Haunted Attractions: Part 2

In my last post, Haunted Houses: Part 1, I outlined my path from 8 year old kid building models of horror monsters and decorating his bedroom with a spooky theme to being presented with an empty barn to fill for a professional Halloween haunted house.

Barn which housed Grimmwood Manor

I had been working in the Halloween business for a while, and one thing I wanted was a "theme" I could not only hang my "haunt" on, but could also take with me. There were haunts that had traditional victorian house themes. There were lunatic asylum themes. There were haunted hotel themes. There were even sci-fi themes. What was my theme to be?

I decided to pick up on an idea from video gaming. I had recently played the game Silent Hill 2, and that game had various spooky buildings in a town. I thought... what if my theme is an entire town, and this particular year's "haunt" is just one of those buildings in the town? I can vary the design from year to year if I want by focusing on a different building in the town. An so the town of Grimmwood was born. Grimmwood had a university, a hotel, an asylum, and a sprawling gothic house called Grimmwood Manor.
The town even had a vistior's pamphlet!

I decided that the audience were essentially like PCs in an RPG adventure. That is, a haunted house audience isn't like a movie audience, or a concert audience, or a theater audience. They are there not only to "watch" the show, but to be part of it. They can talk to actors, ask them questions, and be chased by them. So my story starts with an invitation, "left under your door"

It seems that you, the guest, are descended from someone who once lived in the town of Grimmwood, and for some reason, Professor Grimm wants to see you! But soon, another message is left!

50 points if you can identify the guy in the photo!

Upon arriving, (and buying your ticket and getting in line!) you are greeted by Dr. Payne, who fills you in on the rest of the story. 

Dr. Payne (right), a patient, and the butler peering out

It seems the good Professor has been a patient of Dr. Payne for some time, and is quite mad. He seems to think if he can recreate the events leading up to the night his uncle Victor died, he can contact Victor via a seance. It so happened Victor died on the night of his daughter Iris' wake, so they've dug up dear iris and placed her body in the parlour, just as it was!

Iris Grimm

Portrait of Victor Grimm

The tour of the house ends with a seance gone bad, and "something" summoned that shouldn't be there.

Something very tall summoned

Like my first spook house at the historic tavern, this event went over well with adults, as well as with older children. The middle group... the teenagers looking to get drunk and grope their girlfriends in the dark, were less enthused. It was a ton of fun to design and run, and I got many enthusiastic responses. I have to say I believe the thoroughness of design was a result of many years of designing and running RPG adventures.

I built the story on character devlopment. Each scene had a "host" character who would interact with the audience. Sometimes the audience would get chased out of a room, sometimes not. The actors were great at owning their character, and improvising their parts. Because like RPing, you really never know how your audience is going to react, and you have to be able to adapt to each individual situation.

Next: Incident at Froggy Bottom

Haunted Attractions: Part 1

I'm a haunted house designer. That is, I have designed "haunted houses" for theme parks, farms, and even a 270 year old tavern once owned by Patrick Henry's father-in-law. In the industry, they are called "haunted attractions".

When I graduated from high school, I really didn't know what to do with myself. I wound up getting a job at a local costume/magic shop I had been purchasing from for years.. Turned out, they weren't only a retail shop. They were one of the largest wholesalers in the country. They had warehouses that ran an entire city block.

The company was owned by a gentleman that once did "midnight spook shows" at theaters. I write about Phil in my "Magic of Fundraising" post. He was known as "Dr. Evil" way before Austin Powers ever came on the scene:

Dr. Evil

Dr. Evil (who I know as "Phil") was a haunted house enthusiast, and sold much merchandise to Jaycee groups around the country (to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars per haunted house). He even co-wrote a book, "How to Operate a Financially Successful Haunted House"

I worked at this costume shop for three years, and had plenty of opportunity to look through that book, along with many other books on special effects makeup, horror movies, and things that go bump in the night. I knew that one day I would operate my very own haunted house.

Truth be told, I had been designing "haunted houses" since I was about 8 years old. I had almost every Aurora monster model that had been put out. Frankenstein, The Wolfman, The Mummy, Dracula, The Salem Witch, King Kong, Godzilla, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and the Forgotten Prisoner of Castle Mare. I used to "haunt" my bedroom on my summer vacations. I made my first coffin when I was 13, and got coffin handles for Christmas. I even slept in it one night. I was goth before goth was ever invented.

In 1994, my wife and I moved to Virginia, near Richmond. I heard about a place that did a "haunted history tour" the year before. It was a 270 year old tavern, where Patrick Henry was a bartender. I managed to get to a meeting of the board of directors (the tavern is owned by a preservation foundation). I asked them how much they made the year before. They told me $1000. I told them I would rent the building from them for $1000 if they let me produce my own haunted house there. And they did.

The Hanover Tavern

I had a stipulation placed upon me. The event had to feature the actual history of the tavern. This was to be an educational tour. So I did my research, and there was an interesting array of people who had stayed there. From Patrick Henry himself to General Cornwallis, George Washington, and P.T. Barnum. And so these were the ghosts you met. Cornwallis had come back to pay his bill... in the form of a hand reaching out from a grave, and a ghostly illusion of him materializing on the back porch. A ghost appeared warning you... projected onto a white bust of George Washington. And P.T. Barnum and an assemblage of dead clowns awaited you in the dining room... with your tour guide's head the main course!

What was cool to me about the attraction (and to many of our patrons) was that there were no chainsaws. There were no rubber masks. There were no teenage actors. This was a weird form of interactive theater, where adults were having a blast having the daylights scared out of them. I was in heaven.

The location was rather remote, and financially, it turned out not to be quite worth the effort I had put into it to make it work. It was several months worth of work, a fairly stout investment (not only did I rent the place, but bought the props, paid the actors, etc...), and quite exhausting. I was not ready to just jump in and do it again the following year.

However, in 1999, a local radio station wanted to do a haunted house. They had a venue they used for concerts in the middle of Richmond. They hired me to design and direct it, but in the 11th hour the city shut them down due to building code issues. Well... didn't quite shut them down. The station just didn't want to spend the $150,000 to bring the building up to the city's demands. I had a blast designing it. It was called the Fright Factory.

The premise was that you were entering the lab of a scientist working on a time machine. The lab has been destroyed.  He is on recorded video, talking about his experiments. But as he is explaining the machine, something goes wrong... a portal opens, and he is grabbed by a demon. As you leave the lab through the portal, you are sent through time to various different locations... from Poe's reading room to an egyptian tomb to a victorian graveyard, and finally a Hellraiser type of chaos... winding back in the pristine laboratory. The professor unscathed... wondering how you got there... just as the demon comes to whisk him away.

The following year, I found myself decorating for Kings Dominion Fearfest. Then in 2002 I designed and directed Busch Garden's Sea Dog Cemetery (zombie pirates!). By this time, I had gotten quite good at making props. I had been doing film and theater for about 10 years.

Impaled corpse for Busch Gardens

In 2003 I decide to make a go of it on my own again. A local farm was already doing a Halloween event, and let me use one of their barns. I got the local Ren Faire to provide most of the actors. This is the year Grimmwood was born.

Next up, Grimmwood Manor in Haunted Attractions: Part 2