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Welcome boys and goons!
It's time once again to kick open the old mausoleum door!
And see what climbs out!
Clawing his way out of a fetid grave, he's drew, aka, rabid badger!
Pull up a slab with Jim Millspar, in his award-winning role as the Professor of Torture, meet hook Jim!
Jason Storm is here as fan-favorite, gothic commentator, Storm!
Do you smell something burning? It must be Salem's favorite old prone, Johnna Summers!
Now light a torch, grab your pitchfork, and make like a bunch of terrified villagers!
You found another episode of The Big Scary Show!
The school is out, temperatures are up, and it's the beginning of summer, and something that most of us do at the beginning of summer is think back, years pass, and take a little walk down nostalgia.
Remember all the things that made things fun, and why Summers were cool, and got us thinking of the anticipation to October and to Haunting in Halloween.
And nostalgia for Halloween, that's always been a fun part for us.
So this week, with The Big Scary Show, episode 292, we're going to take a little look at nostalgia.
But first, we've got all kinds of good fun for you. Badger has deadline news.
He's going to keep you up to date on what's going on in the Haunt industry.
Can't just be going on nostalgia alone, you need to know what's happening now, not just what's happened before.
And in addition to that, Badger's got a really awesome interview with Felicia Rose.
Meat Hook Jim is got Between the Corpses for you, and he'll be discussing hanging the drop.
That should be quite an interesting feature. And Jonah has asked the old crone, and as always, great topics, something really to pick into and get into.
She's going to be going over protecting your brand, and when you might need to rebrand.
I'll be ranting in the Haunt minute. I've got another animal in the headlines, which might be either fun to think about, with it going insane,
or it might be some inspiration for your Haunt.
We also go down Nostalgia Road with the Round Table of Terror.
We've pulled in a couple of Haunts that have gotten together. These awesome Haunts from across the country specialize in nostalgia for Haunting.
So there's a lot of questions with that that we answer.
So it's going to be a lot of fun talking with Aiden, Brandon, Carol, and Nicole as they speak with the Gohose about nostalgia.
How can that be accomplished, and is the past the future of Haunting?
Grissom Getaway, all kinds of awesome music. Much, much more. Turn up the AC, turn up the volume, get out of the heat, and enjoy whatever you've got going on for a meal off the barbecue.
Because it's time for Big Scary Show, Episode 292.
Aiden P. Finnegan
Hello everyone this is Drew Badger, this is Deadline News for episode 292 and unfortunately we have not one but two very sad stories from our own.
Story number one comes to us courtesy of Midway Wicked Woods in Statesville, North Carolina.
Randy Jenkins, owner of Midway Wicked Woods in Statesville, died unexpectedly on June 14th at the age of 67.
He had run Midway Wicked Woods for over 25 years. He was a man of integrity, compassion, a smart entrepreneur, and a man to look up to.
There weren't many like Randy around and he will be missed.
The status of Midway Wicked Woods at this time is unknown. He leaves behind his wife Jocelyn, two children, and several grandchildren.
We have this sad news also from the Dent Schoolhouse in Cincinnati.
He left a spotlight and give thanks to a Dent worker that sadly passed away this past week. Alexis Hadsell passed away from cancer on June 21st at the all too young age of 28.
She embedded our attraction with so many warm and lasting memories. She was a natural entertainer and made thousands of guests scream every year.
She was an actor, makeup artist, our lunch lady, co-worker, and dear friend. We will miss you and this year we scare for you.
The big scary show sends its deepest condolences to the family and friends of Randy Lee Jenkins and Alexa Hadsell, Midway Wicked Woods and the Dent Schoolhouse and offers up this extended moment of silence.
On a little lighter note we have some hiring news from a petrified forest in Altamont Springs, Florida.
Join us for a Petrified Forest Hiring Days, working here as a no brainer. If you're looking for a killer side hustle come out either July 8th or 15th from 9am to noon or 2 to 6pm.
We have openings in 8 departments. Bring your ID, your availability from September and October and don't miss out on this unique opportunity. You must be 16 years of age with parental consent.
Visit apetrifiedforest.com for more details.
We have more hiring news this time from Schmitz Farm Haunt in Melville, New York. We're now hiring for the upcoming season. To work at the Haunt, choose which audition date you would like to attend and fill out the form on our website.
You must be 18 or older to apply and help us bring the horror to the Haunt this year so we can scare the Schmit out of you.
You can find that form at their website schmitzfarmhaunt.com.
We have this news from the Chippewa Lake slaughterhouse in Chippewa Lake, Ohio. The carvers are seeking more freaks to join their twisted family.
Become part of our killer cast at one of the highest rated and most realistic haunted attractions in the state of Ohio.
The carvers are open from September 29th through November 4th. Apply today at slaughterhouseohio.com.
We have still more hiring news this time from Fright Farm in Smithfield, Pennsylvania.
We're now hiring for scare actors. Join our Fright Farm family and get paid to scare people.
No experience necessary. You must be 16 years or older and we're proud to offer a competitive nightly pay rate as well as hot home cooked meals to our staff every Friday and Saturday night.
Fright Farm has been scaring southern Pennsylvania and surrounding areas for over 30 years.
If you would like to join our team of talented and devoted employees, apply at frightfarm.com.
If you have questions, contact amber at frightfarm.com with any questions.
Still more hiring news this time from the Eloise Asylum in Westland, Michigan.
Summer may just be starting, but we're preparing for Halloween here at the asylum. Come on out and meet the team.
We're hiring for actors, customer service staff, event staff, and makeup artists.
Send us a message today. Also, anyone who is a guest employee during our off season, this is the time to message and get your interview in so you can come back for the haunt season.
Get more information at their Facebook page, facebook.com slash the Eloise Asylum.
Guess what? More hiring news this time from Lake Hickory Haunts in Hickory, North Carolina. Lake Hickory Haunts is now hiring all positions for the upcoming season.
We're now accepting applications for actors, makeup artists, customer service members, parking attendants, food workers, sales, and more.
Join our amazing team and get paid to scare people.
Lake Hickory Haunts is set to be the biggest and best show ever delivered by our haunt and we hope you will join us this season.
Our schedule runs from September 16th through November 4th. We can't wait to meet you and we greatly look forward to having you as a member of our 2023 team.
Apply now. Go to LakeHickoryHaunts.com for an application.
We've been still more hiring this time from Laurel's House of Horror in Laurel, Maryland.
Come be a part of Maryland's largest indoor haunted house. We're hiring scare actors, event staff, makeup artists, escape room game masters, and more.
You must be 16 to apply. We'll be having open casting July 8th from 11am to 3.30pm.
You must be able to join the family. Email LaurelHauntCrew at gmail.com for any questions and get more information at their Facebook page, facebook.com.
M.D. Scariest Haunted House.
And finally we have this convention update from Spookala in Tampa, Florida.
We have a special guest announcement. Spookala is extremely excited to bring you the voice of Jack Skellington, Chris Sarandon.
Chris Sarandon is well known for being the voice of Jack in The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jerry in Fright Night, Prince Humperdink in The Princess Bride, and so many more.
For tickets to Spookala happening October 6th through the 8th, please go to Spookala.com.
Remember folks, if you have news in the haunted house, Halloween, or horror industries and you want it on the show, email it to us.
News at bigscaryshow.com and we'll get it on the show. No news is too big or too small. This concludes this edition of the Big Scary Shows Deadline News.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
For Girl Fireland, between two worlds on the Big Scary Show.
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Well folks, you know, Haunt season begins in, 2 and a half months maybe.
A lot of Haunts will be opening up in early to mid-September.
