Speculating on the Future of the Haunted Attraction Industry

         The days of the small-scale, family haunted attraction are quickly fading away. With the increasing design quality audiences expect, haunt owners more and more frequently are taking one of two paths: rocketing ahead of the competition, or being left in the dust. With the line between successful and out-of-business growing clearer and clearer, trends are surfacing that can easily predict the future forerunners of the haunted house industry. Want to get to know the industry a little better? Well jump on board; you’re in for a hell of a ride.

For today it seems that the haunted house market is still one that is relatively open to new attractions, but in 20 years all that may change. To me, the scariest thing about today’s haunt industry is the fact that one core team now has the ability to operate different attractions all across the country. Going back to the nineties, there has always been Universal Studio’s Halloween Horror Nights in Orlando and in Hollywood, but thankfully for independent haunters, Universal was limited by its existing theme parks and was unable to expand beyond them. Six Flags, too, runs its annual Halloween Fright Fest out of most of its locations, but for the most part keeps it a side event to the roller coasters and thrill rides. But now a new competitor has emerged on the national scale, and it’s potential to dominate many of the nation’s important haunt markets is astounding.

As a Colorado native, I’ve witnessed the growth and expansion of the 13th Floor franchise firsthand. I remember visiting their now-sister haunt Asylum back before it was anything special and then watching the growth of what has arguably become the influential company in the haunted attractions industry. 13th Floor truly was a marketing masterpiece from the start: owners Chris Stafford and Warren Conard took the ever-present rumor of the 13 story haunted house and preyed upon the mobs of patrons the tagline was sure attract. The concept had even been proven already; Cleveland’s 7 Floors of Hell was a thriving haunt drawing tens of thousands of unsuspecting patrons who had grown up hearing about a mythical 7 story haunted house.

13th Floor opened its doors in October of 2008, with tremendous success. Stafford and Conard never looked back. Over the next 2 years, they expanded both of their attractions in the Denver market, moving both to larger, permanent locations. Then in 2011, everything changed.

Through a partnership with the dynamically creative House of Torment in Austin, TX, 13th Floor multiplied. Two locations popped up in San Antonio and Phoenix (both cities without major competition) in a single season, drawing massive 13th Floor-sized crowds to each. Now, these two small teams of haunt owners had five locations spread across four cities and three states, and on top of that, each haunt was split into the main attraction and a separate pre-show haunt. These haunts became powerhouses; when the new locations opened up, they fed off the budgets of their already-profitable parents in Denver and Austin, and now after only two years  they have established themselves as the kings of their respective markets. When somebody in San Antonio or Phoenix wants to go to a haunted house, they want to go to 13th Floor.

The franchise is becoming so huge, it’s beginning to exhibit some clear qualities of typical big business. For years, Denver was home to Primitive Fear haunted house, which was run with its sister haunt by an independent group of haunters and for many years was a highly respected Denver area haunt. So while visiting Asylum during the 2013 season, I was shocked to see the logo for Primitive Fear next to that of Asylum; it was now the smaller pre-show haunted house  for Asylum itself. But had the sets come with the name and logo? Well, I had never visited Primitive Fear in its days of glory, but from what I could tell, the sets were mostly the same as Asylum’s 2012 zombie themed pre-show. Asylum and 13th Floor had eaten Primitive Fear alive, now all that remained was its name, drawing its once-fans to its gravesite in hopes of turning a little extra profit.

And it’s not just the 13th Floor folks expanding their creative domain beyond a single attraction. Savvy hauntrepreneurs across the country are taking hold of their local cities and dominating the surrounding markets, like Larry Kirchner in Saint Louis, Todd James in Dallas, and Randy Bates in Philadelphia. Each of these three began their career running a single attraction but as time passed, expanded his control over the local haunt market to include 2 (James and Bates) or 3 (Kirchner) separate events. Worse, these monopolies seem to have has a profound effect on the surrounding markets; just this year, Mr Bill’s Thrills outside Saint Louis and The Haunt House outside Dallas closed their doors for good. Arguably, it just isn’t possible to compete with a haunt powerhouse that’s able to control the whole marketing scene of a city. When a patron at Todd James’s Cutting Edge is offered to buy a combo ticket to Thrillvania at a reduced price, why would he ever go to The Haunt House?

