Origin Story
Description
How it Could Have Been Better
Specs
The Three Overwhelmingly Cool Aspects of the Party
Sample Sound Effect of the Night of the Event:
Image Gallery of the Night of the Event

Origin Story:

This party was semi-designed to be dual-purpose. We had the Torture Party Friday night with my friends, and then I had a smaller Twilight move themed party (Vampires and Werewolves) for my daughters Saturday night.

Description:

I hadn’t done a party in some time, and I thought it would be fun to throw a Halloween party with more props than I usually make. Overall this party started out as a “Vampire, Werewolf, Frankenstein, Mummy” Classic Monster Party, but I added the Torture/Execution/Dungeon bit later. This party I was Frankenstein’s Monster and my girlfriend was The Bride of Frankenstein’s Monster. I put black visqueen plastic on my driveway and then dumped tons of free mulch I got from our dump to make a cemetery. I made a cemetery fence and gate, filled the cemetery with gravestones and graves. Some of the graves had faux bones in them and one of the graves had a combination of faux bones and real bones (haha I didn’t expect this but the next night, I still hadn’t picked up the yard, and some coyotes came up my street and carried off some of the real leg bones (actually deer) on one of my “humans”. I saw this with my own eyes out the third story window). I made “Vlad the Impaler Poles” which I put slightly animatronic dummies on. All of them moved slightly in one joint on occasion, and one of them was moaning and coughing incessantly. For this I used m own voice, and this unnerved my children. The cemetery was covered in fog from several fog machines and the sound of a storm with thunder and scary music played. When you got to the tree going up to the deck where you walk to my front door, I had a sensor detect your presence and a hidden speaker in the bushes made a really loud snarling dog effect to cause a startle scare. Past that, I had a guillotine that you had to walk under, with the head holding part on hinges like a gate. The blade was a real metal blade and would randomly drop and reload via a pneumatic cylinder. The blade was relatively sharp but would only drop to above 6′ 5″. I’m 6’3″. Once in the house we had decorations, but nothing so dramatic. For the drink, I made a non-alcoholic lemonade, and I bought a brand new toilet and painted it with gross yellow and brown paint in the bowl and then sealed the whole thing with food grade silion,and made the toilet “flush” into a tank below the toilet. In the tank I had a pump that would pump the flushed lemonade back into the tank of the toilet at the top ready for flushing again, and I gave guests a ladle to get lemonade to drink, and anyone could flush anytime. Some guests wouldn’t drink from it! I also made a little poster in the bathroom so that you could read while using it – which contained the last words of several people at their death or execution. My favorite was assassinated Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, who’s last words were “Don’t let it end like this. Tell them I said something.” I also put a copper wire around the left and right half of the toilet seat and ran it through a transformer to a 9 volt 1 amp power source. I also hooked the bathroom light to my IMS controller (like everything else) and a very large speaker that let out a scream. When you pushed the button it would turn out the light, wait one second, and let out a blood-curling scream out from the speaker while sending the voltage to the coil for one-half second. That was quite interesting after the booze started to flow. I did have to clean up a lot in that room. For the second party I handed the keyfob to my youngest daughter and said “have fun” and they were doing this to their friends at the party.

How it could have been better:

Despite making the inside of the house Twilight themed and less intimidating for my younger daughters, I did nothing to the front yard and cemetery in the driveway, and my girls were scared coming into the house and were scared afterwards and it was a poor decision on my part. They did like the Twilight theming and in particular the vampire and werewolf cupcakes I made. The adult party was more of a traditional party, so there’s not much more I could have done given the constraints I had.

Specs:

Date: October 23, 2009
Level Party: “C”
Food: I don’t recall
Drink: Open Bar
Canned Music: My family’s standard list of hard rock and classic Halloween songs
Live Entertainment: Gypsy Moon
Staff: My Personal Assistant helped me with some things before the event
Staff hired: None
Actors: None

The “Three Overwhelmingly Cool” aspects of the party that we relied upon to make the party successful were:

This concept didn’t exist yet! It was not something I had come to any conclusion was important yet, and my events were just beginning to have props and an entrance scene etc.

Sample Sound Effect of the Night of the Event:

This sound I recorded is my voice – I put a speaker in the head of one of the Vlad the Impaler dummies hanging on poles out going threw them, which had a hood over the head so you couldn’t see the face, and looped this sound coming out the speaker. The head moved up and down a little every once in a while, as did a leg move slightly on this dummy. The other dummies didn’t move (dead). The interesting thing is that when I led my daughters through the scene for the first and only time into the house for their party, they both recognized my voice and hated it. I didn’t think they’d recognize my voice since I’m not speaking at all in the audio.

Image Gallery of the Night of the Event:

These are guest Peter Gray’s images. I can’t seem to find which hard drive has my photos on them.