Lots of brand new stuff going on. We've been to Transworld, we've been to Fear Expo, we've been to Midwest Haunters.
We've seen all the cool, brand spanking new products for 2023.
Can't wait to see them in Haunted Attractions.
But let's turn the clock back a little bit.
You know, one thing that I have noticed over the course of the last few years, and I'm sure a lot of you have too,
a lot of Haunts are starting to kind of go retro.
A lot more classic type Halloween characters, a lot more Jack-o-lanterns witches,
classic vampires and monsters and things like that.
You know, there's still a lot of great brand spanking new ideas out there that have not been fully exploited or used to death.
But a lot of people are kind of into that nostalgic thing right now.
There's a lot of advertising on TV that goes back to the days of the 80s and the 90s.
And of course anything 80s and 90s is pretty big these days.
So why not Haunted Attractions?
If you remember going to Haunts in high school or college, if you're in the Gehost demographic,
you might remember some of those great Haunts back in those days, you know,
maybe not necessarily feeling your hand into a pot of, you know,
Jello and saying it's brains or spaghetti or grapes for eyeballs, maybe not that retro.
But there's a trio of Haunts going on right now that have gotten together and are creating retro themed Haunts around the country.
And if this works and it sounds really, really cool, they may be expanding this and looking for other Haunts to join them.
Don't know if that's going to happen, but we should certainly find out with our guests tonight.
They're all putting on retro themed Haunts at their various locations and we want to talk about why and what they're doing and how cool a concept is this.
So let's welcome our guests tonight.
First of all, from the Dark Knight Halloween World Scream Park, we have Aiden Finnegan who is up in his Haunt is up in Farmingville, New York.
Aiden, are you with us?
I am with you guys.
Thanks for having me on.
All right.
And you are not at the Haunt right now building and hammering away, which is a little odd being it's the middle of build season,
but we're glad you were able to take a little time to speak to us here.
Going down to Silver Point, Tennessee and Halloween Horror, we have Carol Lee Moore and Erica McElroy.
How are you guys doing tonight?
Doing good, man.
Doing good.
Halloween Hollow Haunted House.
That's us.
Sounds like a, it's got kind of a really neat little retroy kind of name too.
So gotta love that.
Oh yeah.
Getting way far out to the West Coast, the Haunted Harvest out of Chino, California, we have Brandon Splatter, not Splatter, but Splatter with us tonight.
Brandon, how are you, sir?
I'm good.
I just got the sawdust cleaned off my shoulders to do this interview.
And yeah, it's pretty warm down here.
Well, yeah, it's pretty warm where we are.
But, you know, since we're audio only, you could have met, you could have had the sawdust, but that's all right.
We also have our regular host up in Rhode Island, not too far from Farmingville, New York, I'm guessing.
We have Storm.
Yeah, if you take a boat, you'd probably be close.
But yeah, no, I'm greetings.
I'm ready to go.
I got my half a meal Boo bucket filled with wax lips and those skeleton candies that came in the coffins that no one ever actually assembled a full skeleton with.
That's true.
Very nice.
Down in Cincinnati, we have Meat Hook Jim.
I have designed an old gothic haunt because I was a hot owner for a hot minute a few years back.
But I'm not going to give that design to anybody because it's going to happen.
I promise you.
Out in Fayetteville, Arkansas, somebody who does a really retro haunt, you might say it's purely medieval.
We have John a.k.a. the old crone.
I am a product of the 70s and 80s JC haunted houses.
So I am all about the retro.
That is my vibe.
I'm excited tonight.
Nice.
My name is Drew Badger in Charlotte, North Carolina.
The heat and the humidity are here and I am feeling every bit of it.
By the way, I started working in haunted houses in 1977.
So let's see if we go that retro.
Gentlemen and ladies, welcome to the round table of terror.
I'm going to throw out the first question.
Why a retro haunt when we have all this cool new stuff going on that you see at Trans World and all the other shows.
Are we are we going in alphabetical order here?
APC, A&M, Trans and Carol?
For right now, yes.
Okay.
All right.
So why retro?
Well, I mean, from a business and marketing perspective, you know, leaving personal feelings and passions
completely out of it.
Turn on your television.
Open up your social media feed.
You know, take a walk to your local strip mall or online e-commerce store that you buy all your close work.
Retro is big right now.
It's been that way since Stranger Things really, I would want to say is probably the, you know, the Watergate moment, the watershed moment for when the floodgates were opened and everyone started getting behind it.
And now it's virtually inescapable.
There's a lot of 70s, you know, nostalgia going on, a lot of 2000, 90s rather nostalgia going on.
And more than anything else, it seems that the emphasis is put on 80s nostalgia.
And, you know, if you're not just a haunt fan, but if you're a, you know, horror fanatic, like I'm sure most of us are pretty much, you know, the 80s is just usually a personal favorite time, you know, era of horror films.
You know, like you said, you had the VHS store experience and, you know, sometimes the art on the front of the VHS would be better than the movie itself.
And, you know, that's influenced a lot of art artwork that's done by market-saved-to-star designs.
If you go back and look at our artwork for the past three seasons, it's all trying to be VHS artwork, you know, and it's all a big tribute to that.
So obviously there's a humongous demand for it.
We're seeing more and more haunts across the country, big and small, including some national level haunts that are, you know, these big name haunts aren't afraid to go after the vintage Halloween, you know, with the pumpkin pales and the classic cat drawing.
You know exactly what I'm talking about, as well as, you know, some of that 80s nostalgia, you know, 80s, slash it.
There you go.
Look at mid-summer stream.
They're all over it, you know, and rightfully so.
This is the trend that's currently gripping the industry, but I haven't seen it really talked about a whole lot.
Aside from a couple mentions and some, you know, seminars I've attended at the trade shows.
So I was like, this whole movement's happening, but no one's seeing that it's really a movement.
So let's make it one.
Let's draw attention to, you know, people like Carolyn Brand and America and Trevor and, you know, all these haunts out there that are really, you know, and not there.
And what I mean by a retro haunt isn't just black, let's put out some black past plastic walls and, you know, put out a bowl of grapes, but take the modern haunt mentality and production value and apply that to, you know, giving an old dog new tricks, you know,
parroting and paying tribute to the things that we all grew up with and remember fondly and replicating that on a kind of a modern way, but still with a heavy, heavy dose of retro feeling, you know.
And I think, you know, everyone who grew up like me when I was growing up in Long Island, going to haunts, you know, in the late 2000s, they had still like that 90s sheen to them.
They were still using a lot of 90s animatronics and props and a lot of 90s, you know, gothic set design and things like that.
So I fell in love with that aesthetic.
And, you know, over the last, you know, over the 2010s, the industry really did, you know, evolve and start trying a bunch of new things to kind of get out of that old school aesthetic.
But I think we've been far away from it now for so long that it's sexy again.
And, you know, I want to see more and more haunts doing it and more and more haunts are going retro.
It's just they're not talking to each other about it.
And that's the main thing.
You know, I want to, I want to give people, you know, the, the, if you're looking for a haunt, there are other options than just, you know, nothing but CGI screens.
So let's say that, let's say it that way.
Now you sent me a press release talking about these three haunts here.
Were you the one that came up with this concept and then you pitched it to Carol, Erica and Brandon and others?
Or how did this come about?
I had bought up to Carol a couple of times because Carol, I've been a fan of his work for for many years.
Same with Brandon.
You know, we go back, but a couple of years ago, one of the trade shows, I think I started talking to Carol when he was telling me about the new haunt he was starting.
And, you know, I wanted to work together in some capacity.