Undoubtedly, the future of the industry is headed down this path. After all, haunted attractions are indeed an entertainment industry, and entertainment industries easily fall victim to monopolies (just think of radio or film). However, there is hope for the up and coming haunter (and this is the takeaway point): the change has not happened yet. The examples I’ve cited thus far are the forerunners in the haunting community, but are certainly not the trend. In 20 years, everything could be different, but for now the young haunter has hope. Here’s how:

First and foremost, the progression to monopoly is happening gradually, and this era in haunting’s history is just the start. That means that there’s still plenty of room for newcomers to take stake in the industry and become one of those forerunners 20 years from now. We just need to be smart about it.

Second, haunted house trends spread in a certain way, and understanding those trends can be key to timing a new arrival in the industry. Twenty years ago, the top haunts in the nation were clustered around its biggest coastal cities: New York, Orlando, and Dallas pop into my mind. Over time, as haunted houses became a new mainstay of the American October, their grip expanded inward from the coasts, taking over less populated and more conservative states like Illinois, Missouri, Louisiana, and Utah. As Hauntworld Magazine noted in 2009, the Bible-belt states of the South were “not the place you usually think of when a discussion of haunted attractions breaks out,” but it went on to commemorate the success of two phenomenal Alabama haunts (Armstrong). Over the past 5 or 10 years especially, haunted houses have spread like wildfire across the Deep South; as some traditional haunt hotspots began to fall to the market dominance of one particular company, the southern states like Alabama entered into their prime.

So where is the next haunt hotspot? Well, to answer that question, we have to ask another. Where haven’t haunts been yet? Internationally, certainly, but I’m not about to move to Constantinople to scare people. Within the states, it’s the northern midwest that has yet to taste our scares when October comes. It seems like crazy talk to think about setting up business in North Dakota when Fargo, its largest city, boasts a population of just over 100 thousand, a third of that of Saint Louis and a mere sixth of that of Denver. But look at your competition. Hauntworld.com, which offers haunt patrons a place to search by state for haunted houses, has a poll on most of its state pages asking visitors to rate the top local haunted houses. On the North Dakota page, it asks “What is the scariest haunted house near North Dakota?” Burnsville, Minnesota. Columbus, Minnesota. And Rapid City, South Dakota. The best haunted houses in North Dakota, aren’t even in North Dakota. But if so few haunted houses exist in North Dakota, why the Hell would now be a good time to open one? And this is where our friends at the Census Bureau come in handy. From 2010-2012, North Dakota saw the greatest percent increase in population of any state (oil boomers, anyone?), with a whopping growth rate of 4.02%. At that rate, it would only take seventeen and a half years for the population to double. Now I bet Fargo is looking a little more attractive to you, eh? Where people go, haunts follow.

And it’s not just North Dakota. The western and southwestern states are seeing massive population booms too. With Texas, Colorado and Arizona the 2nd, 4th, and 8th fastest growing states, respectively, it’s no wonder the 13th Floor guys are doing so well! Stafford and Conard struck gold when they took the old tagline and flipped it on its head; sure, if you build it, they will come, but why not build it where people are already coming? Detroit, often toted as the haunt capital of the world, has one of the highest densities of haunted houses per square mile anywhere on Earth. But Detroit’s population, as I’m sure you know, is plummeting. When the recession hit, it went from 900 thousand to 700 thousand residents in just a single year. Many of those left in Detroit, the haunted house capital of the world, don’t have money to spend on haunted houses. But when states and cities are growing in population, there’s obviously money attracting people there. And those are the kind of people that are going to be willing to toss out 25 bucks for a haunted house ticket.

So if you’re in the business of scaring people, what’s the number one thing you can do to set yourself up for success? Beyond all the snazzy set decor, marketing techniques, and business planning, you have to set up shop in a place that will let you flourish. Philadelphia, Dallas, Detroit; they’ve already fallen to the local greats. But places like Spokane, Santa Fe, and Fargo; these markets are the future of our industry. And these are the cities that will boast the next generation of top-notch haunted houses.

The Flow of a Haunt

A few years back, I created my own model for what the flow of a haunt should look like, in other words, the ordering and purpose of certain scenes. Now, I've gone back to that model and beefed it out to include more specifics to better describe the process. As always, remember there is no right or wrong when it comes to haunted houses; haunting is an art first and a science second. So be sure to read what I'm writing with a skeptical attitude and form your own opinions on the subject.

To get us started, here are my 6 basic stages of a haunted adventure:
1) Detailed opening scene
2) Disorienting scene(s)
3) The meat (body) of the haunt
4) Climax
5) Relief
6) Final scare

Now let's zoom in and take a closer look at each of those.

