Here’s a Jurassic Park pumpkin carving from the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze to give you some inspiration this Halloween.


Here’s a Jurassic Park pumpkin carving from the Great Jack O’Lantern Blaze to give you some inspiration this Halloween.

The Phantom Claw – ( this set-up could be done with a refrigerator box )
Years ago, I was helping with the set-up of a Boy Scouts’ fund-raiser Haunted House in a vacant clothing store. There was an empty dressing room, which was basically a large closet with the door removed. The scouts had all showed up with various costumes and props and that led to me inventing “The Phantom Claw.” One scout going through the family’s Halloween storage box could only find one “wolfman” hairy hand with bloodied wolf claws. Suddenly I saw the perfect use for that claw. Using a cardboard panel cut from a refrigerator box, I created a new door for the closet. The scouts painted a dungeon door with black hinges and bolt-heads; very medieval looking! Next, I cut a very large padlock from cardboard, cut a very large hole in it, painted it black. After the paint was dry I had the scouts overlay the cardboard with wide cellophane packing tape to make the padlock very shiny. Then I glue-gunned it to the door over where I’d cut a hole centered about a foot below a small window that I’d cut at eye level. I had the scouts add two dowel rods painted black, to the window as prison bars. Then I cut a large cardboard skeleton key, painted black with some small, odd symbols inked down the shaft of the key, with a brass color permanent marker. I fastened the key, hanging on a cord to the side of the door. Then, I shredded a square of black visqueen sheeting, and taped it to the inside of the door to hang down over the hole that was cut through door and the overlaid padlock. Since the padlock was shiny, the fact that the shiny visqueen was just shards was unnoticeable in the dim light.
The nights that the Haunted House was open for the public, a volunteer would enter the room, pull the door shut, then as guests approached the door, the volunteer, with one hand nervously gripping and clenching a prison bar, would peer through the window and agonizingly plead for someone to unlock the padlock, advising that the instructions were on the key. When a guest leaned close, suddenly as if appearing out of thin air, a bloody wolf-man claw would be thrust twisting and grasping, through the shredded visqueen! People literally jumped back with a scream! Very effective and basically simple to do. Any ugly hand would work, even just stage make-up could create the Phantom Claw grasping at the guest.
hahaha that’s brilliant
Thanks, and as noted, you don’t need a closet, an upright refrigerator box alone would work, by painting the wooden dungeon door and black padlock and cutting a flap on the backside, for the volunteer to sneak into the box, before showtime!
makes sense thanks for the tip
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You're so welcome!
Thank you for writing and posting this 🙂
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