New Studio and Custom Work

STOLLOWEEN Studio has recently expanded, we now have over three times the space and the studio now features a large gallery with over 100 papier mache pieces on display plus a large well lit workshop area, full reference library and huge storage area.

   

In addition to teaching classes I am now have the space to handle custom work big and small.  If you are interested in having a piece built especially for you or your haunted attraction just let me know.

 

Send me a message to stolloween@gmail.com describing in detail what you would like and I will give you a quote.

Whether you want a single pirate skull or large set pieces for your haunt we now have a facility capable of meeting your needs.

Looking forward to working with you.

Scott A. Stoll

STOLLOWEEN Studio

716 George Street,MidlandMI48640

(989) 750-6457

A Motley Crew

Danger County Mine was a 1993 commercial haunted house that was a fun but exhausting experience yielding a lot of lessons.

The most important lesson was that tons of naïve enthusiasm does not necessarily make a financially successful haunted house.

In the end we broke even, recouping the majority of the money spent to pull off the project but a factor in that was our family and friends donated their time working the haunt for nothing more that our gratitude.

Here’s some photos of staff all decked out in their best "Danger County Mine" costumes.

Polaroid: Scale Model

Circa 1993: A miniature version of our walk-thru haunt called "Danger County Mine."

The miniature was built to help with the design and construction of the haunt.

Wall of Survivors

This is something I had totally forgotten about.

Shift the Wayback Machine to 1993 when my soon-to-be wife and I created a commercial haunted house called “Danger County Mine”, an abandoned gold mine adventure where the guests traveled through dilapidated shafts in search of lost miners only to encounter an array of haunted house scares.

The whole experience was fun and we managed to pretty much break even and have enough money left over to treat our friend and family volunteers to dinner and drinks.

A free meal for three days and nights of hard work, what a deal.

Anyway.

At the conclusion of the haunt we gave our guests a chance to immortalize their journey by signing our “Wall Of Survivors.”

The “Wall” was large sheets of paper attached to the wall next to the exit and it was something that our guests really seemed to enjoy.

Scribbled on the sheets were signatures as well as a variety of messages and shout outs.

This idea would be fun for anyone to incorporate into their haunt or yard display, simply give your guests a chance to express themselves.

The cost is almost nothing (paper and some markers) and the result is a fun way for them to punctuate their experience and serves as a fun memento for you.

My wife and I looked over the rolls of paper and the signatures that were scribed almost 18 years ago with a mix of humor and sadness as many of those that cared enough to sign our wall have since passed.

Bittersweet to say the least.

Spooky Geocaching

Our family has been geocaching since 2006. If you are unfamiliar with geocaching check out the website at http://www.geocaching.com/ to get a full understanding of this fun and addictive hobby.

In a nutshell geocaching is sort of like a treasure hunt using a handheld Global Positioning System (GPS) unit to find your way to a set of coordinates where a cache is hidden.

A cache is another word for container. A cache can be big or small such as a five gallon plastic bucket or a 35mm film container.

Each cache contains items such as log books, monetary items, trinkets, etc. Using clues published on the website and the GPS coordinates you head out on an adventure never knowing exactly what you are going to find.

A few of the great things about geocaching is that it is free (except for the GPS unit and gas money), it’s a great form of exercise as you do a lot of walking and hiking and you discover many areas in your local community that you never knew existed.

A couple of weeks ago we engaged in several days of back-to-back geocaching and found some very creatively themed caches.

One of our favorites was a series of eight “haunted places” geocaches in our surrounding area. Each cache was hidden in a location that was supposedly haunted. Each cache also detailed a local legend such as the ghost of a witch that haunts a set of woods or the remains of a house where a family was murdered resulting in reports of ghostly activity.

Another multi stage cache detailed a legend of a local vampire and had you travel to his childhood home and final burial place.

A multi stage cache is one where the first set of coordinates lead you to another set of coordinates and so on. The story was fun and the cache locations were very interesting to visit.

The last cache we attempted was not themed but proved to be the spookiest, ok, the scariest experience of them all.

The cache could only be done at night because the GPS coordinates took you to the starting point of a forest then required you to use a flashlight and follow reflective markers placed on the trees. The resulting hike was about a ½ mile into the woods in complete darkness, at which point you were to discover an X marked on a tree with the reflective tabs. Once you found the X you were supposed to turn off your flashlight and search for a red blinking beacon which would guide you to the next step.

