The inventive Halloween display that a man and his friend created together has stunned viewers online.
John Essex, known as @johnessex3 online, took to Reddit on October 29 to share a video of the small holiday marvel he and Adam Kasper made—a tabletop graveyard diorama with flying ghost illusions. The post, which has been upvoted more than 57,000 times, has drawn applause from viewers online, with one writing, “Next level, congrats!”
The footage shows the “custom-built” diorama that had been placed on top of a small dining table. Inside the square box was an intricately assembled graveyard. Essex, 44, had added floating ghosts to the display that hovered over the moody graveyard, without using special effects.
“My friend and I built this 1:48-scale tabletop diorama for Halloween 2024,” Essex said in a comment on the post. “It uses the ‘Pepper’s Ghost’ illusion with AtmosFX ghosts.”
“This is not VR or phone-based AR; you can see this in real life without any special equipment,” he added.
Essex, in Indianapolis, told Newsweek: “I’ve known my friend Adam since childhood. In our 20s, we built elaborate front-yard haunts on Halloween to entertain the neighborhood families.
“As busy dads, we don’t have the time for that in our lives like we used to, but we still love the Halloween season and coming up with ways to delight and amaze people.”
Kasper, 43, added: “I believe in a work-life-basement-hobby balance. Sometimes you need to make something creative with no other intention except for family and friend enjoyment. The experience may be motivating for my future builds, yet hard for us to top for next year.”
Screenshots of a video showing ghost illusions in a graveyard diorama that John Essex and Adam Kasper created. The men have stunned viewers online with the inventive Halloween display.
@johnessex3
Essex later told viewers that he and Kasper did not plan to mass produce the creation, which had simply been a fun activity for the two friends.
It was Kasper who first got into building dioramas with intricate weathering and details. He pitched the idea of making a graveyard scene for Halloween to Essex a few months ago.
“I told him we could do a Pepper’s Ghost illusion to make it look like ghosts were flying in and out of the scene for real, with no special viewing equipment,” Essex said. “Pepper’s Ghost is an old stage illusion technique from the 1800s, and it’s what Disney uses for the ghosts in their Haunted Mansion ride.”
“It’s conceivable that we could do it in miniature, and I had been using AtmosFX ghosts to haunt the front of my house for several years; we just needed to apply that to a 1:48 scale,” he continued.
The project took a lot of sketches and testing over multiple “lunch-break work sessions” in late summer, but it came together spectacularly in the end and has amazed viewers.
Reddit users have reacted positively to the Halloween display, with more than 600 taking to the comments section to voice their love of the creative statement piece. Some commenters have said they now feel inspired to get going on their own creative projects.
“Just like the Disney Haunted Mansion! I love it. Awesome work,” one viewer wrote.
Another added: “Thank you for teaching me something new today! Peppers illusion is fascinating and I do scale model work so this really gets the gears going.”
“Would you be able to post a tutorial on how it was done. I really like this and want to make one,” a commenter wrote.
“The video clip has been viewed 3.8 million times and shared over 10 thousand times,” Essex said. “It’s been a surreal experience, but the response has been overwhelmingly positive.”
“This little diorama has set people’s imaginations on fire in ways we didn’t expect, but I love that it has inspired people to take it in new directions and push this concept further,” he continued.
Essex said that as two dads, he and Kasper have always found a special kind of magic in the spookiest season, adding, “We could not be prouder of the life this little Halloween project gained.”
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