Haunt Weekly - Episode 442 - How We Started

[0:20] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the haunted attraction haunted entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we might sound a little different this week. Yes, this goes underneath housekeeping. Yes, we will be doing that in just a minute. And we'll be talking, but it also ties into the history of Haunt Weekly. It does. So that is actually very apropos that we are going to talk about it in just a minute. But if we sound a little different, it's because we have some new equipment. More details a little bit later in the episode, as we, this week, will be discussing a little bit about the history of Haunt Weekly, how we got started, and we are going to look back with new eyes, fresh eyes, on a list we haven't checked out in like five or six years. Yeah. And in many, many years, we talked about the ideas we had when we started the podcast and some of the things that we had to do at the time. This is going to be a very podcast-oriented one. If that's not your thing, I understand. That's not something we do a lot of around here. But feel free to check out other episodes at HauntWeekly.com. We're also HauntWeekly on Twitter, HauntWeekly on Facebook. YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly is a great place to check out every episode we have ever done. And, of course, you can also find us wherever your podcasts are distributed.

[1:42] Um so yeah basically uh we'll start off with the work we did for our haunt we actually did something yes we did some things yay this one was really funny it should it sounds very unimpressive but it actually was yeah we removed a wall a wall and a decorative piece and now here's the problem Problem. And why that actually matters and why that actually took not insignificant time. Yes. And both of us. Yeah. And two people and not insignificant time. This wall has been in place probably for 10, 12 years or so. Probably that long. Probably 10. Yeah. We'll say eight years. Definitely. Fine. But it's been up there for a good length of time. Yes. And when we put it up, we built a bunch of walls around it. Obviously, that's what you do. That's how you build a haunt. But we built kind of the spine and the structure of the haunt around it. And we took down most of that aforementioned spine previously. We talked about that in previous episodes. But this wall remained.

[2:54] And honestly, we couldn't figure out how it remained. Well, no, because usually with our walls, we put a brace between the top of our eight-foot panel and the beams of the garage. Yeah, and also other supporting panels, too. Yeah. We braced the haunt to itself and to the actual superstructure. Yes. This one was just braced to other walls. Those walls were not there. So how the fuck is it still up was the question we asked ourselves. And what had happened is we had put some decorative pieces. Yes, to make it look like a door frame. And they were very nice decorative pieces that were put in in a way that was never intended to be remotely structural. No. However, when we took down the rest of the spine, suddenly they became very structural. Yes. And this greatly complicated it because now instead of being held in place by realistically just a couple of screws, that could come out, it was being held by a shit ton of tiny decorative screws and odds and ends pieces. Yeah. So basically, it was four brackets with multiple screws. Multiple screw types to boot. Multiple screw types. Because it's been up so long, we had switched from Phillips to Torx. Yeah.

[4:19] And everything assembled in the wrong order to take down. We had to take things

[4:23] down in the reverse order. Because if we had taken down the decorative bits in the correct order initially, it would have been very quick and easy. Everything would have come down in the right order. But because this wall was attached to it, everything had to come down in the wrong order, meaning getting to each of these brackets was a pain in the ass. Well, it's not only that, but it's, you know, I took out the screws, And I'm like, okay, the wall wiggles. I should be able to move it. No problem. Right? Yeah. And then I'm like, okay, there's a concrete screw. That was the only other thing holding it in place. But I could not tell that because the way these things were put together, there were screws through the bottom of a supporting cross beam board that was covered up by a decorative board. Yeah. Yeah, basically, we made it impossible to see what needed to come out next. It's the worst escape room. And so we're basically playing this game of removing all these screws. Does it move now? Does it move now? And we finally got to where, A, all of those decorative pieces were detached, which needed to happen anyway. Right.

[5:33] And then we found, we saw the concrete screw, which by the way, previous us did do one nice thing. Yes. We wrote the word screw on the footboard and then we pointed an arrow to where it was. So we actually did highlight where it was, but we'd put, like I said, boards and skins in front of it and things. But once those were removed, we could plainly see where it was. But then, of course, since this concrete screw has been in the ground for eight years or so, and this wall has taken multiple impacts, that concrete screw did not want to come out. No. And we were trying to avoid cutting it, because if you cut it, you then have to go through and grind it, and then it's a whole huge project to re-level your floor, basically. Luckily, we managed to find a way to get it out. Yes. We did get it out wholesale. Everything is fine. But this was a fucking war we did not anticipate.

[6:29] No. I thought, it's going to take me five minutes. I'll just go out and do it. Yeah. And the bad thing is, we're like, oh, yeah, we're going to take five minutes. And then we'll just tell the people in Haunt Weekly we did haunt work this week and that we removed this wall. And that it won't, but we won't really do the hour. We're going to be cheeky about it. No, we ended up taking the full fucking hour. Okay. And that's just it. We can't even lie to y'all because the universe will make it the truth. Yeah. So you all have the power to manifest how long something will take. You just didn't know it. Yeah. So congratulations. Happy you just discovered your superpower day. I hope everyone's happy. Please use that for good. Yes, indeed. We cannot handle a lot of setbacks. All right.

