I took great care to make certain the filament lines in the top photo were visable to you. At night, you cannot see them. Last year, the line we used was too light and kept breaking under the weight of the skelly arms. The lighter weight filament line worked ok with the lighter, blow-molded skelly, but was not strong enough to hold up with this skelly. Brother Lu wanted a more realistic looking skeleton then your average blow-molded one, so we upgraded. The new skelly reacted differently when operated so we had to modify the gallows to accomodate it.
First, you need to build a gallows. We used some landscape timber which, when not used at Halloween, doubles nicely in the garden as a place to hang a lantern. Call it "creative storage".
At the top of the gallows, you'll need to create wooden extensions for the small hooks through which the filament line will run. Sorry, the extensions are painted black, and are a little hard to see in this photo. If you look at the top photo and follow the lines, you can see where they run.
The hangman's noose holds the skelly in place, and a heavy metal rod is inserted in his spine and into the wood behind him. This is a stabilizer to keep the skelly from getting out of control when you jerk the lines to make his hands pop up.
We created a blind behind him and covered it with see through camo material. when its dark it works great - no one can see the operator. What you do is wait until your ToT's are passing by, and when they least expect it, you pull the lines and they jump out of their skin. The whole thing operates like a giant marionette. We do not involve the feet though. . . that was a disaster.
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