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Whew!  I am so glad to be done with October, Halloween, and the Haunted House.  I can finally have my life back! 

This year, Bug finally got to be Harry Potter for Halloween.  I made his robe, my parents bought the wand when they were at the Renaissance Festival in KC a few weeks ago, my sis-in-law had given him the glasses a few years ago, and my uncle had a Gryffindor tie.

Awesome was Dr. Peter Venkman.  I made the jumpsuit, and Jeremy made the proton pack.  Since Awesome was a Ghostbuster last year, J just improved the pack he had made last year.  He added stickers, changed the gun, and added a speaker and an MP3 player equipped with the Ghostbusters theme song and some of Peter's quotes from the movies.

The other thing that took up a lot of my time was the annual haunted house.  Everything was set up and pretty much done a week before opening night.  Then, the fire marshall came.  He hit almost all the haunted houses within 25 miles around us in all directions.  I only heard of 1 that got a thumbs up his first time around.  A few (like ours) had to make adjustments, and a couple even had to close down completely.  We had 3 days to do 3 months worth of work.  Most of it was just a matter of taking down the black plastic we used to cover existing walls and make new walls, but that takes a LOT of time.  Not only that, but we needed black plastic, and the only flame retardent plastic we could get in time was cream.  Luckily the town board gave us the OK to just paint the walls black, and one of the local handymen brought in his sprayer and was done within just a couple of hours.

Despite one of the local news agencies reporting we were closed, we still had 400 people come through over the two nights we were open.

This is most of the cast.  The only ones missing are me, my mother- and father-in-law, and one other guy who wasn't there when this picture was taken.

This year, my nephew led the groups through.  This is one thing that I think sets our HH apart from most others.  When I've gone to haunted houses in the past, they just let you in, and you have to find your own way through.  We create a bit of a story, and the groups are led through by a somewhat scary, but mostly entertaining leader.  We also like to add a bit of comic relief in a couple of the rooms, but our leader is usually the main source.

This was our vortex.  It's hard to get the full effect on film, but it is AWESOME!  It's usually pitch black, except for the green light, and with the fog swirling, it makes you feel like your in a tube that is rolling.

I'll leave you today with a little video of Awesome imitating the way the Ghostbusters walk during the theme song at the end of the old cartoons! I apologize for all the background noise - it's harvest time, so both elevators have their dryers going constantly, and it's pretty noisy.