What's going on at the Dead End in 2009......
9/24/2009
Well, another 2 months passed by, and I have nothing but a few invitations to show for it. I still have about 60 more to go, and they are a lot of work.
Here's a pic of this year's completed invite:
And the completed how-to for making it:
http://theghostess.com/2009invitations.htm
Today, I begin to pull the boxes down from the attic so I can get started transforming the house into my Halloween home. I'm hoping that going through the boxes will spark some of that Halloween "lovin' feelin'" that I normally have too much of. Just haven't been "with it" again this year.... someone stole my Mojo and I want it back!
Anyway, I picked up a new Halloween book and a couple of small recipe mags as well, so those have given me a little bit of inspiration. I've also been reorganizing my Halloween binder which is just a mess.
For other updates as to what's going on... check out my blog (link on the left).
07/30/2009
Finally, a month after Ironstock, I get around to updating the site!
I made it to Tell City for the big event. The drive was about 10.5 hours for me, with a couple of stops on the way. Passed through lots of construction, especially through Georgia. I had a few good friends staying in contact with me for the ride, making sure I was still on the road, and vice versa: Zombie-F, Jeff from Frighteners Entertainment, Perfessor Evil, Tracee AKA Witch-o-tastic, and Jim Rushe from Florida Haunters.
I got checked into the "Roach Motel" AKA Days Inn - and quickly learned how it got its name, and although I never actually saw any roaches, the old hotel was pretty run-down. It really smelled of musty old socks and smoke and the paint/plaster was falling off the walls onto the carpet (which turned the bottoms of my white socks black. But it had a microwave and a little mini-fridge, and all we were there for was to sleep, so it was passable. My room mate Tracee got in shortly after I did - and she is a total HOOT! Love her to death, couldn't ask for a better roomie! It's nice to have someone fun to hang out with. We got cleaned up and headed over to the fairgrounds.
First person to greet us was Jeff from Frighteners. What a great guy! I could say it over and over again about him, even before I met him in person; I've always thought he is awesome. Dave (Zombie-F) and his wife Aprille were next on the list and I was totally thrilled to finally meet one of my closest haunt family members. Really nice guy, although quiet (I expected that) and Aprille is a complete RIOT! We met Rik (PerfessorEvil) and his wife Heather - Perf is one of the NICEST people I think I've ever met. It was a real pleasure to finally meet them. These are my Haunt Forum family. Representing my Florida Haunter family were Jim and Becky Rushe - who actually live in Virginia, and Dean Mackey, who I've been wanting to meet for many years now.
I met so many other people that I've known for 10+ years now on the Halloween-L and for a shorter length of time other various places online: Deanna Witchypoo and DrBones, NoahFentz, DragonLady Sue, Celynn, Toby (who I can't thank enough for the AWESOME pneumatic!), Pickleman, Candymom, Peanut (YOU SUCK!), NavyGhost, KKrazyKkaren (nicest person EVER!), SpiritKanaka and SpiritWahine, Virgil, Buorno (who kept trying to get me to take his RC crawler home), TazDvel, Slanks, BronxBanshee, Wormy-T (who I managed to get a pic of before she got me!), Coztumer, Deb Z., King-of-Halloween (who filled me in on a Geocache in the area), Mouse, Revenant (who sounds just as sexy in person as he does on HauntCast!), Turtle(whose pictures do NOT do her justice, she has an amazing smile!), and so many more - I can't even remember them all off the top of my head! I hope I don't offend anyone by leaving them out, I know I'll remember to add more names later. Met some new friends as well that I wouldn't have met otherwise. And I can't begin to express how awesome it was to finally meet Ironman and Lady Iron - what wonderful people! They put on a great event, and I know everyone enjoyed and appreciated it all.
The whole weekend was fun and exhausting... the Weasel Ball was a blast. I think I was one of the few sober people during the whole weekend, which was good, because I remember it all! We have a couple of funny stories to tell now, and some pictures to show the fun. All in all, it was a super time and I'm sad that Ironstock is now a thing of history. I'm glad I had the opportunity to go thanks to my wonderful husband Andy, who, when I was feeling down and pessimistic about my chances of attending, even yelled at me for the very first time ever when he repeated himself that I was GOING TO IRONSTOCK! Thank you Andy, you definitely won MAJOR good husband points for that one!
Pictures are in my photobucket for now:
http://s62.photobucket.com/albums/h100/ghostessdeanna/Ironstock2009/
And now, I'm starting to get the itch to begin the prop-making marathons.... let the haunting begin!
