Quite some time ago, way back in 2007, the family and I decided to start putting on Halloween and Christmas light shows. We started with rudimentary static 8-channel lighting, moved to animated string choreography, 96 channels of LED-only lights, and more than 2.5 miles of power cords. We then switched to a method utilizing RGB LED DMX (it is a mouthful but well worth the conversion) capable devices to control individual bulbs and eliminate nearly all of the 2.5 miles of individual power cords & associated power circuits
Our Animatronic, Halloween & Christmas Light Show Playlists
In 2011 we added a full custom-built 24′ x 16′ haunted house where we installed our custom-built props, including and not limited to pepper’s ghosts, slamming heads, flip-flop monsters, spitting zombies, floor monsters, jumping-dog, and home-built animatronics. We even tried our hand at some rudimentary 3d projection but found this wasn’t something we could effectively implement within the haunted house so dropped the endeavor the next year.
Of course, our light show also continued to get more complicated and involved until 2013 when we stopped expansion due to a few simple facts associated with the show; most notably, vehicle traffic, the time commitment, neighborhood complaints, vandals, and the sheer time commitment & expense of it all.
We retired from building the haunted house after the 2018 Halloween season and then donated all the building supplies to Habitat for Humanity. We have not decided what to do with the supplies utilized to build the props but they are neatly disassembled (okay, some not so neatly) and stacked in containers awaiting their next adventure.
Perhaps we will return to the madness and resume building light shows and/or haunted houses, but for now, we are quite enjoying not spending hundreds of hours in the cold setting up our displays and await future neighbors who will take the gauntlet to bring happiness and joy to the local children for the next decade.