1) Detailed opening scene

At the beginning of just about every successful haunt in the world is a high-detail entry scene, acting either as the first room of the haunt or as an interactive queue line. The purpose of this set is to establish setting and storyline before guests get into the meat of the haunt. But what does that even mean? Well, looking at a haunt as an adventure film instead of a horror movie (because haunts always have happy endings) in which guests overcome a great evil to get that huge endorphin rush, we need to take the time to establish their enemy before their heart rate gets racing to the point where they can't think these things through. So with this first big scene, our goal as designers is to tell guests as much of the story as we can to ensure that they go into the rest of the haunt knowing they'll be facing a grave danger.

2) Disorienting scene(s)

As soon as possible after the opening scene, our goal is to disorient our patrons and get them completely and utterly lost in the haunt's hostile environment. When I go through a haunt, I find myself considerably more lost in the settings when I can't figure out in what direction the haunt's entrance is. I think this comes from the primitive notion that if you know where safety is you can eventually reach it. But when you're disoriented to the point that you cannot name the direction you came from, you're completely immersed in the environment. So as haunters, we should strive to achieve this state of disorientation as early in the experience as possible. Some of the easiest ways to do this are to implement lots and lots of dark twists and turns and to make corners that aren't at 90 degree angles. This stage of your haunt is also an excellent time to use effects such as vortex tunnels, claustrophobia tunnels, and laser vortexes. Remember, the goal is to immerse guests in our world, so anything to take them out of their comfort zone aids in that purpose immensely.

3) The meat

This is the body of your haunted adventure, where 70-80% of the action happens! This area is comprised of a series of buildup, payoff, and relief cycles, each cycle usually taking one scene to play out. Now, let's take a more in-depth look at these cycles:

1. Buildup is the increasing tension in a scene of your haunt. The music is pumping, the lights are dim, and it's about time for something to move in the shadows. During this stage, guests' adrenaline is pumping; they are primed for fight or flight and now their reaction to that actor in the corner isn't going to be a flinch, it'll be a full-blown scream.
2. Payoff is the scare itself, in which the actor(s) pounce upon the guests! There is a ton of info to talk about with the startle, so rather than trying to cram it all into a small paragraph I'll just refer you to my post about startles.
3. Relief is the state in which a patron is able to let their guard down, if only just for a minute before the next scare hits them. On a side note, this is where it comes in handy to incorporate empty hallways into your haunts rather than just room after room after room. Just as a movie has rising and falling action, this stage is absolutely essential to maintaining the cycle of a haunt; without it, patrons become numb to the screams of the monsters and never experience the true release that a haunted house offers.

Throughout the meat of your haunt, thoughtfully incorporating this cycle into your design can allow for a much higher scare factor for your guests.

4) Climax

When haunters take surveys of their patrons, time and time again they find that the most memorable scenes in their haunts are their first and their last. This is why, as you've seen, I devoted a section entirely to the opening scene, and is also why, as you'll see, I'm devoting three to the finale scene.

Just by glancing at the titles of these final three sections, you may be wondering why I chose to separate them. Isn't climax and relief just a bigger version of the buildup, payoff, and relief cycle? Well, to an extent, yes. But when that chainsaw final scare comes blaring out, you want your guests to have something big and memorable to back it up.
          "How was the haunted house?"
          "They had a chainsaw at the end."
          "So nothing special?"
          "Yup. Nothing special."
Don't get me wrong, a chainsaw is an amazing final scare for any haunted house, but what it isn't is a climax. Don't waste your chance; give people something to talk about!
          "How was the haunted house?"
          "Oh my God! They had this crazy chick come flying out over us on a zip line, I thought she was gonna land on us dude! There were zombies crawling out of everywhere! This wall started falling towards us and a semi truck charged out from behind a corner and stopped right in front of Corey's face!"
          "Wow! So it sounds like you had a good time!"
          "It was so awesome dude! You need to go some time."
Here's the point to remember: give them something big before the chainsaw, or you're losing a key opportunity for word of mouth. Every haunted house has a chainsaw at the end. Make your haunt into something special.

5) Relief

So now that you've got your climax, it's time to let guests think it's over. Bigger than any of your relief stages in the meat of your haunt, this is the time when guests are able to see the outside world and believe that they've reached safety. Remember, your final scare will only be as effective as your relief stage before it.

6) Final scare

So you've given guests a memorable finale, gotten their guard down, and now it's finally your chance to break out the chainsaw! The purpose of this scare is not to be memorable, it is merely to scare guests one last big time. I've been referring to this as the chainsaw scare, but in reality any scare, no matter how small, can be an effective way to take advantage of guests' perceived safety at the exit of the haunt. In 2009, back before I used saws in my haunt, I would often leave my post as the greeter actor, go stand beside the exit door, and bang a shovel on the wall as guests left the haunt, and this worked brilliantly for a quick and easy last scare.

