Haunt Weekly - Episode 441 - Haunting According to Wikipedia

[0:23] Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the haunted attraction entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you this week to do something your teachers tell you to never do. We are deliberately using Wikipedia as a source. That's right, we're looking at the Wikipedia entry for haunted attractions to see just how embarrassed we should be by our representation on what is currently the number one result for our industry.

[0:59] If for some reason that doesn't sound interesting, it amuses the hell out of me. But if that's not what you want to listen to right now, please check out our other stuff at HauntWeekly.com or HauntWeekly on Twitter. I mean, X, I mean, whatever it is now. HauntWeekly on Facebook, YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly's YouTube page. A great place to get all the classic episodes, including a couple we're going to mention in this one. And of course you can find us wherever your podcasts are distributed okay so first off we have to apologize we're late this week we actually had a good run going of being on time we had a few weeks there uh but the problem this week was simply was a part mostly my job um i had a very busy week my sunday was totally taken away from me yeah almost entirely i was literally from from wake up to, you know, the end of the day, pretty much, was trying to finish a project with an urgent deadline. I didn't get to do anything Haunt Weekly related over the course of the day, and that made kind of getting things done Monday impossible. It made it more impossible by the fact that I was sick, not insignificant amount of time. One of the reasons why I didn't get the work done Saturday was I was sick on Saturday and feeling like utter ass. So, yeah, basically, I've been ill and I've been slaying with projects. Blame me for this one.

[2:22] And also, that's why we didn't do any work for the haunt. We've rearranged some stuff. We moved some stuff around. But honestly, this was the first really hot weekend we've had in quite some time. And it's just going to continue to get worse. I know. I mean, so we've got to figure out when we can do work again. We're running into the same issue we had last year. It's not a surprise. But at least this year we're in a slightly better position than we were last year Because we have gotten some work done Yes Some is better than none, I have checked Yes, that is true, I have checked And we have definitely gotten some work done In fact, we've gotten a lot of heavy work done.

[3:04] But you're right, we're not anywhere near where we wanted to be. But then again, looking at the answers to the question of the week. Seems like we're on par with everybody else. Yeah, I've got to say, I've been feeling really bad because we came in hot with the whole we're going to do a little bit of work every weekend. We did, for a while, maintain that very religiously. And we did, like I said, get pretty much all of our demo done and get to the point where we are now, which was a lot of work. Let's not sell ourselves short. but we we did not maintain it as thoroughly as we wanted to we had too many illnesses too many other projects and just weekends where things didn't get done for one reason or another, um but it looks like because last week we asked you where are you guys with your haunt build, and it seems like everyone is either behind where they want to be or just barely started to So, in a way, I think we're ahead of the curve, according to some of this, which that's scary. Yeah. So, yeah, Daniel Barnett said, so far behind, sadly, because of work and burnout. But come July, I'll have that hold my beer energy and knock out seven months of work in two months. We're trying not to rely on that hold my beer energy. Yeah, because we didn't find it last year. But I understand the sentiment completely.

[4:24] Cole Auger said, just started to put panels up after nailing down a theme and layout. This is the first year I'm going from a huge yard display to an actual walkthrough home haunt in my little Wyoming town. That sounds really good. Allow yourself a lot of extra time if it's the first time doing a panel-based construction. Yeah. Because one thing that I will say we learned when we made the move to purely panel-based construction was nothing ever fits exactly like you think it will in the diagram.

[4:56] That is very true. It never does. And I don't know how because we have perfect measurements of our haunt other than the fact that it's not level.

[5:07] We didn't account for that when we took the measurements. No.

[5:10] But, like, we have perfect measurements of the building. It just doesn't matter because the universe comes along and kicks you in the nuts. I think it's quantum physics or some shit. I don't know. I think it's New Orleans, you know, unlevel ground. Maybe the wood, because of the humidity, the wood's swelling by enough to throw things off by, like, a quarter of an inch. But, like, a quarter of an inch per panel. And so, therefore, over, like, a six-panel run. Oh, I thought you were more talking about the unleveled ground so that we can't put some things where we want to because it doesn't touch the ground on one side. That's one problem. Also, the bizarre fact that we can't put something where we want because we don't have a stud or a supporting board. Yeah. That's been one we've run into repeatedly. Yeah, the contractor that came through the neighborhood and put in all the garages did a pretty shit job. Yeah, it built, apparently, because that's the legend we've heard multiple times now, is that this contractor, and it's always described like it's this, you know, fucking Pied Piper type thing. This guy just rocks up into town with his magic little van or whatever and builds and offers a great deal for everyone on back rooms, because apparently they also built the back room of our house. Yeah. And garages. And so, apparently, our house did not have, well, I know it didn't have a front room before, what we call the foyer. it didn't have, and it didn't have the back room. Apparently he built those two rooms and the garage. So expanded almost double the size of the house between those two things.

[6:38] But the front room was, I'm pretty sure, just walling in a porch area.