On our first try at this nighttime cache we brought our boys ages 13 and 10, this proved to be a mistake because being in the middle of the woods in the pitch black was more than they could take.

Several nights later my wife and I attempted the cache again by ourselves. I’ll admit I’m not the bravest person in the world but I’m not skittish….but…after 40 minutes of trying to see the red beacon things started to get spooky.

First there was constant high pitched screeching all around us, bats we assumed, and while I rather like bats I had no desire to have one fly into my face in complete darkness. My wife and I decided to call it a bust and head back to the car.

Our little flashlights barely illuminatating the trail in front of us, my wife in the lead and me right behind her.

Everything was cool until I heard something, and by something I mean something big enough to make trotting sounds cross the trail right behind me.

Like an idiot in a bad horror film I stopped and swung my flashlight around to see what just passed behind my back, nothing. The moment I turned around to catch up with my wife I heard the “thing” cross the trail right behind me again going the opposite direction. This time I didn’t look back but rather quickened my pace and let out a small sigh of relief as we made our way out of the forest and back to car.

We plan on returning and successfully completing this geocache but next time we will bring a couple of adult friends with us. Not that I’m a wimp or anything I just think we should share the fun with our friends.

Right?

Geocaching is great fun and I urge you to give it a try if you have never experienced it. If you don’t have a GPS unit ask your friends, family or co-workers as I’m sure somebody has one that they would lend you for a couple of days. If you have kids it’s one of the coolest hobbies you can do as a family…as long as it’s daylight.

Haunted House

A blast from the past.

During the early 1980’s I had a serious addiction, one that threatened my school grades, wasted my time and had the potential to destroy my future. The addiction was my Atari 2600 video game system. During the early 80’s Atari was the thing even though Intellivision tried to tell you otherwise.

My Atari 2600 addiction caused me to accumulate over 100 game cartridges. One of the things I really loved about the games besides playing them was the great artwork that adorned the cover. Airbrushed scenes of violence and mayhem that just screamed “buy me.” A game that I used to love was “Haunted House” first released in 1981.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the game:

“The house has three floors and a basement. The player's character may pick up only one of three items at a time (a key to open doors, a scepter to ward off evil spirits, or the urn) and must avoid a bat, a tarantula, and the ghost of Mr. Graves himself. If the player is hit by the monsters nine times, the game ends. If the player escapes the house with the urn, the player wins.

The items (and house layout in higher difficulties) can only be seen when the player uses the 'fire' button on the joystick to light a match, illuminating a small radius directly around his character; this can be done an infinite number of times, although the match only lasts for a limited amount of time before being snuffed out. If a monster enters the same room as the player, a howling wind from the monster will blow out any lit match.

Haunted House has a total of nine different levels which make the game more challenging; in particular, later difficulty levels make the walls of the house itself invisible unless the player lights a match.”

The artwork on the box rocked and despite the primitive graphics the game was a lot of fun. If you don’t believe me you can play the Java version of the game online here.



To see more Atari 2600 artwork check out this site.

Thunder Mansion

"A hundred years ago on a dark and stormy night,
A legend began that is sure to inspire fright.
Lightning flashed and thunder boomed,
Dark shadows swirled and filled the room.
Your thoughts turn dark in a terrible fashion,
You will never escape…Thunder Mansion!"

In 2002, 2003 and 2004 I created a small walk through haunted house for my son’s elementary school annual spring carnival.

The haunted house was designed for children in kindergarten through 5th grade..not an easy task to thrill a 5th grader while still remaining mild enough to entertain a kindergartener.

The basic concept was to use a series of cardboard cut-out characters, black light, fog, dual audio track and several actors.

The characters were original artwork I created in Photoshop, enlarged and attached to heavy duty corrugated cardboard.

The actual haunted house consisted of a maze made from wood panels painted with a faux stone technique. Some of the card board characters featured animated and light up eyes. The whole tone was somewhere between Dr. Suess and Tim Burton.

Friendly, weird sort of trippy.

A series of tombstones were also created using the same techniques. The tombstones featured campy names and silly sayings all designed to entertain a young audience.