10 Last Minute Details for Your Haunted House!

With Halloween rapidly approaching and deadlines closing in on home haunters, the time has come to finish up with construction and get on to the final details of our haunts! So here's a list of 10 cheap and easy ways to add some immense detail to your haunt this year.

Fake electrical, Creep Acres, 2013

1) Add fake electrical.
Walmart sells switches and outlets for under a dollar a piece and covers for under 50 cents. With their help, you can add detail and realism to any wall in just a few short minutes! To take it even another step farther, you can get cheap pipes,

2) Use scents.
Froggy's Fog offers scented cologne sprays for $11.99 which can be used to add an immense layer of realism to any haunt, regardless of all other factors. Remember, even if the visuals in your haunt are cheap and cheesy, attacking a sense other than sight can take the realism to a whole other level. (On a side note, I ordered my scents on a Tuesday and recieved them in the mail the following Monday. So there is still plenty of time for you last-minute home haunters to order scents!)

3) Make yourself a good soundtrack.
Again, even if your visuals are absolute crap, attacking a different sense can truly sell the experience. I'd encourage any serious haunter to put in a few hours searching YouTube and i-Tunes for some potential tracks to send shivers down the spines of their guests!

4) Make a thrift shop run.
Grab $20 and head out to your local secondhand store and you never know what you'll find! All it takes is a creative eye and you'll be able to find plenty of props to fill the shelves of your haunt.

Creep Acres 2013

5) Put in fake vents.
As with the fake electrical, you can easily find cheap air duct covers which can be added to walls for that extra layer of realism.

Mine shaft with pipes, Creep Acres, 2013

6) Make pipes.
Any industrial scene would be incomplete without a few rusty pipes, so why not create a few of your own!? With latex gloves, smear spray insulation all over sections of PVC pipe. Let dry, spray paint a rusty orange color, and screw into place!

7) Create realistic blood.
Spray a roughly 2:1 ratio of red to black spray paint into a small cup or spray paint cap, and splash onto a wall for a super realistic blood splatter! (Using only red paint will result in too bright of a finish, so be sure to include the black.)

8) Remember fog and lighting.
Even the cheesiest haunts can become terrifying spook houses given the right combination of lighting and fog, so be sure to leave yourself time to tweak them!

9) Make clacker gloves.
Buy a pair of cheap work gloves and glue washers onto each fingertip. Now when your actor smacks his hand on a wall, the sound will be louder and more frightening!

10) Make your finale something truly memorable.
Don't have a chainsaw? No problem! Unscrew the blade from your circular saw (you know, the one that you built the place with?), save the bolt that'll hold it together once you're through with it, and you've got yourself a finale scare! As always, exercise good judgement and common sense when scaring with a power tool.

Happy Hauntings everyone! I hope your Halloween seasons are filled with fun and fear and I will see you all on the other side!

-Collin

Increasing Startle Effectivity (Part 1): Startle Execution

At the root of everything our industry is about, behind all the scenic dressings and theming that we haunters would like to believe are much more important, lies the startle. For all the energy we put into all the scenic garbage, we really should be paying much more attention to the scares themselves; after all, isn't that the main reason people come to haunted houses?

A year or so ago, I decided to sit down and map out exactly what was needed for a good startle, and came up with a three piece formula for startles. This is not a commonly explored subject in our industry, so as always, be sure to draw your own conclusions on startles rather than blindly following what works for me (because after all, I can only draw knowledge from my own experiences). With that said, I did put a lot of time and thought into this series, so I do think the content is really darn accurate and universally applicable to just about everybody who likes scaring people.

This will be a multi-part series, most likely coming in three sections (but it could be more if I decide to add more details in the end). So when other parts get posted, I'll try to remember to link to them at the end of this post.

As a basic introduction to the series, let me just quickly run through what these posts will be about. I think of startles as being achieved by 3 basic concepts; distraction, timing, and execution. Now you might think that I'd start this series with distractions, but you'd be wrong. I'm going to start off by talking about execution because I think it's at the root of how we approach distraction and timing, even though they happen first for the patrons.

Just to lay down a clear definition for everybody, execution is the payoff of the startle -- what happens when the monster jumps out. In other words, execution is the startle itself, whereas distraction and timing are really components of the setup. So with that in mind, my definition of a startle is “a big, fast, negative transition.” Now let me break that down.