[6:43] And the back room they built, which they built slab on grade, which is unbelievably dumb in New Orleans.

[6:50] Yeah. If any room's going to get flooded, it's that one, and we all know it. Yeah.

[6:56] But anyway, so, yeah, basically, allow yourself a little extra time for that. Just trust me. It'll help you out. But congrats on expanding and moving forward. Yes, indeed. Congrats on the expansion and moving forward. Sounds awesome. Chris Gay, finalizing plans. Won't have my build budget until July. That just gave me nightmares. Yeah, no kidding. Like, I didn't realize that you were working under those kind of restrictions. Whereas i i don't know what to tell you uh that is wow i'll be thinking of you yeah that's all we can do that's all i can do uh honneth the roxbury said have not even started total slacker i don't that's their words and on my we're not we're not interjecting here they put the words total slacker there i don't think it makes you a total slacker i you know everyone has their own different cadence for this yeah um victor ruelas says mostly 3d printing parts currently making housing for many pirs i saw these little guys at norcal hunters meet up it comes with stls for range limiting ca i understood like half those words yeah i just wanted to say i understood like half those words it looks really cool the photo attached looks impressive and really cool and we've definitely been dabbling with 3d printing some this year yeah um we have we're running into to a recurring issue with a 3D printer? So I think I fixed it. Oh, oh, this is the first I've heard about this being fixed. Okay, what'd you do?

[8:23] Re-leveled it. Oh, re-leveled. Yeah. Oh, okay. So the problem was, is that it was not printing vertically in line, but ours has an automatic leveling thing where I just did that yesterday and tried to print something vertical, and it almost worked, but then I ran out of filament and changing the filament changed the print so it still didn't it I still don't have a fully.

[8:49] Functional product that's vertically printed yet, but I'm getting close. Most of the stuff we're thinking about doing for the Haunting Ways is flat. Yeah. Well, then again, it's flat as long as the design is flat, like that stupid light switch we ran into. Yeah. You were doing a light switch cover for something, and for some reason, the light switch cover was printing vertically rather than on the bed. It was a coffin light switch cover. How could I not? You know, I don't Don't blame you. But anyways, finally, since we know this, we'll be focusing on other people's answers to the question. Yeah. Mika Arnold said, I don't know why I would say Mika, said, just finally found somewhere to put it six hours away.

[9:32] Jeez, Louise. That is some dedication. I mean, whew. We thought whenever we were volunteering at Chambers and it was an hour away. And we thought when we were offering to help at Decomposed, which is about an hour and 20 minutes away. Yeah, that was peak dedication. That's six times more? Yeah. Jeez. And it's for a simple yard haunt, but at least I'll get to use my stuff. Ha ha. That's the, wow. Glad you get to have the creative control and the design and stuff and use your stuff. But that is definitely dedication. Yeah. Wow. So this week's question of the week was sponsored by a post on Brett Hayes' Facebook. It came up a while back in which he was sharing images from alien encounters. And we actually talked about alien encounters a while back in one of the early episodes. We discussed it. And the reason, the question is, um.

[10:37] What was the most scared you've actually been inside a haunted attraction? And I'm willing to count times in which, you know, you were, you know, working the haunt. But not a time that involved actual danger. We're talking about the simulated fun kind of fear. Yeah. And the reason I ask this is because alien encounters was the only time in my life I was in a fear-based attraction and I was scared out of my wits without there being some kind of actual danger. Yeah. I was genuinely terrified in that attraction. And it just shows what Disney can do when they stop fucking around and stop trying to keep things fun and light. And actually try to scare the shit out of you. I'm sure that attraction killed people, basically, is what I'm saying. Heart attacks. Heart attacks left and right. Because I'm pretty sure, in fact, I know from when I went there, there were people on that attraction who had no idea what they were signing up for.

[11:34] When they went in there, I knew. I saw all the things that said, this is a scary attraction. And I'm like, ooh. You know? Yeah. I am very sure there were people who did not read those signs and just go, this is a Disney ride. It's going to be fun. And it's going to be light and fluffy. And then they did convert it into that briefly. I think it's no longer Stitch's Encounter either. But they did convert it to something like that. But man, the original alien

[11:57] encounters, I don't think that's going to be top. Yeah. What did you say is... I get, you know, startle reactions quite often, but a deep sense of fear, I don't get that very often.

[12:11] The only other time I actually had that deep guttural fear that I can think of was Raven's Grin In. And then that was from the realization that, oh, Christ, we're three and a half hours away from anyone who knows us. And we're locked in a room in the room of this madman.

[12:28] Yes. And mind you, of course, Jim Warfield is absolutely wonderful, a treasure and all that. But there was a moment, I'm not going to lie. Well, we knew friends who had gone and had made their backs. So, you know, there was an assumption we'd be safe. But then again, do we really trust those particular friends?