Now, you know, the last couple of years of my life have been hectic, especially career wise.
So that didn't pan out.
But this year, especially after attending a couple of the seminars and retro, retro, retro, there's something here.
And I looked and Carol's got this amazing show.
So why not reach out to Carol and see if we can do something.
Hey, Brandon's just doing a retro theme this year too.
Oh, well, let's get right in the mix.
And I thought about it for a while, came up with a big plan, proposed it to two of them.
And luckily we have some crazy resources for other things we're doing with my company that we're able to also put towards this.
We just finished filming an entire reality show and news show that's going to spotlight the history of haunted houses as well as some of the haunted houses that are going retro across the United States.
So, you know, that I look forward to releasing that in the next couple of weeks.
It's campy, it's fun and it's giving some love to that thing that we all care about.
Now, Brandon and Carol, when Aiden came up to you guys and said, Hey, I got an idea.
What was your initial reaction?
I mean, were you already into the, yes, I'm going to do a retro haunt as he just said, or did it just kind of become the catalyst for, yeah, I think it's finally time to go ahead and do this.
It hadn't really occurred to me.
I think Aiden reached out on Instagram because we did a post, we did a theme reveal and it seemed like an exciting thing to do.
We've never really done anything like this where it's like a cross promotion.
I think it's a lot of fun.
We've been aware of, I think all of your haunts for years and, you know, it seemed like something that would be pretty cool kind of getting on the nostalgia that's pretty popular right now.
He pitched it to me and I was like, well, you know, who's involved, who's doing what, and what really made me and Erica kind of decide this is really cool is because he's on the East Coast.
We're in Tennessee, we represent the South, Brandon's on the West Coast.
And if you're going to let everybody know kind of, Hey, we're doing this thing, you're covering pretty much all parts of the United States.
And I really thought that was kind of cool because you're getting three different style retro haunts from three different regions of the United States.
And to me, that's really cool because I've been to haunts like West Coast style haunts are different than haunts you see into the sea.
And I've only been to a few East Coast haunts, but their styles are different.
And so you take different styles with the retro haunt approach.
That was pretty, that was pretty convincing for me and Erica. So we decided, Hey, let's give this a shot.
All you need to do is hit the upper Midwest and you basically got the country covered, it sounds like.
So if there's any haunts out there in the upper Midwest looking to go retro, contact these guys.
Carol, you brought up an interesting point about how West Coast, the East Coast and the South all differing.
And yes, they do. You know, I have been to haunts all over the U.S. as well as our co hosts and there are different styles.
But does retro have its own unique style in the South and on the East Coast and you know, on the West Coast too.
I mean, are the ones out in California is it all about surfing and windsurfing and then VW bugs that eat you or something like that versus East Coast or the south of the Midwest.
Well, I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm I'm from LA and now I live in Orange County.
So I've kind of gotten like a taste of both parts of California, you know, and Los Angeles, you know, growing up in the 90s, it is a different feel from Orange County, which is closer to the beach.
We have Huntington Beach within like 20 minutes in my house.
So it's very much a different kind of a different vibe over here in Orange County compared to like Los Angeles where you're landlocked and there's, you know, lots of city streets and, you know, things like that.
It's funny because Erica grew up and is from Huntington Beach.
So when I met Erica and was talking to her, she was, you know, talking to me about her childhood memories of working at different haunts and, you know, you started with elementary school or middle school elementary school.
Elementary school. So I grew up with like the West Coast haunts and then I moved to Denver, I worked there for a long time and worked for a company that was sending all over the place.
I've worked in haunted houses all over the country.
So I definitely understand that there's different feels.
There's California, you see a lot of, I don't know if it's like this at your hunt, but a lot of like festival type haunts like scary and then there was, you know, there was like dark harbor and all that.
Or haunted hayride and all that.
But then you start seeing like everywhere else, it's kind of like a lot of indoor haunts when you start moving east and then you go, you start hitting more outdoor haunts.
And so they're so different everywhere and it's really neat to see everybody's take on different things.
So like including retro haunts.
So I think it's pretty exciting that we're all over the place.
And I don't know my first time seeing a, I'll tell you a really cool retro haunt that was before it changed hands.
I got the tour of the haunted schoolhouse and laboratory in Akron, Ohio, before it changed hands.
And it was probably the most retro haunt that I have seen that was still basically the way it was since the 70s.
And it's still had the chicken wire up so the actors were separated from the customers via chicken wire.
So you're walking through and you see them do the show behind the chicken wire.
And I was like, man, I haven't seen anything like this.
I heard my parents talk about the JC's haunt, you know, back when they used to have a Nashville and that was way before my time.
But retro haunts in the South to me was black plastic strobe lights, blood paint, you know, and, and obviously we're not going that retro.
But the feel of it, like you could always tell that somebody put some time into a scene and like they were like, this scene I built, you know,
me and my brother built this scene right here.
And we built it and we was a Dahmer and I was leather face, you know, and it's just like you can tell some of these retro, like the feeling of retro haunts has passion.
It wasn't just always to make a quick buck and let's come up with something that's quick and easy.
But a lot of people that work those haunts, they still talk about it today.
I mean, 50, 60 year old men, I remember that time we did this and they remember it like it was yesterday.
And as a kid, nostalgic overload seeing the radio stations when they were a huge marketing powerhouse setting up outside, you'd see the KDF rock van outside with the strobe lights and the search lights.
And it just looked like a cool spectacle.
And if I told Erica, if we could bring that back and bring kind of what that used to be like for me as a kid, like Aiden said, with Stranger Things kind of being hot right now, bring it all back around and do it in a haunted house setting.
I mean, stupid good.
I think that's a good point. Like retro is different, has a different meaning really and a feeling for everybody. So I think it's kind of cool that we're all over the place.
I remember going to the haunted schoolhouse on the MHC bus tour maybe 10 years ago, maybe a little further.
I think that was before the new owners and and I do remember the chicken wire around that giant Tesla coil looking thing.
But I just thought that was so we didn't die as we got too close to it and they fired that sucker up. But that's a yeah, that's that's that's amazing.
That's an amazing haunt. I have good memories from that.
The cool place about that haunt. The cool thing about it is it was like a legit laboratory where they were testing like they had this giant room where they would do velocity type things where you could drop down and like, you know, float in the air and they made it look like a
four level scene where if you look down, it looked like the floor had caved in four levels.
That is the scariest bridge I've ever been on, by the way.
That one. Yes.
And then the another part they had this Dracula's layer and it was all chicken wire off where you couldn't, you know, but he would come down the stairs and just really you could just tell that there had been some time spent in there and it just like you could just smell the age.
You know, and like you could smell the the Morris costumes from the 80s and it was just it was awesome. You know, I haven't been back, but it was really cool to see a haunt that well preserved almost like a time capsule.
Oh yeah.
Okay, so I'm going to I'm going to say 50 or 60 year old old old men. You know, we're still young, Mr. You know, we got it. But I want to ask what I mean I love this but what is the benefit of you guys pairing together or partnering together to do this.
Is it just for marketing leverage or are you trying to really just start a movement? What's what's the benefit of you guys working together in this quote retro haunt field?
All right. Well, I mean, obviously at the end of the day, we got to make money to keep the gates open or else as one of pickle says I can't have fun next year.
So marketing is definitely at the number one priority list but really close behind is we're doing this because one, you know, you don't always get along with other points and you know I believe that sent to community is probably the the one thing that can help this industry continue to grow.
And, you know, I find find myself privileged to be on such friendly terms with you know other talented creators like Carol and Erica and Trevor and Brandon all their respective crews because they just got crack teams working on this stuff some of the most talented people I've ever seen.
