Episode 87-Haunting Pitfalls

Music.

Is hunting you i'm john schultz i'm kioni hutton and i'm leslie reed welcome everyone to the hunting you podcast and happy october holy moly i can't believe it's already october i'm a little bit depressed because it's october and i have not got a single thing successfully set up yet i'm in trouble less question you have big holes in your in your yard, I have a mound of dirt, which is what remains of the 13-foot hole that they dug in my yard. Okay, let me tell you why I have nothing set up yet.

If you haven't been paying attention and following along all of our previous entries in the saga of let's finish building Kay's house. Knowing that we were recording today, I actually went back and listened to the intro of our last episode so that I could see where I got in the story. So I know where we are. If you need more background, go listen to our previous two episodes. That all being said, here's where we're at.

So the county came out to do the percolation test, which is to determine how well the soil drains the water that's coming out of the drain field. It's not actually looking at dirt quality, like water quality or anything. It's purely looking at how permeable the dirt is, right? To make sure it's not backing up. And before we even began the test, the contractor that we hired to dig the hole was looking at the locations of everything.

And he's like, I got bad news for you. The county is not going to like this. I'm like, I don't like the sound of that. Also, it was raining that day that all of this was happening. So we're out there in our rain jackets. It's pouring down and just absolutely miserable. Right. Well, the lady from the county shows up and she goes down, takes a look at the existing subject system or the location, like where everything is. There's a tank over here. It goes to a drain field over here.

And she immediately turns, looks at me and is like, this no longer meets code. You have to get a new system. You couldn't have told me that before I got the inspection and wasted five hundred dollars. God. So we spent the next 20 minutes looking around the property to find a location for the new system because the new system cannot be within so many feet of the house, cannot be within so many feet of the old system, cannot be within so many feet of the well.

Well, so all of these constraints, we're fighting all these constraints to find the one location on my, oh, can't be within so many feet of a steep hill, which was the problem with the old tank because my house is on a hill, which drains. And like there is a, I don't know, 40% grade right where the drain field is that goes down to a stream.

And the concern is that all the from my drain field is getting down into the stream which goes down into the bay and that is a problem based on, current level current standards not the standards the last time the system was installed and because the only time that they the only way that they can enforce new standards is by, holding up permits when people are trying to do any kind of work here we are

so we spent half an hour finding a location where we could put this new septic tank and drain field. And so the new septic tank is going to probably end up pretty close to where the old one was, just further out. So a little more pipe running out to it. But the drain field is now going to have to go uphill to the... Leslie's got the perfect face. It's going to have to go uphill.

That's not how things work in fluid dynamics. I don't have to be a damn engineer to know that that's not how things work in fluid dynamics for a drainage field unless you're putting a pump system on it. It's going to need a pump system. Motherfucker. So, we find a location that meets all of the constraints. So they bring the backhoe down off of the trailer and roll it down into the grass and start digging 13 feet down.

And for anyone who has worked with a backhoe, backhoes are not exactly the most, precise way of digging big holes and so they're effective incredibly effective but precision is not their precision is not their strong point so we ended up with a hole 13 feet down and approximately 16 feet long all the width of the bucket so it's probably you know two two and a half feet wide, So the county person takes a look at our 13-foot hole. Your dirt looks great. You've got your little bit of topsoil,

and then it looks like mostly sandy soil down below that. Not a big surprise. We're bucking the blue beach, right? Which is great. So she's like, okay, now we'll... That's coming from someone who lives on clay. Yeah, exactly. So then they dig seven feet down, dig a little bit further to make a shelf, and then used this fancy little hole digging.

Picture a pole a post digger except this one's like 7 feet long well really more like 10 feet long because it has to get 7 feet down, and then they dug a like I don't know probably a 6 inch hole across in that shelf and then poured water into that hole to make sure that it drains. And then it timed it to see how long it would drain. And the standard is it has to drain at least one inch every 30 minutes. Okay, interesting. Okay. Very simple. It drained one inch in about 40 seconds.

So we have great drainage. No problems on the drainage. All right. But we now are going to have to get a whole new system. That has a pump that meets all of these new sanitary requirements. So it's called a BAT system that it does some level of treatment of the water before it puts it back into the ground. And we're going to have to have a pump to get it up to the drain field. So a significantly more complex system than what is currently out there, which has no moving parts whatsoever.

This one's going to have lots of moving parts. Because that's, you know, exactly, exactly what we want. So we got quotes. Take a guess what this new system is going to cost. 18 grand. Keep going. I was going to say 40, but I was about to say it as a joke. Not that bad. Thankfully, it's right about 30, right about 30 grand. My next one is going to be 28. Yeah, I was kidding. I wish I was.

Thankfully i mentioned in the last episode that the i don't know if it's the county or the state has a grant program that will help pay part of it so it's going to cover 18 of that 30 which leaves us with 12 which grand scheme of things significantly better than it could have been it's an improvement significantly better than it could have been but you didn't share it all there 12 that's because i've had days to come to terms with this but 12 is still significantly worse than we hoped.

