe.

2011-11-12T11:15:00.001-07:00

Hello everyone. As part of an assignment for my ENGL 4500 class this semester, I have written a short essay about the many uses of PVC pipe for home haunters.

PVC pipe has been described as "Tinker Toys for haunters". I learned first-hand just how true this statement was when I spent the better part of two months constructing all of the props for my home haunt this year. My former employer was a fence manufacturer and I was able to acquire a large amount of PVC pipe for free. Any home haunter will tell you that first, free stuff is good and second, free PVC pipe is awesome.

Because my home haunt will have a cemetery theme this year, I wanted to start out by constructing a cemetery fence that gives the appearance of wrought iron. This fence will get reused year after year so it needs to be sectional for easy storage and sturdy enough to last for many seasons. I decided to construct my fence in eight-foot sections. The horizontal "bars" are made from scrap wood; 2 x 4's for the bottom "bars" and 1 x 4's for the middle and top "bars". The vertical "bars" are made from PVC pipes that have been cut to different lengths and arranged to give the fence sections a peaked appearance. Holes have been drilled in the horizontal "bars" at six inch intervals to accommodate the PVC pipes which have been secured with screws. Each eight-foot section of cemetery fence has fifteen vertical PVC pipe "bars". The entire fence section has been painted black to give the appearance of wrought iron. Since setting up the fence in my front yard, I have had several people comment on it thinking that it was a real wrought iron fence.

I also used PVC pipe in the construction of the tombstones for my cemetery. Three-foot sections of PVC pipe were sandwiched between two 1 1/2 thick pieces of Styrofoam. The Styrofoam sheets were made into tombstones of different sizes and shapes. The lengths of PVC pipe were placed over re bar which had been pounded into the ground to anchor the tombstones and keep them from falling over.

PVC pipe doesn't have to be used only in applications that require straight forms. PVC pipe can be bent into any shape with the application of heat. I used a heat gun to soften several three foot sections of PVC pipe. The PVC pipe was then turned or rolled into a spiral shape. When the desired shape was obtained, the PVC pipe was submerged in cool water to make it rigid again. Once PVC pipe has been softened and re-cooled, it is actually stronger than it was previously. These PVC pipe spirals were attached to the stone columns of the cemetery fence and used as brackets from which lanterns were hung

A heat gun can also be used to heat and bend PVC pipe into a shape that can be used as an armature for a skeleton or corpse that can inhabit the cemetery. Here is a shot of a corpse-in-progress.

Here are a few pictures of the cemetery as it looked on Halloween night.

Jack-O-Lanterns 2011

2011-11-01T17:58:00.001-06:00

We continued our annual pumpkin carving tradition this year. Our kids did theirs pretty much by themselves. We listened to the Halloween Party channel on Pandora Radio while we carved this year's Jack-O-Lanterns and had a thoroughly enjoyable time.

The Yard of the Living Dead 2011

2011-11-01T17:50:00.000-06:00

Here are some shots of The Yard of the Living Dead taken late Halloween night.

Everything looked pretty good this year. Our display is still fairly small; but we spent a lot of time doing things the right way. Our cemetery fence looks authentic, is strong, and can be reused year after year. We ditched the cardboard tombstones and replaced them with styrofoam tombstones that look better and last longer. We spent time creating a satisfying fog effect. All in all I think we have a good foundation to build upon in the coming years. Next year I would like to create a more integrated LED lighting system and incorporate sound as well. I want to finish the corpses that I started this year and my wife wants to add some cemetery gates and an archway. Lots to do and my wife has made me promise not to procrastinate on anything. This blog will be the place where I post pictures and progress reports on preparations for The Yard of the Living Dead 2012. Thanks to everyone who checked out my blog this year. I promise to make next year even more entertaining.

Trick or Treat, Day of the Dead Style

2011-11-01T17:23:00.000-06:00

My wife and I decided that we wanted to try our hand at creating some Day of the Dead make up effects for our kids' costumes this year.

You can kind of tell by the style of the teeth, that I did the make up for our two youngest kids on the left and our oldest on the right. My wife did her own make up and the make up for our oldest daughter in the back on the right. The kids had a great time and they got a lot of compliments on their make up.

Here are some close ups of the make up.

The Rib Bone's Connected to... Some Other Bone

2011-10-21T20:26:00.001-06:00

I wanted to put a full corpse in the cemetery this year; but time was just not on my side. I will put together a corpse torso and have it "peeking" out from behind a tombstone. I followed the steps outlined on Christian Hanson's video "Make You Own Scratch Built Corpse" and made a ribcage this week. In his video, Christian uses a plastic 5 gallon bucket to make his ribcage. I am super cheap, so I just used cardboard. I think it will do for my purposes.

