(See what I did there?)

It always feels weird making follow-up posts to the Haunted House in November, but then, future internet searches (regarding what happened in previous years in order to gain new ideas) don’t really care about the “when” a post was posted, but more, the “what” of the post.  Mostly though, these types of posts help me remember what worked and what didn’t work in a given year so we can do better the next year.

The anchors for the long hallways were a massive success!  Great stability!  Really happy with that solution.  We will probably invest in a couple more of those next year as a result.

Last year’s werewolf forest and psycho trailer worked so well that we re-routed the forest this year to lead THROUGH one of the shipping containers, which we converted into a spider’s lair.  A 7’ circular entrance narrowed to a 4’ exit as customers travelled through the spider and web covered lair, creating a claustrophobic result similar to being encased in spider webs – the walls and roof closing in on you and causing you to duck and crouch by the time you exited in order to avoid collision with the mass of spiders, egg sacks and spider webs adorning the interior.  Our webcaster worked magnificently in sheathing the interior walls in hot, glue webbing, while the black lights made it all “pop” visually and played havoc with customer depth perception.

We roofed the switchback hallway and sprayed the walls with expanding foam and luminescent paint, so along with strobes, black lights and a booming box, it made for a crypt-like feel at the end of long, dark, outside hallway.  It worked well to break apart people that clung to one another as you had to walk through it single file, and was a great place to hide maze runners and other staff.

The only problem we found was that a group of frightened people, walking single file through a narrow, hallway will NOT progress when they hear the chainsaws fire up in other parts of the maze that echo through the roofed off switchbacks.  We had a couple of “people log-jams” as a result, and on at least three occasions, people broke through the staff exits to get out into the “behind the scenes” areas, and we had to chase them back into the maze to get them to exit the place!  Always made me laugh, but it was always a massive exercise of herding frightened cats in a thunderstorm.

We had a room with four doors, each door offering an exit, with only one being the real exit.  This worked well in that you could get a group to go through the wrong way and be chased back out by a chainsaw wielding psychopath, but then they were loath to open any other doors and would rather do nothing than take their chances with another door.  At one point, a frightened customer ran out a door, dragging her girlfriend with her and accidentally slamming her face first into one of the open doors as a result!  *OUCH!*  Our final solution for this was for tour guides to open the other doors as people would run for ANY exit once the chainsaws fired up!  Unfortunately, this also tended to split groups, and at one point, a group of 7 teenage girls locked themselves in one of the dead-end rooms for 15 minutes before I climbed over the wall and talked them into coming back out.  Again – hilarious, but problem causing when you’re trying to get 100 people through the place in 2 hours.

Our zombies and clowns were (again), awesome!  Hours of volunteers working in the cold and rain!  Thank you!!

We had an idea for a “feral cat” which utterly bombed.  Last year when I was working on the house at 11pm, being the only person in the place, I propped a door to the workshop open while I was out working in the zombie graveyard.  I came in to lock the place up, only to have a blur of screaming darkness crash past my ankles and continually throw itself at the door, howling and screaming.

I screamed back.

A lot.

Eventually, I realised that some feral cat (or someone’s local pet), had wandered into the workshop looking for food or because it was warm, and was trying to get out after I’d closed the door.  I spent the next 40 minutes, running around the house, trying to get it out, propping doors open and herding it in a general direction, only to have it reverse, and have to hunt under things on hands and knees at midnight in the house, hoping the cat didn’t come screaming past and attack my face.

So this year, we created our own “cat” – a plastic cylinder, filled with gravel and glass and covered in thick fur, tied to a rope so it could “run” down the long hallways TOWARDS an oncoming group.  The idea was to recreate that primal fear that pumped adrenalin through my system on the night last year.  But, our house is too loud with chainsaws and boom boxes, so you can’t hear it approach; it’s dark in the hallways, so you can’t see it approach; and unless it touches you, it will pass you without anyone noticing.  FAIL.

What did work, though, was to attach black styrofoam tubing at knee and elbow heights throughout the hallways and switchbacks that people would randomly brush up against.  It moved and “gave”, and didn’t necessarily hit the person in front of or behind you, so you’d jump and others had no idea why, but would instantly react as well.  Cheaper; no one had to operate it or reset it like the “cat”; and the impact on the crowd was definitely noticeable.

By far, the best “prop” of the house for scaring people this year was four volunteer statues that randomly moved.  Four people, completely dressed in a costume from head to foot so you didn’t know if they were real or mannequins, which stood at various places in the maze – only one of them would move for a given group.  So if you came through a second time, and were warning your friends that “the pumpkin guy” was going to jump out at you, it wouldn’t – but the dead girl that didn’t move the first time, would.  BEAUTIFUL!  We caught even the hardest cynics with these guys, and they easily had a 100% “kill rate” for any given night.

