Halloween Experience
   
         

  > INTRODUCTION
a fascination with imagination
  > THEME PARK MAGIC
inspirational rides and attractions
  > A PHANTOM PLOT UNFOLDS
a 2003 test from Disneyland ideas
  > THE HAUNTING BEGINS
five years of Halloween, 2004-2008
> BACK FROM THE GRAVE
2010-2011 with new technology
  > A 2013 RESURRECTION
a mix of new and age-old effects
  > DAWN OF THE UNDEAD
2014 show, part one
  > THE ZOMBIES EMERGE
2014 show, part two
  > A CHANGING CONCEPT
2015 show, part one
  > BUILDING PNEUMATIC FIGURES
2015 show, part two
  > ROLL UP, ROLL UP!
2015 show, part three
  > INTO THE TUNNEL...
2016 show, part one
  > MAKING MONSTERS MOVE
2016 show, part two
  > TO HELL AND BACK
2016 show, part three
  > SHARPENING THE SENSES
2017 show, part one
  > A MAGNETIC ATTRACTION
2017 show, part two
  > THE BIG EXECUTION
2017 show, part three
  Showtime!    
  At 5.30pm on Monday 31st October 2016, the Tunnel of Hell opened! Around 300 visitors came to see us across the evening! I was surprised by how much people of all ages seemed to enjoy it, and many wanted to go through it a second time, or even a third! The tunnel gave many people a scare, and it was huge fun seeing how they reacted to the shocks and surprises inside.

Let’s have a closer look at the journey through the Tunnel of Hell.
 		  
  Entering the tunnel...    
   
  The entrance to the tunnel was quite imposing, up-lit in red, with flickering torches on the walls either side. These were metal sconces with LED tape coiled around the inside. The sign lettering above the entrance was made from more 6mm MDF cut out with a jigsaw.  
    < I always think that adding signs like these add a bit of extra fun and also get visitors more attuned as to what they're about to see; they played a part in ramping up the suspense ahead of entering the tunnel.

> A sign to explain the tunnel to visitors. 		   
  I felt that it was important to keep the lighting inside the tunnel quite minimal, with just enough so people could see where they were going (!) but dim enough that it would appear gloomy and intimidating. I thought that a passageway leading into the darkness was just what was needed to fire up people's imaginations - perhaps the most powerful tool to generate fear!  
 

Only five PAR 16s with red gel were used to internally light the tunnel, mounted at various points at the top of the walls. I positioned most of these so that they were more or less shining in the direction of visitors as they walked through, making it harder to see what was coming up! Creating a more dimly-lit tunnel would also help to intensify the effect of the lighting from each scene as it was triggered.

One thing I particularly liked was how the pieces of brickwork vinyl on the walls really came to life under the red lighting. As these were lit by different PAR 16s, when each light flickered, different sections of brick also dimmed, which helped to make the tunnel's interior look more strange and unworldly. 		     
    Upon entering, visitors were confronted with the first scene. In front of them, through a scrim, a man was visible, bound to a chair with rope. Suddenly, a big swarm of wasps began flying around the man, while a loud, angry buzzing was heard. The man rocked back and forth in the chair, screaming and wailing in agony.

This scene was based around the Vestibule stage of Dante’s Inferno; the entrance to Hell. Here, those that were indecisive in life were punished by being ‘stung into action’ with wasps and hornets. It was an interesting process thinking about how best to create the illusion of all these wasps; eventually I decided to do it with a projection. 		 
     
  An ultra-short throw projector, set back from the window by about a metre, was used for this. The projection’s default state was a flat red image on the surface of the scrim, looping from a DVD. Upon triggering the effect, a DVD track was then started containing the sounds for the scene, and the video of the wasps flying in and around (graphics created specifically for the effect).