Here is Emma Sue The Littlest Zombie modeling the completed ribcage. I will add a PVC pipe spine and arms and corpse it out this weekend. More pictures to follow.

I Decided to Give My Minion a Hand... and an Arm

2011-10-21T20:17:00.000-06:00

My minion is busy building his first styrofoam tombstones. He is very excited to put them in the cemetery. One of his tombstones' epitaphs describes the fate of a man who was buried alive. He wanted to have an arm reaching up from the grave in front of this tombstone. I slapped together a quick newspaper hand and arm for him to use.

I found a thread on the Halloween Forum by FearingtonHouse that talks about a super cheap and fast corpsing method using only outdoor latex paint and paper towels. I am going to give it a try tomorrow and post some pictures of the results.

Quick and Cheap Coffin Creep

2011-10-21T20:04:00.000-06:00

I made a coffin from scrap wood for the cemetery a couple of years ago. I have since turned it into a hiding place for my fog machine and fog chiller. I have always thought that it was a waste not to have some kind of corpse or something inside it; but the fog machine and fog chiller occupy all of the available space. This year, as a quickie, afterthought kind of thing I made a couple of forearms and hands. I stuck them inside the coffin so that they were lifting the lid just enough to stick a foam skull inside the coffin resting on top of the fog chiller.

This prop is quite cheesy; but I wanted the coffin to be more like a prop than just a housing for the fog machine and fog chiller.

Set Up Almost Complete for The Yard of the Living Dead 2011

2011-10-21T19:55:00.001-06:00

Well, tonight was the perfect night for cemetery fog. The air was slightly warm and there was no wind. I was able to make some really creepy fog without any ice in the chiller. I have just a couple more projects and finishing touches that I want to complete before our first "lights on" night on Sunday.

Man, I love creepy cemetery fog! I only hope that the weather stays like this for the next two weekends and the big night.

Teaser Reveal

2011-10-08T14:09:00.002-06:00

Well, the minion and I spent a few hours working in the garage today and were able to put the PVC spirals and the random wire hanger bits together to make...

...some curved brackets and hangers for our Halloween lanterns.

The curved brackets are attached toward the top of the fence columns. There are two curved brackets on each fence column. I also made some toppers for the fence columns today. I think it gives the fence columns a more finished look.

Here are a couple of pictures of the lanterns as it started to get darker. I was able to play around with my webcaster gun today too.

Another Teaser!

2011-10-08T09:18:00.001-06:00

Spent a few hours with my minion watching Battle: LA and Priest while we straightened out a ton of wire hangers. We bent some and rolled some.

Hmmm. What the heck could they be for?

Teaser Alert!

2011-10-07T18:22:00.002-06:00

Spent a few quality hours out in the garage melting some PVC and killing some brain cells.

More to come...

Cemetery Fence 2.0 Is a Go.

2011-10-02T10:24:00.002-06:00

The first day of October was warm and sunny. I spent a few hours with my minion finishing the assembly and painting of the last four or five cemetery fence sections. We got the fence set up and in place. Next Saturday we will tackle the fence finials, lantern hangers, and maybe the fence column toppers. My minion wants to try his hand at tombstone carving and I have a corpse or two to make. The last few Saturdays before Halloween are going to be busy. I hope we continue to have weather like we did today.

Here are a few shots of the cemetery fence as it stands right now. The first is looking East to West. The second is looking West to East. The third is a straight-on shot at a full fence section. The construction is scrap PVC lengths for the vertical bars, scrap 1 X 4's for the top two horizontal bars, and scrap 2 X 4's for the bottom horizontal bars. Everything for this fence (including the columns) was free scrap except for the brackets bolted to the columns and the paint. Hopefully the extra time that it took to "over-engineer" this cemetery fence will translate to a long life for it.

Here are a couple of shots with Emma Sue the littlest zombie added for scale. The fence looks to be strong enough to keep even the most determined of the living dead safely confined.

Fangs For The Memories

2011-09-25T08:42:00.001-06:00

I was at the grocery store running an errand and was looking for some Reeses peanut butter pumpkins for my wife when I ran across some candy wax lips with fangs in the Halloween section. I showed these to my youngest daughter and she had no idea what they were. I of course bought five sets, one for each of my four kids and one for me. It took quite a bit of convincing for my kids to believe that they were really candy.

I think that the moustache wax lips are new. I have no recollection of ever seeing them as a kid. My upper lip is naturally folically challenged, so I bought a moustache for me. I think it looks great! And it's grape flavored.