As a home haunter with little to no budget, I have to be as creative and cheap as possible when building props. I have developed the habit of looking at any scraps, junk, and cast-offs that I encounter with an eye to their potential for prop-making. If I think that something could be of use in the future, I hold onto it. This practice is much maligned by my wife. Whenever I come home from work with anything loaded in the back of my truck, she rolls her eyes at me and I can tell that she is silently counting to ten in an effort to keep from launching into another ten-minute tirade about how there can't possibly be enough room in the garage for anymore junk. Thus far I have manged to retain control of the garage; so long as there is room to park our vehicles inside, the rest of the space is mine. The block on which our house was built used to belong to the city. They used the space to park municipal vehicles and equipment and to store a lot of junk. The empty lot next to our house consistently yeilds up random objects that leave us scratching our heads. We have spent the last two years tilling up a patch of this empty lot trying to get a garden to grow. After pulling out about a million rocks, countless chunks of concrete and blacktop, and two manhole covers we have some pretty decent dirt to work with. This spring I made my most satisfying random discovery yet. A metal sign with a message that seemed to be meant just for me.
The universe is trying to tell me something. I think I will hang it in the garage.