6/25/2009
I'm headed to IRONSTOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Full report and photos when I get back!
05/07/2009
Wow, May already! The first 5 months of this year have totally flown by, and my head is spinning! Lots to update on, so I'll go ahead and get to it.
I have not been working on any props so far this year; I've had NO motivation to even touch any of my haunt stuff since putting it all away last year. Haunt burnout maybe? After going full-on for the past 10 years with it all, that's very likely. Normally by this time of year, I've got several projects either finished or covering all the flat workspaces in the house. I still can't even believe I just haven't at least started something yet, with it being almost halfway through the year and 5 months from the season. But today that changes. I'm converting a Blucky into a more "scary" version of itself today. It will involve a little carving, some extending of limbs and spine, and some surgery to cover the extra exposed PVC frame. I'll probably use my stash of extra bones to fill in the gaps, plus some latex paint-dipped fabric to give it that fresh-from-the-grave rotten look. It's a trial and error thing for me, and I'm looking forward to getting back in the prop-maker saddle again.
The reason I'm getting back to props is because I only have one week to complete a prop before the Florida Haunters Camping Trip! I'm VERY excited about this weekend excursion. We'll be camping at the beautiful Wekiwa Springs State Park the weekend of May 15th and 16th. Our fellow Florida Haunters are encouraged to come out and hang with us for the Show and Tell/Meet and Greet on Saturday. We'll be hanging out, talking shop, showing off those props, eating, drinking, and having fun. There may be some fun activities going on as well. We're still planning the details now and if you're interested, shoot me an email or visit the forum and get in the conversation! The campground is already full for reservations, but there are some sites available for walk-up guests and we can accomodate the straggler or two on the sites we have reserved. I'll be bringing an extra tent with me as well. If you don't want to camp, just come out for the day!
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In other news, HauntCast is launching new episodes for your mid-month listening pleasure. These episodes will be shorter, more condensed versions in contrast to the regular monthly offering. The new episode debuts Friday, May 8. Catch it here:
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Ironstock 2009 - Check out the updates here:
http://www.theironkingdom.com/Ironstock/
Get on the map! If you're attending the last ever Ironstock, you need to get on the travelers' map. I'm really looking forward to this trip. I still need to think of a costume for the Weasel Ball! I'm having a hard time with that part. I'll probably just wear a costume I already have in my arsenal, unless I get the wild hair and drag out the sewing machine. I'd really like to make one, but I don't know if I can bring myself to commit to that project yet. In any case, I'm really glad to be going and that I'll get to meet so many of the people I consider friends and extended family.
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HAuNTcon 2010 will be held in Orlando Florida!!!!!!!!!! One of the things that keeps some of us from attending all the cool conventions is location. There is no excuse for 2010 as HauntCon moves to Orlando! I am SUPER-stoked about this and am SO there - probably will be helping out with the event as well. I'm hoping the Florida Haunters will have a good contingent for the event. For details as they are posted and recaps of past events, visit the official site:
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If you have not yet seen this book, you MUST check it out!
http://www.howtohauntyourhouse.com/
It's quick becoming a hot commodity in the home-haunting community. I have my copy, and I gotta say - it's my favorite book in my collection now.
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And finally, my pals at the Garage of Evil have been busy! Evil genius Pete has created a variable power supply that is REALLY useful for things such as Steve-O's hot wire foam cutter!
Pete's SUPER awesome power supply: http://garageofevil.ning.com/profiles/blogs/goe-labs-howtohotwire-foam
And Steve-O's "Mach 11 Foam-Erator Extreme (Turbo)" : http://garageofevil.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-mach-11-foamerator-extreme
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And I think that about wraps it up for the latest goings on...
3/26/2009
The latest episode of HauntCast is available for your listening pleasure now... check it out!
These days, y ou can find me on Facebook: Deanna Griffith
and Twitter: http://twitter.com/GhostessDeanna
3/19/2009
Not very much going on at the Dead End right now. Trying to keep up with regular life right now. But I have had a LOT of ideas bouncing around in my head for this year. Goliath has been sent to the landfill. :( But that gives me a really big project on the board for this year in rebuilding him. ALL of my Bluckies will get a new look as well. New tombstones, fixing other things... just a LOT of stuff to do in the coming months.
I am still VERY excited about going to Ironstock this year. I've already got my room booked, paid my fee,bought a new small rolling suitcase covered in skulls and am totally ready for the trip.
Don't forget, the newest episode of Hauntcast is next week! The official air date is March 27th, so stay tuned!
