Haunt Weekly

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly it's time to do the news and what a rough week of news it is. We have cancellations both left and right, but we also have some happier stories as more haunts try to find a path through the pandemic. However, it's not all COVID news as we hear about a copyright story with potential haunt impacts and one queue line actor that was recently cleared...

Send us Fan Mail Pretty much every haunted attraction has a Facebook page. However, is there more that you could be doing with your social media presence? The answer is yes. Social media is a powerful tool for haunt promotion and, thanks to COVID-19, it's about to get even MORE important in 2020. Even if you can't open, social media can help you stay connected with your customers and mak...

Send us Fan Mail The haunts that are planning on opening up for 2020 are most likely starting to really think about their promotion and part of that is getting good images of your scenes and actors. Whether you need them for your fliers, social media, commercials or all three, you need high-quality photos. Getting them, however, can be difficult. How do you find a photographer that can take good p...

Send us Fan Mail It's becoming more and more clear that, if haunts are able to open at all this year, it's going to be with a good deal of restrictions and limitations. Those limitations will likely include masks for actors and customers alike. While getting customers to mask up will be challenging enough, there's also the issue of masking up actors. How do you create masks that wor...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly we're doing the news and what a rough news episodes it is. We slog our way through the first round of haunt closures due to COVID-19. However, we work hard to bring you a great deal of good news too, including at least one story that may bring a tear to your eye. So definitely buckle up with this one. It's going to be a rough ride but, if you st...

Send us Fan Mail No matter what happens between now and haunt season, the haunted attraction industry is facing an extremely challenging year. Even the best predictions call for smaller crowds, shortened seasons and limited capacity. In 2005, the city of New Orleans and the surrounding area was facing a challenge of its own: Hurricane Katrina. The disaster impacted the city in countless ways, incl...

Send us Fan Mail The haunted attraction industry prides itself on being a welcoming space for anyone who loves scaring. However, as some recent events have shown, that's not always an ideal we live up to. The truth is that we have many of the same issues as any other industry but we often lack the tools and processes to address them adequately. So, that's where this week's conversat...

Send us Fan Mail No business is an island unto itself. You need connections and allies to survive and a haunt is no different. Luckily, a haunt has a lot of good opportunities to partner with other businesses and ways that they can add value to their attraction, improve their customers' experience and reduce their own costs. So, today, we're exploring exactly that and looking at 10 types...

Send us Fan Mail It's another episode divisible by four and that means we're doing the news and what a news week we have. Has the nation and world begin the process of reopening, haunted attractions and similar locations are starting to open back up as well. As such, we have a lot of news about various attractions opening their doors for the first time in many months. But it's not j...

Send us Fan Mail Like it or not, the haunt industry is almost certainly heading into a period of great turmoil that is likely to be followed by a recession or even a depression. While that means some rough times are ahead, they are also an opportunity to change the way we work and prepare ourselves to grow. But what changes should we be eying? What adjustments can we make to elevate this whole ind...

Send us Fan Mail Right now is the time of year many haunts are starting to think about actor recruitment, retention and training. It's the time we touch base with our crews, start recruiting replacements and training everyone up. However, this year presents a special set of challenges. The days of 100+ person cattle calls are gone for right now and there are LOT of new things you need to thin...

Send us Fan Mail This week's Haunt Weekly begins with something of a programming note. Originally, we had planned to have Japes Palles on to talk about actor recruitment and training while working remotely. However, some severe weather struck his area and he was not able to come on. So, we will have that conversation next week, same time, same channel. In the meantime, we wish Japes the best...

Send us Fan Mail As sick as we all are of the phrase "In these uncertain times" there's not much doubt that these are, indeed, uncertain times and that means a lot to keep up on. That includes for the haunted attraction industry. Even though our season may not begin in earnest for many months, there's a lot of news that directly impacts us and may alter if we have that season a...

Send us Fan Mail When you go to more than a dozen haunts in a year, you start to see a lot of the same things come up over and over again. Some of those things are fine, especially when they are used well, but many of them don't add much to the haunt and are just kind of... odd. So this week we're taking a look at those things, examining some of the more commonly used tropes in the haunt...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we're taking a look at an issue most haunts will face: How to best help and support actors with chronic conditions. To helps with this, we have brought on two amazing haunters, Derek and Shalisa Muehlberger from Scary Train (https://www.kirbyfarm.com/the-lost-railroad), which is one of the many events held at Kirby Family Farm. Not only do they both...

Send us Fan Mail Haunters, just like any profession, have a language and jargon all of our own. But for 228 episodes we've been using a lot of the lingo without making any attempt to actually define what any of it means. This week we are fixing that by going through some of the more common terms and expressions used in the haunt industry and among its membersSo, get your jargon hat on as we&a...

Send us Fan Mail It's another episode divisible by four and that means it's time to do the news but man what a strange time to do haunt news. Usually, in April we're scraping by on a drip-feed of HHN news and haunt awards. However, thanks to COVID-19, there's actually a lot of interesting stuff going on. So, with that in mind, we are just going to jump right in with a look at a...

Send us Fan Mail Even as the quarantine drags on and haunters find themselves either worrying about the upcoming season or occupying their time with whatever projects they can do, Haunt Weekly marches on. To that end, we started thinking about what haunts might be doing if things weren't sideways and quickly realized that it's Easter and, for many haunts, that means special holiday openi...

Send us Fan Mail We hear you. ANOTHER Coronavirus episode. We hear the groans and we sympathize. We promise to be back to (more) normal next week but, for right now, we have some resources and suggestions we want to get into your hands. You see, as more and more of us are going into various forms of lockdown, we're finding ourselves with a lot of extra time on our hands. Some of us are active...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we're continuing the proud tradition of finding people smarter than ourselves to discuss the topics at hand. Today, that means sitting down with Chris Gay, an EMT and rescue chief that is also the brains behind Haunt Tech Tips and a regular speaker to the haunt community about how to prepare for medical emergencies. With everything going on with COV...

Send us Fan Mail What a week to have a news podcast. Though we were hoping we would be able to completely avoid talking about the coronavirus and leave that to the experts, the impacts on the haunt industry are officially far too great to ignore. So, for better or worse, that is the bulk of this week's news episode. I'm sorry it's a bit of a downer and just one more piece of COVID-1...

Send us Fan Mail We haunters tend to be a strange bunch. We work insanely long hours under grueling conditions. We do it for little (if any) pay and, in return, we get to hang out in a macabre world our creation and, if we're lucky, scare some people. Why would people choose this? Why did we choose it? What possible force in the universe could make an otherwise reasonably sane peprson put the...

Send us Fan Mail Haunts put a lot of thought and effort into marketing and trying to build a brand, but far too often sabotage it with unforced errors and simple mistakes. You work hard to make sure your customers think highly of you and want to come back year after year. However, one small misstep can damage or even wreck all of that goodwill. So it's not enough to have a good brand strategy...

Send us Fan Mail Two weeks ago we discussed the things we hate about being haunters. This week we're flipping the script and spreading the love. The truth is that we love being haunters and wouldn't trade it for the world. Sure, as we said last time, there are things we could do without, but there's a lot to love about haunting and that's what this episode is all about. So let&...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly it's time to do the news! Since we had to skip the news last month we actually have two months of content to go through so this is going to be one packed episode to say the last. We have some difficult news from Field of Screams, an update on the Joilet Prison and an interesting Valentine's Day promotion for one haunted attraction. Couple that w...