[12:52] Sorry, Kyle. So, Kyle, from episode two, if you're still listening to this podcast, sorry, man. You're not the arbiter of what is and is not sane. Oh, man. So anyways, once again, the question, what was the most scared you've actually been in a fear-based or haunted attraction? let us know. Hauntweekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Twitter, Haunt Weekly on Facebook and YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly. So that means we get to kick it over to this week's topic. And it was kind of funny because with everything going on this week and I didn't have a lot of time to think about a topic. So whenever we can't sat down to discuss what do we want to do for a topic, I did the thing I do a lot of times, which is I just search for haunted attraction or haunted house. And I try to see if there's anything going on interesting that we should talk about, just so we don't miss things. I do those searches regularly for news episodes, but sometimes whenever we're just struggling for ideas, I do it too. This time around, like most times, the Wikipedia entry for Haunted Attraction, parens simulated.

[14:02] Not sure, you know. So that gives a lot of validity to the haunted, as in, like, what... Yeah, the paranormal investigator. Exactly. Stuff, yeah. So... I don't think it deserves, but... Regardless, we're going to move on from that. But that came up, and I immediately went to scroll past it, like I always do. But I'm like, wait a minute. I've never actually read that entry. Yeah. 441 episodes into the history of this podcast. 441 weeks of doing this. I've never actually read that entry. I really should drop in and see what they're having to say about it. So basically, it's like I've searched for it a million times. I have seen it in the search results probably thousands, thousands of times.

[14:56] Never actually stopped to read it. So I decided I'm going to see what's in it. What is it saying? What is it? And it's roughly 5,500 words. Is it actually saying about the haunted attraction industry? Is there something it can teach me? Is there something I didn't know in there? Entirely possible. I don't know everything. And how well does it represent the industry? Um, so that's the reason one, I wanted to cover this this week, and this is definitely a meat episode. I'm taking the lead on the finding of this one. Um, the other reason is, and this is the more serious one, is that it is the 40th anniversary of the Haunted Castle fire at Six Legs. Um, that was May 11th, 1984 is when the fire was. Um, those who don't know, eight teenagers lost their lives in this fire. It's widely seen as one of the biggest turning points in the haunted attraction industry for a variety of reasons.

[15:57] We covered it very thoroughly and apparently very well, according to what several people have said. In episode 166, I encourage you to go back and watch that. If we were going to do a Redux episode this week, I was going to make that the Redux episode. Which would have made sense. But we were able to record on Tuesday. But yeah, we may do another deep dive on it later. We have someone we want to talk to and possibly do another full episode on it, but we didn't want to do that here. But this does come up fairly significantly in the Wikipedia entry, and so we'll be touching on it some as we go through. It's a way of acknowledging it on the anniversary without doing the full episode on it. Another full episode on it, I should say. But yeah, we definitely wanted to acknowledge that. And so what I'm planning, what I was thinking we would do, since we've got about 25, 30 minutes here, is we would go through section by section and look at how it represents things and sort of what information we can glean from it. And I've got to say, the first thing I noticed when I pulled up the entry, and this is kind of wild to me, was that the top photo, the very top photo, is Trauma Towers in Blackpool, England.

[17:20] Which is interesting because you don't think of a lot of haunted attractions being in England. Or international in general. Yeah, and it may be that we're just, you know, in the U.S. and see all the lists from the U.S. But it doesn't seem to be as wide of a spread of an industry as it could be. No, it's not. And it's definitely a very different industry there. And we know that from traveling a fair amount of places. We've been to some haunted attractions. We've been to haunted attractions in the Netherlands. and england um we oh and one in budapest yes one in budapest um so we we have been to a few international haunts but interestingly in all the above cases we were in the countries in summer they were all year-round or tourist seasonal haunts not tied to halloween right like they are here that's i think probably the biggest difference is most of the haunted or fear-based attractions elsewhere are not tied to halloween in any way they're tied to like i said either the tourist season or they're tied or they're year-round um so yeah but basically you when i think of haunted attraction i don't think of international ones and maybe that's like i said that's on me and that's on us you know is the ugly americans in the room here but but.

[18:48] I don't know what haunt I would have proposed be the number one photo. I've literally been trying to think of that.

[19:00] Honestly, there's a photo lower down of the Disney Haunted Mansion. I think that's reasonable. And we'll be discussing more about the Disney Haunted Mansion in just a little bit, because they discuss it quite heavily. So I don't know. It seems weird that a random haunt from Blackpool, England got that honor. Yeah. But regardless, the main definition, read the first paragraph. A haunted attraction is a form of live entertainment that simulates visiting haunted locations or experiencing horror scenarios. They usually feature fearsome sets and characters, especially demons, ghosts, skeletons, zombies, monsters, possessed people, witches, serial killers, and slashers. Humorous characters may also be included. So what is the difference between serial killers and slashers? Not 100% sure. I love the fact they felt the need to list the types of... They could have just said, you know, fearsome sets and characters and moved on and probably been just fine. Yeah, or like you would see in a horror film. Yeah, or, you know, exactly. They didn't have to try and list every character. No, because now I know which ones aren't there. Yeah. So, right now, what I want you to do, if you get a minute, is go to the Wikipedia entry. You should pull it up anyway while we're talking.

