Peppers Goast- Jack-o'-lantern

My Wife, Kids, and I wanted to do something interesting for Halloween in Jack O'Lanterns. But our oldest is only six years old so elaborate carving was not on the table this year.

This got me thinking, for the last few years I've been wanting to incorporate a peppers ghost effect outer window, so I figured why not just do that in the jack-o'-lantern instead.

Step-by-step instructions:

• Pick up some cheap plexiglass. We used a two dollar picture frame from a local dollar store.

• Find an older phone or tablet that you don't mind getting a little stinky. Please note: dry the pumpkin out before you put your tablet or your electric device inside of it. Some dried rice might help you dry it out quickly.

• Get a large pumpkin, preferably one that is just wider than your plexiglass.

• Before you start cutting plastic or carving a pumpkin compare your transparent reflector to the pumpkin. As you can see in my photos, we carved an extra wide hole. This allowed us to just barely lower plexiglass to mark the cutting for the with this whole. Then cut up the top and make sure your plexi tightly fits through the hole, to help hold it in place.

• Time to cut the top and dry it out a bit. (Dried rice will help you move this along)

• Carving out the mouth. Make sure your place it about 3 or more inches above the bottom of the pumpkin. If you carve it too close to the bottom of the pumpkin everyone will be able to see your tablet screen. Also make sure you're making your whole with the pumpkins eventual placement in mind. The perspective of the view will be important.

• Place your tablet at the bottom of the pumpkin and insert your plexiglass at a 45° angle to the tablet. Please note you could put the monitor in a slight angle if you don't have enough room for 45° inside your pumpkin to the floor. The important thing is for the video of the person looking in the mouth angle between the plexiglass and tablet should be 45°.

• There are a lot of YouTube videos for pepper ghost window effects. You can also buy quality DVDs.

• Now just paint some eyes.

Not counting the drying out time, we made this whole project in under an hour. This is my first ever posted project. It came out really well the video doesn't quite do it justice, in real life it looks super creepy.

We are also participating in this for the Halloween contest, please give us a vote.

Items you'll need:

1. Some Plexiglass,
2. A tablet, preferably an older cheaper one we ended up using a Kindle fire.
3. A knife for carving and a spoon for scooping.
4. Paint for the eye's.
5. Some Pepper ghost video.
6. And of course a large pumpkin.