[7:12] So moving on. Next up, housekeeping. Keeping and if you have noticed we do sound a little different i don't know if we sound different or not no idea no idea yet we've only done some brief tests but we have a new recorder slash mic system brand new to us and one of the reasons we wanted to do this episode this week is because we are finally retiring the absolutely ancient h4n recorder that we were using we've upgraded to a a new H6, which is the latest model, has a lot of bells and whistles that are going to help us do this more efficiently and do this better. But true story here, Haunt Weekly, other than the live episodes we've done with interviews where we've had to bring, I think we have a P4 that we bring in for those.

[8:01] Every episode of Haunt Weekly has been recorded on the same setup, which is basically an H4 recorder that we position between us and talk into. And it served us pretty well overall. alt yeah and we got it for free yes a friend of ours uh he's in the filmmaking yeah filmmaking they're in the filmmaking.

[8:20] Yeah, they're in the filmmaking. They gave it to us. We bought, this was back when we were doing Garbage Horror, actually, so it's even further back than Haunt Weekly. Yeah. Gave it to us because we bought some lavalier-likes off them that we did use a couple of times doing Haunt Weekly. Right. I mean, we did Garbage Horror, but not Haunt Weekly.

[8:39] We bought the lavalier-likes. The lavalier-likes, I don't know where the fuck those even went, so don't ask me about those. But the H4, they gave to us because the SD card slot was broken. Yeah. It's jammed. There's an SD card in there. It reads the SD card fine. But the day that SD card dies, the recorder dies because there's no way to get it out without breaking the entire recorder. So they gave it to us so they could go and get something new and move on and actually have something dependable. Yeah. Joke's on them. That thing has lasted a decade with regular abuse. That card has been formatted a bajillion times. Yeah. And it's still working. It is still technically working. Working but we decided it was time for us to get be a little gentle on ourselves there's a lot of there were issues with it we've never been happy with it's difficult to record on the screen on it sucks yeah orange not even orange it doesn't even have the backlight when you're on like this one i can actually see what we're doing on the screen because even though right now we don't have a tripod mount for it so i can't read it actively it's a lit screen yes um so while right now the The setup is not ideal. We're having to use a temporary setup to record.

[9:51] Hopefully, this recorder will allow us to do things more efficiently and better. And we can also use it as a substitute for the P4 that we had because basically we can record on just one device even when we do live episodes. Yay! That's the hope. That's the dream. Like I said, right now it's literally positioned on a ring box to give it elevation from the table and help it record. Cord, but we will be getting an actual proper desk tripod for it, a few other things. I've done tests with it. I know that it works reasonably well, but I'm going to be curious to see what the finished product sounds like. Hopefully pretty good because we're not recording a backup.

[10:32] Well, I can tell you it is recording, okay? Yes.

[10:36] So, yeah, basically this should be better quality in the long run, even if this episode is not better. Let us know, though, if the quality is better, if it's worse, whatever. I will be eager to find out.

[10:49] But, yeah, that's part of the reason why we're feeling a bit nostalgic.

[10:54] The retirement of the H4. This is the perfect time for us to look back, and we will, in a little bit, be talking about the early weeks of Haunt Weekly.

[11:03] And evaluating how we think we did compared to our notes. But first things first, every week we ask a question of the weekend. Last week we asked a question of you. What is the most scared you've actually been in a haunt without actual physical danger, ideally? Some highlighted answers. Here we go. Steve Riley said, Horror find weekend in Townsend, MD, July 2005. They even have the day down and everything. Yeah, I know. Must be a heck of a scare. They set up a small haunt in one of the small banquet rooms that was actually pretty good. Torrin, a small framed kid, came out roaring low and from a low position. I screamed like a little girl. You know, we have been big advocates of the changing the height of the attack. Yeah. Coming down low, coming in high. That's a good example. Mel June Yates, a friend of ours, said, It said, grab from behind on both arms. My knee-jerk reaction is to throw elbows, so I guess we were both startled. If they did not warn you that they were going to grab, then that is totally fair. I'm sorry to any haunter that got elbowed in that. You should warn that if you're going to do full contact haunt. Yeah, yeah, that's on them. And I have a feeling, knowing her, that they did not warn. Yeah, yeah. All right, Shalisa Muglebugger. Another friend of the show.

[12:27] Always get triggered with blackout rooms. I feel trapped, and it's not a fun scare for me. I also don't like being stopped from moving forward. Same reasons. I'm lucky to have Derek in those situations because he helps me calm down. I think it comes from life experiences and from seeing how fast a scene can go up in flames. Yeah, I don't like blackout rooms either. I get frustrated by them rather than scared. I don't like the feeling of not making progress, which is why running on a treadmill also is probably not for me. But yeah, so I do get some of that. You also would do well, I think, with an Ellie. She actually posted a comment. I didn't include it. I'm talking about the time that someone tried to block her path, and she just recited the speech they gave us on the way in saying that if we touch an actor, we will go to of jail yeah yeah i remember i know which haunt she's talking about and yeah there there is a time that having karen's superpowers is useful too uh reggie wood said i don't get scared really but buried alive at arabus was the most uncomfortable experience i've had yeah if you don't like claustrophobia any of those buried alive simulators are going to be rough for me i i wanted to take a nap because i found them very relaxing and soothing i maybe i should try casket sleeping, Well, you know, the one that I knew about has sold, so I'll have to find you a different one.

[13:52] And finally for this week, Sam Farrell said.