[20:26] But go there and determine which type of character on this list you are. Where's Bernie Baxter on this list? I think he would be considered a... Demon? Maybe, or a ghost. Uh... He's a humorous character. I mean, he's funny-ish. So maybe it's that. But other than, like, deciding to try and enlist every haunted attraction character in the first fucking sentence. Yeah. I still think it's overall a good definition. It's a good dictionary-style definition. Yeah.

[21:08] Does it encapsulate the entire industry? Of course not. It can't. but does it do a decent job giving you a general idea what it is yes still weird choice trying to list absolutely every single fucking type of character because they obviously failed because there's no way to do that but anyways um but overall the intro i thought was pretty good um, it mentioned animatronics cgi actors and it really sort of focused on the modern on an attraction industry.

[21:38] It discusses the seasonal nature. Once again, this is one of the things that made it kind of weird that Blackpool was listed here. I'm pretty sure the Blackpool haunt is one of the haunts. I did not look it up, but I'm pretty sure it's a haunt on a pier, one of those, because Blackpool is famous for its beaches. So I think it's definitely a tourist seasonal one. So the intro acknowledges the seasonal nature, It says that most are open from late September through October into early November, but does acknowledge that there are year-round haunts, which are a special subsection, and also special events. And then the intro gives an entire paragraph to Japanese ghost houses. I'm not even going to attempt to say the Japanese word for it. No. I'm pretty sure that's just going to offend a lot of people, me attempting it. Which, once again, Kyle talked about on our podcast a long, long time ago. But basically, these are popular in the summertime. The idea is that you ward off the heat by giving yourself chills. Which, A, that is fucking brilliant. Yeah. That is fucking brilliant. I'm just throwing that out. And real quick, a note on Trauma Towers, because I went over to their Wikipedia page. It opened in 1980 and stayed open until 2009. So it's not even open currently, though.

[23:03] But it, you know, it is interesting. Okay. Well, I definitely think it should be an open haunted attraction. Yeah. It was demolished in 2018.

[23:15] Okay. Not only should it definitely be an open haunted attraction, it should be a haunted attraction that exists physically. So, yeah. Okay. That is the first thing I think I won't correct it in this. I think there needs to be better representation visually of what a haunted attraction

[23:31] is there. Yeah, because that could go into the history section, which is up next. Yeah. And so the history section is actually really, really interesting here.

[23:44] Basically, hang on one second. I'm trying to get my tabs set up correctly here because I, oh, wait, I'm in the wrong. That's my problem. Okay. Go ahead. So one of the first recorded purpose-built haunted attractions was the Orton and Spooner Ghost House, which opened in 1915 and we hook England so it started anything yeah there is history in England well yeah and this does say one of the first and as we see there is seems to be a lot of murkiness and the very earliest but I also I and we'll get into it in a second I don't know if I agree that this is actually, the first but anyways one thing I did find cool was then the one thing to say is that you can actually still visit it. It exists as part of the Hollycomb Steam Collection in England. So next time we're in England, we may have to go check it out. Go check it out because visiting one of the earliest purpose-built haunted houses does sound really fucking cool. I'm just saying. Oh, it does. No, we definitely will next time we're over there. We just didn't know about it the last time we were over there. Which, unfortunately, the last time we were over there was quite a while ago. But anyways, so.

[24:55] Yeah, and these types of purpose-built ones were basically carnival operations. And they were hearkening back to earlier types of shows, like, for example, the wax museums, which would oftentimes have horror or gory sections built into them. Also, the shows of mentalism and things like that. You know, you think like late 19th century stuff here. Well, and it's interesting because it was powered by steam, this one. Yeah. It was completely... Yeah. The Spinner Ghost House. It was completely powered by steam, which is really cool that it still exists, it still.

[25:40] Because you know but they actually give a lot of the credit to starting this sort of i guess you would say this uh tourist nature fear-based attraction they give it to marie to sew who of course they say in the the actual line in the wikipedia entries scandalized british audiences with an exhibition of wax sculptures for decapitated victims of the french revolution including King Louis the 16th, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, and Jean-Paul Marat. Yeah, and her exhibit still exists today is the Chamber of Horrors in Madame Tussauds in London. Yeah. Which is kind of cool. So both of those still exist. That's really interesting. I don't know how much in my head I connect those two things with modern-day haunted attractions, but still kind of cool. Yeah, but I mean it is something that people were interested in and that's why they went there, you know. I mean, they went there to be scared. Yeah. And that's... Scared and shocked and... Yes, offended. My pals! Yes, exactly. I must clutch them!

[26:51] But they also talked about the Phantasmagoria show, which is something else we've talked about on Haunt Weekly. Mm-hmm.

