Skeletor part 1

For a gothic play called "The Castle of Otranto" we needed a ghost. It was decided that the ghost would be played by an actor and I set about making him into a human puppet. His costumes consists of a head piece, a chest piece, a hand and a cloak over it all.
To make the head I took an old plastic skull and cut off the front to turn it into a sort of mask. I built a headglove for the actor (You build a headglove by starting with a plastic grocery bag on the actors head then wrapping it in layers of masking tape, it has a level of suction to it because of the plastic inner layer and the custom fit. It and can therefor hold some very heavy mask and other head pieces). I embedded floral wires in between layers in order to wire the plastic skull to the front. springs were screwed to either side of the hinged jaw and a piece of tie line attached underneath. The actor can pull the tie line to move the jaw down and the springs pull it back up, making the ghost talk.