[14:03] Tweetsie Railroad Ghost Train. They basically used a winding enclosed queue that is normally used for their chairlift, turned off the lights, and filled it with the most haunt actors I have ever seen. Unfortunately, I don't think they have that attraction anymore. From 1996 to today? Probably not. That's almost 30 years ago. Yeah. Because I am reluctant to remind myself. Yeah, and I actually do remember a fear trigger. Mm-hmm. Because I couldn't think of one last week. Okay. And it's going to be stupid. Okay, go for it. Stupid isn't always bad. So it was at Ripley's, believe it or not, haunted house in San Antonio. Okay. And it was the bridge that you had to walk over, like the little beam with the infinity mirror underneath to make it look like you were walking on a little board.

[15:03] Like, I have a real issue with heights. Yeah. And not just, well, actually, it's not, with you, it's not heights. Heights is kind of a strong way to phrase it. I know from experience that you can be in high places. Like, for example, I took you to Chimney Rock, North Carolina. And on Chimney Rock, which is a very high point, you were hunky-dory. Yeah. You were looking out over the mountains like a... Yes. Like Jack Sparrow. Yes. My feet were on solid ground. But the issue is when you feel like your feet are not on solid ground, like on the glass elevator at that art museum we went to, or glass, or staircases you can see through the metal grating, things like that that gets it. So it's the combination of height plus transparent floor that gets you. Yeah. And I totally understand that. Like I said, I have the bizarre fear not of height, but of climbing. Yeah. I've realized now once I get up there.

[15:58] I'm great. I'm Jeff Hardy on top of the ladder. I'm a little mouse trying to get up it. Yeah, I've always been able to climb up because I'm not looking down. Well, then that's just it. I think we need to find a way to combine our powers. Because if you can get up the ladder and I can somehow take over at the top of it, we're fine. We have a full functioning ladder. Functioning ladder climbing human being between the two of us. I just have no idea how to make this work. Like the shittiest version of the Wonder Twins. Yeah. All right. Well, on that note, it is an even number episode,

[16:35] so we get to do our conference reminders. But first, we have to ask this week's question of the week. Oh, dang it, you're right. Sorry. That's okay. I threw you off. You did, you did.

[16:46] So, this week's question of the week directly ties into how we got started and what this podcast is about. How do you start new large projects? I tend... Apparently, I just YOLO it. I have learned that I have no issue with long-term commitments. Yeah. That is something I've learned because, A, you and I have been together 25 years. Mm-hmm. We've been with Ellie over 10 now. Mm-hmm. We've been doing The Haunt since 2005. We've been doing Haunt Weekly now for 442 episodes. Do the fucking math on how long that is. Yeah.

[17:23] Um, I mean, even things like, remember when Pokemon Go was big? Yeah. I did Pokemon Go all the way until level 40. Past it. Well, that was when 40 was the level cap. Yeah, but you still played it. For a day or two. I didn't play it much longer after. Because that's the other thing is I also can drop things super quickly. Um, if I find out they're toxic or if I find out they're harmful to me. Yeah. I can pick up and drop very quickly. But like things that I enjoy, things that enrich my life, things that I like doing, I can do forever, it seems. Yeah. And I just don't know how that is. So I just YOLO, man. Now, I do think that, and we'll get into how we planned to do Haunt Weekly, because there was more planning involved than just YOLOing it. That is true, yeah. Because we weren't sure we would have the stamina to do this every week. Right.

[18:19] So we'll get into that in a few minutes. And I think for me, I tend to plan a little bit more. I like to know where the goal is. And then I can make up all the steps to get there. But I need to know what the goal is.

[18:38] Well, and that's just it. I'm a planner in most things in life. But when it comes to starting a potentially long-term project i'm not no i tend just to do it and as things develop see if you know what i mean yeah well and this is something that comes out and as a difference between you and i when we play video games because you hundred percent things you go and you look for all the little nooks and crannies and all the little treasures to be found and i get to the end of the game and then if i really enjoyed it then i'll go back and look for for those things if it's possible.

[19:13] All right. Well, yeah, how do you start new projects? What's your thing? Let us know. Hauntweekly.com, Hauntweekly on Twitter, Hauntweek on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Hauntweekly. Okay, now it's an even-numbered episode. We have to do conference reminders. Crystal, please kick us off. Right. June 7th through the 9th, it is Midwest Haunters Convention at Rosemont, Illinois, at the Donald E. Stevens Convention Center. Meet the people behind 13 Chicago Haunts, Haunt Tours featuring Disturbia, Evil on Erie, Niles Scream Park, and 13th Floor. Another Haunt Tour featuring Hell's Gate.

[19:53] MidwestHauntersConvention.com for the latest. Alright, if you happen to be going to Midwest Haunters Convention, check out the Haunters Against Hate Luncheon, June 7th. Once again, at Rosemont, Illinois at Moretti's. Featuring Judith O'Day, Jakes Palace, Zven, Robert, and many, many others connected to Haunters Against Tate and also friends of the podcast. Tickets are $50 and limited. More details available at the Haunters Against Tate Facebook page. Yes, and I did see there are still a few seats available. Yes. So get on that. We want them sold out. They have been mostly sold out. Yeah. I know, but let's finish the job. Yeah. All right. Texas Haunters Convention. Do you like? No, one before. One before. Sorry, you had highlighted it. Michigan Haunt Fest. How about that? That's better. June 21st through the 23rd in Munith, Michigan. It'll be at the Oaks Campground. Demos and make and takes, Saturday raffles, and costuming and makeup classes.

