HALLOWEEN HOUSE CONTEST

CityTV & Rogers Pumpkin Patrol team up this Halloween to created a contest in the GTA for the Best Decorated Halloween House. The winner would receive a $500.00 cheque for the charity of their choice and would be featured on-air on CityNews @ 6:00 pm on Halloween night.

So my family and I decided to enter my home haunt into the contest. I was the first house to be featured on CityNews at 6:00 PM on Monday October 26th, 2009 with Michael Kuss.

I continued to watch the other entries religiously throughout the week, and was convinced that I lost because I was competing against other creative home haunters. To my surprise I received a call late on Friday night, informing me that I had won the contest.

I was so excited to be able to donate the $500.00 to Sick Kids Hospital along with all the other cash donations we received during the last week of October. But more importantly it's rewarding to receive the recognition for all the hard work that went into creating this home haunt every year for the community to enjoy.

HAPPY FRIDAY THE 13TH

Happy Friday the 13th, everyone. Are you scared? Well, you paraskevidekatriaphobics (you poor saps afflicted with a morbid, irrational fear of Friday the 13th) should be.

Centuries ago, the witches of the north observed the sabbath by gathering in a cemetery in the shadows of the moon. On one gathering, the Norse goddess, Freya (the origin of "Friday"), came down from her sanctuary in Valhalla and appeared before the group, who numbered 12. Freya gave them one of her cats, completing what came to be known as a witches' coven. Ever since then, a perfectly-numbered coven has comprised exactly 13.

BTW, I'll be posting information and pictures shortly of my 2009 Halloween!

ANOTHER PROP PROJECT COMPLETED

I'm happy to have another project completed for my cemetery, I spent the weekend upgrading my old store bought tombstones.

I've never really been happy with my old tombstones because I've always had a hard time keeping them standing up straight when they are placed in the ground.

In the past I've used either wooden or rebar stakes, but they look like crap from behind or snap if there's a big gust of wind.

This year I purchased 2"x 6" wood lumber, I cut the wood to match each tombstone to size, drilled holes into both the wood and tombstone, placed 8" spiked nails filled with construction adhesive foam board into the tombstones. I then drilled two additional holes on each side of the wood to pound nails threw into the ground and painted the wood grey to match the tombstones.

Next year I plan on making many of my own custom tombstones.

MY NIECE MEGAN IS A VAMPIRE

I just found out that my niece Megan is a Vampire and I think it's great.

This would explain why I've never see her around during the day, I just thought she was like most teenagers that like to sleep all day.

Megan will be handing out candy on Halloween night to all the kiddies, I hope she doesn't get thirsty!

TRICK R' TREAT SAM PROP

I'm very excited about the new addition to the Thornhill Woods Haunted House family for Halloween 2009.

My friend Brian Lashchuk from Beyond the Grave Productions created a new custom prop for me from the soon to be released horror movie "Trick r' Treat" (Out on DVD October 6th, 2009).

HALLOWEEN CANDY

Last year we had approximately 2,300 kids visit the Thornhill Woods Haunted House on Halloween night and another 400 kids from the local public school Carville Mills a few day before Halloween.

We know this because we counted the candy that was donated and what we had purchased. Believe it or not, we ran out candy around 9:00 pm and still had many kids coming to our door.

This year I'm happy to say that we were able to get two major sponsors to help us out with the overwhelming amount of trick 'r treaters, which will also help us increase the donations that we give to Sick Kids Hospital every year.

Old Dutch Foods for the second year in a row has graciously donated potato chips.

Cadbury is a confectionery company that manufactures chocolate, gum and candy. This year they have also agreed to help us out by donating various products from their Maynards line.

Most off all, thank you to all of you for your generous donations to Sick Kids Hospital.

PROJECTOR TOMBSTONE

I can't believe it's only 40 days until Halloween!

What ever free time I have in the evenings and weekends, I spend on getting all my props and decor ready for another spooky Halloween season.

I attended the Transworld Haunt show earlier this year in St. Louis and picked up some new props for my haunt. One of them is a custom banner from Illusionator who specializes in full-color, photo quality, custom banners and signs for haunted attractions.

I wanted to in close my porch area and create a haunted hallway for the kids to walk through to get to the garage area where my laboratory is. So, I had a custom banner made up 21' x 10' and had it match the brick and stone work on the outside of my house. I also had two of my windows copied onto the banner, one window will have a five foot terrifying skull face coming out of it with moving eyes. The other window will be plain, but will have projected movies played continuously throughout the night with creepy ambient music.

Once I hang the banner up later in October I'll take some photos, in the mean time I've been busy creating a tombstone to hide the projector and DVD player that will be playing my movies on the banner. Most tombstones are made out of Styrofoam, but I wanted mine to be extra sturdy because of what it's holding, so I made it out of 3/4 plywood. I purchased a Styrofoam tombstone from from a local Halloween store and glued it onto the wood, picked up some crows, foam letters, and a leaf vine from Michael's and painted everything with three different colours of paint.

Be sure to check back more frequently now that Halloween is getting closer because I have more exciting news to share about the Thornhill Woods Haunted House this year.