It looked very effective; the scrim allowed for the wasps to be clearly seen, but the red lighting behind it also made it possible to see the figure in the chair through it. The scrim’s translucency also gave the scene a nice ethereal, hazy appearance. 		   
    The figure in the chair was moved using a windscreen wiper motor! I had originally planned to use a pneumatic cylinder to move him, but his top half was very heavy, and I felt it would be too much of a demand on the relatively small air compressor. The wiper motor had enormous torque (you didn’t want to get your hand in the way of it!) and it made easy work of moving him back and forth. The figure had to be tightly fixed to the chair to prevent him from falling off when moving! The motor was switched on and off via a relay operated by the scene’s controller board.

This was my favourite effect in the tunnel as I thought the projection worked really well, and I loved the overall look of it. 		 
    See this first scene and its workings in action
(.mp4, 13.9mb)		  
                                                             
  Turning right and moving further into the gloom, visitors came across the second scene...

This was a figure hanging in chains, lurking in the darkness. When visitors came near, he suddenly moved towards the window, wailing and pleading for them to help him! This was a great shock effect, giving many a scare!

I liked the use of the big chains here, as they made him rattle and crash about a lot more as he moved. I found quite a vicious-looking big fake hook too, which was hung menacingly close to him!		    
      The figure (previously my 2014 Pepper’s Ghost!) was mounted on a frame which was screwed into the old tree stump. This needed screws of enormous length as the wood was quite rotten!

A PAR 16 above the figure was switched on each time he was triggered, giving a cold, steel blue, down-lit appearance, contrasting nicely with the red light in the tunnel.

He was usually in semi-darkness, which of course helped to create a shock when he suddenly lit up and moved forwards!

The sound for this scene was played as a digital file from one of the AdaFruit Audio FX boards in the main control box. 		   
  See the figure in action!
 (.mp4, 5.7mb)		                
      Moving further round the corner, visitors encountered a big troll-like monster holding a large rock above his head! Lit up by strobe light flashes, he then brought the rock down towards the visitors with a loud roar!

But suddenly another troll, also with a rock, appeared behind them! Both bashed their rocks angrily before disappearing back into the darkness.

These figures worked brilliantly, and one thing I hadn’t anticipated was the added bonus of the wire mesh on the window.

Originally I had put the mesh in to prevent visitors from being able to touch the effects, or escape the tunnel via an unconventional route! But it also gave the figures something to bang into, which made a great loud crashing noise, and this intensified the overall effect!

I deliberately put these two figures opposite each other in the tunnel; my hope was that a visitor reacting to the first troll suddenly appearing, would then be startled again by the other troll bashing against the window directly behind them! 		   
         
  > This is one of my drawings showing early ideas for the scene (these figures were originally known as the 'giants').

Here I've suggested putting strobes above the figures, and scrim fabric behind the mesh. In the final setup however, the strobes went underneath the figures to up-light them, and the scrim was not added, as the figures were normally in darkness and so would already be hidden. 		    These figures were inspired from Circle IV of Dante’s Inferno, a place in Hell reserved for Hoarders and Wasters. Here, there are souls whose punishment is to ram enormous rocks into each other. I adapted this idea slightly to make two troll-like monsters who appear to be trying to hurl rocks at our visitors!

And what about those rocks...well, using actual rocks was thankfully not an option, so the ones held by the figures were made out of paper mache, something I’ve not done since I was about five years old, so that meant a lot of fun getting sticky with newspaper and PVA glue for the first time in about twenty years!
 		  
                                                             
  See the trolls move!
(.mp4, 11.1mb)		              
  At the second corner of the tunnel, visitors saw ghostly trapped souls, floating ominously in the gloom. A reaper figure with arms outstretched gazed up at them from below. I decided to include this scene after seeing a craft tutorial by Ashley Phipps on SimplyDesigning, who came up with the original idea for the heads, and I thought that I should have a go at making some myself!

I had originally intended to put a UV tube along the base of the window, in the hope that the white gauze would fluoresce under UV light as the heads floated up and down. However, I discovered later that the heads actually did diddly squat under UV light, as the fabric didn’t have the necessary pigment (who knew?!). So in the end I cheated and aimed a blue PAR 56 at them! I think this actually improved the scene however, as the UV light would not have made the heads appear nearly as bright - their blue glow looked really spooky in the darkness.