[26:58] So that was the use... That was the first use of what we call today Pepper's Ghost. Ghost the the light driven ghost effect basically was one of the first effects of that now getting more into the direct history here in the united states um they talk about halloween themed haunted houses seem to begin sometime during the great depression which is interesting as fuck to me that that's the case yeah because usually haunted houses now are seen as a luxury item yeah um you You know, you go to them when you have money, not when the economy is going. In the toilet. Yeah. Yeah, and we're a luxury entertainment industry that probably is going to be

[27:41] very vulnerable to economic shocks. But anyways, basically, during the 30s, 40s, and 50s, it was common for magicians to use, quote-unquote, supernatural themes in their stage performances.

[27:54] But basically, they would put on these traveling ghost shows, spook shows, creep shows. And they would mix sometimes a walkthrough thing with displays of mentalism, theatrical effects, basically trying to create some kind of combination of performance,

[28:09] art, and set up to scare and entertain. And I also find it interesting that they used comedy in these shows that were meant to scare. Because, as we've talked about, if you add a little bit of comedy, that takes people off guard. That sets them up to be scared more. Well, and the other thing my head goes to is the difference between someone just tries to make the spiciest, hottest hot sauce possible versus someone, you know, makes a complicated flavored hot sauce that's got some sweet, got a good amount of heat in it. I mean, one of those may get more attention for its insane Scoville rating, but the other is going to sell a lot more bottles. Yeah. Like, you know, Tabasco doesn't sell 80 bajillion bottles a day because they're the hottest. They're not. But they sell it because people like the overall flavor.

[29:08] But finally, it gets into what I think of more as the actual history of modern haunted attractions, where I sort of begin things. And that is with the Haunted Mansion and Disneyland opening in August 1969.

[29:24] Yeah, apparently it was, quote unquote, highly successful.

[29:28] Really? No shit. In 1973, Knott's Berry Farm began hosting its Halloween, it says here Halloween night attraction, apparently it started just Halloween night, it was Knott's Scary Farm, and at the same time, Evangelical Christians became, and I'm just reading the sentence here, Evangelical Christians became early adopters of alternative Halloween attractions. Ratchets, Jerry Falwell, and Liberty University introduced the first Hell House in 1972. So right then between 1969 and 1973, you have Haunted Mansion and Disneyland opening, you have the first Hell House opening, and then you have Knott's Scary Farm having its first season. That to me is like the Genesis time in the modern haunt industry right there.

[30:19] Um but yeah apparently things had been going on well before that in the 1950s i don't like how their history thing isn't in chronological fucking order yeah that is like if it sounds like i'm scattered talking about it and trying to go through this entry it's because the entry is scattered um but then but then it jumps back to talk about in the 50s uh california was a focus is for halloween haunts um and basically the beginning of the charity haunt craze there that would then spill over into the jc what we think of as the jc era of haunting in the late 60s and into the 1970s so once again around that magical time right and then it that's also when it left california and went to other states including oregon connecticut and illinois as some of the first yeah and they talk at great length i think as they should about the history of the jcs and their haunts they would run it as part of membership drives they would run these things as fundraisers basically uh from the 60s and 70s this was um one of the primary fundraising and slash you know volunteer raising tools for the jcs across the country yeah um it mentions is specifically the Columbia, South Carolina JC haunt. Yeah. And we actually volunteered for one there. No, we were there with the Boy Scouts, not the JC's. Okay. It was the local Boy Scouts.

[31:47] I thought that it was a team up. It might have been, but I remember it was being Boy Scouts. It might have been a team up. I thought it was a team up because the Boy Scouts were the actors other than the people like us who volunteer. Oh, I think you're right. Other than us weirdos who showed up and said we want to act in a haunted house. Exactly.

[32:05] Yeah, I think you're actually right about that. I think you're actually right. But yeah, it does. But regardless, you know, that tradition continued. And I really do think the focus on the Jaycees is very, very appropriate here, because that's really what brought haunting to like every town in America, basically. Is what made it sort of a nationwide thing. It took it outside of California, outside of Disneyland, outside of these little pockets of it, particularly in California. Just realized, where is Liberty University? I don't remember where that is. I know it's Jerry Falwell, it's a Christian college. I have no idea where it is geographically, though. I've never had to think about it. But yeah, it took it out of those pockets and sort of made it nationwide wide and brought it to damn near every town. Virginia. Okay. So, wait a minute. California saw Not Scary Farm, saw, saw the Haunted Mansion, saw the initial J.C. Craze in the 50s and 60s, and then the first Hell House pops up in Virginia? Yeah, that's what it looks like.

