PumpkinBrain

Faites renaître Hauntcast de ses cendres!

2012-02-17T19:04:00.000-08:00

Last November, I learned a very sad news. The HauntCast Dungeon closed its doors. I do not know about you, but I was quite surprised by the news. I was not expecting this to happen at all. Despite my disappointment, I understood very
well why the Scream Team decided to stop doing the show. After all they, like us, had other responsabilities and priorities to attend to: some had a family to take care of, others were studying or working to get their business rolling.
But there still hope! We have the opportunity to revive Hauntcast by March 8, 2012! To achieve this, the Scream Team needs 250 people to stand up and subscribe to HauntCast for a year at the price of $100: the equivalent to 8 movie tickets in my town.
As of yesterday, the team had 70 subscribers. I can confirm that, as of today, there are 71 subscribers because I signed up a few hours ago.

For those of you who are already a member, thank you! For those who are not registered yet, I could try to convince you by listing all the prizes that will be given if the revival of the show succeed but
you can already see for yourself by visiting the homepage of HauntCast website. Rather, I will take a deep breath and explain why I chose to cut $ 100 off my 2012 Halloween budget and register.

I was introduced to HauntCast through a post from a blog in January 2009. I listened to episodes 2 and 3 and was totally seduced. There are very few haunters near me. Without the existance of
blogs, forums and communities on the web I would be mostly alone, left to myself. Although blogs, forums and communities informs me, amuses me and motivates me, I find much more motivation through podcasts. Why?
I think it's because I have not the opportunity to interact, personally, with people who share my passion. The podcast helps me on this level because, even if I don't have the opportunity to talk with anyone, I have at least
the possibility to hear other people talk about their love for Halloween. And that, my friends, have a price that I am willing to pay for. In addition to helping me feel less isolated, HauntCast

Makes me laugh;

Keeps me updated on horror movies;

Informs me about many facets of Halloween and

Teaches me techniques that help me improve my yard display through the Theater of the mind, the Prop shop and Interview with haunting gurus.

Finally, HauntCast introduced me to several suppliers from whom I buy stuff regularly to build my props. For all these reasons, I missed HauntCast since November. I sincerely hope to have the chance
to hear the Scream Team again starting this April. However, this does not depend on me but the rest of the community. If you did not register yet and you loved the show, please consider subscribing. If
$100 is too big an amount to pay up front, you can also register by doing smaller monthly payments of $16.66. Besides, you get a ton of discounts if you choose to subscribe. Go check it out on the HauntCast website.

2011 yard display video

2011-11-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

Finally, I got enough time to put the video of my 2011 display on YouTube. Sorry for the poor quality of the video, my camera is not doing very well in dark places and I must admit that I'm not very good at filming too.

Although it was cold, we got a very nice night on Halloween. We got a total of 204 Trick-r-treaters this year. It is less than last year but considering that it was a monday night and not a weekend day, it is a good number of TOT compared to other areas of the city.

On the technical note, since 2009, because there was not a lot of wind, this was the first year that I could have a decent fog in my cemetery. Too bad my fog chiller was broken and that I did not had the time to fix it before the night of nights. Fixing and improving my fog chiller is one of the projects that I have on my todo list for 2012. Also, I still need some work to do on the lighting of my display. There was not enough LED spotlight. I will need to do some more for 2012.

I should be posting pictures of the display soon so you can take a better look at what I added to my display this year. Have a nice weekend everyone!

An award for me!

2011-11-13T17:54:00.000-08:00

The Liebster Award have been bestowed upon me. A big thank to Spookworks for the honor. I'm happy to know that my ramblings gave ideas to some of my reader.

Now that I got my 2 minutes of glory, it is time to take my responsabilities and apply the rules that goes with the award: I must pass the award to 5 deserving blogs that have less than 100 followers.

So... is it the time yet? Start the rolling drums please... The awardees are:

GhoulishCop @ Devil's Eve - I found his blog at the beginning of this year. It was interesting to read about the pro

Grim @ Grimlock Manor

Jason @ Haunt the yard

Arcane @ The Scarecrow's Post

The Invisible Blogger @ The Nether Blog - I have not seen or read your blog yet. But once it is the case, you will be awarded!

And for all of you that did not have your name above, let me say that there are too much blogs out there that deserve an award. If I follow your blog, then, you can already consider to be awarded. And if I don't follow your blog yet, don't take offense, I just don't have much time right now to explore all the wonderful and interesting blogs. But I sure will get to it as time goes by. After all, I still have to find one blog with less than 100 follower to award

Halloween Infographics

2011-10-25T19:03:00.001-07:00

Someone sent me the links to two infographics related to Halloween. Found them interesting so I'm sharing those with you:

Halloween By The Numbers

Ghost-Proof Your House: 11 Ways the Superstitious Keep Evil Spirits at Bay

Who said Ouija?

2011-10-25T18:48:00.000-07:00

Someone sent me a message, a few days ago, about an online experiment that involves Ouija boards and Facebook. Even though I believe in spirits (sounds strange from the mouth of an IT guy), I'm not too fund of Ouija board. I know some close relative who had bad experience with them in the past and, call me chicken, I prefer not to play with these things. But I thought I would pass the word in case this experiment would interest some of my readers who are mor daring than me. Here is the content of the message:

We’ve been following your blog for a while now and I just wanted to get in touch to let you know of something exciting happening this Halloween that would interest your readers.

We’ve created an online experience and we’re looking for daring believers from around the globe to take part in the world’s largest ouija board this Halloween!

I know it sounds nuts, however we’ve been working on this for months trying to get this off the ground and with your help we can make history! This isn’t a half-hearted attempt either, we’ve looked at a new theory where electromagnetic fields generated by electrical devices resonate with EMF created by the presence of spirits.

We’re aiming to get at least 100,000 Facebook folks to connect and be involved in a truly unique one off event. It would be great if you can share this with your readers, as I know they’d find this of interest.

Here’s the website, let me know what you think: The Ouija Experiment

Flying witch

2011-09-19T03:09:00.000-07:00

Found this on YouTube while responding to a comment on one of my videos. Thought it would be nice to share the idea with you all.

Maybe I could do that in the future. But first I will have to make my cemetery fence, gate and a least one mausoleum for my flying crank ghost.

Ground-breaker

2011-08-04T14:11:00.000-07:00

Since 2007, my Halloween display theme is a graveyard. It includes a few tombstone, blue lighting for simulate moonlight, a few fog machines, a full-size toe pincher coffin and a zombie. It is nice, but it feels a bit empty. To correct this situation I have planned to create many things on a two year period starting with this year. One of those prop is a ground-breaker.

At the origin, this ground-breaker was supposed to become a scarecrow, like the one explained in the book "How to haunt your house", for the haunted trail of the Camping Luciole on July 16th. But as the project started, I felt this wasn't what I really wanted to achieve. Besides, following the find or a great mask on the Internet, I decided after starting the prop that the character I would incarnate in the haunted trail would be a scarecrow. As there was no more need for a static scarecrow in the haunt, I choose to convert was I had done so far to a ground-breaker.

I made him out of an old dusty Styrofoam skull and paper mache. I then sealed him with two coats of Spar urethane and painted him with one coat of exterior black paint and a mix of brown, red and white paint.

This prop is nothing exceptional compared of what other talented haunters have done. But I gained something out of it. I finally found a good way to build realistic looking hands out of paper mache. Looks like I am going to rebuild the bad looking hands of my stirring witch soon.

New design, new feel!

2011-08-03T17:19:00.000-07:00

At last, I finally managed to take a couple hours to rework the design of my website and blog. I took a few hours to ponder what kind of look I wanted to have and realized that I was looking for a more cheerful, childish look than a creepy one. I think my memories of what Halloween looked like in my childhood had a role in the choice of the colors and graphics I used to build the new design. I hope you enjoy the new look! I still have a few things to improve here and there but that's pretty much it. All I need is a talented someone to make me a cool design and I will be good to go. Now, that leads me to my next goal which will be to add more content in my how-to section for each new prop I make. That will be a good challenge for me as I do not have the habit to take notes and pictures on my projects progress. And finally I would like to post at least one a week on my blog. I've been neglecting my blog too much recently. Time to go, I have over 350 blog posts to read.

Have a nice evening everyone!

Home made LED spotlights

2011-06-01T08:00:00.000-07:00

One major problem we had last year at the camping Luciole haunted trail event was the lack of ligthing at night.
We didn't have enough power cords to insert lighting in the proper areas. So one of the things I want to add
this year to the haunted trail is proper lighting. It will have 3 purposes:

To help the people walking through the trail at night.

To add more ambiance to the trail.

To either highlight or hide certain props/actor for a scare.