So here's where we're at. We need the new system. We signed the contract with the installer last week. They submitted the application for permit to do that work. And what the county is telling me is once they approve that permit, they will also issue at the same time a conditional permit to allow us to proceed on all of the work inside the house.

So by mid next week we should have the go-ahead to continue the work inside the house the contractor tells me six weeks he thinks it will take six weeks to finish so it's october 1st that's gonna take us all the way to mid-november probably around thanksgiving Exactly. So you're hosting, right? No, no, we are not. The on top of that are the storage for our household goods expires on December 5th. Oh, okay. So we have two weeks of flex. Can we extend? Yeah.

We've already extended it once. The government will not pay to extend it anymore. If we extend it any further, it's on our expense, not theirs. Got it. So I'm at a point where I'm preparing the house to receive our household goods with the assumption that I'm not going to be able to put anything upstairs. That's probably the safe way to do it. That sucks. Exactly. So John and I were talking before you came on, Les. I, if you look behind me, I'm just going to get up out of the way.

It's, it's much clearer down here than it has been in the past. That's because I've started to get rid of the kitchen cabinets, my old kitchen cabinets that I haven't been able to repurpose elsewhere. So many of those have been taken. I've got one, two, three, three left. I thought you were going to repurpose them into your garage. I did some of them. Oh, okay. Yeah. But I'm at a point where like, I've got this, I've got this corner cabinet. it with a glass front.

It's pretty, but it's not something I want to use in the garage, right? Yeah. So it's stuff like that. So I've repurposed everything I can in the places I want to around the house. The rest of them, I'm just giving away for free. And then I've got this really cool roll top oak desk that I have been working... It's where my computer is set up right now, But it's super heavy because it is actually solid oak.

It is not large enough on desk space for me to set up multiple monitors and have my podcast equipment and have enough space for my work computer if I need to work from home for a day. And so it really just doesn't fit my need, so it's going to. Robert Leonard, I found a buyer for it. And by a buyer, I mean, I gave it away for free. So someone's coming to be there. I was just going to say, use the podcast. And it's real top. Yes, I know. It's really pretty.

I like this desk. I like the picture. I was like, I'm serious. I was like, just bring it by. Yeah, it's way too heavy for that. The question I have for you is knowing you, why aren't you selling it? Is it just speed? Speed. A hundred percent. And like in this case in particular, it's so awkward. It's so heavy. That if I were to try to sell it, I'd be going back and forth with people on details for too long. I just need it gone. It's too complicated.

So, we're getting there. In the meantime, the house is still empty and it's starting to get cooler. And what happens when things start to get cooler? Animals start looking for warm places to go.

There's no places spaces for them to hide oh there are oh there are as i am discovering you're getting mice in the walls well i think i told you guys i don't know if i ever told told the story on the podcast my wife went to you know my wife has been working in we have a call it a sun room that connects the what used to be a detached garage to the main house right and we set up my wife's office in there that's going to be her space so she can do whatever she wants with it but she still

comes into the part of the house is being renovated to use the bathroom because it's easier than going through the garage upstairs to our bathroom in the mother-in-law suite right and so she comes into the bathroom at like eight o'clock in the morning and is sitting on the toilet doing her business and here's a rustling, And she looks up and sees a big black rat snake hanging down over the top of the ceiling tile. I like snakes.

I also understand that when it's 8 in the morning and you're taking care of yourself. Not the time to be finding one hanging right above you dangling down from the freaking ceiling tiles. She flips, as I'm sure you can imagine, gets out of there, closes the door, and is texting me furiously because I'm at work already, sending me pictures and all this stuff. Like 40 minutes later, I'm finally able to call her because I see her messages. I'm like, okay, just close the door.

There's a hole above where we're running plumbing for the bathrooms upstairs. Stick a towel in that to make sure that I at least can't get anywhere else in the house. And I'll deal with it when I get home. Stop off at the hardware store on the way home. Pick up a plexiglass face shield because I figure if I'm going to be sticking my head up above the ceiling tiles, I don't want anything to be able to get at my face, right? Which I think is reasonable because I'm pretty sure it's a rat snake.

But from my wife's blurry picture, I cannot be certain. So I'm like, I better just be extra safe, just in case.

So I get home that evening. i grab my my oldest luca who loves reptiles he wants to help and then we go in there to try to find the snake and we search everywhere within that bathroom there is no sign of it anywhere, that's the word oh right so it's either found a little surprised he didn't try and go in and find it after he was at school so ah that's why that would explain i was like yeah i would have have gone in and already tried to be finding it especially in

that age and being a reptile fan so exactly exactly is going on here that he was able to restrain himself he was at school all day that's what i would do it so the snake either found its way back outside or it has wandered off into a different part of the house that we cannot access because this bathroom was finished by the previous owners they just put drop down ceiling tiles and it's open to the walls and the ventilation and And there are plenty of places a snake could get, is my point.