But you know, we're doing this because we want to do it and that's the similarity because you get like you said you have three different types of haunts or what it's a module or it's a pop up one because no one can afford to buy a location in Long Island.
Most haunts out here, they're modular they're pop ups. But you know so obviously you know that grants Carol and Brandon and everyone you know a little bit more you know access to to build bigger things and stuff because they don't have to take it down in two weeks.
But we're all doing this at the end of the day for the same reason that's because we love this not just loving doing haunted houses but the specific niche type that pays tribute to what got us started doing this, you know,
my my response would be why not you know you got other haunts doing stuff similar. We're all haunted houses we're all haunted attractions people are all going to come out of the woodwork in our different regions come Halloween season.
If we can tap into something get some coverage on what we're doing.
Get people talking about it. I used to travel hours still do to go to haunted houses and know if if I'm busy during the Halloween season of course but when I was a young man, you know I would travel up to four or six hours and convince my parents to let me let me go that far to go to a haunted
house just because I read about it in Fangoria magazine. So you know, you don't know when you're going to somebody's going to come across an article or a story online, or social media and go, you know what, that's dope.
I'm going. And that's how things start to take off so when they didn't approach me I said, let's do it, you know, let's rock and roll and what's it going to hurt it's only going to help. That's that's kind of what we thought.
Yeah, and I mean the cool thing about social media is that as divisive as it can be.
You know, that's kind of how I know, Aiden that's how Trevor knows Aiden and this is kind of an extension of that that we, we met on social media and we kind of continue like a friendship over social media since we're, you know, we're across the country.
And this is kind of a nice way to extend that.
And what's ironic about all that is not just any social media but I think even before I was in the industry, like I was still in maybe even middle school at the time when I started, you know, getting hooked up with you guys a petition home and following what you were doing.
That was on YouTube that was on you guys, you know, you guys making late 2000s early 2010s haunt blocks. So before even Facebook hit its peak, you know, like we met on YouTube.
And now all these years later we're working kind of together in this universal project that concerns a time that existed long before YouTube.
You know, like we were talking about blockbuster was the original Netflix. I think that's better. I'd rather go place to someplace physical and pick up, you know, physical media.
So it's just ironic that yeah, we met under such modern terms but and now we're using modern technology to replicate retro retro aesthetics and our haunts.
I do want to remind you all you are listening to the roundtable of terror here on the big scary show we're going to take a very short break to play this very important message.
We are talking retro haunts with our guests Brandon splatter Erica McElroy, Carol Lee, Moran, Aiden Finnegan, along with our regular go hosts, we're going to take a very short break and we will be right back.
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And we're back to the roundtable of terror talking about retro haunts with Aiden Finnegan from Dark Knight Halloween World Screen Park up in Farmingville, New York, Brandon splatter haunted harvest in Chino, California, Carol Lee, Moran, Erica McElroy from the Halloween Horror in Silver Point, Tennessee, along with our regular go hosts.
And before we get back to the guests, I wanted to mention to Jim, Jim, I know you used to work at the Dent Schoolhouse and I went to the Dent Schoolhouse for the first time.
Oh gosh, it's now been 15 years. It was 2008. And I got to say, I thought that was a very retro haunt back at the time, you know, from having people like Damien Reaper walk up to you as you're going through the cemetery, getting ready to go through the main doors and talking about none of you are really going to survive this.
Maybe a couple of you will, but you know, his monologue was just so classic and and just I thought the Dent was like a purely perfectly themed haunt.
Everything was school related at the time from auto shop to the auditorium to everything and that's that's just something I remember from a lot of old school haunts that that single theme and and I don't know.
I'm assuming it has changed over the years, but were you a part I mean I know you were a part of it, you know, 10 years ago, I guess, but were you a part of it back that far and were you able to watch it evolve.
Actually, I did not come on board until 2010.
I know Damien very well. And, you know, the whole theme being behind it was, it was a 1950s schoolhouse. So yes, it was very, very retro.
Well, the theme might have been 1950s, but wasn't it like an 1850s building.
Holding was built like the late 1800s.
Oh, okay. Very cool.
It's a gorgeous. I mean, for those who haven't seen it, it's a gorgeous building. It's got a bell tower and everything.
But, you know, Damien was Damien's an institution onto himself. He doesn't work. So he lives Halloween 24 7365.
And he's really good at what he does. I mean, he loves Halloween so much that he's just, you know, that's all that's his life.
He could almost be one of those late night horror host types of it with his characters. Those were so cool back then. And I think that's also a big part.
And I'm curious to know whether or not, you know, that will start coming back. Maybe Haunts will have a quote unquote horror host that could, you know, kind of be the spokesman and the voice of the Haunt.
You know, not only reading the rules, but being a Q-line actor or being the greeter or things like that. That would be kind of a neat idea.
That would be neat. That one Haunt and Wall Island should do it.
Yes, maybe they should. Maybe I should hang my consultant flag out right now, Cha-ching. We'll talk after the show.
If we didn't just wrap filming, I'd give you that check to your...
You're going to come out with another one, right?
I'm sorry?
You're going to come out with another reality show, right? For season two?
Possibly. We'll see what happens after this season. And with the internal storyline of the horror host and that universe without getting into too much more. But you'll all understand when you watch a couple episodes.
We'll do lunch and we'll talk.
I will undercut Drew.
We're not getting into a bidding war today, sir.
Maybe you need a woman's touch.
Well, what if that horror host was a woman?
Why not?
Princess Trainwreck.
You... No.
That term woman is very loosely used with her.
I'd rather have kinks in there than Princess Trainwreck.
Well, anyway, we're not going to fight over that right now. And if you don't know what that is, do not look up Princess Trainwork on Facebook ever.
Just don't.
But anyway, questions from the host regarding our guests?
Well, I'm just double checking how many States Princess Trainwreck is illegal in now.
16.
So you know.
I didn't have a question so much as a comment. And my comment is, I am admiring all of you for what you're doing because I think this is what the industry needs right now.
Everybody's all about retro. Now, everybody's about the 80s, the 90s, the 70s.
This is the perfect time to do what you guys are doing.
But given it that modern flair to bring it up to the next level.
Thank you guys for pursuing this because I think it's going to take off.
We certainly do too. And that's part of why we're doing it.
Yeah.
I mean, what are the, what are the chances that several different minds who are doing great haunts across the entire continental US are all thinking the same thing.
I mean, there's some magic there. You can't tell me otherwise.
I agree. I agree very much so. And you guys in Tennessee, I'm going to have to take a trip down into this Halloween.
Come on, man.
I'm in Cincinnati. I'm not that far away.
So there you go.
Straight down 75 to 40 or 65 maybe.
So my question, especially involving retro, you know, there's been so many advances in the industry over the past 40 years and a lot of it could very easily be applied to retro.
You can actually do very retro digital effects, that type of things.
You know, Pepper's Ghost has never gone out of style.
But how do you guys address makeup and being retro? Because there's a very different feel to a haunt in the 80s and 70s as to what you'd expect to see a haunted makeup performance at a haunt today.
Well, for our show, we are the only haunt in our area and probably the only haunt out of few that is a all mask haunt.
We do this for numerous reasons, but especially with the retro thing.
We all, a lot of people tend to associate retro haunts with the quote unquote raccoon eyes makeup, you know, the white out face, the black around the eyes.
Maybe some things.
Yes, maybe some fades if you're lucky.
But you know, here's the thing is with me, I have a high tolerance for quality and something has to look both retro and good to go in our show.
And unfortunately, there's still some haunts that are doing that because of their circumstances.