This scene was very simple, with no controller required. Extending out on rods over the top of the tunnel, in line with the window, were three 20rpm motors that turned pulleys. The heads were attached to strong black fishing line (black to avoid the line being seen) and then fixed to the pulleys. 		     
    The motors turned the pulleys in one direction, winching up the heads until they hit stoppers just under the motors, which caused them to start turning the other way, and the heads started moving downwards again. This cycle repeated all evening, and I cut the pieces of line at different lengths so that the heads would become out of step with each other…some going up, some going down…it gave more variation to it.

In truth, this was probably my least favourite scene during the construction stage, as I wasn’t convinced that it would look any good, until I saw it working properly! Once it was all going, I thought the heads looked fantastic! The black thread disappeared completely into darkness, and it really did look like the heads were floating!

I also liked the way that this scene contrasted with the others in the tunnel. While the other scenes had figures that would jump out or attempt to startle you in some way, this was a comparatively gentle scene, but it still looked visually impressive and quite eerie.  		 
      See the effect working in this short clip
  (.mp4, 10.8mb)		  
                                                             
  The tunnel needed a climactic scene to finish, and I thought a good way to do this would be for visitors to come face to face with the devil himself! He was positioned in a little alcove behind some bars (recycled from the 2015 wolfman’s cage!). When visitors came near, he would suddenly lean towards the bars and speak a demonic phrase!
 		  
  The devil was another pneumatic figure, which worked in the same way as the trolls. What I particularly liked about him was that he had two different phrases to speak (“Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” and “You! You who has dared to disturb this hellish place!”). These were stored on the second AdaFruit board in the main control box. When the effect was triggered, the board played a randomly selected phrase, giving the figure more variation.

Not only that, but I can now reveal that after all these years of building monsters and ghouls, I finally lent my voice to a figure in the Halloween Experience…the voice of the devil was me! (slowed down and made to sound a lot more demonic, but it was me!)
 
 		    
As a backdrop to this scene, I wanted to attempt the classic ‘silk billowing above a fan’ to create a flame effect. So a large piece of silk was stapled at the back of the scene, from floor to roof. A fan was put underneath, and a red PAR 56 behind it. The result was a great fiery effect that rushed upwards behind the devil figure, and made the whole scene look more imposing.
       
                               
      See the devil at work in this clip including early test footage of the flame effect (.mp4, 6.0mb)  
                               
  Having reached the end of the tunnel and escaped into the open air again, visitors found themselves in a more serene area in the porch, with lots of blue whirling and shimmering light. In front of them was a large mirror on the wall. A sign below urged them to gaze into the mirror and press the button below it to see what was in their soul. When they did, they saw a ghostly donkey's head suddenly appear in the mirror, with a startled “ee-awe” sound!

Now, if you’ve ever been to Blackgang Chine (and I have once or twice…!), you will know exactly where the inspiration for this final scene came from…Rumpus Mansion! The haunted attraction at the Isle of Wight theme park has a scene like this about halfway through, and I confess to liking it so much that I shamelessly copied it for the final part of the 2016 display! I used some music from this attraction too as the looping soundtrack for this scene.

I did add my own little spin on it by putting the donkey’s head on a pneumatic arm such that it moved up and down with the sound effect. Owing to the way this operated (the air pressure 'held' the head upright, and was then released to make it move downwards on cue) it was not possible to fit a regulator, so as a result it had full 3-bar air pressure to move it, making it a lot more violent than I’d first imagined (so much so that sometimes the whole wall shook as it moved!) but I think this gave it a more startled feel!		    
      How did the mirror work?

