Skyview Haunted House 25th Anniversary!

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Year 1

If you’d like to know how Halloweeners, Halloweenies, and Halloweenettes are made, read my blog ‘Halloween Person Potion’, but suffice to say, I’m one of them. I moved to my first home in Austin in 2000 with an immediate desire to build a Haunted House.

But before I did, I started with these guidelines.
HAUNTED HOUSE GUIDELINES

Be Frugal: As an artist I did not have the thousands of dollars some people put into their decorations. So the first rule was re-use, which made sense to me as a frugal artist and environmentalist. I always try to use scrap material first and will fix, redo, and recreate in every way possible before considering throwing it away.

Use What You Have: From my time creating float parades I learned that it’s all just basic shapes. If you can make a shape, you can make anything, and many things with interesting shapes are just lying around the house or yard. Trash cans, plastic bags, yard ornaments, look at everything around you and conceptualize- see it as a diamond in the rough. What can be borrowed or converted?

Repeat Theme: Keep the same basic areas, and then add to them, and if it grows, add others. In keeping the same themes I could add to them annually rather than creating an expensive and time-consuming over-haul of structure and ideas every year.

No Slashers: Other-wordly, fictional creatures represent the spirit of the holiday for me, not fictional killers. No gore, guts or chainsaws, thank you!

With those guidelines in mind I started a sketch, and if you can dream it, you can build it, so one Saturday morning I did just that. I bought some reclaimed 2x4’s, some cheap panels, reuse paints, a small jigsaw, and made Skyview history!

It was smaller then, maybe 8x8ft, but it was marvelous! It didn’t glow, but the paints looked like they did. The outside looked as spooky and festive as had hoped.

What do you put inside a Haunted House?

Remembering Guideline 2, ‘Use What You Have’, I pulled out the giant box of alien clothing, masks and accessories I just happened to have. I had illustrated an alien book series for kids and had all the props for book signings, so the ‘Alien Autopsy’ section was born!

Then a neighbor came over with lab bottles and what he called the 'scariest wedding present ever', a weird, glowing dehumidifier. 'My wife doesn't want it in the house', he said. So the Mad-Scientists Table came to life just from that one prop, and eventually morphed into the 'Mad-Scientist Alley'.

To top it off, I had accumulated an extensive collection of classic horror toys from the yrs. of working horror cons, which my wife added to on every birthday or Christmas, or friends would find something in an attic or flea-market. For the first ten yrs, the Haunted House ended at my office, and neighbors could come in and tour the collection before I enclosed the space to build a bedroom.

That first year was a screaming success! That year I'd be mowing the lawn in June and kids would come running up and telling me what they were going to be on Halloween. 'You're going to do it again next year, right!?'.

It was a wonderful introduction to the neighborhood. It helped form communal connections, and every year, new kids got to experience

Something sublime and they would talk about it all year long.

So that first year hooked it! I was now the guy who’d be making a Haunted House in October, a new tradition for the community and my life.

It's a well-known Halloween fact that Haunted Houses grow. It is also well-known that wood eventually decays, and the flimsy panel-board front pieces had to be replaced by plywood after 6 yrs.

I kept the same design and transferred over some of the detail pieces, which are still there today.

By now it was extended down the drive. I extended the same central themes and added to them bit by bit, which saves a lot of time and money over coming up with a new design every year.

In 2011, I added gargoyles in 2015, I added two more sections in the front.

In 2017, I painted much of it with fluorescent black-light paint for the first time. Until then, it just looked like it was glowing, but now as night approached, it came to life!

What about the inside? I’m glad you asked

Inside, the 'Spiders & Flies' section was added, and continuing the classics, the 'Tales of Poe' and the 'Classic Monster' walls, a tribute to that inspirational movie genre.

I also enclosed my office so where there was a door, was now the Tunnel of Ill-Repair, flat panels that give a very effective sense of depth. I like the humor and carnival zaniness of it.

As with Haunted Houses, families grow too, and somewhere in that time, mine grew by one, a daughter, an October baby, and one genetically predisposed to be a lover of Halloween. Her Haunted House bday party became part of the yearly tradition. In her twenties and in college, the holiday still bonds us, and she wants to know about every new detail, when she finally calls me back.

My guidelines were as follows 1. No slasher stuff. -Other-wordly, fictional creatures represent the spirit of the holiday more than fictional killers. 2. Always try to use scrap material first.- This made sense for me as an artist and environmentalist. 3. Keep the