Here’s a great How-to post from Jackson Manor on how they use twinkling Christmas lights to flicker their candles. The method originated from the Hallowed Haunting Grounds, and since then Jackson Manor has made some changes/updates to it. I’ve seen this effect in person, and it’s very realistic. I’ll probably be switching my flicker circuits over to this method this year…

PROLOGUE

First of all, I have to thank Tim Doggett of the Hallowed Haunting Grounds. During the Final Manifestation I asked him how they made their candle flicker circuitry, and then he bestowed this sacred information onto me. I have never seen this information on the web before, I am not sure if I should even be putting it here.

If you like what you find here, Please comment below. Thank you.

PARTS LIST

1 x Standard 35 Light Strand (Must be series, I.e. Pull one bulb out the whole strand goes out.)

6-7 x Twinkle Bulbs*** (Buy a strand, usually in icicle style, of Twinkling or Random Twinkling lights. These have a Twinkle bulb every 5 bulbs. Open the box and check the strand, I have found some labeled as twinkle but it was just flashers.)

1 x Wall mount light dimmer.

CONSTRUCTION

***Here is the deal, You need Twinkle bulbs. They are easily confused with a flasher bulb. They do almost the same thing, Flash on and off, but a Twinkle bulb has a little jumper built in so that when the bulb goes off the strand doesn’t lose power. Where as a flasher will cut the power to whole strand.

See Diagram 1

Here at Jackson Manor we have several single dimmer packs that we have made for individual dimming applications. These consist of a wall dimmer in a outdoor electrical box and a Male and female tail coming out of either end of the box. Much like this. Now those are high end ones, more than you would need for this project. I would also advise that you make your own, they are usually over priced for this purpose.

Pull all the Twinkle bulbs out of the twinkle strand, just pull them out of the socket, and replace the first six or seven bulbs of the Standard Strand with the Twinkle bulbs. Plug it into a dim able circuit and viola. Hide the flicker bulbs in a box, with vents, out of view.

See Diagram 2

To get the candles where you want them, I solder 6ft, or more, of thin gauge speaker wire to the leads of the bulb and stick the other end of the wire through the bulbs socket fitting.
you can use other wire but I like using the speaker wire and I have a couple spools of it.

See Diagram 3

In 2007 we had a hard time finding these twinkle bulbs in the Normal size, most of the light strands with them were these new thicker bulbs for outdoor use. To solve this problem we would cut the strand on either side of the socket leaving roughly 2-3 inches of wire, then use wire nuts to string together 6-7 bulbs. Then we used the male and female plug ends from the strand to make it a flicker control strand to control a full strand of regualr bulbs.

For the Cemetery Columns we wired a single 15w candelabra bulb directly after 8 Twinkle bulbs. the load was enough that we found we didn’t need a dimmer.

HOW IT WORKS

When a Twinkle bulb goes off, it frees up a bit of current and the other bulbs get a bit brighter off the extra juice. With several Twinkle bulbs going off at random the amount of load on the strand goes up and down depending on how many bulbs are on or off at a given moment.

If you don’t dim the strand the bulbs will get very bright when a few twinkle bulbs are off, and you will burn out the bulbs faster than normal.

PICTURES & DIAGRAMS