Since getting power to the trail is an issue. I thought I could use LED spots powered on 9V batteries. One product
that is done for that purpose and that I love is the mini spotlight. I determined that I would need around 20
spotlights to light correctly the trail. So 20 spotlights times 11$ = 220$. That alone would drain my budget for
the camping Halloween. So instead of buying the mini spotlights, I decided to go the hard way and build them
myself.

Using the money I got for my 31st birthday, I bough 40 5mm LEDs and many different resistors that will match the different
uses I will have for them (mainly spotlights but I also have other projects that require LEDs). Then, I browsed
the web to look at how other people made their spots and finally came with my own design on how to do them. I had
several points that my design needed to address:

The spot would need to work on 9V battery and so the battery itself should be attached in some way to the spot armature.

The angle of the spot should be adjustable

The spot would need to be easy to fix into the dirt

Finally, the spot would be made on what I had on hand in my garage as most as possible to reduce the cost.

The final result is what you can see below. The spot is made of 1/2" PVC pipe with 2 1/2" PVC caps and one 3/4" to 1/2" PVC reductor.
The armature is made of 2 pieces of alumnum stock bolted togheter. The two alumnum piece form a U shape that gives
just enought space for the 9V battery to fit tighly in. Taking into consideration the price of all the material I already had at home,
the total cost of one unit of my spotlights is 5.25$. I made a total economy of 115$ for the 20 spotlights in exchange of 8 hours of work.
I'm quite happy with the ending of this project.

Did I mention that these spots are incredibly bright for their small size? Here's a picture I took of my lawnmower,
in my garage, at a distance of 18'.

Sentier de l'horreur

2011-05-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

I have been asked to prepare the haunted trail of the Camping Luciole that will be happening on july 16th. Although I wasn't totally satisfied of what I did last year, it appears that the folks at the camping loved the experience.

Last year, a coworker of mine, the camping owner, his brother and I made an improvised setup using some of my homemade props and the store-bought props of my coworker. We were not very well prepared (that was my fault) but we managed to get most of the thing working for the event in the evening. So this year, I decided the haunt will take another direction. Instead of bringing all my homemade props that I use in my Halloween display, I will build new props that will be dedicated to the haunted trail. Also, this year haunt will have a story line, which was not the case last year. And finally, I've been told I will have more actors available to bring the haunt to a higher level.

I'm not going to reveal everything about the haunted trail right now as there are many details that were not adressed yet. For now, I have one part of the storyline written and a few props are under construction. I will be updating my blog on the project as it takes form.

Now Playing...

2011-04-20T16:24:00.000-07:00

in a PC near you!

As if I didn't have enough things that distract me from building all the props my haunt will need this year...

Spooky video game music

2011-01-31T19:24:00.000-08:00

Coming from Chrono Trigger game(SNES and PlayStation). This music is nor creepy nor spooky but beautifully dark and magic.

Haunters Video Awards 2010

2011-01-31T18:58:00.000-08:00

I found some time last week to make and submit my first entry ever to the Haunters Video Awards DVD set. After seeing the entry of the funny and amazing Mr Macabre, I thought that would be nice of me to share my entry with you.

Now, the DVD set need a minimum of 50 entries to become a reality and there is currently only 37 entries listed on the Video Awards Website. If you have a video or pictures of your haunt and have a bit of spare time at hand, please submit your entry by following the instruction there. Think your haunt is too small or simple for the award? Don't worry about this and submit, it is always fun to look at what other haunters do! Deadline date is Feb 15, 2011. Hope to see your haunt in the entries list soon.

Finally

2011-01-13T19:38:00.000-08:00

All the little boys are asleep, dreaming of the upcoming years when they will help their father building a wonderfull Halloween display... Well... That's the plan.

Because the kids are all sleeping, this is a good time to post a picture of my 2 months child Gabriel.

If he is a little bit like is older brother, Gabriel will probably love Halloween. Édouard is fascinated by skulls and skeletons, he is always asking where the stirring witch is and his favorite movie is "The Nightmare before Christmas"... Looks like the next generation of haunter is on its way in the small town of St-Georges.

Spooky video game music

2011-01-13T19:29:00.000-08:00

Coming from one of my all time favorite PC franchise. This ambient song is part of the game "Thief: Deadly shadows" (released in 2004 if I remember well). It is played as you venture inside the main temple of the Hammerites order to rob them a precious artifact.

NES Orchestrated

2011-01-01T07:44:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, that is before I got childrens, I was a gamer. From time to time, I have some flashback about old video games that I enjoyed playing when I was a teenager or a child. I got that kind of flashbacks in the month of december. Using the iPad I won at the Christmas party of my company, I gathered many mesmerizing BGM from various video game that I will share with you from time to time until I get something of interest and more Halloween to say.

So, the first candidate will be a game from 1989 on NES called Shadowgate. This was an adventure game where the goal was to venture in a castle to prevent an evil warlock to open the gates of hell. I could explain all the details of the game but there is already a very good article about it on Wikipedia

About the music. I found two piece of the original soundtrack on YouTube. In my memories, the music was better, but I must keep in mind that NES was 8 bits and that even the best music would sound crappy in comparison of the digital music we enjoy in recent video games. Anyway, here are the to tunes:

Delving deaper into YouTube ShadowGate original and remixed tunes, I came across the remix of one man who is really worthy to hear. The guy orchestrated the two tunes above, and I must admit he did a wonderful job.

If that guy wants to orchestrate another old game, might I suggest orchestrating Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft Strahd's Possessions?

I got a nice surprise

2010-12-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

When I wake up on Halloween morning, a nice surprise was awaiting me outside. It snowed over my graveyard display during the night... The snow gave a nice finishing touch to the tombstones. Seeing the effect of the snow on my scene, I surprised myself whishing to get a bit more snow during the day. It did not happen but at least the existing one did not melt.

Although the day was cold (23F), this year was the most successfull Halloween we celebrated in this house so far. We got 260 happy trick or treaters and many good comments on our display. The only downside is that because it was on Sunday, most trick or treaters saw my haunt on daylight. They did not saw my new FCG and the witch and the cemetery was not as spooky. They will have to wait in 2011 for that.

2010 Haunt Video

2010-11-18T11:46:00.000-08:00

After many hours of fighting with YouTube video upload, there it is! The video of my 2010 haunt. There is not much to say. It is still a very simple display. I try to add as much as I can each year and I must admit that time was not on my side this year. Let's hope time and budget will be on my side in 2011, I have many prop ideas that are awaiting to be done.

Another important year for the Pumpkin family

2010-10-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

This year will be another important year in the pumpkin family. First, although it will already be the second Halloween of my little boy Édouard, this will be his first Trick'r Treating year. For the occasion, nothing less than a Dracula costume will do the trick. Hopefully, we found the perfect costume at rebate at the local Zellers store.

Also, we are awaiting the arrival of our next pumpkin sprout, Gabriel. He is scheduled to be born on November 3rd. Let's just hope he doesn't decide to get out of his mother in the three days that precedes Halloween, otherwise I won't be there to great the Trick'r treater and to distribute the 200 candy bags my wife and I carefully filled last Sunday.

What's next? I still have a lot to do before Halloween, I have a flying crank ghost, a stirring witch and a scarecrow to repair. Nothing has been installed outside yet, I will be installing a few things this weekend if the weather permits it. And finally, I'm afraid that I won't be on time to the SpiderFest 2010... Sorry Frog Queen, I really wanted to be part of it but life had other things planned for me...

Completed : The new pumpkin on the block

2010-10-02T11:55:00.001-07:00

Last weekend, I finished the painting of my new paper mache pumpkin. All it needs now is to be waterproofed with spar urethane and it will be ready for display on my front porch. My wife think that it look too black as if it was burnt... I like that look though, I think it give him a more evil look so I will most likely leave the painting as is.

3 Feet Grim Reaper

2010-09-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered how tall the Grim Reaper is? I remember questionning myself on that topic when I was a small child. I got my answer in my early 20s.

How about a different version of Dracula?

These videos come from the game Conker's Bad Fur Day (Conker Live & Reloaded) on
XBox. I didn't played that version but the original one on Nintendo 64... I really would like to have a copy of it in my collection... A very funny game.

SpiderFest 2010 Will I be on time...

2010-09-17T18:32:00.001-07:00

I hope so. I started building my project 2 weeks ago but I did not have enough material to complete it. I knew this would happen so before starting the project, I ordered what I needed thinking that it would arrive before I would run out of material. Unfortunately for me, I got an email Wednesday telling me that my order is backorder. They say they will get my material before September 23th and that they will ship it as soon as they get it. I just hope it is true... So please, send good energy and thoughs my way so I can get my spider delivered on time to the Davis Graveyard.

