Merlin’s FCG Puppet – Haunt Project

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The first prop that I ever made was a “fake FCG”. It was my first year helping with our local Jaycees haunted house and they gave me a room of my very own. I thought about painting my room black and making a Flying Crank Ghost that would float over the people as they walk through. Everyone loved the idea. Most of the workers had heard of or had seen a FCG at other haunted houses. The fact the the FCG was so well known made me soon realize that a FCG would be cool but would it be scary? If the workers had seen it before then the patrons probably would have too. What if I could make it “attack” them as the walk through my room. They would not be expecting that.

So I built my first fake FCG puppet. The idea was to dress in all black and stand in the back of the room as the patrons entered. The puppet would be worked in a very mechanical way as though it was hanging from the ceiling. I even brought in a small loud sounding motor that I knew the patrons would hear to give the illusion that a motor was controlling it. A black light was positioned in the middle of the room facing the patrons. This would blur their vision and help hide me from their view yet gave off enough light to illuminate the puppet.

On opening night as the patrons filed in to the room I could hear them commenting on how cool it was. No one was scared of it and many commented to their friends that they had seen ones like it before. Some knew it was worked by a motor and was hanging from the ceiling. As they moved to the center of the room the puppets arms suddenly stretched out and with a loud scream I lunged toward them.

To make a long story short, it worked great! I had people falling to the floor in fear. At one point in the night a mother barreled over her two children to get out of the room after only seconds earlier assuring them that it was just hanging form the ceiling. I even had to stop at one point because five young lady’s were pasted to the floor too afraid to get up Two of them then admitted that they had wet them selves.

That was the only night I got to work the puppet. I had every worker begging me to let them do it the next night. It was definitely the hit of the haunt.

Making the frame

The frame is made of PVC. In most of the ones that I have made I used 3/4 in PVC. This one is made with 1 inch PVC. The larger PVC will make the frame stronger but will add to the weight of the puppet. I’m a big guy so the extra weight will not bother me but if you build one think of the finished weight when deciding on the size of PVC.

In the picture to the left you can see the sizes of PVC are printed on the frame. Your frame needs to be made to fit your body so some adjustment in the lengths may be needed.

The rod that the puppet is built on can be any length. The longer the pipe the higher in the air the puppet will be. Longer, will make the puppet move more distance as you move your body as well. If the pipe is too long, the frame will get more uncomfortably to wear.

Here you can see that a small hole is drilled into the PVC connector and a decking screw screwed into the hole. This is how I secured the frame. Cement could be used but the frame tends to take a lot of abuse and the cement did not seem to hold up as well.