MADISON SEMINARY

Being a paranormal investigator myself, I made a good friend who does a lot of work both in the paranormal field and also making repairs, etc. to historic buildings which he often documents on his social media. One video in particular that he posted from one of his working days at haunted Madison Seminary (Madison, OH) caught my attention – and also got my creative wheels turning. It ultimately inspired me to recreate his captured scene in miniature form with motion and sound. Although his video had a greater pause between the opening and closing of the door, I edited down the dead space (no pun intended) for time. What ended up being a twenty-second video of *something* opening and closing a service door on cue took me over two months to bring to fruition in miniature form. 

Since I’m relatively new to the miniatures world, I started out with good intent. And by “good intent”, I mean 1:12 scale. Not too bad to work in even for a beginner, or so I thought… The absolute drawback was the real estate on this diorama would have been way too large on the inside though I’d started with 1:12 scale on the outside. So I guess you could say I have a mish-mosh-orama, given the inside is 1:24 scale. Sigh…

Yes, there were days I wanted to throw it (AND my Cricut Maker) across the room. Lots of them, in fact; I’m not going to lie to you. But it came out better than I expected, and once again I learned a lot as I went. If you consider the fact I’ve never visited this particular location in person, I think it turned out pretty well for a newbie’s efforts. All I had to go on was my friend’s short video of a paranormal-caught-on-camera occurrence that I turned into an animated, haunted diorama. 

My friend also hand-made the sign in front of the building that I reproduced at 1:12 scale and mounted to my outer wall. Here they are side-by-side: 

I used 1:12 scale brick and decided to mount the sign to it. Joint compound and paint on top of acetate stencils produced these “bricks”. To make the stencils, you can find the pattern here* on Heather Tracy’s YouTube channel. I used the Cricut Maker for this task and believe you me – my machine HATES me. Like with a passion. It took several tries to get them cut out and it still was a struggle where I had to use the X-Acto knife to extract most of them by hand. I’d say 80% of them were only scored, even after a long cutting time. I’ve since refined how I work with the acetate and which settings I use. I found out the hard way that I should’ve been using the deep-cut blade with these (though nobody really tells you this). To me, it’s a fine line and a delicate situation that never seems to quite go as I plan every time I power that thing on. I’ve come to the conclusion my Cricut has a mind of its own.

*Although the video remains, the link to the SVG files has disappeared.

Brick wall on foam board:

Inside, I had to figure out how to make a scalloped design on the wall. Since there are no tiny finishing trowels to my knowledge, I ended up making my own acetate stencils to size and spread joint compound with a toothbrush to achieve some texturing. I finished it with a light sanding sponge after it dried and applied two coats of spray paint.*

*When using foam board, I have to be sure to coat it with Minwax Fast-Drying Polyurethane beforehand so the paint doesn’t seep into it. Ask me how I learned that, and I’ll probably tell you “the hard way.”

Since there was to be sound and motion involved, I had to figure out a way to make it happen. I had a vision of what I wanted it to be, but had no idea where to even begin! I wanted a simple one-push-of-a-button design that triggered the movement and mimic’d the original. I started by researching what others had previously used for animated dioramas. I ran into the issue of finding YouTube tutorials on dioramas with sound, but no motion. And vice-versa. I couldn’t really find anything that incorporated both. So I ordered an Elegoo Uno (the Arduino Uno off-brand) kit, a mini mp3 player, and figured I’d wing it. How hard could it be, right? You just hook it all up and slap the files on the SD card and bada-bing, bada-boom? You’re good to go!

Wrong. I consider myself fairly “techy”, and though the tutorials that came with the Elegoo board were pretty easy, what was NOT easy was to code it. I tried for hours, days, and weeks, and that turned into over a month. I was so frustrated that I finally outsourced my problem to Fiverr with great results and an affordable price tag for the few seconds of code I was requesting. Now you’re probably saying  “Come on; are you seriously telling me you couldn’t teach yourself to code in such a short period given the information age we live in??” Yes. Yes, I am. Loud and clear. Because while I could spend my time learning it, it’s not ultimately what I want to be doing. I left that to those who do this every day and have a knack for it. If there’s anything I’ve learned on my relatively short miniatures journey so far, it’s picking your battles for time management’s sake vs. the jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none ego trip.

Once I got the code squared away, I had to physically figure out how to engineer the movement. How was I going to get the servo to move the door? How do I build this arm? And at what angle? How do I light it all up? How do I get sound to come out with bare wires and no speaker jacks? Geez, I had enough trouble just trying to put hinges on the service door. It was a great challenge for me. All of it. From start to finish. But I didn’t give up and got over each hurdle one by one. 

The “brains” behind the wall:

I used some old LED candle “guts” for lights and learned to solder wires to them to achieve the effects I wanted. They weren’t pretty behind the scenes, but they got the job done. Since my friend builds paranormal communication boxes out of old radios and the like, I decided I’d animate one in the corner of the diorama to pay homage to his craft. Ara of Bentley House Minis put out a great little old-style radio tutorial with a free pattern that I scaled down to 1:24 and illuminated. 

I also needed a fire extinguisher, so I made one by hand and printed a tiny label. 

It took me quite a while to design the doors and the transom windows, and figure out how I was going to do the trim. I ended up picking up a light switch, an outlet, and some wood trim that matched the architecture in the original video from a wonderful miniature store (Dolls and Minis, which is run by the loveliest lady. I highly recommend it!) Everything else was designed in Adobe Photoshop Elements and transferred to the Cricut Maker to cut out of chipboard. I picked up a little outlet and light switch as well. I used acetate for the “windows”, including the one at the end of the hallway. Ultimately, I decided to hold the back wall onto the sides with Velcro. Yes, it works and it’s not as scary as super glue. I wanted to be able to remove the back wall to have access to the LED wiring for both the mini radio and the exit sign. 

AND FINALLY…

Here is his video, my diorama, and the brains of the build side-by-side-by-side:

I feel like each step of the way took approximately 84,094 times longer than I anticipated. As frustrating as it was sometimes, I’m glad I didn’t stop. I’m looking forward to making so much more, and as every miniaturist knows – we see minis in everyday objects and seemingly ordinary scenarios. The sky’s the limit!

FULL RECAP HERE: