halloween – A Play on Words

We currently live in a subdivision which is big on Halloween. Many houses sport decorations, some elaborate, and there was even a haunted house, just around the corner, with the entrance fee of a canned good for the local food pantry. Luckily, Halloween also happens to be one of my favorite holidays.

Since our house is known as the castle house by the neighbors, both kids and adults, it made sense to use that to our advantage. It was a no-brainier for me to decorate in the spirit of one of my favorite book (and movie) series, Harry Potter. Some of the pictures are taken with flash, some without. The lighting was dark and moody – it looked great to the naked eye and cast just the right atmosphere, however it’s not so good for the camera.

Did you get your Hogwarts letter?

If not, don’t worry. All are welcome at Hogwarts tonight.

Welcome to Hogwarts!

First the trick-or-treaters get to walk by Aragog.

And Hagrid’s Pumpkin Patch.

Sorry this video is dark. The spot light on the Dementor was bright enough to the naked eye, but the camera had a harder time picking it up. Luckily Harry’s Patronus was strong and saved all the little ghosts and witches from the soul sucking Dementor! (MAKE SURE TO TURN YOUR SOUND UP FOR SOME AWESOME SOUND EFFECTS!)

This is what the Dementor looked like in daylight.

Visitors entered at Diagon Alley where they could browse many of the shops.

Eeylops Owl Emporium had a selection of owls as well as owl treats!

Ollivander’s Wand Shop

With a selection of wands.

Flourish & Blott’s Bookstore

Where Harry and friends can buy their school books.

Every student must stop at Madam Malkin’s Robes for all Occasions!

And of course, Quality Quidditch Supplies!

We also had the Hogsmeade shop, Honeydukes.

Where you can find Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, Fudge Flies, and Droobles Best Blowing Gum.

Butter Beer!

Fizzing Whizzbees, Cockroach Clusters, Blood Pops, Chocolate Frogs, Licorice Wands, and Pumpkin Juice are available.

And you can’t forget Ton Tongue Toffee, Fairy Floss, Pepper Imps, and Dumbledore’s beloved Lemon Drops!

Now we enter Hogwarts. Our first stop is the potions classroom, with none other than Snape brewing several potions.

Where he brews from Moste Potent Potions.

With all kinds of creepy ingredients.

Watch out for the Hand of Glory!

A potion bubbles and spurts in the corner.

The Great Hall is set for dinner.

It wouldn’t be the Great Hall without floating candles!

Anyone for a game of Wizard’s chess?

What can you see in the crystal ball in Divination class?

Herbology is Neville’s specialty.

Watch out for the screaming mandrake!

Can you turn a snail into a teapot?

That’s the lesson being covered in the Transfiguration classroom.

In the Entrance Hall you can check out one of the portraits, check the counters to see which house is in the lead for the house cup, or take a look at the Goblet of Fire.

See the smoke and blue flame?

Here are some of the how-to pictures.

I built the Dementor by pounding a metal fence post into my garden, then I wired a long piece of PVC to it. The flexibility of the PVC pipe made it so the Dementor swayed ominously in the wind.

I shaped his torso, arms, and “tail” out of chick wire, with a styrofoam block for a head. I painted all of this black so the the shiny chicken wire wouldn’t show through the fabric.

I made the Dementor’s hands out of wire, wrapped in regular masking tape. Then I spray painted them gray, and went over with a light coat of black, making sure not to cover the gray completely.

After attaching the hands, I just covered the Dementor in layers of black dyed cheesecloth and black sheer fabric I picked up cheap at a rummage sale. I made sure to tear all the edges and leave long tatters hanging down.

He was sufficiently scary. Every once and a while he would move in the wind and startle us, and freak out our dog.

I didn’t want kids grabbing at all the props, so I took plastic cauldrons from the dollar store and filled them with a quick dry cement. Before it set, I put in a piece of PVC painted gray (It was cut to length at Menard’s, where I bought it. I added a “T” connector on the top to run rope through. Once the concrete was dry a gave it a base coat of green, then dry brushed a coat of glow-in-the-dark green paint. With the black lights in my garage, the glowing, lumpy concrete looked like a bubbling potion!

My goblet of fire started with a plywood base on which I screwed a length of closet pole. From there I just cut a hole in each piece and slid it over the pole to secure. The top and bottom are made of pressed paper rose cones. The star shaped platform is just cut from foam core. Then I used things like soup cans, margarine containers, and an oatmeal container.

After it was all assembled, I added a blue spot light inside, and hid the cord under the paper mache’ rocks. Some paint, and gel stain and we have a Goblet of Fire. I used “smoke” oil drops from a model railroad (available at any hobby store). I just squirted a few drops onto the hot spot light bulb and got the blue flame/smoke effect.

Before it was Hogwarts, it was just a garage. The “stone” walls are from scene setters. Details like the gargoyles and lots of battery operated candles brought it all to life.