[20:56] Michiganhauntfest.weebly.com All right. Then it's Texas Haunter's Convention, July 13th and the 14th at Mesquite, Texas, at the Mesquite Convention Center featuring a trade show floor, Floor, a haunt tour with Dark Hour and a game night. Ooh. Bring Crokinole. Someone bring Crokinole.

[21:16] TexasHauntersConvention.com for more information and tickets. So, yes, a lot of neat stuff coming up as we enter the summer haunt convention season. Side note, Mayday Games is holding a Crokinole thing right now. They are not a sponsor, but we love their board. We take it to bars. Yeah, okay. A few things. If you do not know what Crokinole is, it's C-R-O-K-I-N-O-L-E. Look it up. It's a fun game. It is very popular in Canada. I know we have a lot of Canadians who listen to Hall Weekly. So they're like, well, of course we know what Crokinole is. To the Americans out there that haven't heard of it. Jesus Christ, we're trying to spread the gospel here. Yeah, look up some YouTube videos. It's a lot of fun. And as you said, Mayday Games has a Kickstarter going on. The board is $99 plus, I think, $40 shipping. And trust me, that is a fucking steal. Yeah, it's beautiful. And it's a beautiful board. We play on it regularly. We also have one from crokinole.ca that's three times the price. Very, very nice board. But we are scared to do things with it because it is so beautiful and so well done. But this one, we can take to bars. It comes with a bag. Seriously, it's a great board. If you want to learn to play crokinole, this is your opportunity. Mayday Games, they've done a lot of these and they've all turned out great.

[22:35] I have no idea how we got on a fucking Crokinole sidetrack. Because you mentioned it. Oh, yeah, the game night at Texas. You said bring it. Somebody bring Crokinole. Yeah, and I do think it's a great idea. Also, be thinking about a table you're going to play it on. Because it is large. It is a large board. I'm not going to hide that fact. We have found one table at two separate bars that we can play it on, and that's it. And we do have one that we own, but unfortunately that table isn't permanent residency yet. Behind us. Behind us, yeah. It is my YouTube table. That's right.

[23:09] Yes, it was at the store. Now it's back here. That's right. That's right. We swapped out. I remember now. Okay, so going back to the beginning, finally, and now that we're like, you know, 20 minutes into this episode.

[23:21] That's about right. That sounds about right, Gus. Keeping the tradition alive. But in 2015, we started having conversations about doing a podcast. Now, we'd had the domain Haunt Weekly for quite some time at this point. Right. We had an original plan for that we were going to do a YouTube channel where we would do weekly haunt projects and things like that. Yeah, I wanted to do tutorials, basically. Yeah. But here's the thing. We had had experience doing YouTube videos. We did a YouTube channel called Garbage Horror where we reviewed low-budget horror movies. We had a blast doing it. Yeah. We still talk about the memories. We still drive past a park not too far from our house. And we referred to it as Cottontail Park because when we did the review for the movie Cottontail, we came up with the idea for the intro and basically I'm rolling around with a stuffed bunny.

[24:13] Stabbing it with a comically oversized fake knife and people are like coming out of their house looking at us like, what the fuck are those two weirdos? And you're just there videoing it. Well, yeah, because we had to get it before they called the cops. And before the sun went down too. We were fighting both sun and cops coming. We ended up getting the shot, and it was a lot of fun. But we had a great time doing it. But we realized very quickly that the schedule we set for ourselves was not sustainable. Yeah. Because basically, we only had one night, one evening off per week. And our entire weekends were dedicated to doing these videos between shooting, editing, uploading, everything. It was a mess. And we realized it wasn't sustainable. So we became worried that we wouldn't have the energy to do a weekly podcast. Mm-hmm. So. Yeah. And, you know, and when we pitched the idea to some people at HauntCon that year, everybody was like, there's no way you're going to keep that up. Yeah. Why are you setting yourself up to fail? And honestly, after Garbage Horror kind of went sideways, we didn't have much of a counter argument. Yeah. And the thing is, though, like if you've listened the past couple of weeks, there's one thing you don't do. And that's telling me that I can't do something because it will happen. It will happen. Yeah. So. But we did take a smart approach.

[25:41] We had run blogs and websites of our own. You had been on podcasts before. Yep. I had actually done a podcast called The Copyright 2.0 Show. It ran weekly for, I think, three or four years. Yeah. And that ran into issues not because of me, but because co-hosts became a problem. That show really needs a co-host. And finding a reliable co-host just became impossible. Ran through a couple at the very end. Couldn't find anyone who could do it weekly. Gave up. Yeah. And I just sort of gave up. I still want to get back into doing that podcast. And that's one of the other reasons why I think getting this recorded is a good idea is if I do get an idea to do it. But it needs a co-host and it needs someone who doesn't sit around and talk to me all day about the stuff. You know this isn't like haunt weekly where we're just like reveling in the same thing this is an informational thing i need someone who's an outside perspective to ask questions yeah so anyways but yeah but we had experience basically what it came down to yeah so what we did was we sat down and we came up with a list of ideas and originally we were just going to do like five but the list The list grew very quickly. Yeah.

[27:02] And I think, I didn't count, but I think it's over 100. Oh, yeah. And this is just the initial list. Yeah. This was not the list we kept adding to. We actually have a chat now where we keep Haunt Ideas for Haunt Weekly. Yeah. So we've moved it. We haven't really looked at this list in, like I said, many, many years. Yeah. Yeah. At least two.

[27:26] So, basically, we're going to take a look at the first 12 of those, since doing the full list would not be practical with the time we have, and see kind of if we did them and how well we did if we did do them. That said, though, you did highlight that we also had a to-do list. Yeah, and actually, I did not update the notes. We're not doing the first 12 ideas. Oh, okay. And we'll get into why in a minute. All right. But sorry about that. That's on me. Okay. But we are talking about some of the ideas. We'll talk about some of the initial ideas we had. Yeah. How's that? Yeah. But anyways, we did have a to-do list. And the to-do list was largely directed at me running the more technical side of things. And the to-do list had four things.

[28:11] Yes. One was create logos, which we did using Canva. Yeah. Props to Canva. We've talked about Canva a lot on the show. I do think every haunted attraction slash small business owner should at least be aware of what Canva is and what it does. Yeah, and basically it is if you can't afford or don't need the power of real design editing tools. Or hiring a graphic designer. Or hiring a graphic designer. You don't know how to graphic design. It provides templates. Again, not a sponsor. We just use them. Yeah, and I do have graphic design experience. I come from a graphic design background. I do, too. And you do, too. And we still use it mostly as a time saver. Yeah. The second item was to set up social media, which I'm basically on Twitter. I'm basically on Facebook. You've heard this stuff. On the list, it's so cute because we listed every one of them. Like, we needed a list.

[29:08] The third was to create the WordPress site. Yeah. Oops. That ended up not working. No. Because our original plan, God help us, this was so naive at the time, was we would set up a WordPress site with PodPress and just sort of roll our own. And that was a terrible fucking idea for something that needed to be low maintenance. Yeah. If you have the time and the experience of doing it, it can be a good way to go. So, especially if you are going to try and profit from and make money from it and so forth, it can be a great way to go. But basically, it never worked. No. So, item number four was fine. Podcast hosting. Yeah. And our podcast host now is Buzzsprout. But we have actually bounced around podcast hosts a fair amount. I think we started at Podbean. Yeah. But the cost started going up as listeners started coming on. And so we found a host that shall not be named because fuck these assholes. They promised us unlimited podcast hosting. And then we got too big for them. And here's the thing. We're not crazy big. No, not at all. The thing is, we do have a large number of episodes. So even if each episode only gets a few downloads per week...

[30:34] It can be fairly significant, but they basically kicked us off. Well, they gave us an offer. They said you can either fuck off or you can now pay something like $200 a month in hosting fees. And that was not feasible. This podcast has never been a moneymaker. We have never made a penny off of it. Even when we had and maintained the store, we never made a dime, never really sought to, not our goal, not our objective. But we also can't really sink that much money per month. Into pot just hosting yeah now buzzsprout we have been overall very happy with there's been a few niggles here and there but overall i can't complain i would definitely uh support want to show them love and support yeah so as we've already talked about we had had the youtube series and knew that video editing took a lot of time yes so we wanted to make sure that this was easy yeah as As easy as it could be for us. And we were listening to a lot of very informal podcasts at that time.

[31:37] And we just kind of said, okay, we're going to take the low-edit approach. Yeah. Well, and I also tried to find a weekly podcast about the haunted house industry. Because I had just learned about podcasts and was listening to them at work. Well, you hadn't just learned about podcasts. You were just getting into them. Yeah. I had a podcast, like we said, for years at this point. That's probably true. But you had just started, you learned about them as an experience that you enjoyed. Yes. Not just some weird shit that I did alone in my room once a week. Yeah, exactly. Is Jonathan masturbating or is he doing a podcast? I don't know. Noises are similar. Noises are sometimes very similar. Cries of frustration are coming up.

[32:22] Oh, God. You don't have some interesting thoughts about me now. No? Well, you brought it up. I did. It is on me. You were right. Jesus Christ, where were we? Where the fuck were we? Oh, that we wanted it to be... I had started looking for a podcast to listen to. I couldn't find one that was weekly. I couldn't find one that was updated regularly at that time. Yeah, there's much, much more. Things have changed so much since then. Yeah, they have. Yeah, there's many more.

[32:53] There's also easier to find now, because there are ones that have been around longer than us that we're updating regularly, but I just didn't find them when I searched for them. Yeah, and that part of that is that podcast searching has gotten better and easier. Exactly. I think that's a lot of it. One of the hard rules we had going into it was no monetization. Yep. That was for three reasons. reasons one is that we didn't want this to become our job because we know how we feel about our jobs yeah two was we didn't want to be at anyone's behest i love that you know we've had some dust ups with some pretty big people in the haunted attraction industry yeah and they're like you're never going to make a penny in this industry again never made a penny to begin with fuck off yeah basically and the third is that uh basically you know we did not want to make this an obligation to ourselves. If we started making any kind of money from this, we wouldn't feel comfortable walking away from it. We would feel we had, you know, like I said, we know how we feel about our jobs. Yeah. And I mean, people have asked us to do like Patreon and sponsorships and things like that. And we've always shied away from it.

