Halloween decorations just got a major upgrade with JackGPT, an innovative AI-powered skeleton unlike anything you’ve seen before. Traditional Halloween props often rely on short, pre-recorded audio clips, which limits their interactions. But JackGPT changes the game entirely, bringing genuine two-way conversation to Halloween.
Created by Dave Drake, an avid Halloween enthusiast, JackGPT is the talkative caretaker of the graveyard Drake sets up in this yard every year at Halloween. JackGPT can chat with trick-or-treaters on various topics, from Halloween lore to recipes and even sports trivia, his versatility as a conversationalist is truly unique. This animated skeleton doesn’t just talk; he also adds a bit of sarcasm to keep things fun, playfully teasing people’s costumes or offering his “bone-chilling” opinions on horror films.
Dave invested months perfecting JackGPT’s personality and humor. With OpenAI’s ChatGPT behind his personality, JackGPT is ready to offer Halloween visitors a highly entertaining, interactive experience. You can find out more about JackGPT on TikTok (@scare.labs), Instagram (@scarelabs), and YouTube (@Wackychimp), where he’s beginning to capture the attention of Halloween lovers worldwide.
Whether you’re a fan of clever technology or Halloween magic, JackGPT is bound to captivate audiences with his witty charm and interactive conversations. Check him out on social media to see the future of Halloween props in action!
JackGPT couldn’t have existed without the proper voice. The skeleton prop is only half of the character. Unfortunately most of the stock voices out there sound like… well… stock voices. No character to them, no performance built in. You know Siri, Alexa and others. They just sound fake.
When searching for options I found that Eleven Labs had not just a few good voices, but seemingly unlimited voices that I could create with their tools.
And I don’t know how they even pull this off, but the character voices even have the proper inflection and delivery of a line. Give this example a listen – I did nothing to it other than type in the text to ElevenLabs text-to-speech tool. Astounding!
My Halloween dream for many years has been unlimited fog for my front yard graveyard haunt. I usually set up a fence along the sidewalk and have a bunch of tombstones and other scary Halloween props in the front yard. I’ve run 3-4 foggers on individual timers but they just couldn’t keep up and no matter how hard I tried, the timers wouldn’t synch up. So I’d have a lot of fog and then 2 minutes later have nothing. I needed a complete system for continuous fog.
Tomb Fog Chiller
To help your fog stay around you need a fog chiller to cool the fog after it leaves the fog machine. I’d done trash can fog chillers in the past and they work ok but then you have a big black trashcan in your haunt that you have to incorporate or hide somehow.
This tomb fog chiller has 3 foggers connected to an Arduino micro-controller and controlled by relays. This method allows one fogger to fire off for a full 30 seconds, then the next, then the next – so I can have (nearly) continuous fog.
The idea was that foggers on one end would all feed into a tube that carried the fog into the “cooling side” where it snaked around, cooled under 5-6 bags of ice, and was then dumped into the bottom chamber to be released at ground level.
Building a Fog Chiller
I’d done foam sculpting before with some tombstones and had good success with foam board. This project, however, was going to require a wooden frame as a skeleton (as it were). Having no plans to work from I set out to construct this box.
Dimensions are 75″ long by 22″ wide by 36″ tall
The box is cut in half twice: longways, to form a top & bottom – the top is where the fog machines, electronics and ice sit. The bottom allows the fog to emanate from all sides at once. The top section is also cut in half to separate the ice from the electronics. Sorry, I don’t have the foggers in the photo below.
Fog comes from the far side, through the wall, snakes around this end under ice and then out the bottom.
The internal wall is just a piece of super dense foam I got in some packaging. It’s much harder than your typical styrofoam (not sure why & I don’t remember where I got it). Cut to allow 3 inch PVC All-Hub Double Sanitary Tee joint. Three foggers on the left alternately pump into the iced chamber on the right.
3 foggers feeding into the ice chamber
I should point out here that you can see a 9V battery plug on the center part of the junction. This powers a small PC fan that pushes the fog in the right direction through the ice.
The crypt had to sit 3 inches off the ground in order to let out the fog from the bottom. I probably should have built that into the framework but since I didn’t know how tall it needed to be, I added the feet later.
I used liquid nails to attach pink insulation foam to the frame. That worked out pretty well and everything held in place nicely. Pink Panther… not so scary.
Now it was time to decorate it. I found three skulls for $10 each and cut the back half of the skull off so they could be mounted flat. The arches are pipe insulation split lengthwise (like a hot dog bun). It was trickier than I thought to get the three arches to have the same curve to them. I had to redo the middle one a few times.
I found some foam discs at the craft store that I used to create some raised Gothic rosettes. Also two wooden carved crosses to add to the look. Coloring didn’t matter as they were all going to get a coat of paint.
Holes to be cut behind the mouths for fog to escape
Next up was to paint. I use a mixture of Dry-Loc and black paint to make a dark gray, hard coating for the foam. Works great on my tombstones. I use about a half cup of black paint in a full can of white Dry-Loc. You can adjust accordingly for your color needs. Buy a paint mixer that attaches to your cordless drill. Thank me later.
Holes behind the skulls’ mouths to let fog escape.
Final stage was weathering. For some reason, I love this part. If you don’t, give me a call and I’ll come do yours. You start off with something clean and new looking and then get to trash it! What’s not to love?
I fill a spray bottle with water and about a table spoon of black paint. Then just spray it liberally all over the whole thing. Usually takes 2 – 3 coats and you can focus on different areas to simulate where the natural weathering would take place. Once it dries it’s much lighter in color. The first coat can show you where to focus your next coats.
That’s about it for this step. Stay tuned for the next post where I outline running 3 foggers on a timer with the arduino controller.
House haunted by Haunted Neurons – member of halloweenforum.com
Halloween Forum member Haunted Neurons has a great demonstration of what you can do to an otherwise normal house just by projecting an image onto it.
The stunning effects can be seen by clicking through to the forum.
I hope that you can see that the possibilities for something like this are almost endless. Animated figures in the windows, flames, ghosts… whatever you can dream up can be projected onto the house.