The new pumpkin on the block

2010-08-26T08:09:00.000-07:00

Today is a rest day for me. My doctor diagnosed me a bronchitis and a pneumonia. So I've taken the opportunity to make a round of all the blogs I follow. I though it would take 1 hour to do this but, in the end, it took me 3 hours... I guess I follow too much blog :-)

I wanted to build a new paper mache pumpkin for this year. I love paper mache but my talent with it is a bit limited. I just can't shape it exactly the way I want. So this year, I took a different approach and built a pumpkin with Aves paper mache powder. This stuff is exactly what I needed, all you need to do is add water to the powder until you get the consistency you want to work with (in my case, I mix water until it feels like concrete). I'm very happy with the result so far. I wasn't expecting it to look that good.

Compared to the pumpkin I did last year, this really is a good upgrade :-)

Once I'm done with this new pumpkin, I will be building my spider for SpiderFest 2010. I just hope I will get it done on time.

A more than late giveaway!

2010-08-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

Back to May 22, I announced on my blog that I was redoing my website and my blog design. I also announced that once the redesign would be done (which was supposed to be in the following days) I would be doing a small giveaway. Well, due to a few events that were out of my control and other priorities, I postponed the redesign of my website to an undetermined date.

But because its already mid August and that Autumn is coming our way and because the Dollar store is finally getting out their Halloween stuff, I decided it is time to make my giveaway.

This time, I will give to 2 of my fellow bloggers a Halloween Collection Pack from Dark Candles. And because I'm a generous soul, you will probably get something else too, I don't know what it will yet but that will something nifty too.

What you need to do to win my prize is very simple: You must be following my blog and write a comment in this post that tells us when you are using scented candles (except for your bedroom fantasies, we all use them for that purpose too). The winners will be known August 22th if I feel I have enough participant (I'm targeting 20 so tell your friends to come).

Best of luck to everyone!

Words of wisdom from an old invoice.

2010-08-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I stumbled upon this old invoice while classifying old paperwork that were accumulating in the drawers of my computer desk. Gave me back old memories of the time when my wife and I were still living at our parents house. This invoice comes from Cruella, a Gothic shop located in Montreal city. I bought on their web site, in 2003, a very nice black and red velvet top for my wife (which was my girlfriend at that time) for Christmas.

Now that the story of that invoice has been told, what I wanted to show you is the small phrase written under the website URL on it. It says:

"La conformité est la mort de l'âme."

which traduced in English means:

"Conformity is the death of the soul."

After reading it, last weekend, I took a few minutes and thought about the meaning of this phrase. Although I didn't took any attention to it in 2003, now I believe there is truth in these few words. What do you think?

Silent Hill 8

2010-08-04T18:13:00.000-07:00

While watching on YouTube some video of the next Metroid installment on the Wii, I came across a E3 trailer of Silent Hill 8. Yep, Silent Hill 8 should be release in 2011 for PS3. I've been a bit disappointed by Silent Hill Shattered Memories but this new installment looks promising enough. I will wait until it is released to make my opinion though... Here's the trailer, enjoy!

And for the Sci-Fi fan out there, here's the latest video of Metroid Other M. It will be release August 31th. I already ordered my copy. It looks really good!

Campers Halloween Video

2010-07-15T18:37:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was the Camper's Halloween at Camping Luciole in St-Philibert, Québec. I never did a haunt in a wood trail before so it was a first timer for me. With the help of the owner of the camping and two friends, we took the morning to assemble everything so the small children could come in the trail in the afternoon for some candies and grown-ups could come in the evening and night for a little bit scarier walk.

The haunt was partly made of store-bought props coming from my co-worker and most of my "home made" props (stirring witch, FCG, paper mache pumpkin and my upgraded Walmart tombstones).

The day went well though we got some technical problems: the ropes of the FCG got intertwined in the afternoon and since we did not have the time to fix it, it became a static prop for the evening. The stirring witch got some small problems too but they were easily corrected.

Overall, it was a very nice experience, although it was a lot of work, my team and I had a real good time and the campers enjoyed the setup. This event also benefited me in other ways, first, I had the occasion to test the reliability of my props and detect the flaws in the way I built them (and most of them will need some adjustment) and I also have been contracted by the owners to do some redesigning and maintenance on their website. Talking about websites, things go so well for me on that field that I may be considering to start my own business in a few years. So keep your fingers crossed for me.

Ok, I have talked to much! Here's the video recorded by my wife in the evening. A few pictures and two other videos will be added to the blog with in the following days.

Some inspiration

2010-06-02T19:01:00.000-07:00

Those of you who have been listening to Hauntcast for a while probably know about this beautiful, amazing prop built by Terra... If you didn't know about it, you should really see the video below. It is impressive what you can achieve with paper mache provided you have the necessary patience and talent. And by the way, if you are not listening to Hauntcast yet, do yourself a favor a visit their site now.

The rebirth of a Wal-Mart tombstone

2010-06-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

There seem to be a consensus among haunters that the tombstones sold in stores (Wal-Mart and the likes) are cheesy and maybe not worth our money. Frankly, I like them though their paint is cheap, their 1" thickness is just ridiculous and we don't even talk about their anchor system that is just plain useless. My yard display contains 11 tombstones bought at Wal-Mart in 2007 and 2008. I got some problems due to mother nature last year that forced me to enhance them by making them 3" thick and by replacing the cheapest anchor system ever invented on earth for something "wind proof". That said, half of my tombstones are already enhanced and are now on painting stage. Here is the result for the first painted tombstone. It is not perfect but it is much more better than what is was looking like when I bought it.

News from the patch

2010-05-22T19:16:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday was my birthday, I just it the 30. I've been away from quite some time so, for once, I have a few things to tell.

First I got 4 interesting websites design and programming contracts that took most of my spare time the last two months which explains why I didn't wrote anything on my blog since March 16. Most of my contracts are completed but some of my clients still have other projects that will come my way soon. I just hope these projects will not need as much attention of my part than the ones I had the last 2 months... On one hand, having big projects means more money on my pocket but on the other hand, that leave myself without time for working on my Halloween and other personal projects. Time will tell if I will become richer in money or time.

Next, I got way behind schedule on my prop building/repair projects because of my work. I planned to have my 11 tombstones repaired and painted at the end of April. I only have one of them repaired and painted today. Hopefully, the foam board for reinforcing my other 10 tombstones are cut and ready to be glued. So, I will be gluing all these tombstones this week and will ask a few friend next weekend to come help me with the painting. The Camper's Halloween is coming soon and I must have all these tombstones ready as well as my stirring witch enhanced and I wanted also to build a flying crank ghost... Time to get cracking on that.

Finally, last Tuesday was my birthday. I just got 30. I got a few bucks from my parents as a gift. The last 3 years, I used my money gifts for buying necessities for my home. This year, I thought I could at least buy something for myself so I subscribed to Haunted Attraction Magazine. I also bought myself a brand new laptop today so I can do some programming while having an eye on my 17 months old son in the evening until he is ready to sleep.

What's next? I started redesigning my website two days ago and if all goes well, it should be ready in one week or two. Keep visiting my blog from time to time as I will be hosting a small giveaway when my new website will be up and running.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

News from the pumpkin land

2010-03-16T19:59:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, I've been away from the blogging scene for a few days. The main reason being that my wife will not disguise herself for this Halloween. I got a depression because of that! Just joking! My wife and I learned a good news last week. There will be a new pumpkin sprout growing in my house this November. Yes, my wife is pregnant! That being said, with a new child coming our way comes the need to complete all the unfinished rooms of the basement (bedroom, hallway and bathroom). So we did a lot of shopping in the last few days.

One of the other reason I have been away from my blog was the release of the PC game "Assassin's Creed 2". Being a fan of the first installment, I was not able to resist the urge to buy this game. Then came the addiction and I began to give all my spare time to this game instead of, you know, building props and doing other important stuff. I'm going to have to fight that urge for a while if I want to be ready for the Camper's Halloween in July and for my own haunt in October... We are already in March and I haven't start building a single prop yet...

That's it folks! More to come as I kick out that game from the house and start cracking!

Happy compilation

2010-03-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

Today, while waiting for my software to be compiled at work, I took a moment to read my personnal emails. Imagine the surprise when I saw Diresinger @ Shadowed paths posted on my blog to announce me that I have had an award bestowed upon me.

With most award, comes rules to follow and this one is no exception. Here are the rules of the award:

Thank the person who gave you this award.

