If you wandered into the abandoned school next to Essig Renovation & Design in McKees Rocks earlier this week while graphic artist Christopher Gilgour was away, you might have thought the place was haunted.

Reaching the landing on the second floor, you’d find a two-foot-tall bloodstained rat leering back at you through a hole in the wall. Down the hallway, a grim reaper loomed in the shadows. And, most disturbingly, the adjacent room housed a flayed angel impaled on a stake, its eyes gouged out.

The “angel” is made of latex. The rat is covered with synthetic hair. And it’s all just a scene-setter produced by Mr. Gilgour and his wife, Dejah, who own one of Pittsburgh’s premier custom Halloween prop studios.

The Gilgours founded their part-time business, Sapien Studios FX, shortly before

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