And I'm not hating anyone for it or whatever.
You know, everyone does what they can.
But you know, they're not doing it for the self aware joke of a retro haunt.
You know, when when you're doing stuff like this, there's obviously got to be some kind of level of self awareness and, you know, poking fun at yourself and everyone else who's doing this.
So that was crucial in our decision to go into an all mask, all mask direction, but it also allows us to write into the storyline.
You know, in previous years, it's been the the scare actors actually turn into monsters.
So when you go through the haunt, most of them are wearing like full on silicone masks.
But there's a but they're holding, you know, fun world masks.
And, you know, there's cheap 90s Halloween masks scared all around that these monsters threw off when they actually transformed into monsters.
So there's ways to ways to make that work.
But yeah, I'd be interested in seeing how other retro haunts handle their makeup.
Oh, fantastic. I'd love to see, you know, a zombie come around the corner wearing that plastic bow Duke thing that came with like the the plastic jumpsuit cape and the the the mask that hanged on by one elastic.
Oh, boy.
Ben Coopers. Yeah, we have a couple of those, but they're not getting used to the haunt.
They're actually getting used in our brand new vintage Halloween and history of haunted houses museum at Dark Knight, because we have so much stuff blow molds vintage haunt props cat.
Oh, I have a collection of mortise catalogs, a days back to at least the mid 80s.
So this is all stuff that I don't want possibly getting damaged.
So we're going to display it properly.
Good choice, both by the customers and the actors.
That's a risk.
Brandon, what about you?
How do you approach to make up for retro feel?
Well, we staff about 40 actors.
So we don't have a lot of time every night to do makeup.
We encourage them if they want to or if it's what their character is.
But out of 40 people, we probably get like maybe three or four people actually doing dedicated makeup.
And that's kind of on them.
But we provide masks.
We last year, one of our haunted houses was called maniacs.
And it was based on real life serial killers.
And we actually had like three dead ringers for the serial killers that they were playing.
We had like a Dahmer that looked exactly like him.
We had a Ramirez that looked exactly like him.
So they didn't really have to do a lot of makeup, but they did have to show up every night because like who else is going to play them.
But we rely heavily on masks.
And I think that a lot of the younger kids, because we'll get 17, 18 year olds trying out, they kind of prefer the masks.
And out in the cornfield too, if they're sweating, a lot of the makeup ends up running.
So it's, we kind of just lean into the mask like most of the time.
Definitely good feeling.
You know, even retro masks, there's some incredible movie quality ones that were used in the past, which when working a haunt nowadays, but this type of feel definitely would.
What about Halloween? How, how do you guys approach the makeup and retro issue?
So we are masked heavy as well, for the most part, but we do have makeup.
We have makeup artists, and we use, there's specific characters that we use for makeup.
So like our main character for like our video store, his name is Rewind.
He is makeup with prosthetics most of the time.
So they have, we have somebody specifically that puts on his prosthetics because he's technically a vampire.
There's a whole story behind him, but he's, so he's mask and, or no, he's makeup and prosthetics, but he's also in the video store, which is also the queue line to our haunt.
And so he's in the video store with our patrons and like he's in their faces and talking to them about all these movies and stuff like that.
So we have specific characters that are mask and specific characters that are makeup, but then we have a couple of characters inside the video store attraction that are kind of more old school.
So like some of them are like victims and so like we have, we kind of go like a little bit more retro with their makeup.
So like old school, like, you know, running black and white, just, just to make it look a little fun and like, like they do belong in that era that they're, that they're in the scene that they're at.
So it all depends on the scene and if they're forward facing or back in the back in the one of the scenes.
That's great. And that saves on time and makeup with the actors to just line them up, get the super soaker with the fake blood. Good. You're good to go. Get out there.
Oh yeah.
I also love the video store thing and the concept of, you know, the vampire running it. I'm pretty sure half of the independent video stores in the 80s were actually run by vampires,
especially on a Friday night if you ever walked into one.
Oh yeah.
Who's to say what's really happening behind those red curtains, you know, that special section of the story that you couldn't get into before you were a certain age.
I'll tell you what, that red curtain was what I was about. I'll tell you that much.
That was a right of passage right there. Being able to go past the red curtain.
Red curtain didn't matter. I wanted to see what was behind the curtain. Tapping on what Erica said, you know, the video store, which we call a video slash back is one of three hots that we have.
So we have dark Raven, which your basic haunted mansion feel. So if you go into the haunted mansion, which we call dark Raven, it's got a bunch of ghost like, you know, actors in there.
So you can kind of think of the old school, you know, the real dry, the, yeah, a lot of them are makeup in there, especially the one out front.
He's, he's kind of, he's like a harbinger of sorts. He kind of tells you the story, you know, and on the front porch and wearing like a top hat.
Yeah, it's very bullish, you know, very, if you think of like, you know, Dr. Spookin style, you know, like we talked about horror host, you know, he's very that.
Yeah.
And then of course, that's dark Raven. Of course, we talked about video slash back, but then we have big top meets, which fun, it's clowns and chainsaws.
And I know that's can't get any more retro than that.
But I tell you, I'm a, I'm a personal, I'm not a fan of the chainsaw and I'm not a fan of clowns.
But let me tell you, the public loves it. And when they're the ones buying tickets, I will say sure thing, what will make a house just for you guys.
And they love it.
And the makeup in there is your old school, you know, oboe clown and old school clown like masks to and we have a few masks in there as well.
A few silicones, but in our makeup is across the board, you know, we have silicones, we have latex, we have, you know, the vintage stuff.
Because a lot of these companies are making retro style masks, the plastic, you know, uncanny, you know, like uncanny.
I can't think of the name right now.
Aiden, you know what I'm talking about the vintage, yeah, the old plastic Halloween mask.
Are we talking about like old vacuum form fun?
Yeah, yeah, those things. There's a there's a guy, you know, he had a mask company called on Kenya Valley.
And that's what I was thinking. They used to do a lot of those style masks.
Anyway, go back to the original thing. Our makeup is mask heavy, but we also theme it to our three themes.
So it's kind of unique and cool. And we don't take ourselves too seriously either.
I mean, when you're in a scene of the video store called slaughter salvage and the tagline is a mechanic is insane, you know, like people call it the Dill Earnhardt house.
And he looks comes out looking like a dead Dill Earnhardt. You know, I mean, it is what it is, you know, we don't take ourselves too seriously.
We have fun. And in how if you dress up for Halloween and it's retro, there's no telling what you were going to see on Halloween night walking down the street.
So Halloween Hollow is basically a Halloween town. That's how we kind of present ourselves. It's a big Halloween event.
Retro feel. We there are limits. What we'll do if it doesn't fit, we understand.
But it's pretty hard not to fit in what we got because it's everything Halloween and we can make it fit somehow.
Please, please tell me that your ghostly manner has somebody with a sheet with eye holes cut out of it.
Oh, please tell me you're going to have at least one of those.
I'm going to have to check it out and find out for yourself.
At least one.
We do actually have a photo because we have the Ghostbusters that come out and hang out with us every night.
And we have a photo of one of our actors in a sheet like that with the Ghostbusters and it's really fun.
It's pretty fun.
Fantastic.
That's hilarious.
I'm not going to ask.
Janna, I mean, you do a medieval themed haunt. Is there a way you can go retro with that? I mean, how you're going back like you're going 400 years ago, 500 years ago.
It is. Yeah, it's kind of retro already.
But my type of retro that I've done with my haunt is the fact out of necessity.
I too am a pop up or modular haunt. So we build everything off site and we load it in and then we take it back out, you know, just like somebody you do.