Thank you Diresinger, you made my day! "C'est très gentil de ta part!" I have even lost my english ;-)
Share 7 things about yourself.
1. I'm an addict of Little Debbie's Oatmeal Creme Pies;
2. Although I'm mostly into metal music, I realize recently I like electronica and jazz music too.
3. I'm a big fan of martial arts. I've been practicing Nick Cerio's Kenpo for a few years and was approaching the black belt. But I had to stop all this when I start building my house. I plan to take Kung Fu courses with my little boy when he gets old enough;
4. I'm a budget freak and a fan of Dave Ramsey's philosophy when it comes to money;
5. I'm a big fan of Nintendo games, I own all their major console and around 60 games. All of them are classics, of course.
6. Although I'm a gamer, I don't own a PS3 and an XBox. Anyway, I do not have any room left for another console;
7. And finally, I'm deaf from the left ear.
Pass the award along to 15 bloggers who you have recently discovered and who you think are fantastic!

This part may be difficult for me. I've been very busy for a while now so I didn't took much time lately to browse the blogging world in search of wonderful blogs. All the blog I am following, I am following since october 2009, date at which I changed job and began to do some consulting as an Analyst-Programmer in my spare time. For the moment, I'm gonna risk the wrath of the Blogger God and postpone this part until I get to have more time for blogging.

Spreadin' the Love - Best Blog Comments Award

2010-03-04T18:10:00.000-08:00

The gentleman known as Mr. Macabre of Mr. Macabre's Hallowe'en Cerebrations have kindly awarded me with the Best Blog Comments Award for the comments I let on his blog.

First, a few words for Mr. Macabre. Your blog is fun as well as informative with things like your review on books and videos and your latest how-tos videos. It is an honor to receive this award from you and I would believe that makes us some kind of virtual friends.. cool!

And now, I nominate thee with the Best Blog Comments Award

The very talented, nice and funny queen of the queens: The Frog Queen. It was very nice to help you out with the coat of arm and the text of the Joan of Arc prop.

The one and only spooktacular horror reviewer known as Johnny Thunder. It's always good to hear you laugh on HauntCast.

The gardener and canadian fellow Halloween Spirit. If I ever find any cool looking beer labels you don't have, I will gladly send them to you right away. I hope your pumpkins will grow into behemots this year.

The Captain. You have the coolest Halloween grocery bags ever! I don't know how you get to find those movies previews before everyone else by keep them coming. And thanks again for the witch sound effects. They were great!

Ghoul Friday, another great canadian fellow blogger. Thanks for answering my questions about prop making. Your art is awesome and inspiring. Keep your good work!

Diane. You're a very inspiring person, the way you talk about tolerance and love on your blog proves to me there is still hope for this world.

ShellHawk, our Mistress of Mayhem. Another talented artist who is as good with words than clay. I love your lanterns, they all look great. Keep posting pictures of old mansions on your blog, I can't get tired of them.

This is in no way a complete list. One thing is sure though. Every person who leave comments from time to time on this blog are all greatly appreciated.

Now with the rules of the award. The nominated blogger who didn't already received the award must do the following to continue spreading the Love:

Link back to the blog/blogger who nominated you and say a few kind words.

Paste the picture of the award in your award post.

Nominate bloggers you think deliver great comments to your blog.

E-mail/post/tweet or do whatever you need to do to inform these bloggers they have been nominated for an award.

Haunted video games

2010-02-17T19:01:00.000-08:00

Apart from being an Halloween fanatic, I am also a gamer. I spent much of my time in my teens and my twenties to play video games of all kinds. Some of these games carried me into strange and unsettling places. I decided to share with you one of those places.

Introducing Thief Deadly Shadows. You are Garrett, a master thief and formerly member of the order The Keepers. The story begins with the simple theft of a large precious stone from a noble. After selling the gemstone, a member of The Keepers aks you to steal two artifacts from two religious factions. Then follows a series of events that will push Garret in a quest to prevent a coming dark age that only he can stop.

These video clips will carry you in a building known as The Cradle. It is an old building that once served as an orphanage and an asylum. A fire occurred in the past and the building was abandoned. It is rumored to be haunted.

Now I just got into the mood for playing that wonderful game again just for that particular stage. It is a piece of art! Hope it will work on Windows 7...

I'm planning to bring you more post like this one once in a while so come back often :-)

Have a nice evening!

The Camper's Halloween

2010-02-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

Once again, I am a late in my blog posting. There is not much to say since my last post on this blog. In fact, there is only two news worth of interest, a bad and a good one.

Let's start with the bad one. I got a car accident two weeks ago with a ten wheels truck. Fortunately, no one was injured. As you would expect, the truck does not even have a scratch. But my 2008 Santa Fe did not have that chance. The passenger side got about 8000$ worth of damage. The body shop as kindly lend me a 2010 Mazda 3 while they are repairing my SUV. But, I learn another "great" news last week. I won't have my SUV back until the beginning of march. It seems that the doors they ordered for the repairing are in backorder and they will not get them until March 1st or later... To be continued...

Now for the good news. This year, I will have the chance to celebrate Halloween two times. Yay!!! A coworker proposed me to help him prepare a haunt on his camping. They call this "L'Halloween du campeur" (the Camper's Halloween). The festivities are splitted in two parts. The afternoon is for the young children and teenagers to go trick-or-treating from camping cars to camping cars and the evening is for adults and is more like a party. But, this year will be a bit different. Along with the traditional Trick-or-treating, the children will have the possibility to walk in a haunted wooden trail that leads to an old barn. That is where Mr PumpkinBrain enter in the scenery. My job will be, with the help of my coworker and a few selected campers, to make that haunted trail. Since most of the children are young, the trail must not be too scary. But, at night, it is the turn of the adult to walk through the trail and I intend to scare the shit out of them! (insert evil laugh here) For the moment, I already have a few ideas in mind for the haunt but I will have to wait until spring to confirm them because I have not seen the trail and the barn yet. But one interesting thing I learn from my coworker is that, a church that burnt down a few years ago, was situated near the barn. I'm already hear the ghostly sound of the bells ringing... More to come on this as the project takes shape...

Good evening boils and ghouls, I gotta go, I have a meeting with a Wolfman at the local theater!

My thoughts on Silent Hill Shattered Memories

2010-01-25T18:26:00.000-08:00

My wife and I bought together Silent Hill Shattered Memories for Nintendo Wii last December as our mutual Christmas Gift. After a few hours of game play, I finished the game two days ago. Here's my thoughts on the game.

First, let's start with the story line. You are Harry Mason, a writer, who wake up of a car accident. As you wake up, you realize that your little girl Cheryl is missing. Your main goal is to find her by exploring various area of the town of Silent Hill. That seam a pretty simple storyline but it is much more complicated. As you progress in the game, you will realize that Harry have confused memories of his past and present. His reality seem altered and doesn't make a lot of sense. The more you progress in the game, you will be left with more questions than answers letting you wanting more.

As you would expect for a "scary" video game, the ambiance tries to be spooky and dark. Most of the game is played in the dark as you move Harry into deserted streets, buildings and woods with you flash light. In some area of the game, music is gently played in the background to get you in the mood. But it didn't got me in the mood I expected, instead of feeling a little bit tense, thinking about what will jump on me when turning the corner I felt more intrigued, the music was mysterious, not really spooky.

The graphics were good but could have been better. The main problems were the textures that were not looking realistic enough for me. Also, the game is so dark that you miss a lot of details that could have helped me feel like I was there, in the world of Silent Hill.

Overall, the game is good and I had a good time playing it. I didn't get the kind of scare I was expecting though. I was a little bit nervous at the beginning of the game. But when I realized how the game would be played, while finishing the first chapter, the "scare factor" went to 0. I was more intrigued than scared. The game isn't hard at all, it is not a very challenging game, it is more like watching an interactive movie. I remember reading somewhere on the Internet that the game is meant to be "experienced" and I feel it is totally true. To appreciate this game, I would suggest you play to it alone, late at night. I would also suggest you rent it before buying it. For my part, though I liked the game, I will exchange my copy at a local gaming store for another game of Nintendo like Zelda Twilight Princess or Mario Galaxy that have a better "replay factor".

By the way, if you like Science-Fiction and have a Wii, I would suggest you to play to Metroid Prime 3. I totally digged this game. An all time favorite.

Black and white

2009-12-16T18:42:00.000-08:00

In May, I wrote about my wife idea project for our home theater to be. Well, my wife, my parents and I have been working on this project a few weeks ago. The building part is done. All that is left to add to this room is the big 4k flat screen with the 9.1 sound system, some very nice victorian furnitures, some gothic accessories and the framed Victoria Francés artwork I wrote about in the post from May. Anyway, here are two pictures of the room.

The stirring witch in action

2009-11-17T18:46:00.000-08:00

I didn't have the chance this year to take a lot of pictures of my Halloween setup as I planned to take those at night when the lighting would be on. Unfortunately, because of bad weather, I had to put back all my props in the garage before having the chance to take pictures. Fortunately, I had the good idea of filming my stirring witch in the daylight. Here it is:

It's a shame I didn't had the opportunity to film her at night. She would have look better with the interior of the cauldron lighted and her green glowing eyes. Well, life is life, I will probably have that chance next year :-)

Have a nice evening!