And rat snakes, I mean, yeah, you might have covered up the hole, but a rat snake can pop a drop-down ceiling tile with no issue. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So that was like three weeks ago. Two days ago, I'm putting the kids to bed, and our dog has been sleeping down there with them. And so I let the dog out to do her business, bring her in, and then I go in to kiss them goodnight and all.

And as we're walking down the hallway toward the boys' room, there's an intake vent there at the end of the hallway, right at dog nose level. And I open the door and go in and see the boys, and our dog Sky is fascinated with this vent.

Absolutely fascinated sniffing around going crazy like oh god sky you smell something, and i look closer at it and down at the bottom of the vent there's a whole there's a bunch of clumps of dust that have been pushed out from the inside of the vent i'm like oh something's in there it's always fun what you want to do before bed yeah it's 10 o'clock at night at this point when we're discovering this i'm like i can't leave this i have to do

i can't just leave it till morning i have to do something so i post my son there i'm like i don't know not yet i i've been working in the laundry room right next door and so most of my tools are right there so i just grab Grab my drill and unscrew the screws on this vent cover and pull it away slowly and peek inside. And four beady black eyes are staring back at me. Four beady black eyes. Four sets or four eyes? Four eyes. Okay. I pull it a little further, shine the flashlight on my phone in.

There's two little baby mice, sitting in a nest tucked in that made out of the dust and God knows what else they have managed to pull down from the inside of this intake vent and they're just looking up at me. Hello. Hello. I'm like, hi. Hi. So I post my son there, my 10 year old, get the dog put away. Yep. Put her in the boys room, close the door, like Like, do not let her out because the last thing I need her staring them and they go running off or try

to eat them, whatever. Or eating them. Exactly. And then I post my 10 year old stand here, watch them. Don't let them escape. And then I go and get some tools. I go grab my bucket, get a pair of gloves. And then I'm like, okay, we can attack these mice or we can capture these mice. Sure, sure. So I come back in and I'm like, all right, we need a backup plan in case they manage to get past me to make sure they can't run elsewhere. So I grab my other son. I'm like, here, take this board.

We're going to put it right here against the end of the hallway. Your job, your only job is to block this hallway so that if they come running for you, they cannot get by. That's your job. My other son goes running up and down the hallway. He's closing all the doors. Make sure there's nowhere else that these mice can run. Right? So then I positioned the bucket right there at the vent, just tilted. So my idea is I'm just going to reach in, scoop them up right into the bucket. Right. Makes sense.

Put my gloves on because mice reach in, scoop up the mice. And the first one takes a flying leap off of my hand over the bucket, lands on the ground and makes a beeline right for my youngest son. To his credit, he was right. He manned the post. Nothing got past it. He was Gandalf. you shall not pass you nailed it, holy crap you just made a Lord of the Rings reference I did I did this doesn't happen often that's usually my job I was watching Lord of the Rings before I came in yeah wow.

So I get down I chase the mouse down there to him and it's not very far like the whole hallways maybe 10 feet but it's stuck there right behind the board trying to hop over but it's a baby it can't hop high enough to make it and so i just scoop it up right into the bucket i go back over to the to the the hole in the wall where the vent to the vent and the other mouse has hidden itself in the opposite corner so i just position the bucket again that one i'm able to

scoop up and dump it right in the bucket and so now i have these two baby mice in a bucket again staring up at me and then they just start trying to leap climb up the bucket but they cannot they're they're too small they can't make the jump so i was like well what are we going to do with these, I wanted to kill them. My son would not let me kill them. So we took them outside and let them go in the forest. Hopefully a hawk or a snake will kill them for me. They probably got eaten.

I mean, I'm the same person. I would not have been able to kill them. I would have let them outside and said, okay, nature, do your thing. But I cannot be the person to do it. You can't do it yourself. I can't do it. But nature, whatever happens in nature, happens in nature. Actually, the other part of me, I probably would have just made them a pet and

then that's a whole separate issue. That's what my youngest wanted To do he's like they're so cute I want to keep them like you are not Keeping them and my oldest my oldest Is just like we need to tell mom, Mom is upstairs in the mother-in-law suite passed out because my wife has this uncanny ability where she can hit the pillow and fall asleep in like 12 seconds. I cannot do that. I am jealous of people that can do that. And I didn't even do that with drugs. Yeah. But my son, me neither.

It's me neither. My son is like, I'm going to call mom and tell her I'm like, do not under any circumstances, wake up your mother to tell her that there were mice in the house. More to the point, there were baby mice in a nest, and we don't know if there were any more and where the parents are. Exactly. Exactly. What good is that going to do? And my wife, her irrational fear are rodents.

She hates rodents. And so to find out all of this first thing, to wake her up to tell her all of this would not have gone well. Well what i guess that's the thing is what's that conversation going to be hey mom let me get up just so you know there's mice in the house okay just update you all right go back exactly now go back to sleep there she's not going back to sleep after that that's not happening. Four years to get that experience of like oh no this is a terrible idea so that's

where we're at Next day, I went to Home Depot. I bought like 24 glue traps. I've got them all over the place waiting to see what else I will catch now. We've got snakes invading the house. We've got mice invading the house. I went up into the attic yesterday, day before. It's Friday, whatever. Went up into the attic. I did find a couple of spots where animals could be getting in.

We're going to be working on sealing the house up over the next few weeks now on top of everything else that we have going on. This this right here this whole lovely saga is one of the biggest reasons why as much as i want to renovate my house at some point i don't want to renovate my house at some point because i am, better than 99 sure that if there were permits pulled for the ad for the addition.

Or the work that's already happened. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure that the permits pulled to build that addition were entirely up to snuff. Now, I know that the electrical work that was done did have the proper permit. Yeah. Because that guy was a professional electrician. But there's also this whole building of my house that... And they moved the sink, but didn't plug up the drainage.

Yep. and i dread finding what else we're gonna find so basically when we get to that point i'm going to take whatever is estimated on cost double it at least and then from there, based on that is what i will be using for the budget and for these savings that aside to 100 absolutely oh my gosh so that is why i have not successfully set up any halloween direct decorations at all at its freaking October 1st. Has the snake been named yet?

No, the snake has not been named yet. I would like to submit Chauncey as the name of the snake. Chauncey or Chauncey? Chauncey. Chauncey. Chauncey. Chauncey. You would recommend Chauncey. I would. I would do Chaucer. Of course you would. Do you have better names, Kay? No. I at least take comfort in the fact that hopefully the snake, if it is still anywhere in the house, is at least chasing the mice. I mean, there is that. Yeah. Hopefully.

Like, the fact that we did not find mom. Or mice. Well, mom with the nest. Or dad, for that matter. Hopefully that means the snake got them. And only two. And only two babies. Which is unusual. Yeah, that's a somebody had a snack. Yeah, I suspect so. So I hope so. I can't wait to find out what animal that you obtained in order to get the snake. Now, what's the thing? Like the typical coyote. Mongoose. Like a mongoose. Obviously. I support a pet mongoose.

My wife and I were talking about that just the other day. It's like, okay, we got the rats or we got the mice. We have a snake. We're going to get a mongoose to get the snake. Then we're going to have to get a hawk to get the mongoose. And then we, my son will train the hawk. So like, I think we could stop at the hawk. There was one of those where they have that scenario. It ends with wolf. But what gets the wolf? Nothing. By that point, the wolf eats you and it's problem solved.

Sky, my dog, got lots of extra love that night for identifying the mice. Dogs are the best. So one more thing I have to talk about before we actually get into our topic.

I have been seeking ways of stress relief because of all of this chaos. And, lego just came out with the coolest freaking new set it's based a lot better than what i thought you were gonna say i thought you were gonna make my suggestions for stress release so i've taken that's a good one for sport well i'll tell you what i've been doing so my good friend jazz came up yesterday and she convinced me to go to one of her pilates classes reformer floor or chair Do your video. Reformer.

Love Reformer. For people who don't know what this is, because I didn't when I signed up for it, they use this torture device that has a sliding sled thing to use your body weight and force your muscles to do things like balance while you're doing all of these Pilates moves. This thing is on a track and moves back and forth.

And so you're doing like lunges and planks and it's body weight resistance training yes with zero impact yes exactly and i drastically underestimated how one out of shape i am but two how much it kicked my butt yes yep and so today i hurt in places. Did you pay for this privilege? I did in fact pay for the privilege of this privilege. Yes. Just to add insult to injury. That they have you do elephant.

I don't know the woman was yelling at me the entire time like i can't i could not tell you what she would have feet on slide hands on the bar in front arch your back and move your feet back and forth using only your abs yes what's the trunk then that you're using your trunk that's why it's called elephant but it's art your back is arched did you do planks on it i did do planks on it we did lunges on it we did there was a lot

of tricep work there was a lot of obliques they had us doing like tilted to one side with legs on top of each other. And i don't even know how else to describe it all i know is all i know is i hurt here i hurt here you're doing my butt hurts like where you're holding the thing and you're leaning back and you have to stop yourself and then pull yourself forward? Yes, some of that. And then you do it backwards and then you do it to the side and you do the oblique work.

Yeah, I've used muscles that I did not know exist. That's what it comes down to. I'm going to go sign up for some Pilates classes because I paid for a whole bunch and I need to go use them. And it kicks your butt and stretches and I need stretching because my back is fucked. Yeah, so just know what you're getting into if you decide to do a Pilates class as some of your stress relief.

