For years, my ex and I held one of the highest attendance Silicon Valley Halloween parties around. Unfortunately, we are no longer together, but the videos and memories live on.
For those looking to create a truly memorable Halloween party - here are some of the ideas we actually implemented and ones we only dreamed about.
The third "founder" of the infamous Halloween parties, Dan Rorabaugh, was also a talented woodworker. We had a 12' plywood guillotine with a foil wrapped"blade" which looked awfully real in the dim lighting.
Mercury switches (not sure if you can still buy those), were placed in strategic locations and were connected with sound effects generators tripped by motion. Now that mercury is so hazardous, these could be replaced with IR motion sensors.
Lifesized skeletons were bought from an educational source, and set up in realistic scenes at the dining room table.
Our wood worker friend also designed and built "coffins" that still live in our garage.
"Tombstones" were cut from plywood and spray painted with textured paint to look like stone, and then inscribed with epitaphs appropriate to each guest.
Sound effects generators designed for electronic music creation were programmed with hand created strange effects and piped in through strategic locations.
A fog machine was a wonderful addition to the parties, but had its drawbacks- such as guests bumping into each other and almost falling down stairs.
The best part of the parties was the pot luck "Bring a Scary Dish" competition. We had cakes decorated to look like bloody hands, fried brains, floating eyeballs in punch, and clear jello in a brain jello mold decorated with red icing.
The garage was a location for the "mad scientists" lab, which featured a working Tesla coil and homemade electric chair wired to a buzzer with a metal colandar used as a head piece. A knife switch controlled the buzzer.
The immortal Bob Pease had the best costume ever in those days - he came one year wrapped in police Caution tape and was " An Accident Looking for a Place To Happen".
Ideas we didn't have time to bring to life included:
1) A helium filled "spaceship" floating above the house
2) A servo-controlled string of Bats, flying in programmable patterns in the garage
3) Holographic ghost images appearing at programmable times
4) A scary art contest
One day, perhaps the SV Halloween Party will live again.............
