Southern Spooks

If you ever played baseball as a kid, you will remember how everyone was scattered around the field with little to no idea what made their position important or how their position even worked in the game. You simply knew to catch the ball and throw it to somebody else. As you grew up and played the game more, you would learn certain plays, find patterns, change up your roster, and have a plan before taking the field. You would build a strong foundation for your team around what you knew about each player. This could also be said to describe how you would go about building a haunted attraction. (Just stay with me here.) Just like in our baseball analogy, most haunts start out with a building and sets that are either already made or have strict limitations. You know very little about what's to come or how everything will work during the season. You simply know, "I have to scare people and this is what I have to work with," so you end up decorating what you have, throwing...

If you are a veteran in the haunt industry or just that obsessed with the strange and spooky, then you know that this week is the week of Transworld in St. Louis. If you have no idea what I'm taking about, then you might be thrown off by the name "Transworld" and wondering what a transgender convention has to do with haunt. (You would be surprised how often I get that question when I bring up Transworld to new haunters. Now I'm wondering how many people are dragged to the convention by friends under this false pretense and arrive in drag. Hmm.) I'm sure the convention title is based on Transylvania, though. Just wanted to clear that up. For all you newbies, Transworld's Halloween and Attractions Show is the largest haunter's conventions in the U.S. which takes place in downtown St. Louis, MO. It's a weekend long event, this year's event happening March 22nd through the 25th. Some haunters go to work the show, having booths to showcase and sell t...

Do you know the phrase, "Out of sight, out of mind."? It's the belief that if you do not see something or someone regularly, they begin to leave your thoughts. I believe it is a very true concept. Once haunt season is over, most people fall back into their regular lives and their regular routines. Unless you go to school or work with your fellow haunters in 'Normalville' the memory of your haunt family will begin to fade. Nothing is wrong with this happening, but there are ways in which we, as a haunt community, can stay connected and remain the strong, tight-knit family we are. Of course, it's not fully a haunt's responsibility to keep everyone connected throughout the year. Like any relationship, it's a 50/50 deal, but because a haunt is a business, it's partially their responsibility to ensure a decent amount of returning members. To do this, it's essential to keep tabs on everyone and make sure that they feel loved, appreciated, and...

So, haunt season is over and now all you can do is sit around and twiddle your fingers while you contemplate getting into character and running around your hometown, terrorizing the public with your spooky display to scratch that haunt itch until the next year. If you're an owner, your haunt is just sitting there, not making any money and as vacant as a waterpark in December. If only there was something you could do during the off season, right? Well, there is! As promised in multiple posts, we are finally delving into the fun and interesting world of Escape Rooms! In the past few years, Escape Games have been popping up all over the place. They first became popular online (who else remembers playing them on addictinggames.com during computer lab?) and they were soon turned into a reality. No longer were people limited by stupid coding and poor quality graphics. Instead of randomly clicking around the screen in frustration, you could now explore and tamper with real props and...