Leave but it's the other thing going and doing yoga when you're like oh this this shouldn't be too hard and no no it's something totally different than what you might be expecting yeah exactly the other reason i was really excited jazz came to visit was because she managed to grab something i was trying to find so lego put out the coolest new set based on the nightmare before christmas it has jack's house it has the town hall it has oh the uh the hill with the

curly Q hill that Jack sings on at the very beginning. Oh, Oh yeah. Yeah. With a moon behind it. Super freaking cool. It came out on September 5th and I woke up at 5. AM on September 5th, my normal time getting up or four 30, check the website and it was already back ordered. Yeah. That's not right. Four hours later, it was already back ordered,

but jazz managed to find one at a Lego store where she is. So she bought it for me and had been hanging on to it until she was going to come visit anyway. So she finally came up, brought it, and I spent the last day putting it together. We're almost done. It has 16 bags of parts. It's one of the more, it's not the most, but it's one of the more complex builds I've done. But the level of detail on it is so freaking cool.

Inside Jack's workshop, there's his telescope and the chalkboard with all of his scribblings and the picture of him in the Santa costume that he makes for Sally so she knows what to sew and piles of books. There's a little Christmas tree and a sack for presents. The freaking little details are just so exquisite. I'm freaking loving it. It's been so much fun to put together and I will definitely be posting lots of pictures as soon as I'm as soon as I'm finished.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a good camera to like record the whole build process. Otherwise, I would have done that too. That's a fun idea. But it's super cool. I'm very excited about it. And it's definitely going in my office as soon as it's done. So I want to get that and the Hocus Pocus hat. The Hocus Pocus house looks so freaking cool as well. like I want it but I need to buy a septic system first oh come on.

I'm excited well this is good and bad because it's more money but I got that, Gotham City set from the 90s animated series it looks amazing and then I found out there was a lighting set for it oh so you're going to get the lighting set too, there's a good chance I should look things up You should not look things up. That is dangerous. There's a display case in the lighting set. Yeah. Might have to invest in that. That's what I look at as an investment. It is an investment. It will never return.

It will return much joy. Yeah, we'll go with that. Yes, joy is important. Joy is very important. Yeah, let's go with that. How much time did we say? A lot. It was a lot of time. We should probably actually talk about what we came here to talk about today. Leslie's going, maybe. I mean, if we're already like 40 minutes in, I have this. I assume you and everyone else will go off on me for this, but if we wanted to take some time, I have never seen The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Not even like five minutes of it. John? Mm-hmm? What's up? I'm kidnapping you and we're watching Before Christmas. I will tie you to the couch. I guess I could watch it. You have much catching up to do. It's so good. Kidnap the Sandy Claws? Gotta be one of my favorite songs ever. I need to ask a valid question. So, I'll use an example and you'll both hate me for this too. I hadn't watched seen Hocus Pocus until I think my late 20s, early 30s. I remember that. You told us that already.

It's fine it is it's fine is this so my question is i have been told that that might be one where you need to see it when you're a kid to fall in love with it and truly appreciate it for your whole life is that the same thing for the nightmare before christmas am i going to watch this you can absolutely appreciate it as an adult i don't get i don't get it no you can absolutely appreciate it as an adult. In some ways it's almost easier to appreciate as an adult.

It has it's more adult than child. Yes. By a fair measure. Oh dear. I'm not a huge Tim Byrne guy. I need to battle my son to get my audio equipment back. So let's take a moment, hear from our sponsors, and then we'll actually jump into our topic. Ha ha ha. Music.

And okay, now that we've entertained you for an hour or so with completely nonsensical random about why we can't put Halloween stuff up, let's talk about what happens when we try and put Halloween stuff up and we screw it up. Yeah, as we were talking about what we wanted to talk about for this episode, we were thinking, you know, it's October 1st. We're into haunt season. Most haunts have already opened.

Professional haunts have mostly already opened. And for all of us home hunters, we're in the midst of setup season, right? So we wanted to go back, just kind of reflect on some of our previous haunts and talk about the pitfalls that have bit us in the ass as we were setting up and how we overcame them. Can I go first? First, we did not get bit in the ass by pitfalls. Don't put the tiger in the pit until after you're out of the pit.

Put the tiger in the pit after you are out of the pit. That is a mistake you can only make one time. Oh no, you can make it more than once depending on how big the tiger is It's a little baby tiger Exactly, they're so cute I did see a video about a woman who accidentally raised a panther Accidentally?

I figure you can only accidentally raise a panther until they're about three months old Yeah, I think that was pretty much what it was Like you saw the baby and thought it was a cat It looked pretty much like a cat except for the paws The paws I think were the giveaway away. Yeah, the paws give it away every time. Which is why we're sure Maki's still growing, because his paws are freaking enormous. Maybe he's a painter. Doesn't have enough brain cells for one. Lovely! He's kind of dumb.

I say it about Sky all the time, although it insults Luca every time I do it. He's adorable, but he's kind of dumb. Sky's lucky she's pretty. Yeah. It's true. Anyway. So, John, what is a pitfall that you recall from one of our many haunts? My favorite of all time is easily being very excited as we're about an hour before open. So excited. We put weeks of work into it. So thrilled. And we get the fog machine going and it just does.