I spent a few dollars on the hanging flame lights, stone walls, and life sized Snape, but almost everything else was either something I already had, or fashioned out of finds from thrift stores, rummage sales, and the dollar store. Even the old beat up student desk was only $2.00.

If you have any questions on how any of the props were made, just ask in comments. I’ll be happy to share.

Read “Spirits of the Corn” here as well as other frightening tales.

I’m thrilled to have my story “Spirits of the Corn” featured in the October Issue of eFiction Magazine. If you like a good fright, I highly recommend you read this issue, It’s chock-full of Halloween horror. I enjoy scary stories, and LOVE Halloween. I admit, I have a bit of a dark side.

As much as a fictional tale of terror can inspire nightmares, I have a ghost story to share that is absolutely non-fiction.

When my husband and I bought our first home, there was no history of horrible crime, death, or unexplained noises. Other than us being the tenth occupants in its forty years, there was nothing special about the house.

At the time Duffy, our border collie mix, was in his later years and quite sedate. Sometimes, our neighbors had to step over his sleeping body on the porch to get to the door; not much of a watch dog. So I was quite surprised one afternoon, when he refused to come in the house. Not as in, I’m-napping-in-the-warm-sun-bug-off, don’t want to come in; but tail-tucked-hackles-raised-feet-firmly-planted-not-a-chance-in-heck-I’m-coming-in-there, don’t want to come in.

When I finally dragged the struggling animal in the door, he took one look down the basement stairs, snarled, then turned tail and ran. I finally found the terrified pooch hiding under a table, and when I bent down to talk to him, my normally lethargic dog snapped at me. This was the worst episode, but there were others when our dog seemed nervous, and had a problem with the basement in particular.

A side note, purely for effect, but absolutely factual: our house was a Dutch colonial – the Amityville Horror house, was a Dutch colonial. And in our basement there was a funky little storage room tucked under the concrete front porch. To enter it, you had to climb through a small opening in the basement wall. The opening was covered with a thick wooden door complete with wrought iron latch. The room’s craggy walls and ceiling were covered in cobwebs, and floor was nothing more than dirt. Other than peeking in when we bought the house, we never went in there or used it for anything. It was just too creepy. Only in the movies would someone ACTUALLY go in there, despite the audience screaming not to.

There was also the sound of running footsteps, always late in the evening. It’s a two-story house and the footsteps were always heard from the living room on the first floor, so we knew it wasn’t just a squirrel on the roof. Our son was a year and a half old, so when we heard the foot steps racing above our heads, we naturally assumed that he had climbed out of his crib and was sprinting around his room. Every time we’d hear the thump, thump, thump, of running feet, we’d race upstairs to find our son sound asleep. We found this occurrence curious and intriguing, but not frightening.

The event that hammered home that something other-worldly might be going on happened many months later. I’d laid down next to our son, who was now in a big bed and had trouble settling for the night. My back was starting to ache from lying so still. He had been quiet for a while, but I wasn’t brave enough to move yet.

I was longing to go back down to the living room, so I turned my gaze from the darkened room out into the brightly lit hallway. There, in the doorway, stood the silhouette of a man. I assumed my husband had come up to check on us. I held a finger to my lips to warn him not to say anything, lest our son wake up. I turned my head, for just a moment, to check if our son was truly asleep. When I turned back, the man was gone.

Although my original assumption had been that the figure had been that of my husband, the way he seemed to appear and disappear without so much as a creak of the stairs bothered me. The whole episode was so brief, I questioned whether or not it had been real. Had I imagined it? Maybe, I had unknowingly dozed off and dreamt it. But it felt real.

When I was sure it was safe for me to leave, I went downstairs to find my husband sitting on the sofa reading the newspaper. I sat down next to him. “Did you come up to check on us?”

My husband lowered the paper, his eyebrows drawn together. “Why do you ask?”

“I thought I saw you outside the door,” I answered.

Dropping the paper into his lap, my husband shook his head. “Wow, that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?” I questioned.

He paused. “Have you ever had one of those times, when you see something moving out of the corner of your eye, but when you look, there’s nothing there, so you just write it off as your imagination?”

I nodded.

“Well,” he said, “I was sitting down here reading the paper while you were upstairs and I could have sworn someone went up the stairs.”

My flesh tightened into goosebumps so hard it was almost painful.

Now I can hear some of you screaming in your head, “Run away! Get out of the house!” It’s never that easy. Maybe we really just had a senile dog, funky thumping floorboards, and overactive imaginations. We also considered the fact that if there really was a ghost involved, he certainly didn’t seem mean-spirited, rather he seemed friendly, checking in on us, keeping an eye on our child.

Was it a ghost, or did my husband and I have some kind of simultaneous imaginary event, each of us on a different floor of the house? I leave that up to you. But I have to admit, I really like the ghost theory better.

Did I mention how much I love Halloween?

Tag: halloween

A Literary Halloween

Fiction of Fright…or not…fiction that is.