The Bridge

We wanted something a bit different from more of the dark cavern type walk through, and after trawling the net came up with two items that just seemed to go together. The first was a project on How to build a rickety bridge , the second was an audio WAV sample about “ The Bridge.” Our thanks to everyone out there for contributing to our collective knowledge base and enjoyment.

The bridge itself was constructed using some old pallets. The timbers were taken apart and the cross pieces loosely screwed through an oversized hole to a central piece of timber. This provides movement while at the same time keeping the individual pieces of timber that make up the Bridge in place. Movement was limited by placing small blocks of wood under the moving crosspieces.

To trigger the sound track, a pressure mat was placed at the beginning of the Bridge, while to reset the track a Cherry switch was wired to the underside of the last step on the Bridge which switched off the speaker.

The Bridge was illuminated only by the twinkling of small white Christmas lights placed behind a piece of dyed material simulating the night sky. While additional decoration in the area was provided by the liberal use of real pieces of foliage stapled to the underneath of the wooden framework of the walk through.

The whole lot being protected from the elements by tarpaulin stretched over the framework.

The final touches were the continuously running swamp sound bed playing through hidden speakers providing an aural background of rustling trees, animal noises and the occasional frog croaking and just a bit of smoke for visual atmosphere.

This meant that the guests walked into an area seemingly full of wild life and at the same time as they walked onto the Bridge, they suddenly heard the narrator tell them the tale of the Bridge. When they hear the sounds of the Bridge breaking they are almost at the end of the Bridge at which point they generally ran, expecting the ground to disappear from under them at any minute, although they were in fact only 2 or 3 inches of the ground. Their relief at escaping death was however short-lived since in the darkness beyond the Bridge lurked a scare actor (actually me) who standing stock still while they crossed, looked like another prop dummy. Waiting until they had almost passed by me I suddenly start moving and managed to scare the life out of generally the last of the group as they went through the curtain into the clutches of the graveyard.

Next years project is to make the Bridge even higher and join the pieces together with rope to make it feel even more like a rickety wooden suspension bridge and maybe even add a few animated props either side of the Bridge as they pass. I’m thinking of the guests hearing an arrow fly through the air past their ears and then suddenly seeing it embedded in a corpse beside the Bridge.