Swinging Chandelier This is an easy, but effective prop. Very original, and a really good prop to have in any haunted house, or seance.   Note: picture to right is not this prop.

Pick out a chandelier from a second hand store for a few dollars. Make sure it works or that you are able to fix it. If your chandelier is nice and glossy we need to fix that, because we don't want a haunted seance with a beautiful chandelier now do we? This part is easy, get some gray primer and LIGHTLY cover the chandelier in a base coat. This should be light enough to only get rid of the glossiness, then we are off to paint it. Hopefully you already have acrylic paints, the colors you need are some moldy, mildewy, rusty, and dirty colors, pick ones you have and think will work. Sponge sparingly on and get the chandelier looking the way you want it to. It doesn't have to be perfect, or even neat, most people won't pay much attention to what it looks like anyways. Get some chain used for hanging chandeliers and run the chain on the cord and wire it to the chandelier, this protects it from breaking.

(note: picture appears white, but the chandelier isn't)

Find a place you will be able to hang your chandelier from, that has room to swing and a place to mount your motor (foot to a side), if you are using a garage the perfect spot will probably jump out at you. I had my mother help me figure out what a good height would be so it wouldn't clobber people and wrapped the excess of the cord around a board and tied it down with a piece of wire. Now the chandelier should hang like you want it to.

Now for the constructive part. Take the white piece of plastic that fits into the motor and cut the lip off (JUST the outer edge!). If you don't have one of these you will have to build a crank. Now somewhere near the outside about a half and inch to an inch away poke a hole through the plastic and drill it out to the size of bolt you will use (typical crank stack). Now run the bolt through the bottom of the hole and stack your washers, smallest on the bottom and up to the largest on top, giving at least a 1/2 inch clearance above the lip of the plastic. The top washer should also be considerably larger than the ones closest to it. Take a drill and drill a 1/16 in hole, about 1/8 in away from the edge. This is just like a crank ghost setup. Put the washer on top of the bolt and fasten with a nut, the washer should spin freely and other washers shouldn't block off the drilled hole in the washer. If you can, counter screw another nut on the bolt so they don't come off. Now get out your JB Weld, follow the directions on the tube and wipe some glue inside the motor where the white thingy fits, make sure you have it covered well, then put the white thingy in there and place something heavy on top so they can glue together strong and flat. DON'T jip out on the JB Weld, it's the only thing I found that works, make sure you have plenty applied. It should be ready after 24 hours.

Now take your 2 ft. of angle Iron and cut it in half, assuming you have 1 ft centers on your rafters. Measure where you want your motor to go. Next figure out how you are going to mount your motor. My motor had some knobs on the ends, so I filed those down so it would fit in the holes of the angle iron. Make sure the ends fit and you won't have any problems. Go back above the rafters, center where you want your motor to go and nail the angle iron in place. Your motor should be mounted pretty rigid. Take some wire, run it through the hole on the washer and tie the end up securely. Move the washer assembly so it is the closest it can be to the lamp cord and chain. Run the wire to the chain and tie it up good and tight.
(notice the motor behind the chandelier, the way it's mounted, and the way it's positioned on the picture below, sorry about the poor quality..)

It should work fine, It WILL get very radical in it's swing, but I ran all of my effects to a computer surge protector, so I could turn things on and off at a flick of a switch. I generally would turn it on, let the motor make about 3/4 of a revolution and turn it off, it would swing free for about 40 sec.

After that you should decorate it. I got some cheap strings of Xmas beads and tie strapped them on. Then I ran spider webbing from the chandelier up to the rafters, which was great looking. The chadelier still swung well and the spider webs dramatically improved the effect without coming off.

The Completed Chandelier