I knew that was what you were going to say. I thought you were going to go with the Grim Reaper should not wear white tennis shoes. No. We'll come back to that one. To be honest, that hurts every time we talk about that. I know. Hurts as much as my butt does right now. Sitting on. No, just from Pilates. I keep moving around in my seat because I cannot find a position that's comfortable. I just signed up for Pilates for three days in a row. Nice.

I love it. highly i need something for my sanity this week because otherwise i'm gonna lose it i hear you i hear you but yeah john that that is one of my favorite stories so this was 2014 when we set up our zombie apocalypse haunt and we like john says it was an hour before we were set to open on halloween and uh we're we're turning on everything getting getting everything going and come up to the fog machine and it's not powering on at all. Just absolutely freaking dead. That was a good time.

We're an hour to opening. What are we going to do? We have a couple options. We can not have the fog, which is an option. That is not an option. But it is not an option. That's not what's going to happen here. Absolutely not. But we certainly don't have a spare, so what did we do? We had to go and find a place that had a fog machine. Driving around for an hour. We didn't have an hour to drive around. We had to go to a place that we knew there would be a fog machine and we could pick one up.

And I don't think Spirit Halloween was... I think it was an option at the time. Yeah, it may have been too far away. We have a couple that are in that area, but I think they're both a good 20-ish minutes away. At least then they were. Yeah, but where we ended up stopping was ended up being Party City. And Party City had a cheap fog machine, you know, $30 fog machine that we could bring home. And it got us through the night.

Bankers can't be choosers at that point. Yeah, before opening, bankers are not choosers. Grab it, just throw your money at the cashier and run out the door. So, like, how do you avoid that? Well, proper care for your fog machine I think is the first thing, but... For proper care and feeding from your fog machine. There are a ton of different opinions on how to take care of your fog machines.

What I do and has served me well ever since this is I run it dry first well okay it depends on the fog machine my really nice fog machines i leave fluid in it and then i run it periodically through the year so that it's never it doesn't it's not sitting for the entire time my cheap fog machines i usually treat as a disposable like fog machine cheap fog machine yeah like seriously there are all kinds of recommendations for like things that you can do to clean them out.

But cheap fog machines tend to fail in one of two ways. Either the pump seizes up because it got gummed up, or the really tiny heat exchange coils inside the heater get gummed up. And you can replace the pump, but if the coils inside the heat exchanger get gummed up, you're sunk. There's really no good way to replace that. You may as well just get a new machine. So run it dry. Some people will run like a vinegar solution through it to help clean that out before they store it for the season.

I think that the best way is just to periodically run your machines in the off season to make sure that stuff is still moving. That that's my recommendation. It's it's, it was a, it was a bit of an emotional time, literally spent weeks getting ready and just like so excited. You're almost nothing had gone wrong. It's like, ah, there it is. There it is. Something always goes wrong. And the, Listen, you think he has a potty mouth on this show. My goodness.

There was some adult language flying. Indeed. The other recommendation there, and you'll see this trend pop up in a few of our other pitfalls, test your equipment early. Don't wait to turn it on until an hour before opening. Test it a couple weeks before opening and make sure it works. Test all your equipment early and often. Early and often, exactly. Exactly. Another great example of that was 2021 when we were doing our first iteration of Sanguine Creek Estates with a walkthrough.

And we built special soundscapes for different parts of The Haunt here live on the show. And the goal was to have three different audio systems in different parts of The Haunt to broadcast those different soundscapes.

But same thing i didn't test my equipment early enough and when i went to turn on the one of my amplifiers the amplifier was dead it was fried salt got into it and fried too many circuits like it was gone there was no recovery and so i was short amplifier a shorted amplifier for for that year so ended up having to change the soundscape kind of last minute within a couple of days of opening because I could not get an amplifier replacement fast enough.

Yeah. We had similar issue with Arkham and the video, the fear video I put together. Fear video? What fear video? Where I put in all the scary things? Oh, that's right. I forgot about that. Oh my God. Yeah, so we had a during Arkham 2015 we had the Scarecrow at the end of a hallway and the Scarecrow gave people a blast of his fear gas. Exactly. His fear gas and played admirably by your brother.

Hitting a button hitting a button and triggering a fog machine oh it worked but the like the within the story that fear gas was what caused them to hallucinate kind of the rest of the haunt and see all the scary things that they were seeing right and what we wanted to do was have them get hit with the fear gas and then there would be a projection on the wall in front of them of a bunch of frightening video clips so like you

know bugs calling crawling out of corpse noses and stuff like that yeah yeah but the end scene of you know mufasa's death from lion king. Can't put an umbrella in there i know i put a dolphin in there you definitely put a dolphin in there but when we actually went to to do it we had all kinds of problems trying to make it work We were projecting onto the side of the house, and we could not get it to show up clearly at all. The projector was old.

