To Haunt or not to Haunt? WHEN is the question.

Ok, so the haunt is definitely on this year. I've already made several investments in new props, and all the parts and components for my "big" new scare this year are either sitting in boxes here in my office or are on order from various suppliers. Kiss the new car goodbye this year, baby, I've got a haunted house to build!

So, as stated, the haunt is on the launch pad and ready for lift off. The question I'm faced with this year is when to press the trigger? Last year was the first year I experimented with opening the haunt before Halloween night. We had a handful of early birds walk through the night before for a lights and sounds only event we called the "chicken run". It was meant to give the smaller tots an opportunity to walk through the haunt without any of the impact scares going off on them. I didn't advertise it heavily, so the turnout was pretty small, but I felt the idea was worthwhile, and it helped soothe some of the guilt I was feeling over the smaller children getting left behind as the haunt was evolving into something more teen+ appropriate.

This year Halloween is on a Saturday night (rubbing hands together in anticipation), and this presents the possibility of running a 3 day event. I would like to do a "chicken run" on Thursday, October 29. This would once again be a lights and sounds only event meant to let the tykes and big-scaredy-adults get a taste of the haunted house without anything jumping at them or shocking them. That would leave Friday and Saturday for the main event: 2 solid nights of screeching, nail biting, pants crapping haunted house. (Really, I'm jumping up and down right now flapping my hands up and down with excitement, and I'm still skilled enough to type while doing so!)

The obstacles:

1. We have never had enough volunteers even running one night. Not ever, not once, not even close. Although I add a couple each year, I have never even gotten to the point that I had even half of what I think we could have used. Being safety paranoid means filling key crowd control and lookout positions first, but key actor positions go unfilled each year. I admit that I have not really put a lot of effort into recruiting people, but I do know if you get 30 to swear they'll be there 10 will show up.

2. This is not a commercial venue; this is a residential neighborhood. Would the neighbors tolerate 3 nights of this??? This is clearly a tolerant neigborhood. Seriously, we have a house on the cul de sac with a bunch of teens who when they aren't partying and shouting all night seem to run an industrial metal shop in the driveway. The welding and grinding goes on all day, and I've never seen anyone call the law yet. Yet.

Craigs List Find

For any of you curious neighbors who are wondering why there is a giant fireplace sitting in my driveway, thank Craigs List. I purchased the fireplace and a grandfather clock from a nice couple in Wildomar this week. The items look to be retired stage props, and I think they will fit in beautifully in this year's haunt. They will need a bit of repair and touchup, but almost everything about the look and feel of them seems premade for a haunted mansion.

These items were MUCH larger than I thought they would be based on their pictures. I barely got them in my truck. Like almost everything else I build or buy for Halloween, I shove the storage issue into the back of my mind with the attitude that "where there's a will there's a way". As stated previously these items are big and will take up a good chunk of space in the garage. Halloween is going to eventually force me out of my current and ridiculously small home or into a commercial venue, an idea I have been researching seriously the last couple years.

What's pink and made of foam that I can't get my hands on?

No, I'm not referring to a set of fake breasts....although it would definitely qualify.

Seeking Owens Corning foamular insulation boards to do some facade and tombstone work. I know they are extremely difficult to find in the Southern California market because they are weather rated for cold climates. Anyone know where they can be found locally? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller???

