Halloween again, the scariest night of the year. But you’re a gearhead who doesn’t even like horror movies. So, what’s the plan to make this Saturday night a little more your speed? Skeleton in the driver’s seat? Already done that. Stuff a pair of pants with newspapers, add some boots, and drop a car off the jack stands to make it look like a mechanical accident? Too morbid.
Start with a hearse. Nothing says gearhead Halloween better than a black Cadillac hearse. A costume shop was selling this 14-foot-long inflatable a couple of years ago, and they’re still around. With laughing skeletons in the front seat, it’s a good start. Add tombstones, a ghoul hanging from the tree in the yard, and turn on the underglow on the GMC Sierra and Subaru SVX. Green and purple lighting really set the mood.
This year, to take things over the edge, we added a 1000W fog machine, but a pre-Halloween test revealed a problem. The fog came out more like mist and blew away in the lightest breeze. After some YouTube research, the solution was obvious: build a homemade fog chiller.
With a couple of hours to spare before the trick-or-treaters arrived, we assembled an industrial garbage bag, two bags of ice, some duct tape and a pair of empty tin cans from canned pears. The ridiculous-looking contraption actually worked! Thick, chilled fog rolled across the lawn, surrounding the inflatable hearse and illuminated cars.
Directing the fog into the bag allowed the transformation to occur.
Passing through the ice-filled bag chills the fog, making it denser and keeping it closer to the ground. It rolls along the lawn like a storm cloud instead of disappearing in the slightest breeze.
But the scariest decoration at Number 29 was the Grim Reaper, standing motionless in a dark corner of the driveway. Unsuspecting kids thought it was just a harmless Halloween prop. That was until the Grim Reaper raised his arm, pointed a bony finger and growled “Up the stairs…” Some screamed, and others walking up the driveway just ran away. The youngest got a break. The hood came down, revealing the insane dad underneath.
By the end of the night, the candy was gone, the fog machine had earned its keep, and the Grim Reaper retired for another year. All it took to transform an ordinary Toronto home into a haunted graveyard was a little imagination, plenty of fog juice, and two empty cans of pears.