Zombie mask SCORE at Kroger!

Went to the local Kroger (grocery store) to buy some coarse ground black pepper...scored this great zombie mask for $15.00!

Halloween Hot Sauce

My previous business, Haunted Hot Sauce has died, its been buried and has now clawed its way back from the grave as Halloween Hot Sauce! Do you like Halloween? Do like hot sauce? Then you'll LOVE Halloween Hot Sauce!

Halloween Hot Sauce creates flavorful, high-quality hot sauce for Halloween...or anytime! Each hot sauce is wrapped in a creepy, vintage, apothecary-style label and comes topped with a scrap of “burial cloth” that’s been securely attached with a toe-tag!

It's a decoration! It's a delicious hot sauce! It's perfect for Halloween parties!

Halloween Hot Sauce...the OFFICIAL hot sauce of Halloween! You think that's a bold claim? See for yourself at HalloweenHotSauce.com!

Is your Mort Safe?

I learned recently that bars, stones and fences were installed on top of and around ancient grave-sites in order to protect deceased loved ones from grave robbers. These were called MORTSAFES!

A Google image search for mortsafe yields astounding results!

I'd LOVE to make one of these!

Here's the iron bar variety

How about an iron coffin!?

And here's a full-blown cage!

Many, many more pics and Halloween decorating ideas here! ( http://tinyurl.com/97l2oph )

Yankee Candle Halloween Preview Party!

I love this time of year!

Yankee Candle 2012 Fall Scents

Speaking from personal experience, the Yankee Candle Fall scents "HARVEST WELCOME" and "TREEHOUSE MEMORIES" are glorious!

Yankee Candle describes them as the following:

Harvest Welcome
"Welcome home! Cozy up with this inviting combination of farm-fresh pumpkins spiced with just the right amount of brisk autumn air."

Treehouse Memories
"Warm, earthy woods wrapped in sweet, familiar spices evoke memories of crisp Autumn days spent amongst the changing leaves."


They have four other Fall scents too. Season's Blessings, Whoopie Pie, Caramel Pecan Pie and Apple Pumpkin.

Season's Blessings smells a bit too "grapey" in my opinion. I don't buy food scents (Whoopie Pie is supposed to smell like chocolate with vanilla frosting) and Apple Pumpkin probably smells like apple and pumpkin!

I recommend Harvest Welcome and Treehouse Memories highly!

See them all here: http://www.yankeecandle.com/whats-new/new-fragrances

I can't wait for their Halloween scents arriving in August!

Halloween at Garden Ridge 2012

It's that time of year again....JULY, when Garden Ridge stores display their unique and reasonably priced Halloween merchandise. For a home haunter like myself it signals prop building "crunch time".

Here is a link to my Facebook page where the rest of the photo album is available:

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.321691541259257.74278.100002552417400&type=1 target="_blank"

If you have to "Friend" me to see this link, please do so!! We should be friends already anyway!

Stay Rotten,

Victor "The Undertaker" Ives

Haunted Hot Sauce Halloween 2011

Just a few days shots of my small display this year. More than quantity, this year was about lighting and ambiance.

Click Here to see the photos.

Or Click Here to see the fancy slideshow.

OUTSIDE: The entire house was illuminated by three blue spotlights hidden in the trees.

INSIDE: Red spotlights shone through the boarded windows which made the house scream "EEEEEVIL!" I didn't have time to detail the Styrofoam "boards" but that made no difference at night as they appeared as silhouettes when lit from behind.




WITCH JARS: I made a dozen of these quickly the night before Halloween. Hung at varying heights from the huge Magnolia tree and lit with tea lights, they were VERY effective in creating interest, movement, contrast and a ghostly atmosphere.




THE COFFIN UNDER THE STAIRS: Illuminated by a hidden red spotlight from above, inside this coffin is where I hid one of those sound activated "haunted hedge" shakers. Everyone that approached it was greeted by a violent shaking, rattling sound and guttural growls coming from within the coffin. My fog machine dispersed thick fog from under this coffin at regular intervals.



I actually got to hide in here for a while to scare trick-or-treaters.


THE CEMETERY: Each tombstone was illuminated by a blue/green LED light "expertly" duct taped to a spray-painted black paint stirrer stick and shoved into the ground in front of the tombstone. A few had LED candles and others had oil lanterns hanging from them.



One of my only "night shots".




The same shot the morning after.




The wilted and faded cemetery flower urns I made can be found elsewhere in my blog.




I realize that the inside of this coffin looks too "new" but at night, illuminated by the flickering oil lamp, that goes unnoticed.


SUMMARY: This year's display was creepy and beautiful. Red light streaming through the boarded windows, blue light illuminating the entire house, each tombstone illuminated by it's own blue/green light, flickering candles and oil lamp flames and glowing witch jars swaying in the slight breeze. Haunted organ music, crows and the moans of restless undead souls were heard.

I'll use the lighting tricks I learned along with much greater detail for next year so keep an "eye out" for Moonlit Hill Cemetery - Halloween 2012!


Click Here to see a few more shots!