“A big…” Obviously, the bigger the transition, the more fear is created, and the more time it takes the brain to reason its way out of being scared. As humans, we perceive “big-ness” through our five senses. Therefore, a startle that affects sight, sound, touch, and possibly even smell is much more frightening than a ghoul simply walking around a corner.

“…fast…” Like “big-ness,” speed helps to confuse the brains of those being scared, and accordingly, takes them longer to realize that the thing they fear isn't actually all that threatening.

“…negative…” Obviously, the transition that takes place must be a bad one. Bringing a cake closer to a fat kid through a big, fast transition does not create fear as it is not negative transition; rather, it creates excitement (because it is a positive transition). However, something good (such as a haunted house guide or staged group member) leaving the group is negative and because of that, does create fear.

“…transition…” In order for the bad thing we want to scare people to actually scare people, it has to grow into more of a threat than they previously perceived it as. People can get used to anything. This is why having a monster trail after a group for half of a haunt is not a good scare tactic; they get used to his presence. We can also use this logic to verify why tactics such as actor doors and drop panels work so well. Since guests do not perceive the actors presence in the scene at all, the transition is so much bigger and faster (2 key components of the startle) than the average monster that many guests will drop to the floor out of sheer terror.

These key components are at the base of every effective startle. Every one of the four components must be present, at least to some degree, or else the scare will be nonexistent. The goal, of course, is to turn up the "bigness," "fastness," and "negativity" of the transitions in our haunts. So with that in mind, here are a few suggestions for improving each of them.

Bigger Transitions:

As I mentioned above, we perceive how big anything (including startles) is through the use of our five senses. As haunt designers, we can't ever really affect taste, and while scent machines are highly effective for setting the scene, no scent can disperse fast enough to be effective for a startle (remember, startles have to be fast too). That leaves us with three senses left: sight, sound, and touch.

We can do two things with sight: move things (actors, props, walls, etc.) and change the brightness and color with which those things are lit. Obviously, movement is essential to a startling people, whether it's an actor sprinting out from around a corner or a prop lunging forward, but lighting is an easy (and often relatively inexpensive) way to rapidly change the tone of a scene during a startle. Simply shifting the color of the lights can signal a shift in mood, but for an even more intense effect strobe lighting or bright back lighting of the scare work to up the scare factor to 11.

Sound is another easy sense to prey upon during a startle. But before you even think about adding additional sound effects to a scare, focus your efforts into making your actors make a frightening sound when they pop out (because actors' voices are free, and speakers are not). An actor's ability and willingness to do this will come with experience, so don't expect that a shy new recruit will be willing to howl like a werewolf or growl like a cannibal hillbilly. So in these cases, as with animatronic props, a digital soundtrack may be necessary to prey upon the ears of your audience.

Most haunters will break out in a cold sweat with the mention of the word "touch," so let me be clear on what exactly I'm advising you to do to attack this sense. Fort most haunters, including me, the concept of actors making contact with patrons is off the table (if it is indeed on the table, the rest of this paragraph will be less applicable to you -- so my hat's off to you for pushing your haunt to the next level!). But even without actor-guest contact, there are some great opportunities to simulate contact with various objects. The biggest concern to think remember here is that anything that touches guests must be moving with a low enough momentum to not hurt them. But even with this in mind there are plenty of ways to "touch" patrons: air cannons, falling foam heads, and even water blasters to simulate patrons' favorite body fluid. The sense of touch is so powerful for haunted attractions; after all, it's the only sense that we can prey upon that hasn't been desensitized by horror movies and video games!

Faster Transitions:

In a perfect world, the goal would be to have an actor appear in a scene in no time at all. Unfortunately, until teleporters are invented, we'll have to use a little Hollywood magic to simulate that. There are lots of techniques that exist in mainstream haunting solely for this purpose, drop panels and actor doors being at the top of that list. I intend to at some point dedicate an entire post to exploring various innovative types of startles that allow monsters to rapidly appear next to guests, but for now, you should understand how you can create these types of scares on your own. Essentially, understand that the easier it is for your actor to enter the presence of your guests, the faster the transition will happen. Also, if guests fail to perceive the monster's existence at all before the startle, the resulting "big-ness" added to the speed of the monsters appearance into the scene will create an even more effective startle.

More Negative Transitions:

Again, this is an area that I intend to expand upon in the future because it's not possible to cover in short paragraph. Negativity is really all your scenic design and set dressings, the stuff you're probably already good at! How scary is that mask? How scary is that sound your actor makes? These are the kinds of questions you should ask yourself when trying to make a scene more negative, and frankly, an article on scare theory isn't really the right place to discuss the artistic side of haunts.