The Itch

Every year, usually at tear down, I flirt with the notion (never seriously) of giving up this eccentric Halloween hobby. Maybe I could buy myself a dirt bike or a quad like the rest of the dudes in the neighborhood- stand out in the driveway in the toasty summer evenings with a beer in one fist, endlessly revving the engine as my neighbors are trying to watch television. (Why the hell do they do that, anyway?) I could buy myself one of those oversized, 11 mile to the gallon (highway) trucks with a lift high enough to make myself a threat to migrating birds just to get my dirtbike, quad, and beer out to the desert on holiday weekends. There I could rev my engine with hundreds of other like minded dudes all revving theirs, twangy country music playing in the background and the smell of beer hanging thick on the air like the smoke on a bar scene.
Naw, I don't think so.
Clean up was tougher this year than it had been in years past. I ran out of juice towards the end. All my mojo evaporated into the ridiculously long lasting summer heat that settles over the Temecula Valley and sticks there like a leech. The walls were heavier, the props bigger and more unruly. The stacks of decor and building materials loomed before me like mountains. The extension cords went on seemingly for miles.
Not only is cleanup a first rate bitch, but it's sort of depressing too, like having some turd at the beach come along and stomp on the sand castle you spent half the day building. I got my walls stacked (three piles of them this year) and everything else made its way into the garage into something resembling ambiguously themed piles. Over time those piles morphed into one big indistingishable pile, and that's how it was until just a few weeks ago when I finally mustered the motivation to get it all back into the rafters where it rests during the "off" season.
I thought, not for the first time nor for the last, about how over-the-top I had gone once again to bring my vision to life, and how miserably I had failed to bring even a portion of it into existence at that. And still I marveled at how well it had all come off, and how no one had gotten hurt. We scared the shit out of lots of people, and it had been damn fun doing it. The feedback was great from those who took the time and had the inclination to give it, and even though I had overspent my budget and shed gallons of sweat putting it all together, the payoff had been huge. In the currency of the home haunter, the payoff comes in the form of screams. My wallet was full, metaphorically speaking.
Each year I swear off my weird hobby as I'm busting my arse breaking it down. The gravity of the expense (physically and monetarily) snaps down on you, and in that instant you never want to see it again. But when the heat of summer returns bringing on its heels the inevitable return of the Fall season, the haunting "itch" returns with it. You start surfing the net to see what the professionals are innovating in the world of prop building, you revisit all the haunter's message forums trolling for great ideas and in so doing allow yourself the luxury of not believing your hobby is all that insane afterall by reconnecting with other haunters around the country. You start to have dreams at night about where to run your queue line this year and how to improve your throughput without compromising the quality of the experience or the safety of the event. All the while that knot of expectation begins building in the pit of your stomach, and the crash after the high is completely forgotten as you begin to scheme how you will outdo last year's efforts.
It's Summer time and on the horizon I can smell October. The count down to Day31 has begun, and the "itch" is back....

The light at the end of the tunnel

I remember back to the good old days when it only took me 1 day to reclaim the front of my house from the monster that is Halloween. This time around at the end of the 2nd full day, I am almost done de-halloweening my front yard, but there is still work to be done. Human beings having short memories can be a beautful thing, because if I remembered what a miserable task the tear down is a year from now, this would be the last haunted house I would do....ever! Finding a home for all this stuff is the real challenge. I have wall panels stacked up on the side of the house, soon to be 2 stacks deep and as high as the fence line. I don't dare stack them higher out of respect for the neighbors who I'm sure don't want to have to see pieces of haunted house all year long. Buying storage would seem the logical solution, but I can't bring myself to give up $1200+ per year for rented storage space when I can still make this side yard thing work.
On November 1st I had the pleasure of visiting two other local haunted houses- The French Valley Haunt in Winchester and Night Terrors here in Temecula. What I really loved about the French Valley haunt was its simplicity and low impact read on the fright meter which would have made it very child appropriate. The owners of the haunt were also very friendly and enthusiastic about their haunt, which they have been doing for 7 years. It appeared to be a true neighborhood affair, with neighbors visiting around a driveway camp fire and scores of kids mingling out front waiting to run to their places as soon as fresh victims drove up. I do hope the kid who ran face first into the closed garage door is ok, although I am still breaking into fits of laughter 2 days later each and every time I recall it.
Night Terrors relied heavily upon the use of very talented actors, which made the haunt very intense in places and memorable to say the least. I am always very impressed by a haunt actors ability to remain in character despite whatever the actions/reactions of the haunt patrons may be. This is the single most important attribute of a good haunt actor, and to be able to find them in the form of volunteers is truly a score. So, I have to give high marks to the ghostly woman who went nose to nose with me in a staring faceoff that seemed to last 5 minutes, although I'm sure it was less. Although I'm hard pressed to call the experience frightening, it did make me at least wish I'd popped a breath mint before entering her passageway, for her sake at least. Highlights included a butcher's room, and some very benign looking children who sit at tombstones in the graveyard but are quite unsettling in their singleminded ability to follow you with their eyes as you walk by without showing any expression whatsoever.
There were lots of local home haunts to choose from this year, and this is very encouraging as I like to think the holiday of Halloween is on the cusp of another golden age as more people are deciding to celebrate it.

