February 2006 Archives
Our good friends at Eureka Screams! in Arkansas announce this past week good news for their haunting adventures and some big plans for the future on the path to fulfill their haunting dreams. The following is their press release sent out a few days ago:
Press Release: Eureka Screams!, LLC Comes home to Eureka Springs!
After two years of operation and a whole lot of invested time, sweat equity and financial investment, Eureka Screams!, LLC will finally be bringing Raycliff Manor home to Eureka Springs! After all, the name, Eureka Screams!, was originally given to the business because the intention was to operate the haunted attraction in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Raycliff Manor will be located in the Old Magic Theatre at 132 Huntsville Dr., on Hwy 23 South, directly across from the Country Music Inn. We believe this will be a positive move for many reasons.
:: Editor's Note: This is the first in a series of articles dealing with the experiences of a Home Haunter over the coure of a year::
I guess I should start with some background - a mini bio if you will.
When iamlegend approached me about blogging on their site - the first and only industry-wide site of its kind - I was taken aback. I have only been decorating my yard for about 3 years - what do I know about "haunting"? i know what I like and I know what gives me the creeps - I guess that is what I base everything on for my haunt.
I have always been a fan of horror - books, movies, even old radio mysteries, and certain TV shows. Not just the Stephen King style of horror, although I really enjoy how he is able to take the mundane and reveal a darker side all the while incorporating actual feelings about a given situation. I want my haunt to affect folks where their fears truly hide. I am just starting but I think that is the direction I am headed with my haunt. Almost as much as the macabre of E. A. Poe is also my fascination with special effects. I have always wondered how a certain visual image was done in a movie. Creating my yard haunt has been an ongoing experiment with effects. Among my favorite effects are the make-up effects. Changing the appearance of someone into something else - altering their face, making wounds, and giving an actor or prop the look of something that isn't.
Dave over at Steve The Bum Productions sent this bit of news in. Looks like they have partnered with Screampass.com to do a Nationwide Haunted House Survey for their upcoming film "Generation Fear". I took the survey and it was nice and short. Here's what Dave had to say
"This survey is the first industry wide attempt to measure that market. By filling this simple survey out you will be helping us guage how large the industry is growing and what direction it's heading in. The results of this survey will appear in a new feature length documentary we are creating called "Generation Fear" as well as in industry magazines."
Take the survey yourself here
Tags : Documentaries : Haunted House : Dark Attractions
:: Editors Note: This is the first in a feature series of posts by Mr. Nightmarez as he Blogs his whole year of running a pro Huanted House. Anytime you want to read any of his entries just click on Pro Haunts::
Hey Mr. Nightmarez here. Just wanted to start this journey. We have been working toward 2006 since the close of the haunt and store last season. I've already been to New Jersey (Spencer's Corporate HQ) for a meeting regarding changes and new products for Spirit Halloween in 2006. My partner in fear, Patrick French and I started negotiations w/ Ruby Falls to design and manage their huge attraction in 2006 also. I also own a Haunted House in Memphis and it will retain a similar layout to last year, with a few minor changes. I have asked a local haunt enthusiast, Tim Green to assist me with the Ruby Falls venture and managing during the season. I will still work the Spirit Halloween store some days - but let my wife manage it. My primary focus is to make Ruby Falls Haunted Cavern a premier event for Chattanooga and East Tennessee.
February 17th through 19th - 2006
Not even an Ice Storm can prevent a die hard haunter from getting the job done! My partner, Pat drove in from Memphis Friday night slipping and sliding all the way to Chattanooga. We have an 8am appointment to begin planning, designing and inspecting the Ruby Falls Haunted Cavern...continue reading.....
The year 2006 shows great promise for all of us action figure collectors. Personally I thought the new year would bring tons of Star Wars related collectibles and everything else would be swept to the side. I was wrong. It seems that 2006 promises to be one of the best years for Horror action figure collectors. With companies like NECA toys and SOTA toys paving the way for a whole new re-birth for collectibles related to the horror genre. Here is the break down for each company as announced at the 2006 Toy Fair.
SOTA Toys: Their horror movie figure line is appropriately titled Now Playing. In my personal opinion the details in the sculpts blow away anything McFarlane has ever done, but that’s just me. Here is what they announced at the toyfair:
• Series 2 which is already on the shelves features: Jeepers Creepers 2, Killer Clowns from Outer Space, and The Mummy Returns.
• Series 3 which is slated for a spring 2006 release features: BARON VLADIMIR HARKONNEN (Dune), MEG MUCKLEBONES (Legend), and WEREWOLF (Dog Soldiers).
• Box sets for the Now Playing line features a nice looking set from John Carpenter’s The Thing and also plans for Mini-Busts from: DARKMAN, AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON, DARKNESS (Legend), and THE THING: SPIDER-HEAD also are slated for a spring 2006 release.
• However the most exciting news that has the whole industry buzzing is the announcement of the 18” figure of Lord Darkness himself from the movie Legend. He is the largest 18 inch scale figure to be released to date by anyone standing with horns over 20 inches tall and has a shoulder span of over 9 inches. But his size isn’t the only thing that makes the collectors crazy this incredibly details figure says 5 movie lines to send him over the top. A huge figure like this of course comes with a huge price tag with a suggested retail price of $75.
Hey All,
Please help me welcome three new staff to the Haunted Report. They are R0adk1ll, Mr. Nightmarez and Mr. Maniacal. Mr. Maniacal will be helping us blogging about the latest in the Horror Scene as well his Haunted House opinions. Meanwhile R0adk1ll and Mr. Nightmarez are going to do something that has never been done before in this industry. They are going to Blog thier experiences running a Haunted House over the course of one year. Mr. Nightmarez will be blogging his experience setting up a Pro Haunted House and R0adk1ll will be blogging his experience running a home haunt. We think this is truly unique and a first for our industry.
Stay tuned to see how it turns out! You can read more about all our Bloggers here.
- iamlegend
Creativity in haunted attractions seems to be catching on this new millennium with more and more haunts choosing to create their own frightening effects instead of relying solely on mass produced store bought props. In my book, “The Art of Fear: Theories of a Dark Entertainer” I discussed different ideas and theories on how to help improve your haunts scare factor by creating unique and original rooms as well as how to use proven techniques to enhance the scare factor.
However I’m just one source of many that seem to be heading in this direction. It seems that a simple search for “How-to make your own haunted house props” in your favorite search engine will bring forth many sites from how to make a corpse to how to build your own coffins. Other sources that seem to be a fountain of knowledge are forums. www.HalloweenForum.com is a internet group of mostly home haunters with a few pros mixed in. It is a huge group of knowledgeable people that love haunting and are willing to share and help out with their experiences in building props and displays.
Also be sure to check out Haunted Attraction Magazine that is loaded with a section each issue specifically dedicated to do it yourself props. Take my word for it there is nothing greater than hearing a positive customer reaction to a room or display you built from scratch.
Sources to check out:
www.ArtofFear.com for Mr. Maniacal’s book “The Art of Fear: Theories of a Dark Entertainer”
www.halloweenforum.com for a huge networking internet forum for home and pro haunters!
www.hauntedattraction.com is the internet home for Haunted Attraction Magazine a must have publication for any haunter.
-Mr. Maniacal
Hey All,
Wow we have been doing great in our first week. We have almost 7 new comments and the trackbacks are starting to really come in. We even have our first contrevarsy brewing. Now we want to announce the newest feature of our Blog and that is the Site of the Week (SOTW). This weeks is the great Web Site that is Monsters-A-Go-Go. It's not your aveage shlocky horros site. This one covers the classics as well as keeping you updated on classy modern flix. (None of that slasher crap here). Check out their horror movie reviews here As well as thier site news here. Good Stuff! .
- iamlegend
Check this out. Wizkids Games is coming out with a line called HorrorClix. What clix are basically a line of tabletop gaming collectable miniatures games. They were first made famous by their line of Marvel and DC Clix.
Here's what their Web Site had to say:
"“HorrorClix places players firmly in the action, suspense and excitement of a horror movie,” said Jordan Weisman, WizKids® CEO. “Players assemble teams of monsters from across the horror spectrum — including vampires, zombies and werewolves — and then protect the innocent, eat them or both in a delightful, gore-filled romp!” HorrorClix uses plot twist cards, a heavy emphasis on scenario play and new character cards to explode the boundaries of CMGs and the patented Clix system."
Cool figurines I am sure but the games are all a little too RPG for me...
- iamlegend
Hey All,
The other day a buddy of ours turned us on the Halloween-L. This is one of the Net's oldest Halloween related mailing lists. From what I can tell it started in 1994, that makes it over 12 years old! That is super old for the internet!
The cool part is that it is not a forum but an actual mailing list. It has around 900-1000 members from what I can tell, but if I am off I am sure someone will correct us. The other cool part is that it is very active. On a calm day there are usually around 20-50 messages posted, however on someday's during Halloween season it averages 300 messages a day!. Wow! Anyway you can read the history of the mailing list here and subscirbe to this bad boy here. Enjoy!
Seems to me most of the Halloween/Haunted Attractionm Industry is really caught up on Web Rings. I mean almost every site I visit I can see the little Webring banner flashing at the bottom of the page. Besides helping the ring owners genreate traffic back to their main sites, do they really help smaller sites out? Let me know what you think by using our comments section or sending us an email. Here are some of the more popular rings around our industry, pockets full of posey's.....haha....well I though it was funny.......
Haunted Attraction Magazine Web Ring
Halloween-Tree
General List from Haunted Illinois
Sinister Visions
Disnry's Haunted Mansion Web Ring
- iamlegend
One of our friend's in the industry sent this over. Look's like Disney did quite the survey on Friday the 13th of this year. Using a nationwide sample of 2,311 U.S. adults 18 years of age or older. Here are some of the stats they found out.
- 43 percent of adults and 55 percent of youth remember thinking monsters were in or around their house
- As children (under the age 13), 22 percent of adults were very scared of monsters under their bed and 20 percent of adults were scared of monsters in their closet
- 12 percent of children between the ages of 8 and 12 are “very scared” of monsters under their bed and/or monsters in their closet
- 45 percent of youth said they have trouble falling asleep when they are scared – 32 percent will sleep with a light on
- 42 percent of youth are scared of hearing scary noises, 40 percent are afraid of bugs and 39 percent are frightened by scary movies
- 86 percent of adults and 91 percent of youth admit they’re scared of something
- 24 percent of adults remember being scared the first time by a real-life situation that happened to them, 18 percent recall a nightmare as their first scare, 14 percent said it was something they saw in a movie did it, while 13 percent said they were scared the first time by their own imagination.
Very nice!!! Good work and good numbers by the mouse....
Has anyone been over to Wikipedia lately? Not only is it the World's Largest Encycolpedia. It's also the only one where the users can edit it and add information. There entries on Haunted Houses and Dark Attractions could use a little work I think. So what don't we all take some time to do some editing this weekend? Their Halloween article is quite good as well. So get to work!
Not to knock Transworld or anything but they are clearly ripping off Doom3 with this email they sent. You can see from the section I copied out they are totally using one of the Doom3 Hell Knights in their ads. Not cool guys. ANd yes I am a video game nerd for knowing that. But come on! You run one of the top conventions in the industry and you can't afford original artwork? On top of that they spammed me with it...sigh....
Hey,
We found ourselves some company. Check out this Web Site when you have the chance. It's set up as a Web Site but it's more of a Blog to me. They have cool content and mostly focus on the Horror Industry. Go check it out when you get the chance.
- iamlegend
Sweet. Look what I stumbled onto. Looks to the be the Halloween/Horror industries first podcast show. I am downloading the file now and am liking what I am hearing. However the file size is HUGE. Then again it's around a 70 minute show. I am going to shoot them an email and see if we can't cross promote. The industries first Blog and the industires first Podcast, what could be a better combo?
In the meantime add them to your MySpace or check out their casts.
- iamlegend
Saw this nice little article over at Boing Boing. Looks like the World Horror Convention will be moving outside the US for the first time. It's headed up to Toronto for 2007. Not too far away...Also nice to see the Convention mentioned at a Big time blog such as Boing Boing.
- iamlegend
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