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2012 Display Schedule:
We will have LIVE actors on Saturday 10/27 and again on Wednesday 10/31!
October 20 through October 31 -- 6pm to 9:30pm Sun-Thu, 6pm-11pm Fri-Sat
Note that we are not able to run our display in the rain or during high winds!
Please consider signing our guest book and leaving a tip in the tip box near the driveway if you like our display. The money will be used to help offset the costs for putting on the display next year.
619 N Drury Ln, Arlington Heights, IL 60004
Welcome to the Drury Lane Cemetery Halloween yard haunt, where you'll find tombstones, undead creatures, ghouls, and witches.
We began building our first Halloween display in 2006. It started out small with
just a few homemade static props that year, but since then our display has gradually grown in size and complexity.
Each year we expand our existing display with new
props and animatronics that we've built between the months of July and October.
Our yard display is open to the public
starting 2 weeks before Halloween and runs all the way through October 31st. On Halloween, we even add live actors to the display for some
extra scares!
This web site was built to show off some of our creations and to give you some of the
"behind-the-scenes" photos and videos that show how our stuff is made and how it all comes together. Sometimes
we will even document the construction process so that others can attempt to build the same things for their own displays.
You'll find weekly updates in the "Blog / Updates" section, and you can go back in time and see
the projects we have worked on for each year. Check out our Faq for answers to commonly asked questions.
News
April 10, 2012
We will be making a few cosmetic adjustments to the website in the next few weeks, so don't be surprised if you
see a few changes soon.
We are already working on some exciting new things for this year's display. We have now made the full
leap into pneumatics! Here's a video showing me testing our first 2 pneumatic cylinders with a FrightProps
PicoBoo prop controller that
we bought while at the
TransWorld trade show.
Both cylinders are double-acting 3/4" bore and one has a 5" stroke and the other has a 6" stroke. We're using 12V solenoids with 5-port 4-way pneumatic valves. All parts were ordered from
FrightProps or
PowerAire.com.
So what do we plan on doing with these cylinders? The 10" stroke cylinder is going to be used to animate a 5' foam & latex snake that we purchased. This will make the snake "strike" at unsuspecting visitors.
The other cylinder is probably going to animate a skeleton fence trasher. We might also have something else up our sleeves, but I'm not telling yet. Could be anything.
March 16, 2012
We just got back from spending 2 days at the
Halloween & Attractions Tradeshow (a.k.a TransWorld) in St. Louis, Mo. Wow... This show is amazing.
So many ideas and so many things I'd love to be able to spend money on! It's so hard to go to show like this with a limited budget! :) We met up with fellow
Chicago Haunt Builders
members at the show and as a group we even organized several group buys to get stuff at great prices. Here's a video (part 1 of 17) from Russ at
McKamey Manor to give you an idea of what Transworld is like: