Ghost Golf in Concord CA

As an adjunct to my annual MakerFaire trip I visited Ghost Golf for a quick nine holes of golf.   Located in an innocuous storefront just off the main drag in Concord CA, Ghost Golf is a Halloween/haunted house themed miniature course.   Owned and operated by a perennial home haunter; Daryn Coleman, the course is richly decorated with décor, mood lighting and animatronic props.


Each hole is themed and features classic haunt props.   There are rattling doors, ghost projection busts, talking skulls and pneumatic props sprinkled throughout the course.   A quick round of golf here inspired me to get back to work on my own props…. Tomorrow.

My only real criticism is that there are only nine fairly short holes.   Playing alone I finished in about twenty minutes.    Concord is about 40 minutes outside of San Francisco, so if you are in town you might want to play a round or two.

West Coast Haunters Convention Presentation

I presented "How to Make Your Website Pay" at the West Coast Haunters Convention (WCHC) Saturday.   The audience was great and I managed to cover all the material.    Search engine optimization (SEO) for the haunt industry is an entirely special breed of cat.   Because haunted related searches are highly local, highly seasonal, and come from very specific demographic segments;  SEO for haunted houses requires special tactics.

During the seminar I covered the following topics:

• Improving your website conversion
• Leveraging your website to increase avg revenue per visitor
• Increasing your penetration within your natural market
• Expanding your geographical reach
• On-page optimization tips
• SEO Link building tips
• SEO Link building strategies

This seminar was tuned to fit the needs of haunted house owners.  Many of the concepts apply to marketing haunt product related marketing.  Halloween props, Halloween make-up, Halloween costume designers could all benefit from similar techniques.

Contact me if you would like a consultation.  Steve@ScaryTinkerLabs.com

Dutch the Makeup Madman 2

It's 4:30 Saturday afternoon and I finally decided to attend the WChC Ball. No costume, little time. Dutch and his wife of www.contoursfaceandbodyart.com graciously agreed to add me as contingent appointment after the vendor floor closed... Assumming they wouldn't turn off the lights. That gave me 30 minutes to run to the adjacent shopping mall for a costume.  I blazed through 6 stores and found a t-shirt with a tree frog on it.  With nothing more than a t-shirt as a startng point Dutch created this custom makeup look in record time.  Dutch is the man!