Now is a good time to pass on a small warning. Some fans require the blades to keep them cool, be careful this thing doesn't turn into a fireball if that is the case with your fan. We only use ours for about 2 hours a year, outdoors, so we're not concerned.

A few years ago, we were planning our adding to our yearly yard haunt. This was my first full-time year working the haunt, so we were scouring the Halloween Monsterlist looking for some cheap and easy props to throw together. We had started just that year of joining the ranks of Neighborhood Reclamation and Recycling personnel (garbage pickers) here in our hometown and were heading out 2 nights a week looking for stuff that could "make sweet props".

We happened upon the 4 foot tall stand fan that would become the No No Ghost.


The No No Ghost, as I said earlier, is actually based on a project idea from THE HALLOWEEN MONSTERLIST that apparently is no longer there.

It's actually a very nice easy, low budget animatronic that you can have up and running in a matter of a few hours. I'd give it a difficulty rating of 2 out of 10.

No no is easy to assemble and requires very little parts, Here's what you'll need:

• 1 stand fan, complete and functional
• 1 length of scrap wood (about 3 feet long or so and about 2 inches in width or less is desirable)
• 2 self-tapping screws
• 1 empty milk gallon jug
• white paint (optional)
• adhesive backed Velcro
• 1 large white sheet or comparable piece of white fabric. (we are using a 6'x6' square of white fabric that was bought at a garage sale for about 50 cents.)
  
  (optional)
• 2 low voltage led lights and power supply or 2 Christmas lights, electrical tape and a charger for an old nokia cell-phone)

Firstly, make sure your stand fan is not in use. It really irritates people when you steal their fans.

Once you've liberated your fan, remove the grating, front nut which holds the fan blades in place, and the fan blades themselves. Also remove the rear screen.

someone had to stop the fan from fraternizing with the old vacuum cleaner

It is a wise idea to remove the axle that drives the blades, at least somewhat, I haven't removed ours completely but you can do this with a hacksaw and a few spare tens of minutes.


Once your fan is down to just motor and oscillating mechanism, cut the top off of your gallon milk jug, and continue cutting out sections of the jug until you have a shape that will fit snugly over the top of the fan mechanism.

Attach your length of scrap wood to the fan's stand (hopefully you have a plastic stand) with the 2 wood screws.

Give everything a nice coating of white paint and allow to dry.

After drying, attach self-adhesive Velcro to the "arms" and the "head".

If you wish to install some "eyes" cut 2 small holes into either side of the milk jug head and place them in (finish with a dot of glue if you feel you must)

Cover the works with your sheet or other fabric and you're all set to go. 



We like to put a strobe light under the sheet at the base of no-no, it puts more emphasis on his "ghostliness"

Here's a short video of our friend Nono in action . You'll understand why his name is so appropriate!

 

Happy Haunting!!