Hot on their heels was our 12’ stone golem.  This costume was actually a backpack that you could strap on, with a giant head that extended above you and massive arms that worked via metal frames to reach out well past your own arm length towards people.  We had “the statue” seated on a massive wooden throne, surrounded by pumpkins as you entered the maze.  Tour guides would point out the pumpkin offerings made by local villagers who had to pass through the maze to keep them safe, and since we didn’t bring a pumpkin, one “volunteer” from the group would need to beseech the stone golem on the group’s behalf to keep us safe as we passed through.  Volunteer approaches (hesitantly, awkwardly or cynically – usually to much heckling by their companions); makes some kind of request for the safety of the group; stands to leave; and suddenly, the golem comes to life, roaring and grabbing at them.  If they didn’t jump – multiple people in the crowd always did.

 Another good year!  Once again, glad it’s over!  Some cool new things worked really well and others didn’t, but we ended up with some new ideas to try next year.  It’ll take us a week to tear it all down and pack it away depending on the weather, but nice to have made it through another year.

Eventually I discovered for myself the utterly simple prescription for creativity: Be intensely yourself.  Don’t try to be outstanding; don’t try to be a success; don’t try to do pictures for others to look at – just please yourself.
~ Ralph Steiner

What’s the past tense of Autumn?

My rant on my displeasure with the oncoming season must have triggered the last nerve on Mother Nature’s temperament as a windstorm blew through the area late the other night and completely annihilated all the long hallways we had setup so far.

Not happy Jan…

At least I can take some tiny satisfaction in the confirmation of my thoughts on the stability of narrow hallways versus rooms as none of the rooms were destroyed in the storm.  We’ve got a couple places designed with switchbacks that will add to the stability of those hallways, but we have to figure out a better way to stabilize the single, long hallway that allows it to take wind shear in both directions.

Since the Buffy Stakes didn’t work out with our concrete-like ground, I had to use some nine inch nails (yes, they actually exists outside of the band), and rig some 2×4 blocks to anchor our angled braces.  You drive the nails through the blocks into the ground with a sledge hammer, which holds the 2×4 blocking securely in place (and deals with our concrete-ground issue), which in turn provides both compressive and tensional support for the wall panel via the diagonal bracing. 

We then ran a couple of 2×3′s in 8′ lengths along the length of the panels and above the hallway, securing panels together laterally (reinforcing the c-channel braces we’ve been using throughout the house) and also securing the opposite wall to use a single anchor brace.  It means that the long hallway is going to stay a long hallway, but then, our original design 2 years ago for moving around wall panels has never really seen much use – once we build the maze, we tend to keep it that way.

Nice that we figured this out BEFORE we had people in the maze!  Need to complete the layout and then start laying power for lights and stereos and figure out which areas need roofs to protect our crew from long periods of being outside when it decides to rain.  The fun never ends! *grins*

To succeed, put yourself in a position where failure is publicly embarrassing.
~ Neil Davidson

The days may not be warm, but at least they’re bright and sunny.  So we decided it was a good time to take advantage of the dry weather and pull all the Haunted House panels and props out of the shipping containers to let them air out, dry out, and do a general inspect & repair on things.

16 panels needed to have the front plywood replaced.  Each year, we have to spend a bit on repairing panels and fixing broken props or adding to our inventory.  This usually runs between $250 & $400.  We decided to spend a bit more this year and pick up some better plywood (that is a bit more weather durable) for repairing the broken panels.  The new panels are a bit heavier than the older ones but will hopefully bear the weather and storage a bit better.  So eventually, we may not spend so much on repairing panels.

Our volunteer list so far this year is a bit lighter than the previous years – some of our teenage volunteers have graduated high school and moved on to college or moved away, so our layout this year has fewer large rooms in the maze.  Plus, the long, narrow, claustrophobic hallways worked so well last year that we decided to implement a couple of switchbacks to confuse people and get them turned around.  More interior walls means more panels, and we build an additional 13 from scratch.  Panel count on this year’s layout for the house: 173.

We get the front façade and a room or two assembled so we can start setting up the long hallways.  The bonus of having rooms is that they are structurally more stable than long, narrow hallways.  Rooms are “blocks” of stability that you can attach panels to and not worry about them shaking in the wind.  Hallways are narrow and tie in to nothing, so they are extremely wobbly until you can reinforce them to another right angle wall or room.  This isn’t always possible on the long sections of the hallways.  We cut out some massive wooden stakes that would make Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s pulse quicken.

We quickly find that years of parking cars on the gravel parking lot have compressed the dirt into cement, and most of the stakes don’t get into the ground very far before splitting, so we call it quits for the day to refigure a way to support the hallways.  All in all, a great start to this year’s build!

What we all want is to be valued members of a winning team on an inspiring mission.
~ Graham Weston