The Flying Crank Ghost

[Zombie-F]

I have finally joined "the club" of home haunters with a Flying Crank Ghost. I've only been talking about setting one up for what is it, three years now? I just finished mounting the motor assembly onto the ceiling in my upstairs closet so that it faces a window that faces out towards the front yard. The thing is very impressive for such a simple idea, and looks fantastic.

I kept it simple and went with a the "standard" Phantasmechanics ghost (click here (http://www.phantasmechanics.com/)). However, I did save myself the time and effort of building a motor platform and bought one that was very well-built by Propboy Productions (http://home.wi.rr.com/propboy/).

The only "flub" here, is I didn't realize that the ghost hangs off the back of the motor platform, so the ghost is only visible from the yard below if you're standing back a bit and the ghost is in it's highest position. I'll have to see how it looks at night before I decide to move the platform about a foot closer or not.

If all goes well (i.e. the weather stays friendly), I'll take a quick video of it tonight in the dark to show off how cool this effect is.

Have any other haunters here joined the "FCG club" yet?

[Sinister]

I really wouldn't mind seeing the video. That Ghost looks awesome. Hope you get some good footage Z! :)

[Zombie-F]

Crap. The video footage will have to wait until Halloween when I have a real camcorder to work with. My digicam's zoom works awesome for still photos, but the zoom on the video function is ass, so the video came out terrible. A friend at work is going to let me borrow his 8mm camera (with nightvision) so I can shoot video of all my stuff as it is set up for Halloween.

I did show Matt (The Shape) and his fiancee the prop last night, and they seemed to be very impressed by it. Hell, I was impressed by it and I built the thing! So cool, for something so simple.

[shadow]

I have a FCG too. Actually....my wife made the ghost and I added the crank. Check it out on my site.

There is a movie clip of it and my coffin (major prop construction on it)

Chow

[Empress Nightshade]

Shadow....

How old are you? The reason I ask is because of your signature at the end of your email. The Shadow was once a radio show long before TV. The announcer always said, "The Shadow knows..."

[shadow]

I'm sad to say i'm getting close to the big 4...0

I've seen the old show that's why i used it. I got the nickname at a company i worked at because i used to follow the foreman around everywhere so everyone started calling me (his) "shadow"

It's pretty fitting now that i'm into the halloween thing

[Haunt Master]

I finished my FCG this year and it got alot of great comments. I was proud of it. The only problem I had was that over time the ghost didn't seem to glow as much under the blacklight as it did when I first put it up. Don't know if the blacklight was getting weaker or what. Does anybody know if blacklights burn out?

[Zombie-F]

How did you make the fabric glow? Did you dip it in rit or detergent or did you paint it? I would think if you painted it the paint flakes off from the constant motion and that could be it.

[Haunt Master]

Iwashed in Rit whitener brightner. I thought about rewashing it again but didn't really want to take it down and take it apart. I had it hanging outdoors under my front porch but it didn't seem to been getting really dusty or dirty. Still think the problem was with the blacklight.

[Zombie-F]

What type of blacklight did you use? Was it a fluorescent type? The incadescent ones don't put out enough usable UV light and thus don't work as well.

Also, since it was outdoors did it get rained on at all? I believe rain could have washed out some of the rit and made it glow a lot less.

[Haunt Master]

I used an 18" fluorescent light fixture. It was only 15 watts but it worked great at first. I really didn't notice the change until a bout a week before Halloween night. It did rain here a little but not directly on my ghost. It probably got more damp from a few foggy mornings than from the rain. But it was not damp enough to be soaked. Oh well I paid less than $15 for the light so it was not a great loss other than the lessening of the glowing effect. I'll do some tests with the light before I write it off to make sure I'm not dumping a good light.

[DeathTouch]

I just used an 18 inch as well. But, I noticed that the ghost wasn't as bright as she first was. I was too lazy to put her back in the wash. So, instead, I just had a few pieces of cloth laying around and I used them to beef her up a little. Pandora was telling me that the glow starts to fade after a while, and she was right. I had her up for a month and about Halloween, you could tell the difference.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y260/lovermonkey/DSC01751.jpg

[Zombie-F]

Really? Mine never really faded much at all. I didn't put mine in the wash. I soaked the cloth in a plastic tub with liberal amounts of Tide mixed in with water for about a half an hour. Then I put it right in the drier for about 20 mins on low heat.

I ran her for a full month last year with no color loss and the new ghost ran for about a week this year with no color loss.

[HibLaGrande]

Ooo ooo ooo I'm in the FCG club.

I think rit will loose its glow after a while. sun light will make it deteriorate quicker. I used UV hair spray for a quick solution.