There must have been some sort of struggle and the knocked down some shelves in the process. The shelves held most all of my lighting for the haunt including some rather expensive blue floods I got in trade from a client. Well guess its a good thing this year’s theme will use more greens.
If you’ve missed the Transworld show this year kick back and check out this video compilation. The stuff they were showing off was phenominal! I really wish even ONE of the pro venues here in CT had some of this stuff. I really want to try and make it there next year so here’s hoping.
(thanks Ghoul Friday for tweeting this one)
It’s here finally! Short but sweet so enjoy… For 2009 I plan to get much more video.
Wanted to drop in real quick and announce that after much diliberation we are proud to announce that we’ve choosen Undead Pirates as our official 2009 haunt theme. With this announce comes the launch of our supporting domain Necropolis Harbor. You can still come here for all of our haunt news. However only news that pertains to the 2009 Haunt will be found at Necropolis Harbor.
We’ve got some great ideas this time around and with budgets and economy what-not we promise that you won’t be disappointed in our presentation and originality in this genre.
So grab a keg o rum ya land lubbers and buckle down the hatches, a maelstrom is coming.
After posting drawings of some plans my daughter whipped up for Halloween and a particular creature called The Roarast, RoxyBlue over at HauntForum was kind enough to whip up this little slideshow. My daughter absolutely loved it (not to mention her ego grew a couple sizes) and requested numerous viewings. Apparently, regardless of theme, it looks like I’ll be incorporating The Roarast into the haunt.
Over the break I’ve been busy working on a little project for the haunt community dubbed Haunt Squad. Essentially it’s Twitter for the haunt folks.
Haunt Squad sits on top of a neat little open-source application called Laconica that was originally written to power Identica, a competitor of Twitter. I’ll have to admit the setup wasn’t a walk in the park compared to some of the Word Press and SMF Forums I’ve rolled out over the last few years.
There’s still a couple features I need to enable and test such as the Facebook App and the SMS interface. I suspect the later to be a bit of trouble setting up via GoDaddy servers.
Anyways, it’s been skinned and for the most part pretty functional in both Internet Explorer and Firefox (the Avatar upload was a bit quirky in Google Chrome but I suspect something got cached on my end when I was working with SEO URLs)
If you’re a haunter (and I suspect you are if you’re here), then check it out at http://hauntsquad.com. If you DO have any issues drop in to Carcosa Studios and send me a note via the Contact Us page.
We’re down for winter break and the holidays. We’ll see everyone in spring when we come back where we’ll unveil some of our wicked plans for the 2009 Halloween season.
If you want to follow any of my other dark projects, head on over to Carcosa Studios.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
The day had started bleak and plagued with one technical issue after the other (many of which our guests never had a clue; others, such as the overabundance of fog and crowd control at the table, were painfully obvious). However, all of the problems I did have are being chaulked up as lessons learned. And despite it all, even though I was working right down to the wire, it all turned out very well.
I’d like to thank everyone for making it a fantastic year, it was one of our best yet. The compliments poured in from nearly everyone and we saw an estimated 300 Trick-or-Treaters pass through our front yard (thats up almost 100 from last year’s count). It was a lot of hard crazy work getting to this point. But having the fantastic reaction and reception from nearly all our guests made it all worthwhile.
And in these times of financial struggles and a teetering economy it brings great joy and pride to my heart to have been fortunate enough to entertain so many in so little time. To make them feel alive and, if even for just a brief fleeting moment, make them forget the troubles of the world – and for some adults, like a child again.
Thank you to everyone who made Halloween 2008 a success. I thank my wife for her loving support and putting up with my crazy hobby. I thank my daughter for being the light and encouragement to keep trying even when an idea seemed not to work or head me off at the pass when another was too silly even for a six year old. And of course my friends, my family and the many great people of the Windsor community that poured through our front gates.
Honestly my only single regret is not being able take any photo’s before the end of night tear down. If anyone out there has any great shots to share let me know and I’ll be happy to post them up in a community gallery.
Thanks again. Until next year, lets all kick back and enjoy the holidays.