I had found it used or free somewhere, and it just did not have very much brightness. And so it did not look very good. But then, to make matters even worse, the bulb burnt out the day before we were supposed to open. So it wasn't a great effect to begin with. And then the bulb burns out. And so we just killed it. We were like, we can't come back from it at this point. Thankfully, nowadays, projectors are a lot more reliable. They don't have incandescent bulbs anymore. They tend to use LEDs.

And an LED failure happens significantly less frequently than an incandescent bulb failure. Failure so in general the projectors are a lot more reliable than they were back in even 2015 that was 10 years ago that was 10 years ago wow you believe that no that is crazy. I know isn't that absolutely crazy yeah that was a good time we did a lot of good stuff we had so many visitors we had leslie earning props from the creator party harley quinn for her portrayal we had, that was a good time.

Arkham is still one of my favorite haunts that we ever put together. Yeah. Well, it was also kind of another pitfall is that. With Arkham was my hammer. Oh. Because I was going to use the hammer to spark the fence. Yes. Right? That was the idea. And so. That was so cool. This was just our experience of prop building that, so it didn't quite come together like we intended. So we put, we made a sparking fence for Leslie to be stuck behind.

And the goal was we wanted to have, you know, Harley's big clown hammer with a metal plate on it that we could use to trigger the spark fence.

But the hammer that we came up with was it was made of wood it was made of wood it was incredibly and to try to balance it out i put like a big old honking four by four on the opposite end railroad tie yeah like a railroad tie four by four it was absolutely enormous and more than that the you know i just kind of screwed some metal plates on the end the wiring was super sketchy the could never get the these metal plates hot enough to properly solder wire onto

it and so the electrical connection was terrible and we never could get that stupid thing to spark which ultimately was a good thing because it was so freaking heavy that if i'd even and tapped the fence with it at any sort of level. I would have knocked the fence down. You may have taken the fence down. That is a possibility that I am willing to admit. In retrospect, perhaps Harley's bat would have been...

That's exactly what happened. He ended up pivoting to a bat, like a metal aluminum bat, instead of the hammer. It ended up working way better than I thought it would. We just ran to Goodwill found a cheap bat at Goodwill it was a couple of bucks and, the only problem with it was it had this like plastic coating on it with like that you're supposed to have on a metal bat.

As likely a lightning rod so it was a proper metal bat it was an absolutely proper metal bat which was to be sparky and electrified right exactly so what we had to do was I just take some coarse grit sandpaper and sanded all of that coating off in order to get down to the bare aluminum. And then I just stripped back like three or four inches of copper wire, wrapped it around the base of that bat, and then wrapped it with electrical tape. So we had a really good electrical contact to the bat.

And then Leslie had something to grip onto as well. And then just ran that wire down to my battery charger. Put the negative lead on the fence, put the positive lead on the bat, and then Leslie could spark things up all night long. And the bat was, the bat is absolutely perfect. So much fun. And you did both delighting and terrifying the children. Yes. Yes, indeed. You could do the exact same thing with a variety of hand tools as well.

Hatchets or hammers, not giant, a wieldy hammers, but you know, regular size hammers as well. Well, really, any metal tool that you can get a good electrical contact to, you could do a sparking fence effect with. The bat worked beautifully for us. But, Les, that hammer brought back another of my favorite pitfalls. Leslie was complaining about how heavy it was, day of opening, and I wanted to show. I wasn't complaining. I was commenting on how heavy it was. She was commenting.

Because I was having too much fun with the hammer. I'll put some pictures up on social media. It's a pretty big hammer. It's a pretty huge hammer. It is a pretty big hammer. It is very bottom heavy there. Again, so we have this giant box. The box was like 18 inches square on the face and then probably two feet long. Two feet long. Yeah. And then what? Half inch PVC pipe for the.

I think it was. have no it was probably inch pvc pipe like a six foot tall one inch wide pvc pipe for the handle and then the railroad tie on the end to put the railroad tie on the end to counterbalance it because otherwise because it was just the pipe was gonna break yes yes and it was beautiful i still have it i love it i mean it's a great prop yeah but leslie was complaining not complaining excuse me commenting on how unwieldy this thing was i don't like oh it's not that bad and so i

took it and i started just spinning it in my hands and ended up whacking myself in the face with the hammer they gave me a cut right down the center of my forehead awesome that was bleeding pretty like steadily down my face but that worked out it did like i went to wipe it away and everybody was like no don't touch it it looks great i think it hit like all of a sudden because Because you were playing like a guard that had survived the prison break.

That's it. And I think it hit everyone at the same time. Like, wait, the blood. Oh, wait. It's perfect. It's perfect. It was the most realistic blood we had ever done. Because there's a couple of pictures of you without on it. And you just look like, man, whoever did the makeup there. So it's like, nope. That's the genuine article. Not makeup. I don't believe in makeup. I believe in realism. As real as I can get. Will you commit to that for future haunts? I will not.

