The term haunted "attraction" points to the diversity within the industry. Granted, out of the thousands of haunted houses out there, you'll find plenty of the same scare tactics and setups. Yet many successful haunts fill different entertainment niches to keep old customers coming back and welcome new ones. Consider location choice, for example. Then there's the theme.
Mega haunted houses, like Netherworld in Atlanta, may change their themes each year. For instance, the two attractions at Netherworld are called "Mangler" and "Carnivore" for The former is a take on cinematic horror involving crazed scientists, dentists and butchers gone awry; the latter is more fanciful, with hordes of werewolves and ghouls around every corner.
Before haunt owners can start scaring customers, they have to first scare up resources. As the popularity of Halloween has increased, so has the holiday's controversy among Christians. In an attempt to reclaim Halloween as an evangelizing tool, religious leaders developed Christian-themed "haunted houses. In , Rev. Instead of ghouls and ghosts, Satan and demons do the spooking. Penitent visitors can then learn about Christian salvation. Running a haunted house isn't a one-month-out-of-the-year dream job.
First, the house costs quite a bit of money to construct. Ricky Dick, who co-owns Pittsburgh's Castle Blood haunted attraction with his wife Karen, stresses that to manage a haunt you need two essential traits -- a love of scaring people and the discipline to do all the boring stuff required so that you can scare people.
One of the primary messages that you'll see mentioned in industry information is the importance of haunted house safety. The purpose of a well-planned haunted house is to create the illusion of danger but never actually come close to putting someone in harm's way.
Insurance, safety equipment and maximum capacity will vary, depending on the city where the haunt is located. Those figures could influence where you can rent or purchase space.
Injury-related lawsuits could also shut down an attraction. Netherworld Haunted House in Atlanta has 32 cameras installed along their mazes and prints a disclaimer on the back of admission tickets to help protect the attraction from litigation.
It isn't uncommon for haunted attraction Web sites or disclaimers to include specific warnings for women who are pregnant and people with heart conditions. After you know the regulations you're working with, let's say you find a warehouse you think will make a perfect haunted space.
Before you spray a single drop of fake blood , check out the facility's sprinkler system and fire safety features. Haunt World Magazine recommends being generous when applying flame retardants to materials.
If something catches fire in a tightly designed space like a haunted house, disaster could strike. In the case of emergency exits, find where the doors and windows are and if there are any pillars or obstacles blocking those exits. The walls of a haunt maze must be constructed 4 to 5 feet 1. Of course fire isn't the only potential hazard. Haunted attractions have all sorts of props and hardware that could injure customers and employees. Most of the time, haunted house mazes are dark and foggy, increasing the chances for a stumble.
Check along maze walls for any nails or screws that could be poking through [source: Kirchner ]. Remove loose cords from the path and ensure maze walls are reinforced and won't break or fall over if people lean on them [source: Kirchner ].
Props must also pose no danger. Take, for instance, those chain saws that crazed lunatics in many a haunted house wield at guests. Although it makes a bone-chilling noise, there's no blade. Faux fog and compressed air help create a frightening atmosphere but can also raise carbon monoxide levels in the enclosed spaces. As a result, managers must be sure that air is properly filtered in the attraction to keep it safe for breathing. The haunted house season comes and goes quickly, but for a successful attraction, that means heavy traffic.
If you can't move cars in and out of the lot easily, people will go somewhere else for their Halloween frights. And speaking of frights, now that safety and logistics are covered, it's time to design the haunted house. The groundwork for a frightening haunted house experience lies in design.
Most haunts are designed as mazes -- guests can find their way through, but there must be enough twists and turns so that they can't anticipate what's coming next. Throughput is essentially a haunted house's productivity standard. On high- traffic nights, managers want to move as many people as possible through the attraction in the shortest amount of time, keeping lines down and customers happy.
Throughput also helps haunt owners figure out the number of customers they need to get through each night in order to make a profit at the end of the season. They peed their pants. Sometimes it was uncomfortable. Quinn Ahrens For haunted house actors, the stakes can be just as dangerous as they are for those being scared. HuffPost called the injuries associated with working in haunted houses "a hazard.