Like a kid in a candy store...

One of my favorite post halloween events has been to lie on the floor with my kids and empty out the bucket of candy we collect as Haunted House admission. I must admit to still having retained my almost childlike fondness for candy, and what ends up in that collection bucket tells an interesing story about the people who visited us the night before. Amongst the more traditional Snickers bars, KitKats, and M&M's are usually a handful of peculiar morsels that inspire the imagination and generate some questions. Here are this year's top 7:
#7: Chewy Atomic FireBalls (Oh, the fond chilhood memories I have of the game we used to play where we would see who could keep the fire ball in their mouths the longest without taking them out- a true childhood right of passage into manhood).
#6: Limited Edition Reese's CRUNCHY peanut butter cups. (As if the taste of pure peanut butter mixed with sugar and covered in chocolate wasn't enough, they added whole peanuts to the concoction. What might have possessed the previous owner to let go of this delectable morsel I can't fathom, but I can tell you I'll be looking forward to trying this one).
#5: Assorted gummy body parts (Nose, eye, and miniature foot, someone truly after my own heart. Although the Halloween themed candy generaly tends to taste like it was made in one of my sweaty socks, they are still truly a feast for the eyes).
#4: Assorted Mystery Morsels. (Completely unmarked hard candies in clear plastic wrappers of variable sizes, colors, and flavors. It's like the life-is-like-a-box-of-chocolates cliche made so recently famous by Tom Hanks as Forest Gump, only you kinda do still know what you're getting with the chocolate- only the inside filling was the mystery. These little nuggets are an enigma inside and out, and the only way to bust the mystery is to pop one in your yap. Will it be wild cherry flavor or wild salmon? I'll save these for days when I'm feeling particulary adventurous and randy).
#3: Assorted unwrapped candy. (Ok, so the sign said price of admission 3 pieces of candy or 1 full sized candy bar. What I didn't anticipate is that some of my more miserly patrons would actually open a bag of Skittles or M&M's and literally drop 3 single candies in the bucket. I guess, technically, that qualifies as admission based on what the sign said, but it sure was a pain separating all those free-spirited mavericks from the rest of the booty before the ants could find them. C'mon people, you got it for free! 3 pieces of candy is what most of you get from 1 house trick or treating, not to mention we give the exact same back to you when you trick or treat at our place. I know the economy is in the toilet, and many of us are worried about the future, but hook a brother up).
#2: Snickers Limited Edition CHARGED Candy Bar (This thing stood out right away in its snazzy metallic silver and red package with the graphic design of a rhino head bursting through the package with designs all around the head as if to present the image of a mighty collision, kinda like the cheesey cut away image they would show in the old Bat Man shows- POW! WHAM! KA-BOOM! What really got me was the caption beneath that shows the special ingredients that make this bar different: Caffeine, Taurine, B-Vitamins. Are you serious? Was someone actually handing kids extra caffeinated candy bars? The impact this would have on some children would probably have certain parent wishing the givers had done something less lethal, like inserting a needle or a razor blade in their offerings! And Taurine? What is that? Is that something edible, or is that something grandpa picked up in one of those foriegn "massage" parlors during the war?)
#1: Snack Sized Package of Chicken Flavored crackers. (Yes, at first when I noticed this mysterious treasure in its crinkly yellow-orange bag covered with Chinese writing with a child like caricature of an egg shaped chicken looking up at me, I thought someone had donated a travel sized package of Top Ramen. I had a college flash back to the days when my diet consisted primarily of cup o' noodles, Taco Bell, and beer. Upon further inspection I realized with only moderate disappointment they were crackers. I'll have to be liquored up for sure before I take a nibble out of one of these poultry flavored bad boys. I'd almost rather eat the worm at the bottom of the tequila bottle before drinking the tequila.)
So thank you Halloween rebels who still know how to blend a little trick with your treats, and thank you non appreciators who left these oddball offerings at my home for me to enjoy.