I want my Mummy! (sort of)

THIS is maybe the most realistic looking prop I've seen from Spirit Halloween in a while. It hangs in a cloth box made to look like a crate. It's motion sensitive. When it's triggered the eyes light up red, it shakes and it goes into a sort of "comedy routine" which ruins the effect in my opinion. The voice sounds to me like George Costanza from Seinfeld.

It costs $99.99 which with a 20% discount coupon might be worth it if I can hack into it and make it growl menacingly instead of complain. It's supposed to utter 4 phrases but I've only heard one.

See more pics and a video HERE

Halloween T-shirts at Walmart

Impressive Walmart! The zombie one glows in the dark and they're only $5.50!

Blue Moon Harvest Pumpkin Ale

It's that time again, when various pumpkin beers hit the market. I like the packaging of this one but I'm not getting any "pumpkin" from the taste. I've tried adding my own pumpkin spice syrup to beer but the sweetness of the syrup doesn't mix well with it. Maybe I should try adding just the typical pumpkin pie spices. (ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cinnamon) and leave out the sugar and water. Any recommendations?

It's corpsin' time!

I'm working on a half-corpse to possibly carry in the upcoming Dragon*Con parade on Labor Day weekend. She'll "interact" with the crowd and others throughout the day.

HauntedHotSauce.com website pre-launch

More content to come but you can order Haunted Hot Sauce now if you like.





See what we've dug up at www.HauntedHotSauce.com

Pumpkin Spice Liqueur: Vintage Bottles

I'm extremely happy with how this entire project turned out! I'll continue to make this and if there are any changes to the recipe, I'll post them.



This photo is a little washed out but you get the idea. I let it sit in a big bottle for a couple months and then poured it into smaller bottles. The liqueur cleared up a LOT leaving the sediment in the bottom of the big bottle and giving the final product a nice orange color and clarity.

Something WICKED...

Something WICKED this way comes!


Fresh from a label re-design, a new toe-tag and a creepy, "burial shroud" bottle topper comes HELL-Razor Habanero Hot Sauce! Available very soon on HauntedHotSauce.com.

NEW (Old) Haunted Hot Sauce Bottle Style!!

Revealed for the very first time is the prototype bottle in my NEW (old vintage apothecary) style! What do you think?


The zombies have been redrawn on every product! New, aged, more authentic toe tags!


I still have some tweaks to do on the aged cloth bottle toppers but overall I'm VERY excited about the new look!


I think everybody will LOVE this! I poured my undying soul into this project.

It's a hot sauce! It's a Halloween prop! You NEED this for your Halloween party table! And trust me...the hot sauce is the BEST, thickest, most robust hot sauce you will EVER taste! It's my labor of love! Here's a link to my products and a heat scale.

AVAILABLE VERY SOON at HauntedHotSauce.com!! Stay tuned!

If you'd like to be informed when the site launches, simply send an email to TheUndertaker@HauntedHotSauce.com saying "Let me know when the new site launches"

Incidentally...Thank you House Bloodthorn for the rough-edge die-cut idea. Right now I'm doing that with fancy scissors but when I have these labels printed I'll apply it for real!

Embalming Fluid! It cures what ails 'ya!

A few photos from a Halloween party that I attended a couple years ago.


Embalming fluid...responsible for that winning smile!


Something on my lip? Where?

FrankenScents! It's it's ALIVE!!!

www.FrankenScents.com is alive, Alive, ALIVE!!!

In a post last month I told you about www.FrankenScents.com (is that name not BRILLIANT!?) that offers cool, creepy products to scent your Halloween fog, props, costumes and displays!

There's no better Friday the 13th gift for me than seeing the FrankenScents.com website alive and open for business! I placed my first order today and I strongly suggest you do the same!

Go to www.FrankenScents.com and check out Dr. FrankenScents' fine selection of scent spritzers, incense and fog additives to make your fog machine spew out any of over 25 different scents!

( Scent list and descriptions here )


If you're not sure which scents you want, order some (or all) of Dr. FrankenScents' "Test Tube Sniffies" for only $0.79 each + very nominal shipping.

In addition to scent related products, Dr. FrankenScents Halloween Emporium offers all kinds of haunt supplies, novelties, props and effects!

Check out www.FrankenScents.com! Tell them The Undertaker sent you!

DISCLAIMER: I have no affiliation with FrankenScents.com other than being excited about new, creative, fun Halloween products and wanting to make all of my props smell like Zombie Breath!

The Undertaker (Me!)

I just stumbled across this picture of me as my Undertaker character taken at Dragon*Con last year.

A corpse escapes?

Taken on a recent trip to the local cemetery.


A better photo of that amazing Celtic cross!

Making Skulls

I've decided to try my hand at making a latex skull mold so I can cast my own expanding foam skulls year-round. I purchased a kit from Smooth-on and have filled in some of the deeper recesses in my skull with clay to make removal of the foam skulls easier. I'll carve the finished skull copies with a Dremel tool to re-deepen those areas.


My skull and the directions.


The skull's recesses filled in a bit with clay to make releasing the skull copies easier.

The next step? To secure my skull to a smooth surface, apply a mold release to the skull and start coating it with layer after layer of thick latex.