Building of Alien Ocularium Funhouse Dumper’s Davey
About Alien Ocularium Funhouse
Alien Ocularium Funhouse was a haunted house Tod and I built for Okemos Coffee Shop in Halloween 2025. It took about 2 months. Tod did so much work as he was the main builder. He kicked ass–and I just made things pretty–or ugly–however you want to think about monsters!
This ~2 month build happened like a whirlwind! I was going to make one post for the whole thing, but now that I’m going thru hundreds of images and videos–there is no way!
It was honestly the coolest thing we’ve ever done and I still can’t believe we did it. We had volunteers, but still the main amount of work was done by me and Tod. He missed a lot of work to do it LOL. He built a whole partial interior and exterior of a house, winding paths thru a “forest”, a bunch of paper mache monsters, a hand tunnel, a door maze, and so much more!
I worked full time on this project, organized everything, built and hung the Alien Anemone flowers, made and hung the whole glowing alien jungle vines from the ceiling, re-skinned our animatronics from Sprit Halloween to fit our theme, etc.
We had helpers and volunteers. Angela Risk (Okemos Coffee Shop), Sarah Morr, Brenda Lochinski (me mum <3), Jenna Joseph, Carrie Lochinski, Amanda Leksche of Paint Your Poison, and tons of people who donated Halloween decorations and building materials!
Today I’m just going to start with the Dumper’s Davey build so I don’t get overwhelmed. I’d love to include more but I just don’t have the time!
The Dumper’s Davey Story
Dumper’s Davey started out as Dumpster Davey. One slip of the tongue and it stuck! This is a monster with many eyes and tentacles. He lives in a dumpster fire. He pops out to shred an innocent man. He carries a squirt gun.
Dumper’s Davey is in the middle of the haunted house. Oh shit, should I do this in order? It’s too late. I’m not starting this again LOL. Mr. Davey is seen terrorizing a man with his alien compadre, Nimbus.
Dumper’s Davey started out as a sketch by Tod. He planned the whole structure with chicken wire, hot glue, cardboard, cellophane, fake eyeballs, a fan, and pool noodles!
Next step was to start fleshing him out with paper mache, cardboard, and pool noodles. Here is a picture Tod took of him on our microwave and in our back yard, LOL. Our house is always a mess because we have huge projects all the time, but it’s a 930 sq ft house.
Here is a look at our hideous deck and hot glue gun jizz coming out of Dumper’s eyes. He also got some zip tie teeth.
Here is Jenna and Dumper’s. Dumper’s finally has his beautiful neon pink fur LOL. I just included this pic because it’s a really cute pic! I like how she is so chill standing next to a hideous monster!
Here is where Dumper’s gets placed in the scene and Tod was playing around with the set up. The victim in the foreground is having his eyes ripped out by Nimbus.
This is probably the best pic of Dumper’s Davey in regular lighting. I don’t have great pics of it, but Tod rigged up moving fire and had Dumper’s arms moving. He did this with a fan. The fan blew the red and yellow cellophane to make it look like fire. While the fan was blowing, it was also oscillating and rigged up to Dumper’s arms so they moved too. This was all a learning experience—it moved, but not very much. Maybe needed a beefier fan next time? Or multiple fans?
Here is a pic of him in his lit natural habitat. To the left is Amanda Leksche’s (Paint Your Poison) freaky spaceship scene in the background. To the right he is grabbing onto Nimbus’s victim’s leg (hard to see in this lighting). Behind the victim is a neon city doodle that I did with Neon Posca Markers. In retrospect, I should have used paint because that took a long time.
What’s next? Thinking maybe I should cover Nimbus, since Dumper’s and him are buddies sharing a scene. Or maybe they are enemies and they’re trying to pull the victim away from each other lol. IDK.
Business is ramping up for me right now. Summer is my time to shine! I don’t have much energy outside of my work, but I’m gonna try to keep posting this bit by bit. Maybe I can finish by Halloween!