The part of the wall directly behind the mirror was cut out, to make a window that was bordered by the silver frame. Behind this was the donkey's head mounted on th e moving arm. Directly above it was a PAR 16 to light it up on cue. The head was then surrounded with black fabric. 		   
  The mirror was made from clear Perspex coated with a film that turned it into a one-way, or ‘half-silvered’ mirror. This meant that when the space with the donkey’s head was in total darkness, the Perspex behaved as a mirror. To help with this, I positioned another light above the mirror facing towards the visitors, so that they could see their own reflection clearly. When the head behind the mirror was lit up, it became visible through the Perspex. Looking through the one-way film reduced the apparent brightness by about 50%, which meant that the black fabric surrounding the head completely vanished, and the head itself had a nice floating, ghostly look to it.

This was actually the very first time I’d made a push button-activated effect for a show, and it provided quite a bit of fun. It reminded me of the buttons in the Magic Forest at Paultons Park, if you've been reading this section all the way from the very beginning...!		    
  See the mirror in action in this short clip
(.mp4, 6.7mb)		    
  The button had a light inside it which turned on when the effect was ‘ready’ (this effect had a 10 second ‘reset’ duration in place, just like the others) and it triggered an Arduino board, which controlled the two air valves needed to move the head, as well as triggering a VenueMagic SC+ timeline on a computer, which switched the light above the head on and off via a DMX dimmer, and also played the sound effect.

The main reason that I wanted to include this effect was that throughout the design of all of this I was conscious of the fact that very young visitors might not have felt brave enough to go through the tunnel, what with it being a lot more intimidating than previous years. But I still wanted them to feel part of it, so I kept the path open so that they could still walk to the front door and bypass the tunnel. I thought it would be good to have something animated in the porch that they too could also see, so the mirror scene went in. I also thought it contrasted well with the tunnel, acting as a finishing point and rounding off the whole experience (for those who braved the tunnel first!) in a fun way. 		 
  Journeying to Hell and back for Halloween 2016...  
   
    James's Tunnel of Hell tour
Let me be your guide on a behind the scenes
tour of the tunnel in this seven-minute feature
(.mp4, 90.9mb)		   Full attraction walkthrough
Experience the tunnel again with this great walkthrough perspective video
(.mp4, 36.7mb)		  
  I was so pleased with how much fun people had on their journeys through the tunnel. The project was pretty colossal but, as with all of these things, I found that the further I ventured into figuring out how everything was going to work, the more I felt compelled to see it through and build it! At the time it was by far the biggest and most complicated project I’ve done for Halloween - it makes me laugh to think that during the final week of installing, it all slotted together so well, with very few problems!

This was also the year that the Halloween Experience broke out into social media! Loads of people wanted to film it on their phones and tablets, and even take selfies with some of the monsters! Some of it ended up online, and I was lucky enough to see some of these videos a few days later. Hearing the screams, shrieking and laughter of people I'd never met was a bit like striking gold - that was how I had hoped the tunnel would entertain people when I first came up with the idea, so it was wonderful to see it for real.		  
  The tunnel was designed to entertain and slightly scare those who entered, and I think it did exactly that, to a wide age range of people. I suppose that because I'd come to know every inch of it, I had become de-sensitised to the things that people would encounter inside. But we certainly had a good few screams from both children and adults across the evening!

What I loved most about it was that it completely transformed the experience; instead of simply walking along the path and viewing a display, now visitors were part of the experience themselves! It was so much more immersive! Things jumped out and happened to THEM!

So many people said nice things about it, and seemed genuinely impressed! Some parents said afterwards that they had to persuade their children to go inside, but once they had been through, they said that they were glad they changed their mind!

What was also great was that a lot of people wanted to go through it more than once! Watching it entertain a record number of people on that night  - twice as many as the previous year - made it one of the most enjoyable and rewarding things I’ve done.


Best part of the evening by far!!! Hope you continue it next year the kids loved it. Giving Baddesley a scary name for Halloween!  Eugene Glasspool

Both my kids look forward to your display every year. This was by far the best yet! Well done fellow ghoul lover!  Kathleen Lockyer

 (Comments received on this site from visitors to the 2016 display.)
 		    
  In the weeks that followed, it seemed obvious to me that the tunnel format could be re-themed to create something new in the future! It had never proved more popular with visitors, so there just had to be another! It would soon be time to get thinking up some new scares for 2017...