R.I.P

2009-11-12T17:46:00.000-08:00

Once again, I feel bad... How on earth could I leave behind my wonderful fellow bloggers for more than one month! I have, again, been very busy since october 7th. Unfortunately, my absence had nothing to do with prop building but much more about work. Some of you already know that I started a new job october 5th. The new job is wonderful. All the people working there are friendly, my superiors are very open and fun to talk to, the job is challenging and the best part of it is that I do not have to do overtime each week to deliver the new features of the software on time. You are probably asking yourself on what I have been working on in the last month. Before leaving my previous job, I offered my previous employers to finish some projects for them until they find someone to replace me. So I did some programming most of my weekday and weekend evenings leaving me no time for blogging and leisure time. Now that that these projects are theorically completed, I can at last take some time for blogging...

What would be the best way to come back to the blogging world? Maybe by telling your of my last Halloween. Here we go:

The day started at 8AM. I woke up feeling like I caught a cold. That was not that bad, there was no ways a small cold would prevent me to celebrate Halloween! My parents, my in-laws and I moved all the props from the 2nd floor of the garage to the front of my house. The installation took about 3 hours. Once the installation completed, I had some time ahead before the Trick'r treater come to my door, so I took a little nap while my wife and my little boy were doing their Trick'r treating round.

1PM, the Trick'r treaters started to knock at the door. It was time for my wife and I to put our costumes on to give candies. For the first time, meet the mastermind behind this blog and his wonderful wife:

We had a good number of trick'r treater, I think the exact number was 186. The new stirring witch was a hit, most parents and teen had good comments on our setup. Some parents took pictures of their children in the setup and some even took pictures of my wife and I. Everything were going fine until 3PM. The day was a little bit windy but at 3PM, the wind started to blow stronger. Sometimes, the wind were blowing so strong that my stirring witch and/or my pumpkin scarecrow had some issues. The witch had loose her head in her cauldron, or her head would do a 180 degree rotation. The scarecrow finished in two separated pieces a few times. Fortunately, it was easy to fix and the celebration continued until 5PM.

At 5PM, the wind started to blow even stronger and it started to rain a bit. The wind was strong enough to cause other damages to my stirring witch so I decide it was time to put her back in the garage, it was a shame, but I was not interested to let the wind destroy my hard work. I took my drill, started to unscrew the witch from the cauldron so I can move her more easily. Then came the disaster. As soon as I removed the last screw, the wind started to blow even stronger and it started to rain like hell. In a few seconds, I saw the witch and the scarecrow collapse in pieces while some of my tombstones where blown away. No need to say I tried to salvage what I could, so in about 10 minutes, all my props were all in safety in the garage. Then I started to look at the damages:

- On 11 tombstones, 1 was missing and 3 were broken in two.
- Some fingers of the witch were broken. Hopefully, the head was fine and the pipe frame could be repaired.
- The scarecrow frame was alright, no real damage to that prop only a few adjustments to do.
- The zombie and the coffin were fine, no damage on them.

Looking back at this, this is not that bad. But that night, my Halloween was totally trashed. Here are some pictures of the damages:

I should be able to repair them with a bit of creativity... In one way, with a bit of paint, these damages can be used to give a worn look to the tombstones.

That summarize my Halloween day. I hope yours started well and finished well too. Wow, this is the longest post I ever wrote... I wonder how much of you have read it entirely ;-)

Have a nice evening!

Movie frenzy, grocery bag and bad hair day picture

2009-10-07T18:35:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, my wife and I have gone shopping to Quebec city. We took an hour to make the tour of the HMV store and bought a few movies: The Crow, John Carpenters Vampires, From dusk till dawn and Thirt13en ghosts. In addition to these movies, I got my copy of Trick'r Treat yesterday at 5pm. I planned to watch it yesterday evening but my wife fell asleep on the sofa before starting the movie... She was a bit tired because of a bad cold. We will probably watch it friday.

Two weeks ago, one of my favorite blogger, The Captain, wrote a post about Publix Halloween themed grocery bags. I left a comment that my grocery store also gives Halloween themed bags. In fact, they are more Autumn themed bag. But here it is:

Finally, my little boy woke up with a strange hair cut... He also got very sick that same day... I guess he got a bad hair day :-)

Tadam!

2009-10-01T18:15:00.000-07:00

Yep! I'm done with the stirring witch project. At least for this year. She looks good enough to be part of my display. Not bad for my third hand made prop. For the completion of this work, I have some thanks to do. Here we go:

Thanks to:

My wife for supporting my constant babbling about this project;

My father for providing me with some tips on how to place the wiper motor that makes the head of the witch turn;

My father and mother in-law for providing me the fabrics and the wood necessary to dress and assemble the witch and the cauldron;

My brother in-law for giving me the barrel I used to build the cauldron;

My coworker Billy for giving me the steel bar I needed to fix the stirring stick to the wiper motor of the cauldron;

Thinking of it, there is still one thing missing for this year. A good sound fx I could loop on a mp3 player so the trick'r treater can hear the cauldron bubbling. I found some on the web but they don't loop very well. If anyone knows where I can get one, that would be great.

I also completed sooner this week the skull with a pillar candle that will ornate the table on which the ingredients bottles and the spell book of the witch will be displayed. I have a small problem with the led tea light not being bright enough. But I can surely fix that by buying some on eBay. But since I'm not sure to get them on time for Halloween, I'll keep the cheap ones I bought on the dollar store for this year.

Next post: Mr Jack and Autumn themed grocery bags!

Are you getting ready for the H day?

2009-09-15T19:59:00.000-07:00

Other than the prop building that may get some delayed, the little family is getting ready to welcome the trick-or-treater and give them some candies.

The candies are bought and the bags filled.

The little Édouard is, as always, the pride of his father.

The crazy dachsund will also be celebrating

And the hosts have finally made a choice for their own costumes. They will become Edwardian Ghosts this Halloween.

How about you? Are you ready yet?

Stirring witch update...

2009-09-15T19:34:00.000-07:00

Number ?... Seriously how much updates did I wrote on this stirring witch project? How on earth this project takes me so long. Well, it's almost done. Yes, I say almost done because I already added other things on the todo list for completing this projet. Let's take a few seconds to make a checklist of what must be done:

1. Test the fog machine with the cauldron and see if any adjustments is needed.
2. Put some clothes on the witch.
3. Fasten the witch and the cauldron together.
4. Install the led mini spotlight to highlight the witch face.
5. Build a small table to display the witch ingredients bottles, her spellbook and her skull pillar candle.

Okay, that's not too bad. I should be able to get it done for Halloween. Well, I hope so because I just received an order for my wife. Seems like I need to build a groundbreaker too! Oh crap! With only 2 hours a day of prop building, will I make it? I really start to feel the pressure. And finally, to top it off, I'm changing job at the beginning of October, that means I'm gonna have to cut on my prop building time to work at home so I can perform learn all I need to perform in my new job... Well, I should stop complaining and get cracking then. Otherwise I gonna have a crazy October and I won't have the chance to enjoy fall at all.

Now that I complained about my soooo terrible fate (just kidding), let's get back to the subject. The stirring witch project status. It is completed at 80%. I finished the cauldron yesterday. At first, the cauldron was supposed to be very simple but I didn't like it. There was something missing. I finally had a good idea last friday and came across what I needed, at Wal-Mart, to complete the job. Have a look below at the Before and After pictures of the cauldron. And as a bonus, have a glimpse of the witch without her clothes...

Do you feel it?

2009-09-15T18:57:00.000-07:00

6AM, getting up, the temperature in the house seems cooler than usual. It's still dark, the sun has not completely rose up and a light fog is floating in the air outside.

The air seems fresher, the sunlight more attractive. The leaves began changing color and the darkness becomes more pervasive each evening. Autumn is upon us. Finally!

To celebrate this wonderful season that is autumn, my wife and I have built a beautiful vase to the colors of the season to ornate our dining room table. It's really incredible what one can do with things sold by the dollar stores.

Fright at the Museum

2009-09-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Someone told me about an interesting event going on in Washington DC at the National Museum of Crime and Punishment. They are doing an Halloween specific exhibit portraying an electric chair dating back to 1916. If I were going to Washington I would certainly go to this exhibit as I love museums and history. But since I'm living far far away from DC, I'm just going to share this information to all my fellow bloggers in case some of you would be passing by.

For more information on the event click on the following link: Halloween in DC

You can find me now on

2009-09-01T19:13:00.000-07:00

Garage of Evil Network

and

Twitter

So feel free to add me as your friend on GoE or to follow me on Twitter!