Another Look at Fear:

For those of you who are more mathematically inclined, the following equation may help you greatly; it is based of the assumption that a startle is “a big, fast, negative transition,” but broadens the definition to apply to fear as a whole. (If the description is too dense and mathy, believe me when I say that this is merely a supplement to the rest of the article; I promise you aren't missing anything big!)

The capital letter "F" is used to represent fear in relation to a single threatening situation. The graveness of this negative situation is represented by a capital "B," essentially, the "bigness" of the scary situation. "ΔD" represents the change in distance, or the velocity, with which scary situation B is moving towards the person interpreting the fear. We understand fear in terms of the rate with which something bad approaches us, not by the graveness of our current situation - How do we know this? - because starving children in Africa often act less scared than a middle class American losing his job; the American's move towards demise is greater, even though his final position is farther from it! This velocity component proves the necessity of the "transition" in the startle definition, for without a change in the threat, there is no velocity and therefore no fear.

Home Haunt Spotlight: Maximizing A Small Space

As a home haunter, it's often difficult to create a complete experience for your patrons with the space constraints of a small backyard or a two car garage. With that in mind, I decided to make a list of ways to make the most of a small space.

At a basic level, there are two ways to maximise a small space: either make smaller rooms (and therefore more rooms), or slow people down so the whole experience takes longer. It would be impossible for me to list every possible way to do these two things, so remember that essentially anything that achieves one or both of these purposes will effectively make your haunt longer (in other words, don't limit yourself to the ideas discussed below)!

Without further ado, here's my list of space-maximising techniques.

Creating Smaller Rooms:

1) Build narrow hallways. Granted, if you want to have wheelchair access, your halls need to be three feet wide or more, but there is absolutely no reason to make halls wider than that. The less space any one scene takes up, the more scenes you can have in total. In my haunt, I rarely have hallways wider than two and a half feet, with my average being right around two.

2) Use 2-dimensional props whenever possible. Let me elaborate on that; with a small space you don't want to lose square footage to large props. But then of course, you can't have a good haunt without props. So how do you meet both of these demands? It's simple; you establish your setting using wall-mounted props. Signs, posters, family photos, cork boards, warnings, windows, tool racks, and even some not-so-thick props can all be hung on walls without cutting into layout space. As a general rule of thumb, think of anything that you can draw onto a blueprint-style layout of your haunt as a space-consumer, something that detracts from the remaining usable space in your haunt, and be sure to carefully consider the necessity of all of these pieces. (But on a side note, make sure you do have something other than just walls in your haunt, otherwise it's just a bunch of hallways. I would never argue for anyone to do this, just to remove the unnecessary and space-wasting set pieces.)

3) Take time to paint and detail your base walls. If you're lucky enough to be able to afford wooden walls, don't waste this powerful scenic opportunity! Going off of my last point, if you can establish a setting using the existing walls rather than by adding set pieces that take up more horizontal space, you will be left with more walking space and therefore a longer haunt.

4) Utilize floor and ceiling space. The top and bottom of any scene are powerful but often overlooked canvases for telling a story. You often may find that you can't do much to the floor of a scene without creating a tripping hazard (but if you are in a permanent space that belongs to you, a simple coat of paint can do wonders); however, one should never forsake the opportunities that ceilings present. Of course, you can install a wooden panel and paint it to your heart's desire, or cover the tops of your walls with cammo netting or erosion cloth, but also remember that putting a prop above people will never cut in to your workable space; essentially, the same few square feet can be used both for scenic elements and as the patrons' path.

Slowing People Down:

1) Scare backwards. It is often said in the haunt industry that scaring people forward (or from behind) is the best way to run a haunt, but this is only true when the purpose is to increase throughput by pushing people through the event faster. Of course, in the world of home haunting, the goal is rather to slow people down and make the overall experience take longer, and arguably the easiest way to do this is to put a monster in people's path.

2) Use the sense of touch. Whenever people have to push their way through any obstacle, be it as simple as hanging fishing line or fabric flaps, or as complex as a claustrophobia tunnel or moving room, they inherently slow down. This comes, I think, largely from the fact that touch is the only major sense (excluding, of course, smell and taste) that isn't preyed upon by other forms of entertainment; after all, movies can desensitize people's eyes and ears, but most people will still have hesitations when it comes to touch.

3) Make lots of twists and turns. By making your guests change direction frequently, you can both hide upcoming scenes so the haunt seems longer and slow down the patrons' pace. People can't run around 90 degree turns in a two-foot-wide hallway, no matter how loud the chainsaw is behind them.

