If someone had told me years ago that I’d be owner/operator of not one but two haunted attractions--I would’ve thought they were nuts! Nevertheless, here I am, starting my second haunted house. How did I get started doing a haunt? I’ll tell you about my fist one and then you‘ll know.
Back in 1990‘s, my husband, daughter and I lived in a neighborhood that was teaming with kids ranging in ages from our two year old sprout to the ripe old age of fifteen. We had a chance to get to know all the kids since they played basketball with my husband, lawn games and they always seemed to have room for the homemade treats I loved to make. This was a great place to raise a child and we loved our neighborhood. We still do!
One day, I ask the kids what they were doing for Halloween and most of them said regretfully, not a lot. A few of them were invited to a party of a classmate but they said they had lame parties--their friend’s parents expected the kids to sit down, talk and to not make a lot of noise during the party. Oh, what fun that would be for some pre-teens!
The only activity left was Trick or Treating for the rest of the kids. That was fine for the younger kids but the rest of the kids thought they were too old to go Trick or Treating. I grabbed the local paper and sure enough, all the activities were for really young kids and nothing for the older kids. There really wasn’t a lot for tweens and young teens to do for Halloween and that made me sad. I got to thinking about what I could do about this and offered to do a haunted house for them in our house. The idea was an instant hit with all the kids and so I got busy recruiting volunteers to make the haunted house happen.
Hubby and I got group of our friends and neighbors to come over help plan and build the haunt. We decided to use the whole bottom of our house that included our finished off family room and storage room. We put up temporary walls so that we‘d have many places to scare the kids and we put together some basic sets. We did the typical stuff like a body in the bed that was a real person, black out hallway with bugs dropping on them, tunnel with haunted hands trying to grab them as they passed and other stuff we thought would be scary. We blacked out the windows and put out some four-watt candlesticks from Christmas, as the kid’s only light. After a lot of work, we were ready for the kids. We hoped the kids would enjoy our efforts and would feel like they had a great holiday night. However, with this age group, you never know if they‘ll like it or not!
The big night finally came and sure enough, all the kids in our neighborhood came. My husband was the gatekeeper and would send down small groups of four or five kids at a time. We jumped out at them and made them scream non-stop. The volunteer’s and I got so tickled at the way the kids would scream their heads off and then laugh as they came through time and time again.
We adults thought we’d do the haunted house for maybe a couple of hours but the night drug on and the kids just kept coming! Then I started noticing adults and kids I didn’t recognize coming through and it was almost nine-thirty. I radioed up to the gatekeeper and ask if all the kids had been though at least twice so we could shut down. That was when I got a shock. He said there was a line of over thirty people waiting to go through besides the kids that had already gone through earlier. What?? I was shocked to find out the kids had been having so much fun they’d all called their parents, brothers, sisters, class mates to come over and go though the haunt with them. Then the older kids called their high school and college aged friends and siblings to come too. I have to say that as the best-behaved group of people we’ve ever had come to our house!
We were thrilled everyone was having such a good time with haunted house so we just kept going and going. We kept the haunt open until midnight and finally had to turn people away. The volunteers were pooped and needed a break. We were delighted to listen to the kids laugh as they figured out who each costumed character was and then they’d tell us how badly we’d scared them. They happily babbled on non-stop about every detail of their trips through and that got me to thinking about all the other kids in town. It bothered me that the kids in my town didn’t have anything to look forward to on my favorite holiday. That was when I got the bug to do the haunt again but now I wanted do a family friendly haunt for the whole town full of kids.
It was a strange thing to find out that I dearly loved scaring people and that they‘d pay me to scare them! I wouldn’t like it scaring people if it made them feel bad. I love it because they have so much fun being scared! They scream and then laugh as they come back again and again. We ran The Haunted Castle for four fun years and entertained a lot of families! The next haunt is not going to be a family friendly haunt and I’m looking forward to the challenge of doing an "in your face" haunt. More on that one later!
Sarah
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I think the only haunted house I ever went to was one like this that someone did in their garage on Halloween. We had the same reaction as your kids. Halloween for some reason has become a pretty important holiday around here too. Todd is already planning his next costume on November 1st. He really freaked out one of the neighbor kids last year when he came to the door in his joker costume. It is only April (OMG it is almost May!) and I feel like I am so behind schedule costuming for this year.
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