Learnin' Stuff

Got to spend the day at my favorite sculpting and casting supply store, " Reynold's Advanced Materials" in Orlando. Took their "Intro to Mold Making and Casting" class. We have a Q&A session on Thursday on using "Lifecasting". Hopefully we'll take casting up a level this year.

The class was about 20 people,  some jewelers,  a couple of wood craftsmen, a taxidermist and a sculptor or two, but no other haunters. I was a little surprised considering their showroom examples are nearly all props and scary stuff.

Once again the employees get kudos for really knowing their stuff and excellent customer service. Trainers were very good.

Haunter's Hangout

One of our bigger resources for networking with other yard haunters and Halloween fanatics these days is "Haunter's Hangout" on Facebook. If you haven't joined, it is an incredibly friendly group of people, mostly home haunters, some professional haunters, but all of the them are about sharing, sharing their latest prop build, ideas for a prop build, haunting tips, haunting questions, Halloween jokes and  memes, and pretty much anything you can imagine relating to Halloween and home haunting.

Recently the Facebook group passed 3000 members and this last Thursday started the second season of Haunter's Hangout on Google's ( YouTube ) on air live streaming function.

Haunter's Hangout Host, Deoblo Lopez

Live Streaming interviews with other haunters on YouTube was originally the brainchild of home haunter, Deoblo Lopez, aka Deoblo85 ( Haunter's Hangout ) who quickly realized he was going to need help to get his idea rolling and solicited the help of friend and home haunter, Jim Walden, aka JWAL ( The Twisted Seed ) and "Haunter's Hangout" was born.

Haunter's Hangout Host Jim Walden

Shortly thereafter they requested the expertise of home haunter, Brad Goodspeed ( The Butcher of Provincetown ) to help with the "Haunter's Hangout" Facebook group and provide his video expertise with a weekly promo vid for the upcoming Thursday night video stream.

Haunter's Hangout Host, Brad Goodspeed

Each Thursday night at 9 PM (EST) from February through May the three hosts bring on various guests and "special guests" from home haunts and professional haunts for an informal question and answer session, usually made even more informal with the consumption of each person's alcoholic beverage of choice. So in addition to exhibiting their work, experiences and ideas, there's a few alcohol enhanced jokes and some laughter to keep things from getting slow. Generally the shows I've seen last a couple hours.

Things are a bit sluggish this time of year as far as  Halloween creativity, props and projects, so Haunter's Hangout is a nice bit of Halloween entertainment for a Thursday evening. You can post questions for specific haunters on the "Haunter's Hangout" Facebook page or on the YouTube channel. 

Busy on a Thursday night? You can watch the videos from the live stream anytime afterwards at " Haunter's Hangout".

Old Jewish Cemetery

This one was on our bucket list so I thought I'd share a few photos. There are some things that just defy description...

 This cemetery in the Jewish Quarter of Prague was the only area the Jewish were allowed to be buried from the 15th century to the 18th century. There are over 12000 tombstones in this area, roughly the size of a small city block. Historians estimate there are nearly 100,000 graves and as many as 12 deep.

The Ossuary

 Had no idea what an ossuary was before our visit to the Czech Republic.
 In a nutshell it's timeshare for dead people. You get buried for awhile at an exclusive burial location then after a few hundred years or so, your time is up, they dig you up and relocate your bones to an ossuary so other people can be buried where you were.

Think the coins strewn around the mountains of skulls are where people made wishes?

This chandelier of skulls and bones is the centerpiece in the Ossuary.

The exclusive grounds in the village of Sedlec, in the Czech Republic, surround the abbey there. In 1278 the head of the monastery in Sedlec brought back soil from Jerusalem (or more specifically Calvary, where Jesus Christ was crucified) and sprinkled the earth around the cemetery. So now it became like this very cool place to be buried and everyone wanted in.  I didn't read how much it would have cost but I'm guessing no paupers were buried there. So that pretty much excludes any of my ancestors, assuming I have any Czech or Bohemian family history.

 A few wars go by and a couple of plagues and things are getting a little tight at the small cemetery, and in 1400 they added the Church of All Saints there. The first of the skeletons are exhumed to make room for the church and placed in an ossuary built beneath the church.