4) Employ fog, darkness, and other disorienting effects to confuse people. When people can't see where they're going, it takes them longer to get there, so whenever you can, be sure to block or at least minimize patrons' line of sight. (These effects can and should also be used to hide a scare, otherwise you're really just killing one bird when you could take two.)

Haunting With a Purpose

No human does anything without a reason. We eat because we are hungry, we work when we need money, and we exercise when we want to become more fit. It's easy to asses why we do simple tasks like these, but few tasks are as hard to assign a motive to as building haunted houses. Certainly it seems simple at a glance; after all, scaring people is fun! But never in this industry have I heard a conversation about why fear is fun. For a while I've been pondering this concept with myself, thinking that there must be something more to haunted attractions than simply fear, because let's face it guys, if all we're good for is terrifying and intimidating people, why do people come?

So I decided to do a little research. Obviously, as haunters, we provide a service. For one reason or another (I'll get to why in a moment), people like being scared. But we can't forget about the pleasure that we, the owners and actors, experience by creating this fear. And I think this joy is doubtlessly the most significant reason why we make haunted houses. Yet without an understanding of why our patrons like being on the other side of the fear transfer, however, it's hard to see ourselves as anything more than the satanic freaks that certain Christian groups want us portrayed as.

Thankfully though, there's more to haunted houses than, say, the demonic love of all things evil. Haunted attractions present a special kind of fear, specifically, the fake kind. If one really wished to be scared, he could take a pleasant stroll through East Saint Louis. Or do trapeze off the side of the Empire State Building. Or drive a pink Volvo with bumper stickers reading "I'm Gay," "I'm a Vegetarian," and "I've Come to Take Your Guns" through the hills of West Virginia. That, my friends, would be real fear. That kind of fear is not available at your local haunted house.

Haunted Houses are not the practical equivalent to horror movies because horror movies never have happy endings. Assigning this horror movie comparison creates an inherent paradox, after all, our patrons always seem to exit our events in one piece; furthermore, they do so laughing, not in tears (excluding, or course, the case of the easily-traumatized child dragged through by her over-eager parents). Haunted Houses are like action movies; the heroes (patrons) overcome the villains (actors) to escape with their lives. We are not simply presenting images of death and fear, we are creating an adventure!

On a side note, when we examine the purposes of Christian "Hell Houses," it's easy to see how their goals are not to create an adventure, but rather to simply terrify children and adults alike. Rather than telling a story and creating a hero's journey (to entertain their patrons), they use highly frightening emotional appeals to persuade their patrons into conversion. We entertain, they merely frighten. Damn hypocrites.

Now for a brief science lesson to explain why exactly we like being scared in Haunted Houses. When we are scared, in any situation, the brain releases certain chemicals, most importantly, adrenaline. Adrenaline is a key component in triggering the fight-or-flight response, which, among other things, accelerates the heart and lungs, causes tunnel vision, and relaxes the bladder (which is why people wet their pants). Of course, this response causes a great deal of stress. Thankfully, however, most people who go through haunted houses are mature enough to differentiate fantasy from reality, and therefore subconsciously interpret the stress as eustress (good stress) rather than distress (bad stress). This positive interpretation leads to a response with a sense of hope and vigor rather than one with a sense of despair. With this outlook, haunted houses are challenges that, when defeated, boost confidence among patrons. (Of course, if someone interprets the stress of a haunted house as distress, the experience can be traumatic, so this is why we have warnings for small children and those with mental illnesses not to enter). But thankfully for us, the body itself cannot discern between distress and eustress, so the instantaneous reaction to a startle will likely be the same for all people until their brain has time to process the scare.

Again, to my "Hell House" reference. Since their purpose is to form an argument in favor of Christianity, and the tools they use to create that argument are emotional appeals about the horrible nature of Hell, they inherently strive to create long-lasting distress in their audience. Their goal is to keep their patrons terrified of Hell long after the experience itself is over. Contrastingly, our haunts have the goal of momentarily frightening and then relieving patrons to create an overall confidence-booster for the audience. Hell Houses make distress, Haunted Houses make eustress. Damn hypocrites.

In conclusion, let me sum up the purpose, or at least my purpose, for creating a haunted house. Think of this as the thesis in an argument for why someone should build a haunted house:

Haunted Houses do not simply scare people, they create an adventure. Fear is simply one of the tools used to build that adventure, along with relief to grant a sense of accomplishment to the patrons. The artificial struggle presented by haunted houses allows for satisfaction when, time and time again, patrons overcome the monsters, in essence, defeating them.

