OK, so maybe I am obsessed. Yes, I admit it. But not over a girl. No, I obsess over Halloween. I love the holiday- it is the one season when I am allowed to express my creativity without any restrictions. Anyone can buy a costume and give out candy. It takes a special, shall I say "twisted" individual to come up with this kind of scene. Maybe two twisted imaginations... ROC's and mine.

Anyway, the pictures and video below are from this Halloween 2002. I hope you enjoy!

This is a shot of my cemetery. Ghoulio Iglesias guards the stones. He is about 6 feet tall and floats gracefully, illuminated by blacklight (and, in this case, flash). He is 1" X 1" wood struts, PVC counterbalances, and a latex mask and shoulder piece with Glow-in-the-Dark highlights. He hangs from a PVC T-bar hanging on a twisted support wire running from my porch to a tree in the corner of my property. The Vampyre Bride hangs on the back end of the T-bar acting as counterbalance. The stones are styrofoam insulation cut with a hand jig saw and battery-powered cutting tool. The skeletons are store-bought... I promise. There are two sources of blacklight- the twin-tube utility shell being held up by the skeleton groundbreaker and the single-tube stand-alone behind Ghoulio. Another light source is the silk flame skull next to the stone behind Ghoulio. It is there to illuminate the color in the Vampyre Bride... she looked incredibly eerie in the flickering light!

Ghoulio's head illuminated by blacklight. He is not for the weak of heart. Maybe I should have one of those sign- "Pregnant women..." etc. Never occurred to me.

What 6' Ghoulio would be complete without his Bride's decapitated head? Floating in the back, acting as counterbalance, is the Vampyre Bride's decapitated head floating low. I found her at Spencer Gifts. Ron and I both agree that she is by far the best purchase this year.

A midrange shot of the Vampyre Bride illuminated by blacklight and silk flame. She is evil looking! I love her!

A flash shot of the Vampyre Bride. To this day, I'll never know why that string is white. I tried flat black spray paint, but it just kinda flaked off. I'll replace it next year with black nylon. The veil is held up behind her by black string. I painted her eyes with a clear UV-reactive fingernail polish to get her eyes to glow under blacklight... very cool!

OK, talk-through Borisi (yes, the plural of "Boris" is "Borisi") nicknamed Skully and Molder. They have been modified- the "micro-bone" was cut off and replaced with a mono headphone jack. I then added a Radio Shack stereo-to-split-channel adapter. I also imported some of my favorite sound files, including Abbott and Costello's "Who's on First" routine, into my Mac. Using audio editing software, I created stereo tracks, then edited them so that each voice was exclusively left or right channel. Burned these sounds on a CD (including several tracks of silence of various lengths for effect), plugged the Radio Shack adapter into a portable CD player set for Random Repeat, and turned on the skulls with no voice modification. They spent the evening talking to each other in synchronized conversation!