It’s mid-July, and if you haven’t already moved your car out of the garage so you can begin your Halloween projects, it can only mean one thing: Your workshop is in the basement! For all of you who are thinking about their next project for Halloween this year, we’ve got a first-rate example from Shawn Wilson of Salina, Kansas.
The haunted mirror that Shawn built is, at once, absolutely mesmerizing and easy to build. And here’s the best part – he did almost everything with materials he already had on hand.
How did Shawn do it? He started with a plywood frame built out of some leftover two-by-fours, then mounted onto it some plexiglass with auto window tint adhered to it. Voila! A DIY one-way mirror! Then, behind the frame, Shawn applied some weather stripping to serve as a gasket and affixed an old 32-inch television onto it.
From there, he plugged a media player into the TV, and selected several AtmosFX Decorations he thought were the spookiest. In the photo above, you can see the “Twisted Twins” individual decoration from the Ghostly Apparitions 3 Decoration Collection.
When there’s nothing displayed on the TV, it looks like an old mirror. But when the TV displays a ghost-like decoration! Boo!
Of course, placement of a prop such as this is also key – and we love what Shawn did. He placed the mirror in an Halloween maze. “I added black lights to the mirror and a sign that said ‘Check out your costume in the black light’ to encourage people to loiter in front of the mirror,” he tells us. “Everyone loved it; some were actually scared.”
Shawn says he put the decorations on a 10-second delay to give an opportunity for people to walk up to it. For the upcoming Halloween, he says he might consider a motion sensor.
“I may incorporate a motion sensor,” Shawn says, “but with the amount of traffic we get through the maze, using the time delay method I did last year is probably still good, but maybe five seconds instead of 10.”
Shawn is already considering building another haunted mirror for the upcoming Halloween, improving on what he learned from his past experience. He plans to use smaller pieces of plywood to cut down on the weight, and build the frame a bit larger than the TV screen so he can more easily hide the TV’s power supply and media player. Shawn also found that the plexiglass and gasket muffled the speakers in the television set, making it hard to hear. So, he’s considering mounting a soundbar to the future frame. Bluetooth-enabled speakers would also work well for this purpose.
This type of experimenting is perfect for this time of year – ensuring that, come October, all your Halloween tricks (and treats!) will be working perfectly. We love what you have done, Shawn, and we can’t wait to see what else you come up with later in the year!
Are you building cool Halloween props with AtmosFX Decorations? Perhaps you created something ingenious in previous years? Past or future, we want to see it! Send your photos and videos using this easy submission form and you may become the next AtmosFAN of the Week! Not only will you inspire others around the globe, you will also earn Kudos redeemable at the AtmosFX.com store, and win a free decoration collection!
