Having a skeleton that pops out of a coffin is always a pretty cool thing.  Having room to store it is something else though. This Halloween 2005, I decided to build a half-coffin that appears to be coming out of the ground.  This saves on storage area too.

Here are the 3 outside connections: 1. The air line to a pressure regulator 2. The brown cord for plugging into 120 volts for the timers and solenoids 3. The green cord to plug in the remote motion detector for triggering the prop

No staining yet, but you get the idea

Here shows the 2 air cylinders that will make the coffin doors open up.  No pneumatics for the skeleton added at that time or lines to these 2 cylinders

Some close-up shots of the 1" bore x 3" stroke air cylinder mounting. As you can see, 1-1/2" L brackets were used for the pivot end of the cylinder and at the rod end.  Cheap, but so far effective. I did make my own rod end connector out of some aluminum chunks.