The leering skeleton is another one of those ubiquitous home haunter props that has been around for quite a while. It’s always fun to see someone have a different take on them though. In our case we decided we didn’t want to go with your standard tombstone for the base. Instead we hit upon the idea of using a “Columbarium”. We decided that a small columbarium for two would be about the right size for our needs. Once that was decided we needed a name. “Farol” is lantern in Spanish and that seemed like a good last name as well. (See what we did there?) We then just brainstormed first names and came up with Bartholomew and Helena, because the sounded fun. When it came to needed a death date, we decided to throw in some local history and used a date that is special to West Chicago. October 21, 1873.
We didn’t get a lot of photos of the construction process, but we can describe a bit of it.
The nicest part of this build is we designed it to break down for easy storage. The roof, sides, base, and the front panels and divider all detach and the whole thing, minus the skeleton packs up into about 1/3 the height of the assembled unit. The skeleton also lays on top of that in storage. It also makes it easy to transport to conventions, etc.
We started out, like we often do with a series of sketches on graph paper. This made it easier for us to work together and have a better idea of what we were trying to communicate to each other.
The basic structure of the unit is built from thin plywood, and 1×4, and 2×2 lumber.
After we had built the basic structure we filled in all the seams and edges of the plywood with wood putty, let that dry, and sanded it down. Because this was a last minute prop we started on almost half way through October, we really didn’t have a lot of time for trying to do a fancy stone finish. Rust-Oleum “Stone” textured spray paint to the rescue. We coated the exterior in the stone fleck paint, and then followed up on every wooded surface with multiple layers of “2x Ultracover gloss finish”.
col·um·bar·i·um
/ˌkäləmˈberēəm/
a room or building with niches for funeral urns to be stored.
The sides and top and base all bolt together using lag bolts, wing nuts, and fender washers.
For a motor, we once again turned to the ever handy wiper motor. ( If you plan to make many motorized Halloween props, just buy a stock of these things, you never know when inspiration will hit and you will need one. ) The motor is mounted to a custom built bracket that also secures to the base using a couple of bolts with wingnuts.
On the motor we attached a short arm with a nylon glide post sticking up from it. Then to one side we used 1/2″ PVC to create a vertical post that sits on a couple washers and has a bolt that acts as the pivot point. In the vertical PVC we added a tee fitting with an arm extending out about 14 inches. Using the Dremel we cut a slot in the bottom side of the arm, the slot is wide enough to let the nylon post on the motor arm slide back and forth freely. The slot begins about 1/2″ inch from the free end of the PVC and extends about 8 inches towards the tee fitting. Once this arm slips over the motor arm, post the 36o degree rotational motion of the motor arm gets turned into back and forth motion on the vertical pipe.
The skeleton itself was reenforced with a 1/2 EMT electrical conduit custom bent to mimic the curvature of the skeleton’s spine. In the shoulder area a section of aluminum channel stock was bent in a custom shape to re-enforce the right shoulder area. This new bracket was riveted to the EMT conduit spine. Finally the arm itself was reenforced with a section of 1/8″ plain steel round rod from Menards. This keeps the elbow and wrist from bending and allows the skeleton to hold up the lantern. To get the skeleton to hold the lantern, we used a heat gun to soften the hand plastic and bent the fingers around the ring of the lantern.
The lantern is a lightweight plastic lantern from a craft store. John re-wired it so that small thin power wires exit the top of the lantern and are hidden by the skeletons hand. The wires continue up the arm and neck and into the skull where they attach to the LEDs for the skeleton’s eyes. John then ran wires down the spine and out the end of the EMT. John also attached a strip of addressable LED strip light down the inside of the skeletons breast bone so that the ribcage can be lit to any color combination or pattern we desire. Those wires are hidden inside a rib and also run down the EMT into the base. Once in the base the wires for the motor, and LED’s connect to a custom built controller that handles turning on/off the various lights, and the motor as needed.
Bartholomew debuted in our yard on October 22, 2022 to much neighborhood acclaim.