Quick Shout to Moxley Manor Haunted House

I wanted to give a quick shout out about Moxley Manor Haunted House in Bedford!
I have had the utmost pleasure and sheer fun in volunteering the past two years at this haunted house.
Last night was my last night working there for the season and I have to say WOW!

If you have not gone down there and checked them out, please do so! I love so many things about this place and not just cause I worked there! Great attention to detail and alot of hard work and dedication brings this haunted house to the forefront of haunts for me. I have enjoyed watching it transform and change over the past few years from season to season and sometimes month to month!
Don't think you have seen it once and that's it, oh no! It is completely different than last year as they have added a phobia section on to really creep you out and touch on your fear buttons and send you screaming out the door!

I worked at the front, helping to read the rules and make sure all had wrist bands and I would time the groups going in. It was sooooo much fun to hear all the brave talk while waiting in line only to watch the transformation into utter, stark fear once they stepped into the first hallway! Many would wrestle themselves in order to not go first through the dark doorway of sheer terror, or they would go screaming to the floor if one of the actors came out and scared them!

From creepy clowns to the undead, it is one place that will get your scare on for sure!

Is Moxley Manor scary? Oh yesss it is! Intense and just a heart-pounding, blood-rushing, great haunt!

 

Don't miss it!

They will be open every night from now, including Halloween night as the last night for the Halloween season. But don't think the scare is over then, be on the watch for they will be open during Christmas and Valentine's Day! Check their site for select dates and times!

Moxley Manor

Thank you to everyone at Moxley Manor for a great experience!

Even more Tombstones & Props!

I've been busy keeping an eye out for really good deals on the internet for tombstones. I have been wanting to really fill out my graveyard this year and so I went completely bonkers in buying unique tombstones that I don't normally see as well as those that I just really liked alot and would not cost me an arm and a leg.
I've made my own several years ago but they are starting to show age and wear and tear and many will have to be remade. I am already reinforcing them with wooden stakes as well as adhering pvc piping in the backs of them all using Great Stuff to hold the pipe or the stake to the styrofoam. That has always been a struggle as I used to just wire them to a garden stake but the floral garden wire cuts into the styrofoam. I've also used zip-ties and those were ok but again, they would just compress and cut through the styrofoam.

Once I learned about Great Stuff, I began to use that and so far, it's working out well!

But until I can get into making my own some more, I picked up more new ones this year as well as some of the cemetary kits:

Now that cemetary pic just above, is ok. I liked the design on the tombstones but they were all plastic and with no way that I could see to get them to stay up on the ground. Unless I was missing something, I knew there was no way they would hold up to the strong Texas wind I get ripping across my cemetary. So these got Great Stuffed with wooden stakes. The skulls and hands and feet were ok, nothing to write home about. I'll use them but they were disappointing.

I picked up some dangling jack o'lantern lights from ebay. These looked really cute like that and blowing in the breezes and I was looking for more of them. They hooked right on up onto the gutter with gutter hooks and I thought looked really cute out back!

This cute, lighted spider I got from Walmart. He has these great spirals cut-outs on his body and I really liked him alot...until....I went to take him out of the box!! OMG! This was a bit of a nightmare to put together and keep together. I might have gotten a broken one but it seemed the legs did not match up to the slots at all and while trying to put it together, it broke. We managed to get the couple of odd legs tied to the body and one of the legs hangs up in the air and it really has a great look! Nice price, great idea, poor tech/ease of putting together.

Garage door magnets are the best! I picked up two different sets and I really like these alot! It helps to decorate the large metal garage door and I can move them around as I wish to and they have no issues with the rain nor the wind. Perfect and fairly large enough to cover a 2 car garage door so it looks nice, not bare and not too cluttered. Love it! I got these from Collections Etc!

Circle of Glowing Green Ghosts!

It has been a very crazy and busy past several weeks! I have so much to share with you too!

One of the first coolest things I wanted to post about is the circle of ghosts. I have had this set of white sheets for a long time, many years actually. I first made this with the typical 5 flat sheets and folded them over to a triangle and then tied the two opposite ends together as if the ghosts are holding hands. Originally, I had placed these over styrofoam balls mounted on a tall wooden stake. This was a quick fail as the styrofoam wouldn't stay on the wooden stakes and kept falling off and my poor ghosts kept losing their heads! I had tried to create this when I lived in Las Vegas and was very disappointed that it did not work. I tried many different things but couldn't get anything to work so I gave up on the idea temporarily until I could learn how to build it better. So I just packed the white sheets away into a Halloween box and I left the 'hands' tied together.

So now that I got older and wiser...I learned what might work better!

Some of the problems with the wooden stakes were that they were too thick and your ground needs to be very soft and not have any rocks. Yea....good luck with that!
The other problem of course is using styrofoam balls on wood. I've since learned how to connect these two things but....I think this is an even better idea!

Here in Texas, where I live, I get a lot of strong gusty winds and I battle as it is to try to make sure my tombstones do not get blown away. But each year as I unpack my Halloween boxes, I come across these set of sheets. This year, now that I know how it is here and I've learned some from the past, I thought about how to go about putting them up so they would stay and not lose their heads.

I decided to use shepherd hooks! Those with the points on the top and my kids' dad suggested instead of the stryofoam balls, to use pumpkins. I thought hey, why not use the white craft pumpkins for the heads and then I thought to add a green flood light in the center.

This really came out great and really kinda creepy to me! The shepherd hooks work really well and can withstand some pretty good wind if you get them into the ground good and deep. I draped the cloth right on over the tips and then cut a small hole in the bottom of the white craft pumpkins that I got on sale from Michael's Craft store. I then pushed the pumpkins over the top and because of how the shepherd hook tops are, the pumpkins don't even move!

I got the shepherd hooks from Home Depot, but they ran out of the ones I wanted so I had to improvise with a tiki torch pole and then added the 'arms' with curved brackets and zip-tied them onto the poles.

The green flood light is the best as you can see here in this pic! It really gives it a great eerie look! I did not paint nor carve faces out of the pumpkins either because I thought it really made it more spooky to not do so.

This has to be one of my favorite newest props that we put together and I was so happy to finally be able to use my ghosts!