[34:06] We did the store for a little bit because a lot of people did ask for that. Yeah. Basically, I wanted to make shirts for me that were cute. Yeah, and that was the reason you agreed to it, was that you wanted to make some cute shirts. I think you spent more in the Home Weekly store than we ever made. Oh, yeah. I think we might have sold, like, two shirts. No, we actually sold a fair amount, but because we cut the prices so low, we made no fucking money at it. We basically broke even on everything. Yeah, we, yeah.

[34:36] That's true. We made only pennies per shirt or a few dollars per shirt. And then, of course, like you said, you bought goddamned everything in the store at least a couple of times. But, yeah, we did not. That's why I made them, so that I could buy them. If you didn't want it in the house, we, yeah, so I don't think we made a penny off of that. And even if we had, that would not be the kind of monetization that would worry me. because, like I said, sponsorships, advertising, those types of things put you at the behest of other people and make this a job. And Patreon too. I mean, I'd love that y'all want to support us, but that's not how we operate. We don't operate on that kind of reward system. We're fucking weird, alright?

[35:18] We do it because we want to do it, because it's fun for us. And if we stop wanting to do it, we're going to stop doing it because then the content won't be any fucking good for y'all. Exactly. I think that's about it. So anyways, Anyways, episode one. That episode sucked. Yes, we probably need to reintroduce ourselves to everybody. I think maybe that's not a bad idea, is to go back and redo episode one. It's like 10 minutes long. It was just an introduction, and that's it. Yeah. All right, episode two. Episode two was Haunt Safety, which was on our original list. Yes. And I think we did okay with it. It probably needs updating. Yes, it definitely needs updating. It was, like, years ago. Um...

[36:06] But whenever, so I think that we intentionally picked this, and I think that you pushed for it to be first, so that you could go back to that safety first, ever all the time. I did. No, no, there is no, I think you might have done that. No, I absolutely 100% did that. Because I wanted to say we are safety first, so after our introductions, the first thing we talked about is safety. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely 100%. I did that on purpose. Yeah. Episode three was Basic Hall of Construction. It was actually first on the list. But like you said, we picked to go safety first. This one, we did all right. I mean, you could tell. I went back and listened to a little bit of it. You could still tell we were getting our format down and getting our pattern down. Yeah. And that's true for all of these to a degree. Yeah. Well, it's new. You know, you don't judge a new restaurant on the first meal they serve. Oh, some assholes do. And fuck those people, honestly. Some assholes also go to haunts on opening night and then talk about it. We try very hard to avoid that. I know.

[37:15] But it's often not possible. Yeah, it's often with our schedule it's not possible. And we do give caveats that it was opening night. And we know the types of jitters that happen on opening night. And we actually don't talk about those if they happen. Yeah. Anyway, episode four was the news. And, okay, I remember this conversation early on. Yeah. Because we initially were going to do news as a segment every episode. Yeah, that seems crazy now. And we didn't do it because when we were crafting the show notes, we realized, A, there might not be news every week. Yeah. Like a month, even in the off season, you kind of spread out the possibility that something will happen. but there's still some months where jack shit fuck all happens i admit it but.

[38:06] It's much more rare for it not to happen over a month than it is a week. Yeah. So that was one. And the second is we realized the news can be kind of dry and dull, even haunted attraction news. And so making this just like a 10-minute thing you had to sit through to get to whatever interesting thing we were going to talk about seemed kind of mean. So it's like we'll separate the news out. We'll do it. We felt like we had to do it. Yeah. It felt important to do it. And then so we decided we would just do it every four episodes and if nothing happened, initially we said we would just skip the news and say hey not a lot of news happened we'll roll it into the next month um but that has only happened once or twice and 440 you know 100 plus news episodes 110 plus news episodes yeah so that doesn't happen very often but that was the idea that we had was we would roll it in okay yeah and it also gave us a guaranteed topic once a month Yes. Which is nice. I, you know, I enjoy that at this point. We know exactly what we're going to talk about. And that's gotten more and more useful as we've gone on. Yeah. Like, I think we need to start revisiting some of these really old topics. And maybe that's something we will do now that we're looking, we're having this reflective moment. Yeah. Okay. Okay.

[39:24] But yeah, I think it was my idea to do it once per month. The initial idea was to do it as a weekly segment. That wasn't going to work. No. So yeah, the rest of the list, it's mostly checked off.

[39:39] But basically, we kind of did it in chaotic order. Yeah. Because if you go back and listen to those first episodes, it was, we should do an episode on this. and then it would immediately be added to the list somewhere randomly while we were recording. Yeah, because one of the things we talk about occasionally is that we use Google Docs very, very heavily in this.

[40:06] Google Docs has been instrumental in making Haunt Weekly work because, A, all the show notes are done in Google Docs. And that way, A, one of us can kind of just kick it off and start it and the other can jump in and add things and all that. So A is that, but B, it's managed, it's enabled us to keep literally our entire archive of show notes in one place. Yeah. And so if it's like, hey, if we talked about blah, blah, blah, we usually just search our Google Docs for a relevant term and see when and if we did. Because searching for it anywhere online is difficult. Difficult well and then we also had the the issue though when doing that because there were a few times that i got frustrated trying to find out if we had done something or not so i actually created a spreadsheet of all of our episode titles in order with the number so that we could you know do a quick reference do a quick quick check of that one document because in our show notes we reference things all the time, but don't do a full episode. Yeah. And that's, so that list exists also. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah.

