On Halloween night you will need a festive being to preside over
the graveyard, greet guests, or simply wait hidden at the top of the garden.
Uncialle's Reaper is shown above. You, too, can host this frightening
presence. These basic instructions show how to make your inhuman helper.
Although the figure featured here is the Reaper, you can modify the clothing,
head, and hands to make Zombies, a Witch, Dracula, or even the Dead Elvis, a
fearsome creature indeed.
You will need: duct tape; two pieces of PVC plastic pipe (one
piece about 5 feet long; the other piece, a "T" piece, about 18" long--you can
get the store to cut it for you); a sturdy metal rod, or better yet--a 3' to 4'
foot-long steel fencepost; duct tape; a sturdy stick or dowel about a foot long;
two coathangers; plastic flesh hands or plastic skeleton hands; a plastic skull (or,
alternatively, a Halloween mask, whole-head type); a hammer; a robe.
1. Select the place in your yard where you want the Reaper to
stand. Using a hammer, drive in the steel fencepost until only about 20 inches
remain above ground.
2. Place the long piece of PVC over the fencepost so it stands
upright.
3. Place the PVC T piece down over the long PVC piece, as shown in
the diagram. These are his "shoulders." The two pieces may be glued together
with the "purple stuff"--PVC glue.
4. Straighten out the coathangers and twist and/or duct-tape them
together so that you have one long piece. Duct tape one hand to one end of the
coat hanger wire.
5. Thread the wire through the T PVC piece. Then duct-tape the
other hand to the free end of the wire.
6. Duct tape the stick or dowel to the upright PVC pipe so it
sticks stright up about ten inches above the T.
7. Put the plastic skull on the stick--or stuff a whole-head
Halloween mask with foil or newspaper and attach it to the stick with duct tape.
8. Now add a dark robe, bend the arms satisfactorily, and--there
stands the Reaper. If you want to make his body seem more robust, fill a small
(white-type) garbage bag with mailing "peanuts" or "starchies," and duct-tape it
to the chest region of the PVC upright; do a smaller bag for the hips. If he's to be in semidarkness, he doesn't need a body. What am I saying? Of COURSE, he doesn't need a body -- he's the Reaper.
The Reaper wields a scythe made in the 1800s and used early in the 20th century by Uncialle's grandfather to
harvest wild hay on the Snake River Plain. (Never hold a scythe this way! The
Reaper, of course, is death.)
There is only one thing more frightening than the scythe
of the Grim Reaper, and that is--
How to Make the Grim Reaper
