Here are some pictures from the Knights Dungeon haunted house which was a charity haunt which we operated for about a decade. The dungeon became a real big fund raiser for the K of C charities and was reasonably priced so that any size family could attend. Many people help contribute to the overall success of this Halloween event and I would like to thank them all.

The dungeon relied on a pole and curtain system that was supplied by the Hyatt Regency. the curtains would either be all black or alternate black and orange. On top of the supports camouflage netting was placed as we tried to create the illusion that they were not in a Knights of Columbus Hall. The Knights Dungeon used animatronics including air pressure to create some great effects such as a corpselator (where a corpse flies out of a coffin at you) and the werewolf. Most of these items were motion activated.

Unfortunately there was really no one to carry on the tradition so all that remains of the Knights Dungeon are memories and these few pictures.

Continue reading “Knights Dungeon Haunted House Ends 2000” →

Myself and several of my friends just joined the Knights of Columbus and the Grand Knight approached us afterwards and asked if we would like to do a Halloween Party for kids. We agreed and The Knights Dungeon was born. We named it Knights Dungeon instead of a haunted house so as to protect ourselves for insurance purposes. Turns out if you host a haunted house your insurance rates go up, but since no one ever heard of a Knights Dungeon, the K of C insurance rates were not affected.

We hosted games for the kids upstairs and every kid was a winner. We also had people dressed up as characters (IE Scooby Doo and Barney) so that people could get their pictures taken with the characters. That evening we had a Halloween Party for the adults in the basement which was “so so” attended. We hired a disk jockey and the party went well and made a little money for the council. They have already asked us if we would like to do it again next year and we thought “why not”.

In the lower lounge we set up the haunted displays, shown here was our big hit for the year, the Phantom of the Opera complete with candles and sounds.

Charles T (James Grandpa) had a male home nurse come and draw blood once a month or so and he really hated it. He said the guy was rough and always left his arm bruised.

I told him the blood tests and other tests were necessary and that the guy was not that hard on him (there was always someone in the house while this was going on), but I told him I would set up some Halloween guys (even though it was springtime) if he liked and put signs on them saying “be nice to Charles” and maybe the guy would get the message in a humorous way.

I set the props up in the living around Charles T the day of his exam and left for work. A few hours later I got a call from the hospital regarding the nurse. The hospital complained that when he went to draw blood that there were a bunch of “artificial monsters” in the room and Charles was shaking his cane at him and yelling at him that he wasn’t going to “draw any blood today”.

I apologized to the hospital and told them I would remove the monsters and rescheduled Charles T appointment for next week with a different nurse. I guess in a way it worked since he got a different nurse but I would have really loved to have seen the look on the guys face with all those monsters and Charles shaking his cane at him.

Halloween costume parties have always been alot of fun and James Dad attended many of them in various outfits. In this one, he dressed up as a Keystone Cop with a mustache and dyed his hair black, the only time in his life he did not have blond hair.

The costume party was much fun, although James Dad did not win. The picture was taken by James Grandma when his dad came home after the party. Everyone liked the costume I think because they never saw me with anything other than light blond hair and got an idea what I would look like with dark hair, I think.

One year after getting out the army and watching the Tigers win in 1984, James Dad decided it was time to do a Halloween display and using odds and ends around the house put together a very interesting display at very little cost. This was actually the second big Halloween display James Dad did at home, the first was when he was in college in 1980. The guitar player actually played the guitar with a little motor that controlled his hand, unfortunately we did not have a video camera at the time so we never got any live footage of him playing.

The Halloween display was well received and several people mentioned that we should have called the newspaper which I think would have been an overkill. Most everything in the pictures moved at least a little bit and we were fortunate to have very good weather as some of these props were very light and would have blown over with a strong gust of wind.

Continue reading “Halloween 1985” →

James Dad had just started College when he decided to take Halloween decorating to the next level. In the past, the house had always been decorated for Halloween but the decorations amounted to paper decorations hung on doors and windows, nothing really 3 dimensional. This year using whatever items he could find including an old electric weight loss machine and an old adjustable sewing mannequin along with some cheap Halloween masks and made a pretty decent Halloween display at a fraction of the cost for current animatronics. Most of the items moved, including the guitar player, a guy stirring a cauldron made from a laundry basket, Frankenstein arms went up, etc. This was Dads first attempt at a large Halloween display, but it certainly would not be his last.

Continue reading “Halloween 1979” →

We can’t forget devils night when I was young. I was too young to be out at night and it was devils night,we were suppose to go out and ring door bells and soap windows and I wanted to had to be a part of it,but Mom said no way was I going out on devils night,meant only trouble and was too young to go out after dark anyway. I pouted for awhile then forgot about it until the next day when Mom called me and accused me of soaping her windows,told her that I was always blamed for everything that happened around there and was tired of it and that I had not gone out that night because she would not let me and she told me that she knew it was me because they were soaped from the inside.

I also remember that every Halloween we went out got bags of candy,that’s when they gave the big candy bars and you could be out until 11 without getting hurt or the parents being worried. We would come home and I would empty my bag and my girlfriend and I went back out,did this a few times. When I got home for the night and wanted to look at all my treasures,I asked what happened to the big candy bars. Dad had gone through each bag as I left it,not as a caring father to make sure everything was ok with the candy but to take the big candy bars for himself.

I did all the work and he got the candy. I was left with the junk candy and apples,said the apples were better for me