Haunt Weekly

Send us Fan Mail We're pretty sure most people have figured out what the focus of this week's episode is. It's about the FearVR story and, to be frank, we don't have any good answers here. Still, we talk at great length about the story and how our industry made international news. But that's not to say that there isn't other news to cover. We have a similar story from...

Send us Fan Mail When it comes to actors, every haunt wants to know three things: Where to find them, how to train them and why they stay or leave. Japes Palles  may not be able to help much with the first item, but he has 14 years of experience with the other two. This includes finding their strengths, finding the best role for them and, most importantly, keeping them happy so they stay through t...

Send us Fan Mail It's that most wonderful time of the year, the time where haunts are opening up and we get to go to a few of our own! That, however, means buying tickets and, for a lot of the haunts, that means buying tickets online. Unfortunately though, buying tickets online isn't aways the smoothest experience it can be. In an ecommerce era, we are an industry that often leaves their...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly we are revisiting our Women in Haunting series but this one is a bit different. Our interviewee this week e is local to us and had a very negative experience with her attempt to enter into the haunt industry. While her experience is certainly not every woman's, as we've learned from the other interviews, but hers is unfortunately common and it&a...

Send us Fan Mail Yes indeed, it's another episode that's divisible by four and that means it's time again to do the news! It's a bit of a downer this go around as we have stories of one major haunted attraction that will be shuttering its doors in the new year and another popular one that won't even get to open this season. However, we do balance it out with news of one at...

Send us Fan Mail To pay? Or not to pay? That is the question. As haunts across the nation begin to recruit actors the question about pay will inevitably arise as actors and owners alike will try to decide what they want and what is best for them. The truth is this: There are haunts that go both approaches very successfully. However, it's important to choose the approach that works best for yo...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we are returning to the subject of women in haunting and have a great conversation with Neena Collins of the  Scareatorium in Columbus, OH . Neena's story is, in many ways, not the typical one for a haunter. Though she was brought into haunting by dating a haunter, one who would later become her husband, she said she wouldn't have likely dated...

Send us Fan Mail We run one haunt, we've acted in several and we've been through countless. The vast, vast majority of our haunt experience has been completely safe, wonderful and fun. This is not about those experiences. There have been a few times that the horror of the haunt got a little bit too real. Whether it was unsafe props, overly aggressive actors or just poorly-thought out con...

Send us Fan Mail Yes folks it's another episode divisible by four and that means it is time to do the news! We ended the show a little bit early this week. misestimating the amount of time we needed to talk about each of the stories. However, it's still a VERY busy time for the industry as we're learning about new haunts opening up and what attractions to expect at some of the big e...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we are putting my degree to some use and talking about guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing is one of the most popular topics not just at haunted attraction conventions, but all small business conventions. However, most businesses that attempt it fail miserably because, while they love the "low cost" part of it, they are a bit short on the...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we're doing something a little bit different. As we've discussed in some of the recent episodes, we're wanting to start a series on women in haunting where we discuss the experiences and challenges women face in the haunt industry while keeping an eye on how to make our industry more inclusive to all. This week, we're sitting down wit...

Send us Fan Mail With the recent news in our industry, we've been thinking more about haunt reviews in general and the tense relationship between haunters and reviewers. The truth is we have a very unique culture when it comes to reviews. Many haunters seem to dislike haunt reviewers and even have open mistrust to them. The biggest complaints include reviewers wanting free admission, that rev...

Send us Fan Mail Yes everyone it's another multiple of four and that means it's time to do the news! This time, however, things are a little bit different. We start off this week talking about the recent controversy involving Ohio Valley Haunts. While it's rough that we have some very hateful people in our community, it's been truly amazing to watch how  Haunters Against Hate  ...

Send us Fan Mail Every haunt that has a backstory has a process for coming up with it. This week, we wanted to share ours and take a long look at how we come up with the story and how it ties into the construction of our haunt. So how do we come up with a new back story every year and weave it into the fabric of our haunt? Should the backstory follow the haunt or the haunt follow the story? We don...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we're doing things a little bit differently. Normally we find a topic and take a deep 50-minute dive into it but we've had a lot of things we've wanted to discuss but haven't really been able to figure out a way to talk about it for nearly an hour. So, we're taking a bunch of those topics and putting them into one episode for you...

Send us Fan Mail Following up on our previous conversation about the need for kid-friendly horror, we take a look at look at one medium that's been giving the younger generation a good fright for decades: Music videosBut these videos aren't just a way to introduce kids and teens to horror (perhaps helping spread the haunting bug), they're important lessons for haunters about storyte...

Send us Fan Mail It's a number four episode and that means it's time to do the news! And to think, we were worried we wouldn't have enough to do a monthly news show. This week we have a lot of news about haunts, opening/closing/moving etc. as we enter permit season, including one haunt that's making a small move into a much bigger location. However, we also have a lot of other...

Send us Fan Mail This week on Haunt Weekly, we have something very special for you. We brought in a good friend of ours, Dawn, to talk about her experiences with Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios in Orlando. Dawn is a 10 year veteran of Universal Studios and has helped not only with a decade's worth of Halloween Horror Nights but also providing technical assistance to various stage...

Send us Fan Mail When people start thinking about opening a haunt, there's one decision that they usually make almost subconsciously: Whether the haunt will be indoor or outdoor. Very few haunts, it seem, seriously consider changing their path in this regard. Most people start out knowing if they want to have a haunted trail, a hay ride or an indoor haunted attraction and don't look back...

Send us Fan Mail Pretty much every haunt has had to kick out a drunk and belligerent customer. It's a part of the industry that few like to talk about but everyone is familiar with. This is part of why the haunt industry's relationship with alcohol is so strained. Being drunk in a haunt is just plain dangerous and having to kick out drunk customers is unpleasant and disruptive. Yet, some...

Send us Fan Mail This time on Haunt Weekly, it's all about the news! That's right, it's an episode that's divisible by four and that means we're taking a look at all of the latest and greatest news in the haunted attraction/entertainment industry. And boy do we have a lot this week. We start off with some coverage of "Halfoween" that showcases just how big the Ha...

Send us Fan Mail Maze attractions are great. For many, nothing says Halloween more than a corn maze in the dead of a brisk October night. However, many haunted houses incorporate mazes into their attractions, rather than making them standalone. The idea is simple enough, people are afraid of being lost and a maze is a great way to get people confused. Throw in the fact they're simple to build...

Send us Fan Mail Many haunted attractions bill themselves as an interactive horror movie. Why should one simply watch a film when they can be a part of it? But on that front haunted attractions have some strong competition in the form of horror video games, which actually are interactive horror films. But whether you view video games as competition, inspiration or something in between, there'...

Send us Fan Mail For all of the planning, building and other work that goes into a haunted attraction, haunts inevitably run on actors. It's the people in the haunt that make or break it. But recruiting and keeping good actors is no simple matter. Virtually every haunt struggles with this to some degree, making it one of the few things that truly unites all haunted attractions. So how do you...

Send us Fan Mail Haunt Weekly fans it's time once again to do the news, this time for the fifth time. This week's episode starts on a bit of a down note as we get dueling reminders about the importance of safety when working on and acting in a haunted attractions. We then shift gears and talk about legal stuff as a long-running case against an Illinois haunted attraction is settled. From...