But also, you know, basically I'm poor.
So I don't have the room or the money for these, you know, $10,000 props.
So we're retro in that our scares are more thriller mental, food scares or job scares.
You know, we're kind of low tech in that aspect, but it works.
I'll tell you something about, you know, being low tech.
I used to own a haunted house that was called Death Yard.
And I had it for two years and we had bought out an existing haunt north of Nashville, about 15 minutes from Nashville Nightmare.
This haunted house had one air prop and it was just the air blast. That's all we had.
And every year we were open. We tied with Nashville Nightmare in the Nashville scene as best haunted house.
And I found out then that you don't have to be high tech to scare people.
And that's kind of where and that's kind of where I started to in, you know, the more creative you are with your show, you don't have to have a lot of high tech stuff.
Now it's nice to be high tech. You know, I've been in some very high tech haunts.
I've worked for some very high tech haunts, but I've also worked for some very low tech haunts.
And let me tell you something, if people are laughing, screaming, having a good time, they don't give a dad gum what kind of tech you're using.
As long as they come out having fun and want to come back again.
And that's what I found out to be the most important part of what we do.
And you say you haven't made evil show. That'd be, I'd love to see that, you know, that'd be kind of cool to check that out.
Well, thanks. Well, we are we are definitely kindred spirit in that because I couldn't compete with the great big haunts and the big expensive props and things.
So I had to find a way to offer something completely different.
Yeah.
And so the medieval and it's very story driven and everything.
But yeah, I agree with you. I mean, preach it.
If they're if they're laughing and they're having fun and they're having a good time and they're coming back every year.
That's what matters.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, it seems like, you know, throughout talking to people in the industry, it seems that people forget, you know, after they get, you know, especially what's look at our employees.
I was just talking with someone about this earlier is one of my favorite parts of, you know, owning Dark Knight and working with our team is most of our team, they're not haunt industry people.
They're genuine horror lovers.
But when someone goes into the industry, I've seen it happen time and time and time again, where they get so, you know, obsessed with trans world and the newest technology and that's that's great.
You know, I remember that time in my life, but, you know, there becomes this kind of thing that you're trying to trying to, you know, push your haunts towards.
And if not that, and if you're not trying to kind of replicate, you know, what you have been convinced by industry politics is the right way to do a haunt.
You're trying to get in with the in crowd of the industry, you know, it's always one of the two paths, sometimes both.
But, you know, we're taking it back to the point of like, you know, people like different styles of haunt, you know, I, you could talk to five different people and, you know, one will say, hey, I like that story driven haunt where it really felt
intimate and really felt like I was in the experience and it relied, you know, the fate of the icon character, relied on the decisions my group made, you know, which is the right book to move on the bookcase to open the next door.
And there's other people who, you know, love haunts like Field of Screams and PA, you know, lots of fire, lots of animatronics, lots of big production value and it's gorgeous stuff like Netherworld, you know, I love, I love haunts like that.
But people like different things and, you know, sometimes people aren't going to like that big haunt or people aren't going to like that small low tech haunt.
But it seems that more and more haunts are now trying to almost appear identical. You're going to walk through haunts now and, you know, all five of your cities operated haunts seem to all have the same props, the same amount of animatronics,
the same silicone masks. And, you know, I feel like the retro haunt thing is going to definitely help with that because it's going to remind people that there are other options. There are a variety of styles of haunt that you have to choose from.
So, you know, maybe the general populace that attends haunts of the attractions, which I believe is still at about 20% of the population each season, will now be able to kind of expand their palette of, you know, hey, what haunts am I going to go to?
Oh, we're going to go to that one that we always go to. It's the biggest haunt on Busby, you know, the whole freaking night. So hopefully, you know, this encourages people to check out other haunted houses than the one that they go to.
I'll tell you one time. 2007. Trans World Chicago. First Trans World ever attended.
Walking to the dark zone or whatever they used to call that. I think they still call it the dark zone. But anyway, scare factories in there. The dragon with the parachute material wings is flapping high above us.
We're looking at the property, the haunt owner, and he was like, I'm buying this. I was like, you're buying that? I was like, dude, that's over $10,000, you know?
He's like, I'm buying it. So we kept it top secret from everybody. We didn't want anybody knowing what we were doing and wanted to make this huge big unveiling. We had it in this giant cave that we built.
And at the end of the year, we did a tally of what people like the most. And everybody said they like the mattress in the ground effect or the quicksand effect.
And I sat there and said, you know, we did, you just spent over $10,000 on that dragon. And although it was cool, it was second place. First place was a mattress in the ground. And I've never forgot that.
And it's just, it's funny how things, how people work. You know, you talk about field of screams, Aiden, you know, I went to field of screams, Bates Motel and Reapers Revenge on a, I think it was a legendary haunt tour a few years back.
And I tell you, my favorite out of three was Reapers Revenge because it felt a little old school and kind of how I came up, you know, in the Southern Haunted outdoor haunt, you know, it was like, you just kind of use what you got.
But field of screams to me was the best outdoor attraction I've ever been to clean. It was organized. It looked slick. It ran smooth. Bates was retro in my opinion. It seemed very nostalgic.
It seemed like Bates was the same that when I would see Bates in the Fangoria magazines and things like that from when I was a teenager. And I think that's why they all three do very well because they're all different.
Also, while you mentioned it, and we, you know, we're right here, big shout out to Reapers Revenge. Oh my God, Kelly, Todd, all of them, Paul, the whole nine, Ryan, incredible haunt.
And like you said, you know, it has aspects of old school and aspects of new school, but the old school aspects are done to such a degree, you know, overbuilt, overblown that it's just, it's hard to describe their experience besides, you know, what I usually tell people about Reapers.
And it's one of my favorite haunts, if not my favorite haunt because it's the most well-rounded attraction or multi-attraction attraction that I've ever been to in my life.
Big shout out to Reapers. I mean, if you're in the area or even if you're not in the area, it's worth the trip.
I'll tell you, the amount of haunt porn that I saw at those places, Reapers had a lot of old carnival looking haunt porn, I think, if I'm not mistaken, it looked legit.
They added more.
Okay, well, that's crazy to find that kind of stuff. And then the field of screams had all kinds of farm equipment, haunt porn everywhere, just rust and just sexiness all over the place. And I'm a huge fan of that.
Very cool. Carol, I hope the third place for favorite things was a pallet buried in the ground with a red light under it and those fake hands.
Those are scary. Those are scary.
I got a quick question and I know we need to start winding this down because I think a couple of you have scheduled issues.
With it all being retro and a lot of people, we were talking before we started, people remembering all the 80s and 90s of people, at least in my age demographic,
are your demographics older, people who are going through the nostalgia, are they more in their 30s or 40s or more versus the people who are what we typically try to market to, the teenagers and the early college age.
We try to get the 14 to 25s in there, but are you seeing more people in the 30s saying, oh my God, I remember this back from the 90s or from the 80s?
Well, for our hunt, we would say that the lion's share of our clientele are probably middle of the road millennials like myself.
I'm 33. So I grew up with Blockbuster. I had three video stores within walking distance of my house growing up in LA.
And that, I think that's anywhere from like age like 30 to like 44 now. I think that's, which is crazy to say, but that's the biggest share of who comes to our hunt, who sees our ads, who's visiting the pumpkin patch.
And then followed by, I think, Zoomers are like the next one, and then followed by Gen X.
But, you know, I think this has been the biggest response we've ever gotten was doing like the retro video store, because a lot of the people that are coming, they grew up with like 90s, not scary farm.
