This year's haunt was great! Every year more people show up, and the candy-count increases. Joining us this time around would be Evil Melanie, Evil Kate, Witchypoo, Evil Rocker Kris, Kris' beat-up karate date Christopher (whom I don't have a picture of), and, of course, both Evil Joey & Evil Jay. We even had a special appearance by Evil "G", the neighborhood freeloader cat. Sadly, Keoni, known to his friends as "The Full Monte," could no longer attend due to the fact that he had moved back to Boston.

This year I constructed the Barlow and Chaney props. Additionally, I updated the Reaper and built new, thicker tombstones out of 2" foam board. I added engraved epitaphs to them with flurescent paint, and lit them up with concealed black lighting. I built around twenty stones this time, and the yard was covered with them. The Flying Crank Ghost (again, without good pictures) was updated with glowing eyes and a new face. Sound and lighting effects were placed throughout the yard, and I broke down and bought a fog machine this year (we had been renting them up to this point).

Barlow and Chaney were fun characters to build. You can see some detailed plans of their construction on my Projects pages. As the years go by, I hope to build more characters in this same fashion. I received many compliments on both of them.

I also had a lot of fun with my costume this year. Creating the "ribcage" with the rotting flesh and worms was cool. After coating it with a shiney epoxy resin to give it a "wet" look I lit it up from the inside with a green light-stick. The effect was outstanding.

Much inspiration for this year's haunt came from different sites on the Web. There were so many ideas that I wanted to try, but I just didn't have the resources. Every year gets better.