August 2007 Archives

There are many kinds of screams; shrieks of horror, shouts of joy, or maybe it’s a good old fashioned rock & roll scream. Whatever scream you do best LiveMansion.com wants to see it.

Upload a video of your best scream to http://livemansion.com/dcContest.aspx?cid=30 for a chance to win $500 (use it to pay for the throat doctor).

Members of LiveMansion can enter up to 10 separate scream video submissions and the LiveMansion community will vote for their favorite. The winner gets $500.

As you may have noticed, it's been a while since we posted anything substantial on HR.

But that's about to change.

You see, we've been in negotiations for a little while with other interested parties about making some changes to freshen things up a bit.

Now we're not talking about money or anything here (we wish). Just a slight course correction.

Iamlegend and I have decided to switch places. My site - The Console Conspiracy will now fall under his jurisdiction while I take over the Haunted Report.

What does this mean for HR?

Well nothing in the short term. The news I bring will be the same or similar to what Iamlegend did. And in fact, you won't even see the first changes - namely upgrading our publishing platform.

I will tinker with the layout of the site a bit in hopes of helping pages load quicker, but the quality of news will still (I hope) be the same.

Once the upgrade in publishing platform is complete I'm going to bring you some overdue news. There's been lots of tips and news coming from valued readers which hasn't been posted yet, so I'm going to attempt to post as much of it as I can in the coming weeks.

If you have submitted news to us at our news email - news at hauntedreport dot com please rest assured that I will post it if it's relevant to this site.

And if you'd like to contribute please email the same address.

I look forward to bringing you all the haunted industry news in the future!

Thanks for your patience.

We know this isn't necessarily "haunted industry" related, but felt we'd like to share the above picture and explain why.

Apparently due to logging in the rain forests, vampire bat attacks on cows have gone up. There are many theories as to why.

You can find out more at National Geographic.

Around 1,200 spookers attended the 2007 Midwest Haunters Convention in Columbus, Ohio two weekends ago. It is an attendance record that the show’s four producers, Kelly Collins, Kathy Schieferstein, Neena Collins and Barry Schieferstein, can rightly be proud of.

As in previous years, I was a seminar instructor at MHC. My session this year focused upon some of the mentally dumb things that actors sometimes do, and positively should not ever do.
But that was minor compared to the big job that faced me during my four-day visit. I blogged the convention for a Web site called hauntedreport dot com. You can see my entire array of blog entries at www.hauntedreport.com.

This was my first experience at blogging, and it might well be my last. Like most people, I’m still learning what the heck blogging really means. Shooting in the dark, I decided that I would try to put up three posts (with embedded photographs) each day. According to other haunters to whom I spoke on the subject of my blogging strategy, I made a big mistake. They told me that once a day is the accepted norm in the world of blogs.

By the time my early Sunday afternoon class began, I was pretty much blogged out. The chance to talk to about 25 producers and actors (instead of cowpunch a keyboard) about some of the mentally dumb things that haunt actors sometimes do (and should never, ever) was a welcome break.
*******
Next year, 2008, should be a fascinating one in the world of haunt conventions in the center of the country. TransWorld will take place in faraway Las Vegas. HAuNTCon will travel all the way across the country from Detroit to Houston. Midwest Haunters Convention will return to the largest building in Columbus, the Convention Center. No other structure in our state’s capital city can now accommodate the show.

Another change: the show dates will switch from mid-July to mid-June. They are posted on the MHC’s home page right now. And if you are a vendor, you can reserve your booth space for the 2008 convention right now. Oh, what a tangled web of dark intrigue we haunters weave...please leave your thoughts in the comments below.
*******

- Rex B. Hamiliton