“Stanley” 2023

Building a Haunt on a hill … where our house is … on a … house on haunted hill! Oh! I just got that.

Anyway … when you build structures that are meant to go on an incline, you have to engage in some additional engineering to make them stand “up” (where up is based on the bead of a level, and not the slope of the hill).

Thus was the challenge when we decided to move Stanley’s mausoleum from it’s traditional spot at the bottom of the yard on a relatively level place under the oak tree… to the back of the yard, where the slope is more pronounced.

We needed to build a new hill jig. Unfortunately, the mausoleum, in order to be storable, needed to be able to be disassembled too. And thus requires a good solid base, or it twists and sags and looks … like hell.

Anyway, a new base was needed, and it also needed to be able to be stored without taking up a lot of space. The solution is approximately 3′ x 4′ x 7″, and can be stored in the garage rafters. This is what I came up with:

There are two levels to it. The lower level is equal in dimension to the lower frame of the assembled mausoleum. The second level is the same dimension as the INSIDE of the assembled frame. This means the mausoleum basically plugs into the supporting frame, the upper level of which becomes the framing of the mausoleum floor…

Of course, it wasn’t all about the mausoleum. Stanley got a new head as well. Rebecca applied her sculpting skills to a new wig head. We changed Stanley’s eye color to match the blue aesthetic of the other ghosts.