2/24/09
If you're here, then you already know the website has moved. I finally got every single page and every single picture switched over (took me 6 days straight to do it all) and I even added a few pages while I was at it. The look and content of the site is the same as the other one - I like that part; I just didn't like the domain name. I added the pictures from 2008's Halloween (click the link on the left nav pane) and I also added a couple of project pages:
http://www.theghostess.com/bluckycorpse.htm
http://www.theghostess.com/columnsandarch.htm
http://www.theghostess.com/mmcauldron.htm
I also added the steps for creating a "Ham Head" on my Recipes page since I remembered to take pictures this past Halloween.
My email has changed to deanna@theghostess.com, please update your address books. I'll keep the old howloweenqueen stuff for a few months, but the email will be shut down probably by August or so.
I want to give some big Southern love to Monster Guts.... If you need stuff for making your props animated or stuff to help make your props just plain cool, or stuff to make your haunt kick some ass,, then check out MonsterGuts.com. From cylinders and motors to lighting and Bluckies, they got ya covered. Dean gives reeeeaaaallly good service, and he's a damned nice guy too. I've bought from him before, and plan on doing it again - probably very soon!
If you're into cool stuff... you MUST check out GoreyDetails. They have some really neat art and collectibles, gifts, etc. I spent an HOUR just perusing the site this morning... and I want it ALL!!! I particularly like the "Emily the Strange" items, and just about ALL of the Pirate stuff. Give them a look:
Dude!! if you are a haunter in FLORIDA (or S. Ga./S. Al.), join up at the Florida Haunters Forum!!! We're a nutty but loveable group and more members equals more chances to get to know each other and brings more experience to the table. New to prop-making or just wanna learn new stuff? What better way to learn than to do it with people near you!
I'd also like to introduce our newest friends at Soul Echo Haunts, lots of good content there, so check them out!:
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Updated 2/15/09
Hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day or "I Hate Valentine's Day" and an even better Friday the 13th!
Well, another Florida Haunters Make and Take is in the bag! I had an EXCELLENT time, and I really really love hanging out with my fellow Florida Haunters. I'm so thankful to have such a great group of people to call my friends. THANK YOU to our host and hostess, Hamm and CylonFrogQueen - the day was just perfect!
Photo Source - CylonFrogQueen and Hamm
For pictures, see the Florida Haunters main website, click on the Gallery button on the navigation pane and then the link for the Feb 14 Make and Take. My camera batteries died half way through the day, so I didn't get many pics.
For a recap of our day, visit my blog. You can reach it from the navigation pane to the left here.
I look forward to the next event!
In other news here at the Dead End, I will be changing the domain name of my website in the near future. The new site will be theghostess.com and will contain all of the same content. The old site will still be available for a while since I own the domain until 2014, but will redirect to the new one eventually. If you're wondering why I'd change... well, I never really cared a whole lot for the "howloweenqueen" title in the first place, I just needed one and being the "I must have it NOW" person that I am - I went with it. When I first wanted to set up my own site and get away from AOL's now defunct "Hometown", I asked my local non-Halloween friends what their suggestions would be. Many of them said "HalloweenQueen", since that's what they all considered me as. I don't like being a "queen", it's way too presumptuous for me and doesn't convey my own true personality since I'm by nature a quiet and shy person. HalloweenQueen.com was already taken at the time, so they suggested changing the spelling to "howloween". I also was running "thedeadend.com" through my head since my haunt is called The Dead End, and it was available at the time. But I had more votes for howloweenqueen, so that's what I went with. It's not, however, what I want to be known for. So I looked up "ghostess.com", and it's taken. Thankfully, "theghostess.com" was available, and I snatched it up. I'll always be the Ghostess, no matter what. It's my name, it's what people know me by. Even thedeadend.com would have eventually gone away too, because I don't plan on living in this house on the end of our street forever, so that name wouldn't fit forever. Anyway, that's my rambling story.
1/23/2009
CALLING ALL FLORIDA HAUNTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!
We've scheduled a real "sweet heart" of a Make and Take!!!!!!
Florida Haunter members Cylonfrogqueen and Hamm have offered up their lily pad as our location for the first Make and Take of 2009!! We will be converging on their pond, just south of Daytona, on VALENTINE'S DAY, February 14. What a way to spend the day, doing something we all love - making props! The prop du jour - it's a Shiatsu Massager Free-For-All!!!!!!! For more specific information and details, please visit the official thread:
http://www.floridahaunters.com/forum/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1232683393
and for discussion and banter on the Make and Take, take a gander at this thread:
http://www.floridahaunters.com/forum/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1226687396/0
Come out and join us!!!!!
