Start Your Own Haunted Mansion with This Bone Chilling Effect!

Halloween is such a fun time to decorate your porch with pumpkins, spider web, and ghosts to welcome all the neighborhood trick ‘r treaters. I wanted to do something different that the kids would like and something that reminds me of effects at the Haunted Mansion at Disney World. I like how they project ghosts or skeletons dancing in a ballroom, on pictures or windows, or even sitting beside you. So I thought it would be great fun to make it appear skeletons were partying in my house specifically our office that has a window open to the front porch.

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Table of Contents

Creating Such THE Effect

To create this effect you need the following things:

A decent projector that you can hook up to a
computer
Tripod, stool, or something else to mount the
projector on
A laptop computer
A sheer curtain or similar thin sheet to project
your image or video on
A video on your laptop of skeletons, ghosts, or
other ghouls to show
For sound, some average computer speakers
A sound file on your laptop of Halloween sounds
or output sound from your video
Maybe an extension cord and surge protector
strip with several outlets

The PROJECTOR

For the projector I used an affordable one from DBPower that I bought to take on camping trips to watch movies outside. It is cheap but for the money works well especially for this. The projector has a connection on the bottom for use with a camera tripod.

I used the tripod mount to secure the projector to a camera tripod.

Connection to the Laptop Computer

The projector has a HDMI video out connection and the laptop I own has that also. HDMI is the most common connection on TVs today so I had an extra cable lying around to use. You could just temporarily borrow one off your tv for the evening if needed.

Projector connection. HDMI cable attached

Sound Setup.

I also had a nice computer speaker set left over that has two speakers and a subwoofer. You could easily just use an average two speaker set. I used a stereo phono plug cable. This has a connector like on a set of earbud headphones on both ends. I ran the cable from my laptop earphone output to the same connector port on my speaker set. Your speaker set might hook to your laptop via USB cable also. That is very common. I actually raised the lower window and put the two speakers outside under the window and left the subwoofer with volume control inside the house to plug it in.

VIDEO To PROJECT ON THE WINDOW

For the video, you can probably find and play some clips from youtube for free but I opted to purchase a video set from a company called Atmos Fear FX. They have all kinds of videos and kits to do effects like this. So if you do not have a projector they sell entire kits for you to do this with that include the projector, a sheet, and video. Anyway, I purchased the Bone Chillers collection. It has a variety of clips to show from family friendly to scary. The videos also have sound and/or music too. They have a great Skeleton Band clip and that is what I am going to use.

Hang your Sheet

Next, hang up your sheet or sheer curtain so it covers the entire window. I just clothes pinned the sheer curtain my wife let me use to the curtain rod already there. It works best if you can make it as tight as possible to make the video or image you are projecting on it look better.

Now put everything together at the location you want to setup your effect. I placed everything in our office. I used a power strip since I had to plug in projector, laptop, and speakers.

POSITIONING the PROJECTOR

I opted to project from within the room on the curtain on the inside. This worked best for this projector since I could make the room completely dark. If you have a more powerful projector you could project from your porch onto the outside of the window instead.

I played around to place the projector to get my Skeleton Band just the right height on the window and also placed the projector itself closer to the floor so you cannot see the projector light from the outside.

Projector lower and projecting up to window

SOFTWARE For Playing Video

The Bone Chillers collection I chose came on an SD card but you can download or purchase a DVD. I copied the clip from the card to my laptop. I often use a free program called VLC Media Player to play the video file or files.

FINAL effect

It seems like a lot of things to setup but it really is pretty easy once you gather what you need. It is super fun and looks really cool. You can also use multiple clips and load them as a playlist in VLC player or Microsoft Media player. Create a playlist of the family friendly ones for the little kids who come trick ‘r treating early and then play scary ones later for older kids. Check out my skeleton band projected on my office window below.