[41:23] But, yeah, basically the thing was, especially in those early, the first 100 episodes or so, we were constantly playing this game of, oh, we need to do an episode of that. And then we would add it to the conference. Now we stopped adding it to the list. Now we stopped using Google Docs for the list, mostly because we moved a lot of our stuff in our day-to-day life. Yeah. It not really is necessarily a thing to do with Google Docs. But we moved, like, our, you know, meal planning. We moved a lot of stuff into our relationship chats. Right. And the other thing is, is that if I had an idea while I was at work, it was easier just to send a text about it or a message somewhere than it was to pull out my laptop and add it to my Google Doc. Yeah, but it also was also, it became kind of our mental process. Like, ooh, I have an idea of where we should go for dinner. I'll pull out our chat app and send it there into the appropriate chat. Oh, I've got an idea for Haunt Weekly. All that ooh, I've got an idea stuff got routed into the chat app, basically, is what I'm trying to say. Yeah, yeah, that's true for the Haunt, too. Yeah, yeah, the Haunt purchases, Haunt needs, yeah.

[42:32] All that got moved to text chat, too. It was Google Docs, it's moved to chat now. Yeah, there's even a list of ideas for themes. Yep, that exists in chat now. So we moved it to chats, and that also is very searchable still. But also it gives us greater segmentation of these things. So now, for example, we have a separate chat for Haunt Weekly, what we call Haunt Links, which is the news stuff. Right. When people say, where do you do the news stuff? Well, a lot of it is we just pull it out of a Telegram chat. Yeah. And then...

[43:08] If we have an idea, well, that's a separate chat. Yeah. And that's made life so much easier for us in terms of just getting those short things across. The young people around us are horrified about how many chats we have and how segmented our chats are. Our little triad, I think, has almost 20 chats. Yeah. Everything from events that are coming up we may or may not want to do. And that's to discuss if we want to put them on the Google Calendar because, of course, we're polyamorous. Of course, we have Google Calendar. Yes, you have to have Calendar game. You're not allowed in the polyamory community if you do not know Google Calendar. It is on the quiz. It's on the quiz, man. You've got to get 100 on that quiz before you're in. No.

[43:55] So, yeah, we have like an events chat. We have our health chat for doctor's appointments and things like that. We have that type of stuff. stuff so yeah it just made sense to move this everything to chat yeah move there but anyways moving on all right um but i want to note real quick before we move to the next point that haunting and ethics or haunting ethics was on our list and was high up in our first episodes, and it ended up realistically i think being broken apart into a lot of little topics yeah but but But looking back, the main thing that I feel is I feel proud of the people that we were and proud of the people that we've grown into over this time.

[44:41] Because we wanted, it was clear that we wanted to create a space to talk about things that are still important to us today and that are worth talking about and that are, you know, the industry needs. Yeah. Looking at that list, women and haunting was one of the earliest topics we put down on there. Before we ever even thought about making that an interview series, we had that as a topic we wanted to talk about. Yeah, because I... Yeah, I mean, I know why. I mean, it works to my left. Well, yes, and I don't have the same experience that you have on Hans. No. It was very much a boys club at the places that we were at. And also the places we would visit and attend. Yeah, and it would just annoy me. Yeah, because that's kind of the thing. We would go to, like, a lot of haunts, and maybe not so much the ones, like, in the immediate southeast Louisiana area, but farther afield. And you would get the, oh, she's just clearly the date. Yeah. He's clearly the customer. She's the date. No, she is, believe me, every bit as enthusiastic about being here as I am. Though that enthusiasm on her part may be waning, depending on your attitude here. Yeah. And then, honestly, my enthusiasm is, too, so. But yeah, a lot of our early topics covered safety, ethics, diversity, and brass tacks.

[46:01] Like, how to actually do this stuff. Yeah, I was worried when we were talking about doing this look back episode. Yeah. That we were going to be, like, super cringe. Yeah, I... And I don't think that's what... I haven't listened to them, so we probably were in the beginning. I know the audio and I know the actual episodes were cringe. Yeah. But thinking about how we came into this, I'm proud of, like you said, we intended to be a force for good. Yeah, exactly. From day one. And I think we were very careful with the idea that even though our platform may be very small, we wanted to use it for good.

[46:41] Yeah. And I think that we've done a fairly good job doing that and trying to expand that even more. Yeah. And I want to continue that and I want to grow that. I want it to be fun, obviously, but I also do want to make sure that we are a force for good in the haunt industry as much as possible. Me too. Now, that said, there were some topics on that list we've never done. Yeah, exactly. Maybe we should.

[47:09] There's like a dozen of them. Yeah, there are some of them. But anyways, go ahead. A lot of them were just not full-fledged ideas. Yeah. They wouldn't cover a full hour. so like haunt flyers was a full topic yeah that was that obviously just needed to be advertising and marketing yeah you know we've touched on it multiple times in various marketing ones we've done on promotion guerrilla marketing things like that it's been covered multiple times it's not a full episode i'm sorry i mean if you think it could be a full episode i actually do have the expertise. I do have, and you do too.