If you haven't yet signed up, jump over and visit Home Haunters Association:
And for those who haven't heard it yet, please check out Haunt Cast... you won't regret it!
THIS JUST IN!!!!! Haunt owners, Halloween fans and anyone who has content posted on the internet - BEWARE!!
For those who were following my myspace blogs about the "MORON" last year, check this out:
Every once in a while, I get that old urge to throw on my Internet Police hat and see what's going on in the world of the MORON. This video (LOVE it, BTW) absolutely made my day. Thanks to whomever made it.
1/12/2009
My family and I spent the day in Savannah, Georgia on Saturday. My husband wanted to take me back so I could visit and photograph the Bonaventure Cemtetery since we missed it on our honeymoon there. We also visited Fort Pulaski and were able to see the musket demonstration. Those things sounded like mini-cannons. They also fired two of the cannons, very cool. It's a nice fort, but a lot of it is roped off or has partitions blocking you from entering the rooms. I much preferred Fort Clinch in Fernandina Beach Florida... you could walk around more freely there. In any case, it was a nice day, low 70s, sunny and a slight breeze. Too bad my kids didn't want to cooperate very much. We had to cut it short and come home. I didn't even make it halfway through the cemetery. It's beautiful. LOADS of inspiration there. We'll be going back, just the two of us next time. :) Pictures of the cemetery can be seen here:
I joined up on homehauntersassociation.com yesterday after receiving an invitation email. Looks to be another good resource for finding other home haunts near us and around the country. Check it out:
And if you haven't checked it out yet, please pop in at hauntcast.net... do it! It's worth your time!
1/1/2009
HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yay, 2008 is over. I, for one, am glad. It was a crappy year for the most part and the "other" holiday was no better. I mean, we had a nice day and all, but it just ain't my cup o' tea and I generally do not enjoy that "season" of greed and hypocrisy. I DO enjoy the new TV and the Blue Ray though!!! I've noticed things from the Harry Potter movies that I never noticed before since watching them on an HD tv. Details, so many details!! And my favorite gift is the one that my youngest daughter made for me. Emily kept asking me what I wanted for Christmas, and I kept telling her "nothing".. so finally in an effort to get her to stop asking, I told her I wanted a skull. She asked me if I wanted blood coming down the skull, so I said yes and forgot all about it. Then on Christmas morning, I opened the gift she wrapped so carefully by herself, and to my amazement, there was a drawing of a skull with blood coming down it! She's my little Halloween artist and is constantly drawing me really cool pictures of ghosts and monsters.
Anyway... I'm now actually looking forward to the upcoming 2009 Halloween season. I still have a few Halloween things that need to be taken down, like the master bathroom's wall and ceiling decorations, and several boxes that need to be finished packing and put up in the attic. I also had to retire Goliath as he has sustained way to many injuries to continue. He has now been attacked by some sort of rodent (probably squirrels) and after getting the proper permission, my son used him as a "bunker" for his last back yard airsoft match. Coolest. Bunker. Ever.
Today I added a couple of pictures and some updated info to my Crypt page on how I made it and some info on the FCG itself. I've had a lot of questions on the subject since 2005, so I figured it was time to go ahead and fix the page to include the pictures I took in 2007 of the inside with the FCG in place and the top of the roof.
I'll also be adding more information to the Blucky page, or even another separate page explaining how I attached the Bluckies to the roof of both my house and to the roof of the Crypt for the "Climbing Bluckies" scene probably tonight or tomorrow.
I just listened to the second podcast from hauntcast.net. Gotta say, I LOVE it! Kudos to Chris Baker for making it happen and great job to everyone who contributed, especially my good friends, Steve-O from the Garage of Evil, and Ken AKA JohnnyThunder from Haunt Forum and Sinister's Realm. I look forward to hearing more of Haunt Cast in the new year! Check it out:
And lastly, just because I just had to share... we had to go yank a friend of my son's car out of the mud today, and while we were out in that area, I decided to snap a pic of Slim Whitman's house as we passed by it on our way to Jennings State Forest to do some Jeep riding:
For those of you who are too young or just plain don't know who he is, he's the crooner whose song, "Indian Love Call" killed the aliens in the movie "Mars Attacks!". My mom listened to his music so I remember him well. He lives about 10 minutes from my house. Yes, folks, he IS still alive.