Ghost Traumatic Stress Disorder

After 2 marathon days of last minute checking, rechecking, zip tying, taping, stapling, hammering, drilling, measuring, swearing, kicking, stomping, and throwing an occasional tantrum, another successful haunted event has passed peacfully into the pages of the Day31 annals.
The most important thing is that no one was hurt, and hopefully all of the children who came through the haunt this year will be nightmare free for tonight and into the forseeable future, although tear free was too much to ask for as more than I would have liked to have seen came out bawling this year.
The main scare was the chain saw maniac in sync with the sliding dead end wall. We had some timing issues that prevented many people from experiencing the full intended effect, but I think it did a good job of topping last year's electric chair and spark fence as the main event. I'll be hard pressed to beat the chain saw scare, but I now have 364 days to cook something up. To be honest, I'm not sure the hearts of my patrons can handle anything more intense, and while the reactions of the older kids have been my lithmus test for the success of my props and scares, it saddens me a bit to see the little kids being left behind as my haunt and my skills as a haunt owner mature. I was pleased with the results of the Chicken Run this year for the smaller kids and weaker stomached adults, and I think it has a place in my future haunted ventures.
Here are some of my final results. 463 people passed through the long and narrow chambers of Day31 this year. We didn't do an official count, but we estimated approximately 250 visited us last year. I have been strongly against charging a monetary fee to walk through my haunted house, and while many home haunters except cash donations, I have been reluctant to do this because, frankly, I didn't feel the haunt was good enough. This year I was talked into allowing a donation jar at the entrance placed in a very non-conspicous place. The final result? $30 and some change. I'm flattered that some of you felt this experience was worth leaving a cash donation, especially in these times. As promised it will be put towards new props for future haunts.
There were no major issues to report. My kicking hang man did go at some point from being a 2-legged kicking hang man to a 1-legged kicking hang man, but I'm confident that will be an easy fix. The intensity of the chain saw scare did cause the walls to be pushed and shoved against often over the course of the night, and although the walls had to be pushed back into place repeatedly and plastic restapled, the overall structural integrity of the corner did hold up, and I never felt that desptire the beating it was taken there was any danger of a wall being knocked over. The number of volunteers was the major issue for the second year in a row. If you can get 40 people to lay their hands on a Bible and swear by their immortal souls they will be there Halloween night to help, you'll get 10 who show up.
I want to sincerely thank my reliable core of people who helped make this work. We all keep that naughty and nice list in the backs of our minds, and all of you who showed up and helped are on the nice list, which means your kindness and generosity will be repaid in kind and with interest as the opportunities arise. As for the others, particulary the ones who just no showed without even a phone call, you are on the naughty list, so if you're broken down on the side of the road and desperately need someone to come out and help you, please give me a call. I'll come out and help you still, of course, but I'll probably finish watching whatever was on TV before I leave, and there's a good chance I'll stop for a slow and liezurely lunch along the way. I'll likely pull over to the side of the road and pluck a few gray hairs out of my goatee as well just to make sure I'm looking my best- gray hairs I got trying to man a 15 man event with a staff of 10.
Anyway, it's now 2:30am and I'm standing at the foot of the mighty Everest of a mountain that is the post-haunted house tear down, but I'm already shaking off the it's-all-over-dumps and looking forward to next year, and I certainly hope I'm not the only one!