[47:51] You know, my degree is in advertising, is what I'm trying to say. I have like paper expertise here. Yeah, you have paper expertise. I have paper expertise with paper. Yeah. Boom. Yeah, and mine is real world, small company experience. Yeah, exactly. So between the two of us, we should be able to cover just about everything here. Yeah. So if you think that could be a full hour topic and something you'd be interested in an hour on let us know blah blah blah all the usual places oh we're haunt weekly um yeah i don't know if you know but we have social media wink wink really important we put it down and we listed all the places we want to be man so fuck it all weekly.com on we go on twitter on we go on facebook on youtube yeah anyways um yeah the other ones are ones that we didn't have the expertise for, like animatronics. We were gonna talk about, and in the list, it says animatronics, how they move.

[48:52] Different ways that they move. I don't know why we put that in there. I think we wanted to learn and thought it would be a research project for us. Yeah, and I do want to learn, and I still want to learn more about animatronics. But animatronics are not something we really use. Yeah. And they're not something I think we need to start using. No. It doesn't really fit what we do.

[49:17] Yeah. But I would love to have someone on who can talk about construction and types. Like I know there's pneumatic and there's electric motors. And I know there's like different things you can do.

[49:29] But I don't. But that's basically gave you my knowledge. That's the episode. Like someone to come on that could dumb it down for people who have no experience at all. Basically, you know, pretend like the only physics I know is like quantum physics and like cosmology and stuff. Up because that's the stuff i actually do you know enjoy and and research and read and podcast about is angry birds helpful is that yes the original uh what about that game where you eat the dummy down the stairs to get the maximum damage or the worms oh yeah yeah the worms game worms worms are good yeah is that useful okay so yeah we don't have the expertise in that that never came about and probably never will unless someone comes out of the woodwork who wants to uh talk about it for an hour. Yeah, and only a few times have we started an idea and it just didn't go anywhere. I think a couple of times, I know that I've started in-depth dives for the Christmas episode and like three quarters of the way through it, found where we had done that episode already.

[50:37] That is aggravating. We had the one episode we were going to do about a video game. Yeah. And then found out they literally published a Nazi gang previously yeah.

[50:50] Unabashed, unashamed, actual Nazi game. That was quite surprising to learn. Yeah. And we learned that as we were literally cleaning up and just getting a few background character things about them. We had the entire episode written and ready to go. And that was like literally the very... Minutes away from the studio, basically. So you got a Redux... Studio. Yeah. Meaning my office. But you know what I mean. Yeah. Shut the fuck up. So y'all got a Redux episode that week. Yeah, because of Nazis. Because Nazis. They ruin everything. Yes, they do.

[51:25] But there was one episode in there that we didn't do that I don't know why we haven't done. I just haven't sat down and done the in-depth dive. Yeah, we wanted to do Legends of Child Behavior Management. Yeah. I guess is the best way to phrase that. Yeah. Because basically, there's a Tiger Lois album called Shockhead of Peter. And the album is realistically nothing but a musical, musical, air quotes, retelling of German fables and fairy tales that are fucked up. That were meant to tell. To make kids be better. Yeah. Behave better. To behave better. Not be better, behave better. Don't fidget at the table because you'll stab yourself with all the silverware. Don't suck your thumb because a guy with giant scissors is going to come out and cut your thumbs off. And you won't be able to clap. Your hands will be like little flippers. It will be sad. Stuff like that. It's really messed up stuff. And I remember listening to that album the first time, not realizing the context. Thinking, this band is messed up. And they are. They do a lot of messed up. The band is messed up. I mean, there is stuff they do. Yeah, there should be all the warnings before you go and look them up. Yeah, any content warning you can think of, apply it. Yeah. Violence. Sex. Sex.

[52:49] Anti-religious stuff. You know, any content warning you can think of in your head. Yeah. Apply it to the Tiger Lilies if you're unfamiliar with them. I'm going to it with that. But I remember listening to this album thinking, wow, that band is really messed up. I thought that was like the most messed up they'd been. Yeah. And then to find out they didn't come up with any of it on their own. No.

[53:10] Blew my mind. I definitely want to do that episode talking about that. A, because it talks about phobias that kids have. Yeah. And also, there might be ideas in there that could be used in a haunt. I think you could build a haunt around this really easily. Yeah, and it's in public domain. Yeah, it's public domain work. These stories are really, really old. Yeah, shock-headed Peter, look it up. Consider that your homework for this episode. And we're going to consider it our homework, too. Maybe we'll do it in an upcoming episode. Yeah. Well, on that note, everyone, thank you very much for this trip down memory lane. I hope you found it at least somewhat entertaining, maybe somewhat informative about how we do what we do. Let us know how the new microphone sounds. Yes. I will be curious. Like I said, we obviously don't have everything dialed in perfectly yet. We have some other things to get. And we have to do some figuring and jiggering and thinking.

[54:02] But yes, let us know how it sounds. Until next time, this has been Haunt Weekly, episode 442, talking about our history of Haunt Weekly. Please check out more Haunt Weekly at hauntweekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Twitter, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and everywhere else that we listed in that first list we made in our to-do list. I think I said the worst list like eight times there. Yeah, plus the ones that have come up since. Yes, indeed. Please check us at all those places. Until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we'll see you all next week.