[33:21] Fuck me, that's weird. I don't have an explainer for that one. But one thing I did not know, one thing this did teach me, was that while the Jaycees were doing their things, the March of Dimes got in on it. Now, I never thought of the March of Dimes as anything other than those cardboard carts that you see at restaurants and places. Yeah. I never had two thoughts about the March of Dimes in my life. But apparently in 1976, they began doing haunted houses as well. And specifically, they trademarked a March of Dimes haunted house. I'm sorry, a mini haunted house for the March of Dimes. You know, whatever that is. However, they didn't continue very much past the 1980s with the last ones being gone in the 90s. So they weren't as quite as successful with it as the Jaycees were. But still, interesting that they made a significant push into it, too. Yeah. One of the interesting things from the Jaycee era is in 1974, the Haunted Schoolhouse, located in Akron, Ohio, opened, and it's still open. Hmm. Wonder who we know that works there. Yeah, no.

[34:40] But then, it brings us toward the 80s, unfortunately.

[34:46] And unfortunately with that, we get to May 11th, 1984, New Jersey, Six Flags Great Adventure, the Haunted Castle Fire. Once again, I'm going to direct everyone to episode 166 on that. Basically, eight teenagers lost their lives, and if you watch the episode, and then also, we encourage you there to watch the documentary. Much our discussion was based upon Six Flags can go suck it I'm sorry they were ridiculously and I do mean ridiculously.

[35:20] Negligent there they were and one of the things that it talks about, the wikipedia article talks about that we i don't know that we touched on effectively is that, the net um effect on the industry as a whole made a lot of the charity attractions we were just talking about less economically viable yeah because they couldn't get insurance they couldn't get they couldn't do the building code and follow the safety laws and all of the new things from the The fire marshal. And even if they could, they were often scared off from doing it just because of the risk of something like this happening. Right. And, yeah, I think we did touch on it somehow. Except it's hard for me to remember that episode completely and thoroughly. It is one of my favorite episodes we've done.

[36:08] But, yeah, I do think we touched on some. But the main takeaway from it for our industry was that the fire marshals got blamed for it. And I don't think that's wholly fair that they got so much blame for it. Because Six Flags did a lot of chicanery to try and keep the fire marshals away, claiming it was a temporary building, even though it hadn't moved in, like, God knows how many years. And basically doing a lot of tomfoolery, in addition to using, like, the most flammable material of all time. I mean, apparently that haunt was all but papier-mâché, you know, in terms of flammability. So yeah but the fire marshals took the fire marshals took the blame and they then transfer that to other haunted attractions including charity ones putting pressure on us and that's basically what happened there so yeah and politicians and regulators went after haunted attractions directly yeah in order to shut them down yeah fearing something like that would happen again basically blame six flags mm-hmm.

[37:13] Lame Six Flags, 40 years ago this week. Now, that said, the history section ends talking about how there's been this big resurgence in recent decades in theme park haunted attractions or theme park haunted events, including Six Flags Fright Fest, which was launched in 86 through 89. Universal Studios began doing Halloween Horror Nights in 91. Knott's Berry Farm launched Knott's Scary Farm in 73. but kind of resurged it in the 90s. And now we even have international ones like Universal Studios Singapore and Japan doing it. Disney's doing their own events like Not So Scary Halloween, both domestically in Paris, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. So basically, you know, yeah, Six Flags can suck it, but they still get to be the great benefactors of the mess they created because those big theme parks are some of the ones that can deal with all that new regulation the easiest. You know, your mom and pop, charity, haunted attractions are going to struggle under it, but they can do it.

[38:21] You know, anyways. So the next section is the types of haunted attractions. And I find this breakdown endlessly amusing.

[38:32] The first category is the, quote-unquote, haunted house, mansion, or castle. Mm-hmm also known as describing nearly every goddamn um interior based haunted attraction yeah basically i mean i love that it it goes into a list again yeah with visitors may experience intense animatronics bloody and frightening set pieces rustic antiques scary music and sounds dynamic lighting fog called Costume Actors with Elaborate Makeup or Mask and Other Special Effects Used to Create Scenes of Terror. Okay, we need to contact Ice-T.

[39:15] Because I want Ice-T to read me this Wikipedia entry. Yeah. Could visitors experience frightened set pieces? Rustic antiques. And so, because I love Ice-T listing things, man. It's just great. Yeah. Can't do the voice, but man, he's so cool. But no, the point being... Point being, they basically lump, I would say, like 90% of the haunted, especially the interior ones, as we'll discuss in a second, into one category. The next category is haunted trail or forest. Okay, that's fair. That is a legit separate category. It is. No issue there. I find no qualm with that being a second category. We're going to move on. Because I think they did, and they explained it quite well. Well, Haunted Hayride is the next category. Once again, no issue. Definitely a separate category. Moving on. Thank you. We're done, right? Mm-hmm. No issue. I completely agree. That deserves its own section.

[40:14] But then comes the one that confuses me the most. Haunted Ship. Mm-hmm. And it's funny because, once again, we need to get iced tea here. They list haunted ship attractions, but they can only list three, and they're the three that I knew before I read the entry because you have the Queen Mary Dark Harbor the USS nightmare in Newport Kentucky and the ghost ship harbor and Quincy Massachusetts and I couldn't remember the name of the last one but I knew it was in Massachusetts yeah okay that doesn't seem like enough to warn its own category especially a category that's above haunted theme park slash green park.