And they just did a poll recently to do like one of their throwback hunts, like something that they did in the 90s and the early 2000s.
And I'm kind of cashing in on that too. And yeah, I mean, millennials are the generation that celebrates themselves. So they like it.
And yeah, I would say that, you know, we're kind of playing to that crowd more than anything else because it's who comes, you know, to our hunt.
The key engineer are the whole concept of Halloween hollow was Halloween fun for everyone. So we have a not scary pumpkin patch.
So when little ones can come, they can hang out with the Tennessee Ghostbusters who are protecting the, the, the corn maze and the pumpkin patch areas and making sure that no ghost or goblins or ghouls or whatever, you know, can scare them.
And then we have, you know, the killer clown, cannibal clown, chainsaw hunt. That's bloody and gory. And then we have the haunted mansion dark Raven. That's more spooky haunted mansion Disney esque.
And then the video store, which is for your basically your hardcore horror enthusiasts. So we wanted to hit all spectrums. And that way we can have any age group come to Halloween hollow and have a blast.
And that's what we've seen it like we, we have a ton of people, we have a lot of families that come, and they'll bring like all their kids and they'll. So we've set it up to where they can either do like all the haunts at once or they can buy like individual tickets, you know.
So a lot of times we see repeats so they'll come in and they'll do like, they're not sure if their kids are going to like it as much as they do so they'll take them in and do one hunt.
And then they'll come back the next weekend and be like, they loved it. They can't stop talking about it. Now we brought it like more people. We had somebody show up with an entire hay ride that they drove in themselves full of people because they wanted people to see it.
And they so like we have everybody from we saw like tiny kids all the way up to like, you know, a super pretty elderly people like out there.
And like, was that one grandma I saw your pumpkin on the nosepiper kids with me. I was like, great. Yeah. Thanks granny. Come on back.
So like we have a very wide variety in our audience. But I probably say that like millennials are probably our biggest return.
I have to almost mirror that, you know, last year for Dark Knight, which is our second season, we looked at the data after we closed and upon reviewing it, it was almost a clear 50% divide between, you know, teenagers and people in their 20s, and you know, people who are older adults and beyond
quote unquote, you know, been both for different reasons, you know, the teenagers and the zoomers, you know, are now very aware of stranger things and all this retro media that's coming out the peace tribute to the media of the 80s and 90s and horror and things like that
retro horror. And the adults you'd have coming through and saying, Oh man, I remember this prop from rich Hamstown's The Living Dead, which was probably the best haunted house on the island from the late 90s through the early 2000s.
And then what ended up happening was towards the end of the season, those adults came back, and they were bringing their kids to show them, Hey, this was what haunted houses were like when you know, we were your age or whatever it is.
And those kids went through and said it was best haunted house they've been to that year, you know, as opposed to you know, everywhere, everywhere else on the island. And that's a pretty high compliment considering that we have some great haunted houses out on all night.
But, you know, again, a big we held back with the marketing the last two years, we arrived almost entirely on word of mouth, which was kind of out of character for me given on the marketing guy.
And we ended up still making the Buzzfeed list of the top 20 scariest haunted houses in the US. So, you know, we're excited to see, you know, now that we're going to be properly marketing it this year and we know we have a good product, how things expand.
And, you know, part of this whole collaboration is using our new resources that we're putting into marketing and using that to try to help out, you know, bring some attention to Carol and Brandon's places too.
Because honestly, you know, we got to look out for the other people who are doing like minded ideas, especially when they're good ones like this and if all turns out well, the industry is going to look very different in the next couple of years.
Excellent. I know we need to start winding this down. So if the host have final questions now would be the time to ask anyone.
I covered everything we did with retro pretty well but yeah badger if you got a good quick one.
I got a quick final question.
If this turns out that the three of you have fantastic years and everybody is just, you know, raving about this. Are you looking to create like a larger group like if I had a haunt in Ohio or Pennsylvania or Idaho and I wanted to join the three of you guys.
Are you going to be soliciting for that after the season.
We have big plans for this and you know, I highly you know, I try to put a lot of emphasis on, you know, partnership in the proper regard. So if that's something that's something I want to do, but if that's something that my other two you know haunt partners here, Carol and Brandon would like to do as well which I think we've talked about before and you know it's
definitely not out of the wrong possibility I'd say yes definitely we're trying to build the community here and spread the love around.
Excellent. Any final questions.
No, I'm just looking forward to, you know, one day seeing the retro Council 13.
That's old school. Well it has been a fascinating conversation we really appreciate you guys coming on and talking about it. This is the part of the show we like to call the plugs.
So if you have websites and social medias where people can follow you catch up on your progress. Obviously we want to know your opening date if you have that already set.
And let's start with Brandon tell us about haunted harvest where can people get more information. Do you have ticket sales pre sales going on or when they're going to go on sale opening nights.
Social media sites, etc.
We operate out of Frosty's force and pumpkin patch so they don't do online tickets their old school. So everything's on site, but that's in Chino you can follow us on the haunted harvest on Instagram, the haunted harvest on Facebook haunted harvest calm for any info.
And yeah, do you have an opening night yet.
They're telling us September 29.
Okay, so check out haunted harvest.com or look at haunted harvest on the social medias. Carol and Erica tell us where people get information on Halloween hollow.
So you can visit our website at Halloween hollow hunt.com. Currently we are in the process of redoing our website but our website does have the schedule on there and hiring information contact information on there right now currently
We will be doing pre sale tickets starting August 1.
You can catch us on social media on Facebook, Instagram and tick tock. All of those are Halloween hollow.
It's just kind of a retro, like haunt. It's the haunt line we call it the Halloween hollow haunt line. Yeah, that's fantastic.
It's not 99 cents a minute I hope.
We try to get a nine.
976 haunted house.
There you go.
That would have been great.
That would have been.
Aiden take us home with this sir. How can people get more information about the very long name of dark night Halloween world screen park and all right dark night Halloween world screen park it's a long name but that's kind of the joke.
Like I said we're self aware on all socials we're at dark night.
So yeah, we're at dark night.
dark night not spelt like Batman dark n i g h t because that's when haunted houses take place on dark nights of course.
So yeah we also have dark night.
So we open up on Friday October 13th because what's more 90s than opening up a full on 14 acre retro screen park in the middle of October when half the seasons passed you by.
We are located the Catholic Health Amphitheater at Bald Hill in Farmingville New York aka the Bald Hill Amphitheater and we all look forward to seeing everyone we're doing a bunch of awesome cool stuff this year keep an eye on our socials because we have some surprises planned and some stuff that's going to make you probably laugh if you get the joke and you're as involved in the industry and fandom as we are so thank you again to drew and all the
gah hosts here on the big scary show not the first time I've been on here hopefully not the last time we'll be on here and it's always a great time so thank you to you guys for having myself on as well as our wonderful haunt partners here and give it a spotlight to what we're doing.
Yes, but you're opening Friday the 13th so there you go.
But anyway, we could not do this again without our aforementioned ghouse including storm.
And then fabulous conversation, you know, love the whole retro feel and the fact that's coming back, but I am going to blame all of you for the fact that I can no longer get blow mold decorations without spending a small fortune.
That's because me and my partners bought all of them for the museum.
I'm very sorry.
Also want to thank me hook Jim.
I've got to say the whole concept just enamors me I can't wait to see what you guys have done. And hopefully at least I can get down to Tennessee to see what you guys have done.
Please do.
And of course we would be remiss if we did not mention, John of the old crone.
I'm just going to say that if you ever want to know why gen X is so tough is because we grew up on the fears you guys are creating.