Around 1500, one of the order's monks who was partially blind, (and I'm guessing, based on his job assignment, was no one's favorite monk), is assigned the task of exhuming some of the graves and stacking more of the bones in the ossuary.

Finally, in 1700, Frantisek Rint, a Czech woodcarver, is hired and begins the decorating of the Sedlec Ossuary with all the exhumed bones. The most disturbing thing to me is why this job was thought of in the first place? I mean, what kind of warped mind says, "lets take all these bones and decorate"?

The macabre sculptures are unusual to say the least. Not as creepy as you might think. We missed out on seeing the catacombs in Paris and after seeing photos of this in the past, we weren't about to let this one go by. Certainly it was one of the more unusual things we've ever seen.

 

Family crest

 

We did spend quite a few minutes admiring the beauty that neglect had on some of the old tombstones

 

 

 

"Dead with Dave" Video Contest Submission

Reworked our 2013 video to add some photos to the end  (at about 1:59) showing some of build process for "Sorrow" and the mausoleum facade and entered in the "Dead with Dave" Home Haunter Video Awards. We entered in the static prop contest even though I'm not very optimistic, there are some killer entries in that category this year! It's all good though, each year we see what people are creating and the videos they put together just challenges us for the next year!



We've also submitted to the Home Haunter Video Awards for the second year and the Canadian Haunter's Association Video Awards in the "International" Category.

Resting and Reflecting

Souvenir from Sedlec Ossuary in the Czech Republic

Some days to recover from the holidays and I should be able to spend some time setting some goals for this years additions to Shingle Creek Manor. We're hoping our readers, fellow bloggers, and fellow haunters had an excellent Christmas and New Years and good fortune follows you throughout 2014.

An exhausting vacation out of my normal element and in strange surroundings always makes me feel re-energized when I return to my home and what I know. The renewed energy and creative feelings makes me optimistic for 2014. I'll share some of our more unusual and macabre discoveries in some future blogs maybe it will inspire or get the creative juices flowing so to speak. We did manage to bring back one unusual souvenir for this years haunt, ironically it didn't even get a raised eyebrow from Customs or TSA officials at the airports. Guess they've seen it all...

Looking forward to reading what everyone is planning and their goal setting for the new year. We hope you will continue to share with us!

Christmas Has Been Delayed ...

While I have been touting that we are "skipping christmas" this year, it may be a bit of an exaggeration. There are no Christmas decorations inside or outside here at Shingle Creek Manor, not so much as a wreath, but we're not skipping Christmas. It has however been delayed... well, at least for us.

We have always had to plan our holiday rituals around our careers which have never allowed any vacation time during this time of year, so our Christmases have been somewhat limited to whatever festivities we could squeeze into Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and of course the pre christmas battling of the shopping hoards. This year though we planned way early to get away from our normal Christmas routine, visit our family on Christmas Eve and then leave the country on Christmas Day. So while everyone else is exchanging gifts and celebrating with friends and family we'll be cramped into over priced airline seats. Our arrival date to Prague on December 26th will begin our holidays this year.

While this might not seem like it should be a first choice for a Christmas getaway, by all appearances and reviews it is one of the few European destinations that continue their christmas festivities beyond the 25th. It has far less tourism than most other European destinations, plus they have lots of "old stuff" there. Not a century or two of old stuff  like here in the U.S., but that kind of old where they have to put BC or AD on the date to help distinguish how old it is. I'm all about exploring historic stuff and having lived here in Florida for so many years, if we can have some fresh fallen snow a bit while we're there, well, that would be okay too.

While it might be a bit optimistic, we hope to capture the feel of an old world kind of Christmas with a little less corporate influence and instead, concerts in centuries old churches or cathedrals, street markets of hand made goods, street performers, and savory new cultural foods and spirits.

 Of course this isn't a Christmas blog, and it would be inappropriate for two people that dedicate so much of our year toward making a Halloween experience for our neighbors not to to spend some time exploring historical sites of a more macabre nature. Several of Prague's beautiful Cemeteries and the Sedlec Ossuary (The Bone Church) are in our plans.

Seen so many photos of the Old Jewish Cemetery and read the history behind it, this is a must see in person

However you chose to celebrate Christmas, we hope you will find the joy that you seek with time for family and friends, and of course time to reflect on the true meaning of this season.  Merry Christmas from Shingle Creek Manor!