The ToTs waiting outside the cemetary columns. This kid definitely had a cool costume!

This is your friendly instigator of things haunted. I see I forgot to tuck in my shirt that night and I left my watch on. Who ever heard of a zombie wearing a watch? The castle facade, sadly, was not able to be painted due to all the rain we had right up to the day before. So I drew psuedo-stone with a magic-marker on the cardboard directly. The 'Animated Spooky Ghost' is in the window about - it worked great!!

One of my multitudes of friends named 'Mike'. This guy was in the entry room behind me scaring the guests. We fogged up the room and with the Scooby portraits (I did some WONDERFUL haunted portraits but didn't get to mount them in time) and the Skull Chandelier it was pretty nifty.

My brother-in-law, who is not named Mike but instead is called Stewart, did a riff on the old space alien bit with my trustly space suit and a handy mask.

Mark from across the street reprising his role as the Mummy - this time with a nicer backdrop.

Diane appearing again as the Spooky Witch! She's married to the 'Miner 49er' below.

Another 'Mike' as the old Miner '49er. He does great grizzled characters.

That was the best of this year's haunt. Not shown are the 'rickety bridge' or much of this year's cemetary. We forgot to take pictures of anything that didn't have people in it. D'oh!

I did use my 'Grave Grabber' mechanism, thanks to the Iron Kingdom, to animate a quicky prop in the graveyard and we had loads of decorations out from.

The cemetary columns, created by my friend Paul Goss, were absolutely fabulous as well.

- Year 2002 Crew

This is the framework of the main castle facade going up. It's made from 7ft x 4ft panels that are built from 2x2in pieces. The door is 1/4in board mounted on a frame that is attached with hinges to the frames. The panels are screwed to each other with drywall screws.

This view shows the inner door leading out into the rest of the haunt/maze. Due to the slope of the land between the houses each panel rises about 1in from the other one. We'll be facing this with cardboard and painting it so we'll cut the carboard to hide the changing height of the panels.

This is the cheap Home Depot PVC maze framework. The maze is a box about 24ft x 24ft and sub-divided into 8ft x 8ft sections then we put another vertical strut in the middle of the 8x8 sections to make various 4ft wide passageways.

The joins are glued to only ONE strut so it's easy to take apart. We number each join so it's easy to rebuild this again from the same parts. We'll be hanging black plastic tarp (very light weight) from each section.

You can see some of the old fencing used to good effect here. We actually knocked out some posts to increase the apparent damage and reused them to make another section of fence!

Our strap-board tombstones. Held up with rebar and a conduit clamp in the back. They look pretty good and we didn't even have to age them since the strap-board is so textured.

The Scooby Gang portrait wall. Nothing spooky here, just move along folks!

The Swamp Witch and her smoking cauldron - made from an Ultrasonic Humidifier. She's also holding a $1 blinking skull for extra spookiness.

Our old favorite - the Spooky Space Kook!

The 1849 Mine - the passage leading to this was also illuminated with little red mining lanterns. The skeleton is a $8 Big Lots plastic skeleton. Darned handy things.

2001's Scooby's Boo House crew! From left to right it's Kermit, Diane, Mike J., Mark and then Mike H. in front. You can see the flame lamps I (Kermit) made in this shot as well. Mike J's beard was pretty much a lost cause by the end of the night - sort of looks like a small animal is hanging from his nose in fact.

The Haunted Mine Elevator (adapted from the Hellavator plans) and made of scrap plywood, strap-board, luaun, and wood shipping palettes. The palettes are used as a floor and a gate in the front. The 'hidden' side door isn't on it's hinges yet here and the sign that reads 'Mine Elevator' hasn't been attached or painted.

Coffin/Crate - we put a skeleton in here and the Mummy hid behind it. All the better to jump out and scare from!

One last photo of the gang!