I never built it either. For me it was the Maya 4 fundamentals book which had a step by step NURBS Haunted House project. Later you created the spooky atmosphere with paintfx, lighting, and a poly creature...this was before Maya had all the poly proxy features and maybe even before CPS (connect poly shape) was around. The poly tut used a bunch of manual mel scripting to build a proxy, IIRC. Still have the book...it's still a good primer resource to have around.
"Terminat Bora Diem, Terminal Auctor opus."