My name is Drew Badger and one of these days I would love to see an entire haunt with nothing but actors in Don post masks.
That would be Uber retro.
This is the round.
I think we've been on a tour with one or two of those.
We may have but this is the round table of terror here on the big scary show.
Yeah.
Greetings listeners, Meat Hook Jim here.
As we continue our journey down torture and execution, we're still at the gallows and
hanging the drop.
When a trapdoor was first added to the gallows, the drop did not aid execution as intended.
It took the efforts of a diligent hangman to reflect the process.
On May 5th, 1760, a mighty throng gathered at Tyburn as a new era beckoned.
The victim was Earl Ferrars, the first peer of the realm to be hanged in London and a
new method was on trial.
Ferrars would not be hanged from the horse and cart that conveyed him from his cell at
the Tower of London as felons in the past had been.
His death would occur when the floor beneath him gave way, leaving him suspended and strangled.
It was known as the drop.
The monumentous event was first spoiled when Earl Ferrars inadvertently broke protocol.
He presented the hangman's assistant with five guineas, leaving the empty-handed hangman
fuming.
Ferrars was forced to wait for his moment of doom while the two officials argued.
Finally, executioner Thomas Turlis was ready to release the mechanism that held the floor
in place.
Misjudgment by the makers of the scaffold left Ferrars writhing on the rope with his toes
touching the ground.
Author Horace Walpole said, as the machine was new, they were not ready at it.
His toes still touched the stage and he suffered a little bit, having had time by their bungling
to raise his cap.
But the executioner pulled it down again and pulled his leg so that he was soon out of
pain and quite dead in four minutes.
Turlis returned to the tried and tested method of horse and cart.
However, the drop was the shape of things to come.
It was modified and made an appearance outside Newgate Prison in 1783.
The victims were let out from the prison basement, directly up the steps and onto the platform,
some six feet high.
Well, my toes still be touching, I'm six four.
Hangman still used short ropes, which meant that, despite the drop, victims suffered slow
strangulation.
It wasn't until Lincolnshire met man William Marwood took the job of hangman that science
was applied.
In Ireland, there had already been some advances in the form of the long drop.
The correct length of rope could be calculated if the prisoner's weight, height, and neck
musculature were assessed.
With a long drop, the neck was broken or dislocated at the end of the fall.
Death or at least cessation of pain was instant.
Marwood drew up a chart to work from, which gave the length of rope necessary for anyone
weighing between 112 and 224 pounds.
He used a good quality rope, faring a soft Italian type made of hemp and silk, as it
now had to bear not just the weight of the body, but the force with which it fell.
Marwood exchanged a traditional slipknot for a metal ring to increase efficiency.
He urged the replacement of scaffold ladders with ramps to assist the weak-need prisoners
on their final walk.
Where possible, he encouraged the digging of a pit beneath the scaffold to allow the
platform to match the height of the cell floor, yet still have the efficient long drop beneath
it.
Marwood's proud bows were that others hang criminals while he executed them.
He was duly rewarded for his compassion.
Unlike his predecessors, Marwood was not abused by street children or reviled by society.
This humanity won the respect of everyone from prisoner governors to his victim.
So there was way to, you know, at least live a little bit longer.
Taller people like me may be quite a bit longer.
But anyway, I digress.
We'll catch you on the next episode.
The Ohio Haunted House Owners, actors and enthusiasts.
Join the new Ohio Haunters Association.
We are working with hunters across the state from home to pro to strengthen the Ohio Haunt
community.
Open to all owners, actors, makeup artists, prop builders, designers and Halloween paranormal
enthusiasts.
The Ohio Haunters Association.
Our haunting is the heart of it all.
For us on Facebook.
It's time for Astiel Crone.
A while back we talked about some good ways to brand your business.
Everything from selecting your name, your logo, your image and presence in the marketplace.
Well, what if you need to rebrand your business?
There may be many reasons why you have to do or choose to rebrand.
Maybe you're expanding, wanting to go in a different direction, or perhaps there's
a dispute over the rights to your business name.
Do you think it's just time to change things up?
Well for whatever reasons, here are some quick guidelines of things to consider before proceeding
of a rebranding.
Make a list of everywhere your business name is because every single one of them needs to
be updated.
This will be easier if you can keep the same LLC or corporate name so all you have to do
is change your DBA, doing business as, which will make taxes and legal items much easier
to update.
And don't forget to update your state and city licenses as well.
Next think carefully on what your new brand and name will be.
Due diligence is always important to make sure the name isn't taken or too similar to
someone else's that creates an issue.
It's easy to check for available names with your state and simply googling will help as
well.
If you can select something similar to what you currently have, it will help with recognition.
Create a plan for launching your new brand.
You can pretty much follow the same steps it takes to launch a new business.
As soon as you update your website, social media, and all your legal paperwork, get
the word out.
Use this as a great marketing opportunity to reach out to your past patrons or customers
and make yourself known to new ones.
Regardless of what prompted you to rebrand your business, see it as a chance for growth
and expansion.
Change like growth can sometimes be painful, but it could be made less painful if you plan
ahead.
Until next time, don't forget to stir the cauldron.
Stir the Haunted World of Frightfind and discover an environment dedicated to promoting your
Haunt.
Target customers who will influence others on tending Haunt attractions as Frightfind
brings in Screamseekers looking for Haunted places, events, and accommodations of every
sort.
Various exposure options give you the ability to reach your audience throughout the year.
Don't be afraid, go to Frightfind.com now to add your Haunt for free and see for yourself
the difference Frightfind will make in your Haunt listing.
Hey, this is WF Bell from Rob Zombie's 31 and The Walking Dead.
You're listening to the Big Scary Show.
It's a great adventure in the tradition of the guns of Navarone and the bridge on the
River Quay.
Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra, the Devil at Four O'Clock.
Two men first met on the island of Tuluwa in the South Pacific under the black volcanic
shadows of the Devil at Four O'Clock.
One the island hopping Harry, the other Dunan, a holy man.
Where are you from, tough guy?
I hear echoes.
What's it to you?
You spit your teeth.
That'll be Jersey.
I come from just across the river, Hell's Kitchen.
We used to eat punks like you.
That's when you had your teeth.
Together they raced against the damnable Devil at Four O'Clock.
Spencer Tracy, Frank Sinatra, volcanic fury in Columbia Pictures, the Devil at Four O'Clock
in exciting color.
Virgil Franklin, Redneck Rump on the Big Scary Show.
Have a great day.
Music
Ready to dress up your show?
Need to pump new life into old props?
Just want to show something no one else has?
Do with Alice Cooper, Distortion's Unlimited, and A-list Haunters All Over The World do.
Wear Van Karan, Durable, Handcrafted, Dependable, Year After Year.
Van Karan, When You Scary Enough To Wear The Very Best.
VanKaron.com, V-O-N-C-H-A-R-O-N.com.
As we slide back into the swamp where we hid the body, we would like to thank the following sponsors.
Screamline Studios, Creepy Collection, Dark Imaginings, Fright Finder, Haunt Pay, Van Karan Productions, and VFX Creates.
We'd also like to thank Virgil Franklin, Master of the Ether Muse, and we couldn't do this without the three ghosts, including...
Badger, Haunt Consulting & More, RabidBadger.org.
MeadHookJim, Check out his other podcast at WrestleHorror.com.
And Storm, Rants and More, HauntMinute.com.
And finally you, the listener. Without you, we are nothing.
Big Scary Show is copyright Big Scary Show LLC and no rebroadcast of this show may be made without express permission of the owners.
All music used on the Big Scary Show is used with express permission of the artists themselves.