To make Flat Owl, you will need: a good quality plastic skull, four stout branches at least 5" in diameter at the base and at least 5 feet long, two strong branches about 2" in diameter and at least 5 feet long, 20 or 30 small branches each about an inch in diameter and about 25 inches long, raffia twine or rags torn into inch-wide strips, an old blanket, and four 8" (in diameter) PVC pipes, cut to be about 20" long (You can do without these by burying the bases of the stout branches directly in the ground, but if you bury the PVC "holes," it is very easy to set up Flat Owl each year, and the branches won't rot). Optional: gray or white "hair," skeleton hands, other bones (Uncialle uses sheep bones found in the desert -- they are about the right size), gourds painted with Native American symbols, feathers, antlers, beads, even a sheepskin.
Flat Owl is an eerie denizen of any Halloween celebration, peering from his weathered burial platform that is hung with his trophies and supplied with gourds of food for his journey to the Happy Hunting Ground. Tattered rags flutter in the night wind, and you will swear that he is watching you from his empty eyes. Kept year after year, his platform weathers into authenticity. One Halloween guest asked Uncialle, "Where did you get this real skeleton and platform?" Flat Owl seems to be more than his sticks, plastic skull, and handful of odd sheep bones. You may not even need to read the directions. Flat Owl is easy to make!
First, decide where you want Flat Owl's platform. Then sink the PVC ends into the ground until the rims are at ground level. Place them in two pairs. Each member of a pair should be about 20" from its mate, and the pairs should be about 5 feet apart. Scoop out the dirt inside the pipe rounds. Then set the ends of the four stout branches into the PVC "holders." Then take the two long 2" branches and attach them between the "front" and "back" members of the pairs as shown below. Tie them on with raffia twine or with strips of cloth. Place all the shorter branches across the two long ones in ladder-rung fashion, and tie them on with rags or twine. The framework is now finished. Don't worry about getting perfectly aligned, straight branches!
After the platform is finished, place your old blanket on it, rumpling it to suggest some remains beneath. (Uncialle uses her old saddleblanket.) Position Flat Owl's skull and hands so that they are easily seen from below by smaller humans. If your skull is one that has an obvious join line where the top of the skull has been glued on, add some white, gray, or rust-colored cobwebby hair, and tie a "headband," a strip of torn cloth, around it to conceal the line there. Now Flat Owl is finished!
Now you can add a few odd sheep bones or plastic human bones, painted gourds of "food" to supply Flat Owl on his ghostly journey, trophies of the hunt (like J's deer antlers, seen here), beads, a spear or other weapon, and so on. Uncialle ties fluttery rags to the platform uprights to make it seem to shimmer in the wind of midnight. As a final touch, place a lantern on the ground near the platform for that unearthly glow.
How to Haunt: Back to Making Alien Life Forms
Uncialle's Fly-by-Night Tips for Fast Haunting
Strange Things of the Real Universe
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