Sorry for not being very present lately. I'm very busy with building props (I even dream of it at night), my children and my job. I have a lot of things going on right now, some I can't talk of yet. Long story short, I try to keep up with all the blogs I follow but it's a little bit harder than usual. So... don't worry, I'm going to be back soon.

For Mr. Macabre and Dracenea, I'm still waiting for your prize to arrive at my house. I did not forgot you!

Have a great evening!

Horror Show

2009-08-22T18:06:00.000-07:00

Do you know of the band Iced Earth? In 2001, they recorded the album "Horror Show". The songs on the album are mostly inspired of the old horror movies classic monsters (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Wolf Man, etc...). Here is the list of the album songs:

Wolf

Damien

Jack

Ghost of Freedom

Im-Ho-Tep (Pharaoh's Curse

Jekyll & Hyde

Dragon's Child

Transylvania

Frankenstein

Dracula

The Phantom Opera Ghost

Here a some of the song on the album found on YouTube. Keep in mind it is Metal music :-)

Wolf

Damien

Dracula

Jekyll & Hyde

Frankenstein

Grimvisions Skull Book Giveaway

2009-08-22T16:57:00.000-07:00

Grimvisions is currently doing a very cool Giveaway. A skull book lamp giveaway is going on at his blog. The picture below is the skull book lamp itself.

All you need to win is to live in US or Canada and become a follower of his blog. Want to have more chance to win? No problem! You can even have more entries by following him on twitter and putting a him on your Facebook account.

Here's some quick info about the guy. This guy is doing amazing work for those of you who like things that are dark and creepy. Although I wasn't following his blog before today, I remember visiting his site a couple of time before I began to blog myself. Go take a look, it's worth it!

Here's the link to his wonderful blog: http://www.grimvisions.com

Stirring witch update part 3

2009-08-20T19:31:00.000-07:00

The stirring witch project is almost finished (at last)! That project started on May so it's time for it to get to an end. The body of the witch, the cauldron, the stirring mechanism and the stirring stick are done. You can see a picture of the stick below.

Now, I'm working on her hands (picture below too), the forms are made and one layer of paper mache has been applied on it. I'm waiting for them to dry. They will need two other layers of newspaper strips and then I will be putting one or two layers of towel paper to smooth the surface of the hands and give them a more "skinny" look. I doubt I will have enough time to finish them this weekend but they should be done by the end of next week.

Then I will get to the last stage of the project: The dress of the 6' tall witch. An uncle of mine own a fabric store so I guess I will be able to find some cheap black fabric there. Next I'll ask someone in my family to do the stiches for me, I just don't have the talent to do the dress myself and I don't really want to learn how anyway.

Once all this is done, I will be posting pictures of the final result and if time permit it you might even get a video of her in action. I will have to wait late at night to make the movie so my neighbors won't be seeing her before Halloween.

Finally, I'm almost done with the last witch bottle I will be doing this year. The bottle doesn't look old enough to my liking so I need to think how I could make it look older. Any ideas are welcome. You can see how it look like right now in a picture below.

Demon IPhone Case

2009-08-19T04:18:00.000-07:00

Do you have an iPhone? If so and if you find it boring... I came across this Silicone Case for iPhone yesterday while consulting a website on programming. Contemplate the Demon Silicone Series Case for iPhone 3G/ 3GS.

Here is the link for the website of the company that sells it: http://www.ideal-case.com/

Calendar Giveaway Winners

2009-08-15T04:41:00.000-07:00

And the drawing out of the bag bring (insert rolling drums here)

Dracenea from Rabid Reflections

Mr. Macabre from Mr. Macabre's Hallowe'en Cerebrations

You two will receive a wonderful Victoria Francés 2010 calendar packed with some other goodies. I'll be contacting you by email to get your coordinates so I can ship your prize pack once it is completed.

Thank you all for your participation! I'll be doing another giveaway... someday... when I will get something of interest to give.

Sleepy Hollow Video Game

2009-08-11T19:37:00.000-07:00

Most of you probably already know about the "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" book by Washington Irving or the movie directed by Tim Burton. For those of you who likes puzzle games and video games but don't have countless hours to play them, let me introduce you to "Mystery Legends: Sleepy Hollow".

This game is very simple. You enter a location on the map of the sleepy hollow village then have to find hidden object on the scene while listening to spooky music. You sometime even hear the Hessian say a comment like "Heads will roll"

You can download this game and play it for free for 60 minutes by following the following links:
Shockwave Games
Yahoo! Games

Giveaway part 2

2009-08-11T18:59:00.000-07:00

For those of you who did not know, there is a giveaway going on this blog. The draw will be done in 4 days (August 15th) so there still time for you to participate. Actually, I was expecting more participants so I'm going to try to convince my 35 followers to participate.

The rules stays the same. In case question number 3 is the reason why you don't participate, please write anything funny, this question is only there because most Victoria Francés artworks I'm expecting to see in this calendar will somehow have a connection to vampires.

As some of you may know, I was one of the 3 winners of a giveaway/contest at Mr. Macabre's blog. His prize pack was so awesome that I decided to add other things with the calendar. What will be inside? Who knows? It will stay a mystery until the winners will receive their prize pack. There will be 2 winners determined by a random draw.

Best of luck to you all!

Some pictures of the Old Quebec

2009-08-10T18:00:00.000-07:00

Each year, my wife and I take one day to walk through the streets of the lower town of Quebec city also known as the "Old Quebec". We took some pictures for you to look at. Enjoy! (Just click on the picture below to open the pictures galery)

Giveaway for the price of your blood

2009-07-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, it's time I guess for the first Giveaway of PumpkinBrain. And the price will be...

A Victoria Francés 2010 Calendar

To have a chance to win a calendar, you will need:

To have a shipping address in the Canada or in the USA

To be a follower of my blog

Tell us what you like in vampires

And the hardest part: Answer to this mathematical formula 1+1=?

The winners will be choosen by random draw amongst those who fulfilled the points above and will be announced August 15th.

Best of luck to you all!

Introducing "The Witcher"

2009-07-23T03:45:00.001-07:00

Yep, it's time I let you know about another very good game about vampires and monsters. Introducing "The Witcher".

You are Geralt of Rivia, a monster slayer known as a "witcher", who cured the daughter of King Foltest of a curse which caused her to transform into a monster. A period of years mysteriously passes, ending with you being transported to the witcher stronghold of Kaer Morhen by fellow witchers who had discovered you unconscious in a field. You remember almost nothing of your life before returning to Kaer Morhen.

Through the game, you meet many former friends and foes who help you recover information about your mysterious past. Through the storyline, you discover that you had died five years earlier while attempting to defend an oppressed group of non-humans from a racist mob. You also learn that you are actually the renowned witcher referred to in prose as "The White Wolf."

Through your choices and actions, Geralt redefines character relationships and navigates political intrigue in the changing landscape of Temeria. This allows you to make decisions that affect the plot progression, and of course the game's ending. There is a lot of decisions of moral natures that will have consequences later in the game so there is no black-and-white morality in this game which makes it very different from other games.

Now you know the basic plot, time to enjoy the game opening and some gameplay video. Before I forget, this game is rated M for extreme violence and sexual content.

Intoduction video

Gameplay video showing the most violent attacks of the game

Gameplay dialogue

Hairs, hat, flowers and more

2009-07-20T18:40:00.000-07:00

Yep, I'm still alive. Still working on some props: the stirring witch and another secret project I won't show until finished. That witch projet is taking way too much time, I hope the final product will be good... I finally got almost everything I need to finish it, a wiper motor for turning the head, a wig, a hat and a led mini-spotlight. Now I must wait for Halloween stuff to be available at dollar store. I need those cheap witch fingers they sell. They will be used to build, guess what, the hands of my witch. I found an interesting article on the Internet explaining how to build hand with cheap latex gloves, metal wires and witch fingers.

I will not be working in the next three weeks, so I guess I should have enough spare time to finish that witch. Again, I will be posting pics when I'm done... In the mean time, enjoys some picture of the completed witch head, of what is blooming in our landscape (thanks to Mrs Pumpkin) and some other dwellers around my house.

What's this? It's a part of the "secret" prop I am building. Try to guess!

Stirring witch update - New stuff coming soon.

2009-07-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

When will my stirring witch projet will be completed? This is a question I keep asking myself when I wake up each morning. Time goes so fast, there is so much things to do I barely have the time to finish my prop projects for this year's Halloween. I still have 4 months until the "jour J" so I will probably manage to finish my things in time.

I just bought some things on Ebay for the witch head (wig and hat). I should get them next week. I finally decided to go with a black wig with white glow in the dark stripes. But I was impatient, I bought the first cheap wig I saw.. If I had waited another day I would have bought a black and purple wig which was looking much better and at almost the same price... I also bought a velvet hat with black feather. That should give the final touch to the witch head. I will be posting pics as soon as everything is in place.

As for the stirring cauldron. I still have some painting to do, one motor to add to make the witch head turn and one green led spot to add to highlight the witch face. I will probably be ordering them soon from MonsterGuts. Again, once I'm done, I will be posting pics and I will write a complete detailed step by step guide on how I did all this (Once I am finished with my coffin tutorial I started in april... Days should be longer, I don't have enough of 24 hours a day to do all the things I want).

In the mean time, enjoy some of the video of ScareFx, the guy who inspired me to become a home haunter. ScareFx, if you read this, I want to tell you that your work really amazed me. And also, thank you for the information you gave me concerning fog machines last year!

Good evening everyone!

TAC.tv Halloween

2009-06-30T19:25:00.000-07:00

I saw this video in french two years ago. It was hilarious. Unfortunately, I can't embed the video in this post. So here's the link.

Have a good laugh!

Witch ingredient bottles

2009-06-28T19:18:00.000-07:00

I am planning to make some ingredient bottles that will be displayed next to my stirring witch. For the moment I already made two. Another one is in progress and should be completed "when I have time"(probably before the end of july). Here's a picture of the two completed bottles.

From left to right:

"Oeufs de crapauds baveux" or "Slobbish toad eggs"

"Asticots bouffis arc-en-ciel" or "Rainbow bloated maggots". The fine prints read "Cueillis à la main de cadavre en putréfaction" or "Handpicked on rotting corpse".

As always, I will keep you updated on that project once other bottles are completed.

Sunday Stealing: The ABC Meme

2009-06-28T06:14:00.000-07:00

Sunday Stealing: The ABC Meme

A – An advantage you have –
I have married a pharmacist.

B – Blue or brown eyes –
None of them, I have blue-green hazel eyes.

C – Chore you hate –
The chore I hate most is doing the dishes.

D – Dad’s name –
Léandre

E – Essential start of your day –
A simple breakfast: a bowl of cereal with a glass of orange juice.

F – Favorite color –
I would say black but because it is not a color I will say midnight blue.

G – Greatest thing you’ve ever done that made you feel really good –
Giving some of my time to listen to some lonely elder peoples when I was a teenager.

H – Habit you have –
Leaving my clothes in the corner of the bedroom.

I – Issue you hate that the world tries to make you pursue –
Materialism. The "american dream" is all about collecting stuff to make you happy. I did believed in that some time ago but I realized that stuff makes you happy only if you're already happy. Otherwise, it will make you happy until you get your credit card bill.

J – Job title –
Chief analyst programmer

K – Kohls or Target –
Don't know them.

L – Living arrangements –
Live with my wife, my son and my weiner dog in a house we built 3 years ago.

M – Music you like –
Power metal, Heavy Metal, Gothic and Celtic

N - Nicknames –
Smiley

O – Overnight hospital stay –
You don't want to know.

P – Pet Peeve –
Sea food.

Q – Quote that you like most –
"Il n'y en aura pas de facile!" which means that nothing is realy easy. I don't believe that nothing is easy, I do believe that people complicate their lives too much. I like to keep my life as simple as possible which means to live within your means and take the time to be with people you love.

R – Right or left handed –
Right handed.

S – Siblings –
1 sister

T – Time you wake up –
Week Days 6am Weekend 8am.

U – Underwear –
is what you put under your pants

V – Vegetable you dislike –
Most of them.

W – What makes you run late –
My wife or my children.

X – X-rays you’ve had –
Neck and fingers.

Y – Yummy food you make –
Orange chicken breast
Pork à la diablé (Pork in a red spicy sauce)
Blueberry Coffee Cake (Very delicious and very unhealthy with all that butter and sugar)

Z – Zoo animal –
Lions, tigers and cheetahs.

My first award!

2009-06-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Mr. Macabre for awarding me the Gourdqueens Scream Award.

"This award is to be shared with anyone whose blog you just love. Whether it's their art, their interests, the things they share, you just simply love to visit their blog!

This is what you do:1~Accept the award then post it on your blog with the name and link of the person's blog who shared this award with you.2~Explain the award.3~Then share the award with at least 10 blogs that make you SCREAM! Please tell what makes their blog so special to you. Be sure to let them know they have received the award. Also you can share this award again if you run across more bloggers that make you SCREAM!"

Now to choose 10 blogs, which is very difficult... Some of the blogger listed below already got them but since I like their blog so much, I must award them too.

Creepy Cupcakes

Frog on the Pumpkin

Halloween Fanatic

The Holiday Queen

Haunt Style

The Gallows

Raven Faes Creations

Rabid Reflections

My Ghoul Friday

Orange and black

Please note that the bloggers listed above are not in order of preference. In my eyes, every blog I follow publicly need and award. I read them daily and there is not a day I don't think about my fellow bloggers.

Have a good sunday!

Old vampire pc game

2009-06-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

If you're like me, you may have some obsession about vampires. I like everything that is about vampire: books, movies and video games. I have found this pc game a couple of years ago, it's name: "Vampire : The Masquerade - Bloodlines". I bought it as soon as it got release. You don't see video games who you have to play as a vampire so often... Anyway, here is the trailer of the game.

I tried to find some cool gameplay video on YouTube but can't find any... maybe another time..

Good evening everyone!

Some stirring inspiration

2009-06-18T18:18:00.000-07:00

While browsing YouTube today, I came across that stirring skeleton. I found it.... very inspiring. That could have made a wonderful prop in my "beginner" graveyard. But since my witch is 80% completed, I don't think I will change it for a skeleton.

The next video have nothing to do with halloween but I couldn't resist sharing it with you!

The witch head

2009-06-16T17:07:00.001-07:00

My stirring witch head is almost finished. All it needs is a wig and a hat and everything will be just fine. The only question remaining is "witch" color the wig should be: black, white of maybe orange... What do you think would be best?

Did you notice?

2009-06-16T17:02:00.000-07:00

The small changes to the look of my blog and website? I asked my coworker and friend Aradein to tweak the look of my blog and website because I hated that purple color so much. It's not a big change but that makes all the difference! My friend does not have a website yet but if he ever needs one I will be happy to develop it for him!

Haunted Quebec

2009-06-01T09:35:00.000-07:00

I was reading a post on Dark Destinations a couple of minutes ago. Since his last post was about a haunted hotel in Canada. That reminded me of two supposedly haunted location in Quebec province in Canada. These two places are:

St-Adolphe d'Howard
There are rumors of an old demolished Asylum, The ruins of the Asylum would be found on a mountain in St-Adolphe d'Howard near a tourist attraction known as the "Château Sir-D'Howard". Two years ago (when I was managing a paranormal website), I did some search about this place on the internet. Some peole claim to have found the ruins and saw weird things there. Unfortunately, it seems that this haunted place is just a local legend because there would be no trace of the asylum in the archives of the city. I should go take a look next time I go in the Laurentides.

Breakeyville
A large house would be haunted in Breakeyville according to my father in law. I think I will take a ride with him one day to take some picture of it and I will be posting them on this blog.

I don't know when I will have some spare time for this but I think I could take some time to read books and looking over the Internet for haunted locations in Quebec. It seem there are a lot of haunted buildings in the area...

The Crypt Kickers

2009-06-01T09:30:00.000-07:00

A while ago, I was browsing on YouTube for videos on 3-axis skull and found this video. I really like the idea of singing skeletons. This is so cool!

Sunday Stealing: The Monkey's Meme

2009-05-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

Normally, I don't participate to that kind of thing because I find the questions too personnal. But I have some spare time tonight so I decided to give it a try.

Sunday Stealing: The Monkey's Meme

1. Name one person who made you smile today:
Édouard, my 7 months old son.

2. What were you doing at 8am this morning?
Eating breakfast, I had to wake up early this morning because I had an important appointment regarding the neighbor park.

3. What were you doing 45 minutes ago?
Feeding the little Édouard.

4. What is your favorite candy bar?
3 Musketeers

5. Have you ever been to a strip club?
Once with some coworkers. I didn't like the experience and will never go again.

6. What was the last thing you had to drink?
Pepsi

7. What was the last thing you ate?
Chicken strips and fries for St-Hubert restaurant.

8. The last sporting event you watched?
I don't watch sport on TV. I think the last thing I watched was a couple year ago, it was a martial arts competition.

9. Do you go to church every Sunday?
No

10. Do you prefer Chinese food over pizza?
I like but equally.

11. What are you doing tomorrow?
Going to work. If I have some spare time, I will probably be painting one of my halloween prop.