It made me really uncomfortable. Though they might appear scary, they're humans, after all. For Kobak's place of employment, that meant there were codes, including colors for different scenarios. And "there were EMTs, firefighters. Officers walked through just to make everyone was okay. Despite the occasional risks or incidents, the industry has continued to thrive. Kobak said it might have something to do with the aforementioned psychology and science of fear.
That's how these haunted houses get their money," Kobak said. Though it may not always be pretty, it seems as long as people love to be scared — and to scare — haunted houses will only continue to grow in popularity.
World globe An icon of the world globe, indicating different international options. The Egyptians knew well that if you wanted to keep body snatchers away from a pyramid, the best way was to scare the hell out of them. Mazes, moving walls, self-opening doors, traps and the use of snakes and insects were commonplace in preserving treasures and dead royalty.
The Greeks and Romans also unknowingly seeded the path for haunted attractions. Their folklore is rich with mazes and labyrinths, all filled with monsters. As theater was a vital part of their culture, it stands to reason that these ancients began devising rudimentary special FX to represent monsters and beasts.
They also pioneered a number of theatrical devices that would evolve into the spooky elements used in haunts today, including fog, trapdoors, ghostly images and even fake blood and gore.
Fun fact: The ancient Greeks created multiple large-scale special FX contraptions, including the deus ex machina, used to make actors fly, and the ekkyklema, a platform mostly used to reveal dead bodies so the audience could see them. During this time around the s through the s , Europe had recently been converted from Celtic and pagan religions to the practice of Christianity, and pageant wagons toured the land performing plays. These were mostly Biblical stories acted out, often including the scarier parts.
Though they were intended to frighten folks into staying pious, the attendees enjoyed the scares and gore right along with the morals. Additionally, this era began the evolution of Halloween as we know it today. Though the holiday was born out of the Celtic and pagan religions, the European masses carried its practices with them as they converted to Christianity. Carving pumpkins, bobbing for apples, dressing up in costume and even trick -or-treating were all pagan practices that were carried over.
Fun fact: Originally, people carved turnips to represent sprits and demons on Halloween. It was believed that hanging these carvings outside would protect your home for the night.
When the European settlers came to America, they found very few turnips, but discovered that pumpkins grew in abundance and were much easier to carve. Ghosts, demons, the devil and other monsters made regular appearances in plays, including those of William Shakespeare. The opposing actor would stab the bladder and pig blood would pour out, making it look as if the actor was actually bleeding to death.
The s People became enthralled with ghosts and the possibility of other realms during this century. Mediums, fortune tellers, spiritualists and conjuring sessions to communicate with the dead became a form of entertainment for the elite, and many clairvoyants became renowned celebrities who were paid top dollar for their services.
Magician Harry Houdini set out to disprove the practice, and debunked several famous spiritualists. Fun fact: That same s obsession with death led Mary Shelley to write Frankenstein. The beginning of the 20th century saw the height of the traveling carnival, and with it the rise of the freakshow.
Patrons would walk through these attractions looking at human deformities and other oddities many of them fake. Dark rides also became popular amusement attractions; these had patrons sitting on a boat or train and automatically moved through numerous scenes the best-known variation is probably the Tunnel of Love.
As amusement parks and family fun centers sprang up all over the nation, many could not afford a big rollercoaster, so some offered cheap fun-houses and haunted houses to pull in patrons. These were often very dark mazes filled with mirrors and loud buzzers. Around this time, many of the residential houses built during the early s were becoming worn down and dilapidated. To prevent children from exploring these dangerous buildings, adults would say that ghosts inhabited the neglected homes, further fueling the mystique of haunted dwellings.
The first recorded haunted attraction was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in in the United Kingdom as part of an Edwardian fair. At this time, the Grand Guignol in France was scaring audiences nightly with its graphically staged horror entertainment. Fun fact: The fake blood of the Grand Guignol was made of soap and bugs! It consisted of equal parts glycerin—clear soap—and carmine, a bright red pigment made by boiling and crushing certain beetles.
Many haunt owners and even older generations remember having their first spooky-attraction experience courtesy of the Jaycees charity.
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