Welcome!

Hello fellow haunters!

Welcome to my new blog, How to Haunt Your House! Over the past few years I've been working on and off on on some tutorials for haunt owners, focusing more on 'haunting theory" than tutorials on specific props (and let's be honest, there are plenty of sites out there for prop-builders if that's what you're looking for). I decided a few weeks ago I decided I'd like to be able to share my ideas about scaring people and creating world class haunts, and it looks like today's the day I'm finally getting around to starting the process (yay!)

Before I get into the tutorials, let me take a paragraph or two to give a little background on myself and my experience with haunted houses. I'm a 16 year old high school student from Lafayette, Colorado. Because of my age, there's not many subjects I consider myself to be an expert on, but believe me when I say that haunted houses are one of them. I've been in love with Halloween for as long as I can remember, I've loved haunted houses from the moment I was old enough for my first one, and I've been creating my own home haunt for six years now (2013 will be the 7th year for me).

Starting in 2007, I began making a short haunted trail in my Dad's backyard. Of course, it feel way short of my elaborate plans (which included an animatronic barrel wall and a lawn-mower repair shop), but none-the-less, it was a start and got me hooked for years to come.

(I started taking pictures in 2008, and select ones from each year thereafter are posted on our website at http://www.creepacres.com/pictures.php)

In 2008, I was able to channel the excitement from the previous year into creative drive and much more effort. This led to better planning and drove me to ask for permission to use the garage for the haunt. This was the first year that I created an actual flow-through path, and was also the first time I made a wooden room (with the help of my Dad) rather than using black plastic walls. I continued with this in 2009, where I was thrust back out into the backyard thanks to a basement renovation cluttering the garage. I made the commitment not to use any black plastic and only wooden walls to make the rooms. Unfortunately, due to poor planning and a massive blizzard a few days before Halloween, I was unable to paint all but one room of the haunt.

2010 saw the start of what, looking back, signaled the first major turning point in my haunting history, and also happened to occur the year I decided to change the haunt's name from the generic "The Terror" to "Creep Acres." I was back in the garage, and made the commitment to convert most of the walls to the standard industry wall panels (excluding one scene from 2009 which we wanted to keep as it was). The main difference between typical wall panels and my wall panels was that I wanted to make hallways narrower that 4 feet wide, so I made my panels 4, 3, 2, and 1 feet wide so I could make more custom-shaped rooms. It was also the first year that I painted (and detailed) all of the wall panels to create more realism. This style continued into 2011, where I finally decided to theme the haunt, selecting "Uncle Bubba's BBQ," a redneck cannibal butcher theme, half way through the year's build as a way to connect the scenes together and create a better flow.

And then in 2012 we bought a farm. My Dad and step mom had been eyeballing a certain neighborhood with 1-2 acre plots for quite some time, and when a 1.9 acre ranchette went on the market the quickly pounced on it. And the best part, at least for me, was the 2300 square foot workshop beside the house. I expanded roughly to a haunt roughly 3 times bigger than what I'd done in 2011. I decided to divide the haunt into 3 rough areas: Uncle Bubba's BBQ (completely redesigned but with the same root theme as 2011), Body Repairmen, and UNEARTHED: Into the Cellar. The renovation to Uncle Bubba's included an all-new slaughterhouse and an amazing outdoor scene with three amazingly detailed facades. Body Repairmen preyed upon the creepy hillbilly motif, and was set in a backwoods repair shop where inbred freaks wreaked havoc on their victims. UNEARTHED, on the other hand, focused on demonic serial killers who made their home in a creepy old basement, making guests venture through old storage rooms, caves, and sewers. Despite our modest turnout (thanks to our more rural location), 2012 was easily my favorite year so far.

Which brings be to the coming season. Today is January 28, 2013. Thus far, I have two custom and all-new scenes being built in the shop: a claustrophobic coffin hallway where the shape of the exit is that of a three-foot-long toe-pincher standing vertically, and a super-gory wooden shed that will house an actor with a skill saw. This is by far the earliest I've started working on haunt sets, and needless to say I'm insanely excited for the upcoming season. I have some awesome plans for this year and plan on pulling out all the stops as it will be my last year before college. For more info on Creep Acres past and present, check out my build vlogs at http://www.youtube.com/user/minimoose1750

So now back to the topic at hand. With this blog, I'm hoping to be able to share some of my experiences and advice about running a good haunted house, anything from startle execution to set design. So pull up a chair, dim the lights, and get ready for a hellishly scary time!

-Collin