12. What do you think of when you hear Australia?
Kangoroos

13. Biggest annoyance right now?
The credit card bill.

14. Last song listened to?
Bloody Kisses (A Death in the Family) from Type O Negative

15. Do you have a maid service clean your house?
No

16. Are you jealous of anyone?
No

17. Is anyone jealous of you?
I don't think so

18. What do you usually do during the day?
Going to work. Working on my halloween props. Taking care of my son and doing the day to day chores.

19. Do you hate anyone that you know right now?
Not really. But there are some people I don't like.

20. Are you thinking about someone right now?
Yeah, my son.

Shopping Day!

2009-05-23T17:57:00.000-07:00

Today, Mrs. Pumpkin and I went shopping at the Place Laurier mall in Quebec City. Our city is smaller and we do not always find what we need so we must go shopping from time to time in the major shopping malls of Quebec City. We got up early this morning took the one hour and a half ride to Quebec City.

Our shopping began with the usual round of Mrs. Pumpkin favorite clothing shops. She
found the pants she wanted. Next, we sought an black hourglass with red sand that would be an addition to the decoration of our future home theater. So we stopped by the L'Imaginaire store which specializes in the sale of collectibles items such as money, stamps, collectible cards, figures and more.

Whenever we enter this shop, we take at least an hour to look at everything. There is a lot of interesting stuff there and I admit that it is difficult to resist the temptation to buy. This time, I entered the store with an idea, find the greatest possible collection of stuff related to Halloween and, to my surprise, the shop was full of them: Horror movies and halloween figurines of all kinds, monster masks, A nightmare before christmas stuff, etc...

It was during my search for stuff on Halloween that my wife showed to me the Castlevania figurines, a franchise of video games that made its debut at Nintendo and that still exists today. This franchise is one my favorites. I still play my old Super Nintendo "Super Castlevania" game from time to time. I never got tired of it. In short, when I saw these figurines, I lost all control... I needed them!! So I bought the entire collection and my wife bought one for me for my 29th birthday. Obviously, these figurines are for collection purpose so I must fight the envy to get them out of their packaging. They will surely gain value over the years but I do not intend to sell them. It will be a legacy that I leave to my children. Here is the photo of the figurines:

Then we continue our round in the store, we did not find our hourglass but we have did another great discovery: Puzzles depicta gothic scenes. After 15 minutes of contemplation we bought this one:

We intend to scan the drawing and make a larger replica that will be framed on the wall of our future home theater. Our home theater decor will be uncommon, I doubt that my family will appreciate this room because it will be of gothic inspiration. The walls will be black and white: the first half will be caissons whose background is black and reliefs white.
The second half of the walls will be white wallpaper with black Victorian patterns. The furniture will be of metal color and the sofas and other accessories will be dark red to add a touch of drama to the room. This project is probably going to take place at the end of this year or maybe the beginning of next year so you will not have the opportunity to see pictures of this room before a long time. But don't worry! When it's done, you can be sure that I post photos in my blog.

Have a good evening!

First pumpkin completed!

2009-05-14T18:36:00.000-07:00

I must confess that this is not really the first pumpkin I made. In fact, I started another pumpkin before this one but I did a mistake. I used natural clay to create details on the pumpkin and unfortunately, the clay cracked everywhere. So I tried to repair the damage by filling the cracks with more clay using water to shape it. It was a very big mistake, the paper absorbed the water and has become so soft that the pumpkin deformed. Rather than trying to salvage my work again, I decided to put my first pumpkin in the trash and start over from scratch. Here is the result of my second pumpkin.

Now that my pumpkin is complete, I will be able to concentrate on my stirring witch. The ABS pipe frame of the witch is completed and the cauldron too. Now I have to build her head. I think I'm going to user papier mache to build it.

Before continuing the witch, I think I'll take a small break this evening. A good martini would not hurt ... or maybe a pink elephant ... we'll see!

Good evening to all!

Full moon

2009-05-10T19:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the full moon and the sky was cloudy. The clouds gave the moon some kind of horror movie look. I grabbed my camera and took these pictures.

Pumpkin mache

2009-05-03T19:28:00.000-07:00

Here are picture of my first paper mache pumpkin. It's nothing compared to those made by Stolloween but I'm really happy with the result. The next step will be to paint it using the way described by Stolloween. I can't wait to see the final result! I will be posting pictures when it will be done.

I had some time today to work on my stirring witch too. I almost finalized the cauldron with the stirring mechanism. The only parts missing for the cauldron is the wooden stick and the pipe for the fog machine. I should be done with it this week.

My stuff from Monster Guts

2009-04-24T19:42:00.000-07:00

I got the motor, leds and foam head for my stirring witch last friday (april 17th) from Monster Guts. I ordered them the previous sunday (april 12th) so the guy at Monster Guts shipped the package really fast. Here's a picture of my stuff.

The guy at Monster Guts even gave me a bonus (the spider on the foam head!).

Tomorrow's weather forecast a hot and sunny day. I'm going to get up early and start seriously my stirring witch project. My objectives for tomorrow is to prepare all pieces of the cauldron for assembly and painting the plastic barrel that will serve as the cauldron. I will post pictures of the cauldron once it is done. It will be very soon! Well, I hope so...

Of skull and coffin

2009-04-24T17:04:00.000-07:00

Today, my parents dropped by with some the stuff I let behind in their house when I moved to mine 3 years ago. Almost everything went directly to the trash or the recycle bin except these two things:

The jewels coffin

My sister gave me this coffin at christmas at least 10 years ago. 3 years ago, I would probably have put it in the trash or gave it to someone else but now that I am an halloween addict, I will have to find a place to display this piece in my house.

The Australopithecus skull

My sister also gave me this piece in the same years as the jewel coffin. I will probably use this skull for a prop... Maybe for the flying crank ghost that I will build next year... I have to think about it. I you have any idea, please let me know!

Toe-pincher coffin how-to on it's way

2009-04-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

My gothic toe-pincher coffin how-to is on it's way. You can access it through my website by clicking here.

It's not complete yet but it should be in the following days.

The next project I will be adding on my website will be the zombie with red glowing eyes that is sitting on the coffin in my 2008 haunt.

The week of discoveries

2009-04-13T05:23:00.000-07:00

I discovered cool things last week while browsing the website of other yard haunter. They all do very cool haunt, I thrive to become like them in the years to come.

By browsing the Frog on a pumpkin blog, I learned about Hauntcast, a podcast for yard haunter and halloween enthusiast. I listened to all the podcasts they did and learned about Stolloween who use paper mache to build is props. Looking at his website, I found that you can do cool props for halloween. And guess what! I decided to build my first paper mache pumpkin this week-end. I just finished applying the second layer of paper mache a couple of minutes ago. When the pumpkin will be completed, I will be posting the final result on my blog if it is not a complete disaster ;-) After all, I am a programer analyst so I'm far more better with computer than paper mache and acrylic paint.

Last cool thing I heard about in the past week was the Monster Guts online shop. This is a site that sells online stuff for professionnals and home haunters. Browsing through their inventory, I came across wiper motor kits that are ready to use. As I said in my previous post, I am starting my stirring witch project so this kit was definitively what I needed so I bought one.

I am posting here the links to all this wonderfull and resourcefull website:

Frog on the Pumpkin blog

Hauntcast - The podcast for Home Haunters

Monster Guts - Prop building supplies

Stolloween - Paper mache extraordinaire!

Au boulot!

2009-04-07T09:32:00.000-07:00

Now that winter is gone and that snow has finally melt down, it's time for me to prepare myself for Halloween 2009. My first projet this year will be to create a witch stirring a cauldron like the one made by ScareFx. My version will be slightly different though, the eye of my witch will be glowing green with the help of two low intensity led (like the one I used for the zombie of my 2008 haunt) and the head will not turn (well, I might change my mind later). I will be posting updates about my progress on this year's haunted yard props.

Horrific windows

2009-04-03T09:16:00.000-07:00

Do you know about Hallowindow? Hallowindow is an animation on DVD that can be used as a dynamic decoration for Halloween. Put your big screen TV in your window or use a projector, plug your speakers, up the volume of your sound system and sit down and relax. You can be sure your neighbors will speak about your window until next Halloween.

Here's is a YouTube video of the result

Click on the following link to go to Hallowindow website.

New website online!

2009-03-30T18:34:00.000-07:00

My new website is now online. Right now, like this blog, it is rather empty but I will be adding content regularly in the next weeks. For the moment, you can view a picture galery and a video of my 2008 halloween haunted yard.

Home page of my site

Picture galery of 2008 haunt

Halloween Haunt 2008

2009-03-27T09:28:00.000-07:00

I am preparing my new website about my halloween haunts and projects. In the meantime, here is a picture of my 2008 haunt.

Welcome to my blog!

2009-03-25T09:45:00.000-07:00

Hello!

Welcome to my blog! Right now, it is rather empty. I will be posting stuff very soon so come back often!

Thanks!