[40:58] When they literally earlier in the entry just gave a whole paragraph in the history to the growth and explosion of haunted theme parks yeah so they get two sections yeah but no and and you know i i'll agree that this is a separate type of haunted attraction this does need to be separate but it's just like wow you know that the the tone and the view here i can't really grog You can definitely tell this was written by a lot of different people. Yeah. All right, the next group is, and this confuses the hell out of me. Yeah, I haven't seen these in a while. No. The Dark Maze and Chain Maze. And for the record, Chain Maze refers to Chain Link Fence Maze, not actual Chain Maze, which I'm not even sure what the fuck that would be.

[41:48] I've seen it once. Okay, I've seen, like, the ones, like, the stream, like, 13th Gate or something had, a section that could be described as a chain maze. Yeah, exactly. I've seen these in sections inside of haunted houses, but not as a full haunted house. Yeah, and I've seen the chain link maze at the old House of Shock. They did that as their chainsaw maze one year. I think they still have it. They may. I don't remember. Because if they do, it totally slips off my mind because it's not particularly interesting or exciting. But the pitch black maze, Like, the last time I remember going through one of those was at Waterloo. Yeah, it was an end piece. Yeah, which we should have skipped, honestly.

[42:33] But I don't know if these are common enough as whole attractions. Y'all let us know. Are these like actual, full, unto themselves attractions in other places? Because I've seen mazes be separate attractions, but not a blackout maze. Like, I know that the Lafitte Fire Department used to do their burn building, where they would practice firefighting stuff. They turned that into a blackout maze. Great way to get a concussion, by the way.

[43:07] I've not seen these, though, as standalone attractions. I've seen these as parts of attractions. Exactly. Specifically, parts of Haunted Houses, Mansion, or Castle Attractions. Yes. I'm not getting over that title. You can forget it. It will not happen. All right. So, yeah. The next section. The next one is Hell House. Yeah. Which, okay, I will once again, I will agree, this is a very separate type of haunted attraction. Probably worthy of that. How big are health houses in your area? We've been to one here. One in all of New Orleans area. Yeah. All southeast Louisiana.

[43:53] Slash, we'll just say Gulf Coast region. That we know of. Yeah, because I'll take everything from Lafayette, Louisiana, all the way to Pensacola, Florida. Uh-huh. And say I have not seen a health house. We've only been to one health house. And it lasted one year. I've been to a haunted house that I thought was going to be a hell house, but it turned out just to be a not very good haunted house. No. Yeah, definitely. Let me know. Dark Ride. Once again, another category that actually is a different category. Excellent work there. This is the, they call it a dark ride or a ghost train in United Kingdom, Australia. But basically these are, you know, the rides, the carnival rides, the fair rides. They specifically list the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror at Disney World, The Haunted Mansion, obviously, would be one, too.

[44:42] But they have a whole bunch of other ones here that they talk about at various theme parks. And then they list the Haunted Cornfield Maze. Yeah. It is a separate section. I'm willing to grant that it should be a separate type of attraction. mostly because agro entertainment is so different from a business standpoint and from like a legal standpoint too. Why is it listed here and not with the other outdoor stuff? Yeah. This feels like very weird placement of it. Oh, I do think that it needs its own thing. Okay. Well, the next one is Home and Yard Haunts. I'll give you that one. Glad to see it there. Glad to see it somewhere. Exactly. Wasn't sure I was going to see it. The next one is a ghost run.

[45:42] In 441 episodes of this show i have not heard of a ghost run but i but they describe a haunted attraction that takes place in your car but then they say you are given various clues as to where different haunted attractions are basically making it a scavenger hunt event this doesn't make any Any sense? No. From a business? Anybody heard of this? No. I haven't. Like, I've heard through the drive-thru haunted houses. Yeah. Those were popular in the pandemic. Yeah. Because, you know, COVID-19 rules, people would stay in their cars and do these drive-thru haunts. And they are not on this list. Yeah. And we also talked a lot about car wash-based haunted attractions. Yeah. But... But Ghost Run? This just seems like one of the scavenger hunts. It doesn't seem like an actual thing. Weird. Yeah, and then the next category is midnight ghost or spook shows, which this seemingly is more about just, you know, the magicians, the seances, those types of things done with special effects and whatnot. It doesn't really seem like a haunted. It seems like something completely different from a haunted attraction. and then they list extreme haunted houses.

[47:04] And mercifully, they only briefly touch on McKamey Manor.

