2009 Davis Graveyard Open House

Everyone had a great time at the open house. The weather was great (which in the NW means that it did not rain - cold, but no rain) and we made over $600 for the Milwaukie High School Dance Team.

It is a great community event and we estimate that we had over 800 people attend throughout the day! Thanks to all the volunteers who helped throughout the day answering questions and giving tours. And special thanks to the Portland Coffin Cruisers for bringing by your rides!! You guys rock!!

Here are pictures of the event. Thanks to everyone who came and helped support the dance team. If you were not able to make it and still want to donate to the dance team (who danced their as...behinds off! :) Contact hosts@davisgraveyard.com.

Photos by the cute and funny Marci B.

A word from our local fan club

Here is a link to our friend Brian Dorr's blog, he is part of the neighborhood association with us and a good friend. Here is his take on the Davis Graveyard open house. He makes us sound so cool!!!

I am glad he got his pictures up...we are still working on ours. Open house wrap up is on the way!

Great photos and words Brian, thanks! http://www.bjdorr.com/200910112152

Photo courtesy of Brian Dorr

Thanks for the makeup

A big thanks goes out to Matt Huntley, who, for the third year in a row has volunteered his time to come do the makeup for the dancers on the day of the open house.

Great guy, the girls enjoy the attention and he is very generous with his time and is happy to show anyone who is interested how to do it.

Thanks again Matt, the dancers looked great!

Davis Graveyard Dancers - 2009

Sorry to miss a day on the countdown...but yesterday was our Open House and we were busy!!

Pictures to follow, but here is a video of the new dance routine from the Milwaukie High School Pony Prancers. This year they got one of their coaches to dance the Micheal Jackson part. It was a show stopper!! You cannot hear it this edit....but the applause at the end was deafening :D



We had great weather and a great turn out. Thanks again to the Milwaukie Dance Team. They will be back Halloween night!

Last night was the first night

the yard was up and running....almost everything worked and we got hundreds of visitors!!

BTW - that night vision security camera is the coolest thing.....we can see what you are doing at the front gate, so mind your manners when you visit....I mean don't mess with the props!

Tomorrow is the open house. We have a lot to do!!

Another great Hauntcast

If you have not heard it already, go right now and check out the latest Hauntcast. Lots of stuff happening in the Halloween world, you would not want to miss any of it.

I mean who does not want to hear from the guy that made "toliet monster!" :D

Hauntcast 11: K'Octoberfest

Great show as usual guys, oh and gal! Keep up the great work.

Okay, say it with me

Wow! Marci takes amazing photos.

Here are photos of the Angel/Skeleton (nuangel) prop. She is just beautiful.

photo courtesy of Marci Brandt

Website update

We updated the Davis Graveyard site with information on where to park for the open house this weekend and the schedule of events.

We also added some more bios of our fabulous crew. Welcome Daniel and Elyssa (they have been here for years...we are just slow at getting the website updated) - who have been at the graveyard almost as much as we have...I am thinking we need to set they up a guest room! :)

Anyway, thanks guys, your work on the yard this year is amazing....I mean you have all seen that spider right?

We are featured in the Milwaukie Newsletter

We were also featured in our local Milwaukie newsletter called "The Pilot" - and mention in our local neighborhood association section!

Yeah! We are hoping for a big turn out for the dance team this Sunday!

We are featured in the Oregonian

Wow, we were in the main section of the paper, four pages in, top of the page above the fold.

I used to work in a newspaper, trust me that is a prime spot!!! :)

We are trying to get as much press as we can for the dancers this Sunday so we can raise lots of $$ for them. They do a great job each year, they so deserve it!!!

The yard is mostly working

We had a few extra problems last night - first being the sound system that we got working by mid afternoon, did not work when we started it at dusk....no sound, nothing! Jeff got it working, but it still bothers us that it is having problems.

We heard from the crew that the replacement of the music soundtrack with just whispering is very creepy...:)

The "help me" directly ripped from the original fly is off working nicely....along with an occasional skittering sound, makes your skin crawl :)

Fog machine is giving us grief, we have two controllers and neither of them seems to be working.

The bush rattling effect is cool, in the daylight....at night you really cannot see anything and we are now thinking that it really needs to sync up with the glowing eyes in the bushes. I believe we will be ordering more EFX-TK controllers this Hauntcon :)

We will be working on replacing the way that some of the projectors and controllers are plugged in to be safer and easier to set up.

More testing the next few nights. Getting ready for our opening night, Friday, October 9th.

