Sometimes the Scares are Real

Haunt Tour 2012 Day 2

Phobia Haunted Houses - Houston Texas

Fire.   A small electrical fire broke out tonight while I was in the Exile: Zombie Apocalypse.  It was late and I was the last and only patron in the venue.   As I came around a corner one of the actors broke character and told me to back away.   There was acrid smoke in the air followed by the rolling cloud of a fire extinguisher blast.  Actors were calling for supervisors.   Another actor with his face covered against the smoke told me that tonight was his second night and this was serious shit that he'd never seen before.

The actor that told me to back off came back to me and calmly said he was going to lead me out of the attraction.  He said there had been sparks and flames from some of the wiring.   We calmly cut through some of the display areas and left the venue.  I looked for and never saw a lighted exit sign.

The actor walked up to two guys that seemed to be charge and explained the situation.  One said he'd check and he entered the attraction.  The other guy just stood there.   Nobody reacted with any sense of urgency.  At no time did the emergency lighting come on.  

Really it was just a short with some burned insulation.  Luckily it did not spread, and the attraction was practically empty.  

Haunt Tour 2012

Kingwood Asylum - Kingwood Texas

This haunt offers a family friendly hour each night where the scares are turned way down.  I skipped the family friendly hour and went for the full scary version.    I enjoyed the haunt but it was small.  The first two visitors were coming out the exit before the fourth group was admitted.  The interior portion of the haunt had good detail and made good use of the commercially available haunted asylum videos.  It was fun to see the classic flying crank ghost at one point during the tour.  In an effort to expand the experience they use and outside area for a graveyard scene.   It felt like tombstones on the front yard rather than a graveyard.   Use of fog and lighting would have gone a long way.  And love it or hate it the last scare was chasing patrons out with a chainsaw.

Full price admission was $20.   Take advantage of coupons or the discount for a food donation to get full value for your money.

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!