[47:13] So I won't get too deep into that. Though they also do talk about the Naked and Scared Challenge, an adults-only experience at Shocktoberfest, a 27-acre fear park located in Pennsylvania. But basically, visitors, it says that 18 years and older had to disrobe before entering and choosing the nude or prude underwear only option. Were asked to sign waivers to do a closed free fright. I'm not sure if that's an extreme haunted house or just a gimmick for a theme park. Yeah, I'm really confused why VR and laser tag houses are in this section of extreme haunted house. Yeah. Because that doesn't, it also puts escape rooms in here. And that does, those don't make sense there. No, this whole section, if I were going to edit any section of this entry, this would probably be where I put in a lot of my effort. Yeah.

[48:14] Because, while they do mention Blackout, and they do mention some other actual extreme haunts, I do not, A, the inclusion of McKamey Manor, which is not a haunted attraction at all, is bizarre. Well it's because it gets media coverage like it is one even though everybody in the industry knows it isn't yeah so yeah this is just bizarre we'll move on to the next big section though that was the types of haunt breakdown we got to kind of move a little faster i didn't i didn't i was worried we wouldn't have enough to talk about but um apparently yeah we did.

[48:53] The business environment. Basically, they say haunted attractions can be categorized as follows. They say this after they just did a breakdown of categories of haunted attractions. But haunted attractions can be categorized as follows. Mega haunt, professional haunt, charity haunt, and home haunt. And those are not the same terms that they just used. No. They say mega haunts include the large theme parks, like universal six flags etc pro haunts are you know basically a professional haunted attractions, and then of course i think um charity haunts and home haunts would be pretty clear what they mean, um but then they go into a bunch of data from different organizations, some of it a dubious date and origin yeah i'm not gonna i don't want to delve too much and And it does talk a lot about haunted attraction-related conventions and conferences. You know, like we do every even number episode. Yes.

[50:01] But yeah, it discusses various organizations and things. I don't want to go too deep into this. Honestly, if we're going to skim over any part of it, this would probably be it. Okay. Because they do talk about how, like the very end of it, But they talk about how, according to the Halloween, the National Retail Foundation, it was an $8.4 billion industry in 2016, up from $6.8 billion in 2011. But that's all Halloween spending, not haunted attraction spending. And that's all pre-pandemic. Yeah. There's no numbers post-pandemic here. Yeah, which is weird. Yeah, it's weird, and it's very much out of date. Okay. They do talk about the legal and safety environment, which they touched on this whole section for it here. But they talk about it in much greater detail in discussing the Haunted Castle fire. Yeah. But basically, they talk about the fire suppression system, basically the fire code issues that we all know and don't love or know and do love or whatever your opinions of it are.

[51:09] I'm glad it keeps people safe. And the final section, mercifully, get us out of this, please, is the international perspective.

[51:19] But yeah, apparently, it says the American haunted attraction has recently begun being exported elsewhere from the early 2000s, with theme parks playing a major role in globalizing. And I'll agree with that, that theme parks have played a major role in globalizing it. But overseas operators of themed attractions have also been following the American trend, including Fright Nights at Thorpe Parks in Surrey, England, Scarefest at Alton Towers in Stratfordshire, England, and Fright Nights at the Warner Brothers Movie World in Queensland, Australia. So it's interesting to see that that's where we're seeing a lot of the internationalization of the haunted attraction is in theme parks copying what American theme parks, what their American counterparts have been doing. Yeah. Hmm.

[52:06] It's interesting. It's also interesting that they talked a lot about the history in the history section about the history of haunted houses in England, including having the photo. But they make it a Halloween American Halloween culture. I mean, that's based in America. The way it seems to be presented by Wikipedia, which I don't think is completely accurate, is that this was something that started in England. Got exported to the united states got changed and and sort of digested and then went through like you know the jc phase and all that then the haunted castle fire and then it became according to wikipedia very much dominated by the theme parks and then exported as a theme park thing internationally yeah which i mean there is some truth in that but i also think it really doesn't talk about the haunted attraction industry as a whole and really, I think, credits the theme parks for having an outsized importance.

[53:13] Yeah. While I don't dispute that these are the largest attractions, I mean, for much of the country, for most of the country even, there isn't one of those haunted theme parks close enough to even be relevant. Yeah. If you're outside of California, Florida, and like those hubs of theme parks you may not even know that their haunted theme parks are a thing.

[53:39] Like, growing up in South Carolina, Carowinds was the closest theme park, and yeah, they now do Scarowinds, but even they were over an hour away. Yeah. You know? They were not the local haunted attraction. Anyway, that's our brief tour of the Wikipedia entry for Haunted Attraction Prevent Simulated. Definitely let us know. I'm interested to hear what you guys thought of it. Like I said, we tried to just largely stick with what was in it. But I'd be curious your thoughts. Please do let us know. Hauntweekly.com, Hauntweekly on Twitter, Hauntweekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Hauntweekly. Maybe next time I'll do something that gets me a little bit less agitated. But until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we'll see you all next week where we're not going to be doing Wikipedia because, Jesus Christ, that took way more out of me than I thought it would. But yes we will see you all next week with another episode of haunt weekly thank you very much.