Thanks again to all our fabulous helpers!!!

Techincal weekend

We have been testing the technical side of the haunt for the last two nights. Good thing too. We found some problems that we forgot about from Halloween night last year :)

We have tested:

The opening coffin

The spider spinning the cocoon

The church ghost

The crypt ghosts (she had some issues - but she is all better now :)

The children ghost

The preacher coming out of the door ghost

As of today we are down a projector and an amp. We are using our back ups...but now we need new backups!!! Back to Ebay we go! :D

Tomorrow it is the talking head, spider and gravedigger.....and the big headache....the sound system.

Husband is sitting at his computer right now installing the operating system for the new computer to control the sound....cause the one we were going to use did not work when we plugged it in this afternoon. :)

That is why we have a test weekend :)

Happy Halloween

From the Davis Graveyard.

The pictures are starting to come in . . . we both love this one.

The Angel/Skeleton

This is one of the new props for 2009. We recycled the old angel into another prop and built the new angel inspired by the Angel and Demons movie poster.

She is a collaborative effort, starting with our Mike our new helper that did the wings for her. She is up in the yard now and we are working on getting her lighted correctly.

It has been a challenge to get lighting on all the details (including the base), we have attached lights on the ground and on the back of a few tombstones in front of her.

Watch for evening pictures of her in the coming weeks.

Happy Halloween from the Davis Graveyard

We are working feverishly to get the yard ready. Most of it is up and we have been working on lighting and effects each evening.

We will be doing a test run this weekend and the full display will be running "cross-fingers" on Friday, October 9th.

Stop by and see our new props and effects.

The display is getting closer

We worked on a lot of the details on Sunday but kept getting interupted by people stoppy by and wanting to talk. Its hard to ignor everyone you haven't talked to in a while so it slowed us down. We also on had a little bit of help. Nick got all the lights wired and we were able to turn them on at night.

First day of setup went well

We got everything unloaded from the shop and out in the yard. We got the cathedral setup and the masoleum and hearse. We got all the tombstones up in the yard (maybe not all where they should be). Sunday we finish with as much details as we can.

Thanks to everyone that came and helped. We had an awsome crew this year.

The new spider looks good in his home for the year.

Last weekend before setup

We got the scafolding up on Saturday dispite the heavy rain in the morning. We got most of it up with Preston, Andy and myself. Nick showed up a little later and we finished it by the end of the day.

We got the sign up in the yard. A little late this year. We normally set it up on Labor day weekend.

The spider is coming along and should be ready by setup.

Tony created some new skulls for the stantions and we painted the stantions and the skulls and got them all ready this weekend. Also cleaned and organzied the shop for setup. We are just about ready.

Another work weekend

We worked on projects both Saturday and Sunday. We finished the Angel monument finally. We also built a stand for Chris' luminary and a box for the new projector for the new effect. We painted and detail or skeleton cages and cast some new skulls for the stantions we put out front. I even cast a few concrete skulls for Chris. We spent quite a bit of time on the new Spider and it is getting close to being done. Next weekend is scafolding setup and final finsh of all projects. Then it's SETUP!

New Video Effect

We have been working on a new ghost effect in the yard this year. We strung a cable across the back of the yard and hung 3 ten foot black backdrops up. We sewed the seams of them together and made some sandbags to hold the bottoms down from blowing around.

We filmed our friend kids dressed in white walking along the backdrop. Then we can project their ghost images on the backdrop from a projector in the yard behind a tombstone. Looks pretty good.

Busy Labor Day Weekend

Despite the heavy rains on Saturday and Sunday we got a LOT done over the last big weekend before Halloween. Our good friend Dan dropped off a big tent we used to keep things dry and stay out of the rain between downpours.

We built 2 additional mud men for 2 people who couldn't make the workshop. With Chris and Ellysa helping it only took a couple of hours. But the weather was so damp and cold that we waited to paint them until Monday afternoon. One of our students stuck around all day Saturday and helped us paint stuff. She was great help! We finished painting them on Monday afternoon when it was dry.

We painted a lot of the props and finished them. Chris didn't like how the Angel monument looked with the short dress so we decided to add a leg coming out like she is kneeling on one knee. It took quite a bit for me to cut into that nice prop and mess it all up. But it will look good when it is done. We also finished the sword for her too.

Got a lot of technical projects done too. An animated skull, some devices to move the bushes, new UV painted footsteps and a few other projects off our list. Things are looking pretty good. We even had time to drag out all the tombstones and touch them up before setup this year!