I'm a little surprised you didn't get a concussion. I don't think I didn't hit myself that hard. It just caught me right in the face. Yeah. See, that's the pitfall we haven't had yet, is the showrunner accidentally knocks himself out with a hammer. No, but the showrunner has done other things to himself. Like sprain your ankle? Like sprain my ankle. Yeah, I still feel it. And a boot. Two days before opening, 2018, Halloween 2018, we're doing the Haunted Ship

on board the Alert up in Oregon. Which we planned last minute anyway. Right. We started planning for this one in August. That's when we got permission to do it. No. September. No, no, no. We got permission in August, but we were underway and we didn't get back until mid-October. So we had two weeks to put it together, like actually put it together. But we were at least able to do some of the planning ahead of time.

Uh-uh. Because we started planning for that right before Alan and I went to Yellowstone for our anniversary, beginning of September.

Okay. But that's like very beginning. The 10th. okay maybe it was maybe it was the beginning of september we had six weeks to put that one together, i think six weeks sounds right thinking about it hoping for it but we put that thing together in six weeks, i remember there being a ship i'm not kidding, lucas just pointed lucas just stopped me to say that i deserve getting hit in the face.

You have such supportive children such supportive children, but yeah so anyway two days before opening i'm crawling all over the ship to you know hang projectors and hang effects and set up the spider web and all of the things that you have to do to get a haunt ready right and i climbed up on top of the exhaust stacks to i wanted to set up a projector to project down onto the ground where we would have like bugs and things coming up out out of a hole.

It's a great effect. Abyss FX does it. I love it. But as I'm coming down from there, I stepped onto... This bag of metal pipes that we use for setting up a tent when we're underway. This is where we set up the washstand or we put up a tent on to shield them. But I step onto on that and felt the pipe roll and my ankle rolled with it and immediately heard a pop as my ankle rolled over. And I'm like, oh, I just screwed something up.

Bad so it's very painful immediately and so i just kind of lower myself onto the deck and pull my pant leg up and my ankle is the side of a size of a grapefruit like it swelled up immediately and i'm still halfway up the stack at this point so i had to get myself down off of the stack climbing down ladders and i mean like actual vertical ladders not just the ladder wells on ships no actual ladders i had to climb down ladders with a sprained ankle so i'm just kind of dangling one leg as i'm

hopping with the other one from rung to rung using my arms to support my weight as i'm as i'm doing this get myself down onto the regular deck and then called up the the officer of the day the duty the duty watchstander who was able to find a driver that could take me over to the hospital, which, very conveniently, basically across the street from where the ship moors, which was helpful. That's Columbia Memorial, isn't it? It is, in fact, Columbia Memorial.

Why do you know that? We have nurses there. Oh, fair enough. Yeah. Well, there you go. It's a great hospital. They took good care of me. I was not a high priority, which anytime you go to the ER, you want to not be a priority because you're really not that bad off, right? But I was there for a couple of hours and they ended up just giving me a boot and crutches and kicking me out the door. But I mean, it takes weeks to recover from a sprained ankle like that.

And so two days later, I could not participate in the haunts on board the ship. So I was out at the entrance, welcoming people aboard and controlling the throughput. So what are the takeaways here? Nothing's ever going to go perfectly. Well, that's.

There's a point to this statement, though. If you are somebody who is a perfectionist to the degree that you put all of your time in expecting everything to go perfectly and you have no baseline planning or ability to take what blows up and make something of it, you're going to stress yourself out and you're not going to have a lot of fun.

And you're not actually going to be able to put together the haunt that you want to put together because you're so worried about getting it perfect so that nothing goes wrong, that you're never really having a haunt because you can't really make the decisions to get the things done that need to be done. Right. And that's the point, too, is if you're not having fun, then why are you doing it? And I mean, these things were all very, very frustrating and stressful and painful.

In the moment but we laugh about them now because it's a good story we took what got screwed up we learned from it we have better ideas not just on how to prevent these types of things in the future but what to do when they happen yeah that yeah that is very true like if you're playing a grim reaper you should wear black tennis shoes now we know now we have learned we went through the experience and we learned like oh yeah that would have been a good idea that's going way back like that was when

what 10th grade even like that was a long time ago john was dressed up as a grim reaper and we've told this story i know we have but you should tell it again because it's a good story and who knows some of our listeners probably are new and haven't gone back that far i just. We had a few, it was just nothing as fancy as Arkham or Staying Winter, the zombie apocalypse sort of thing.

It was literally just us doing some jump scares and some atmospheric scares to creep people out on the way up to your house. Nothing too crazy. And one of them was after I think they got one or two scares on the way up the driveway, I was basically sitting there waiting in a Grim Reaper costume with the fog. The effect is perfect Perfect, because you're standing there right in front of the front door with the cloak at the top of these stairs and there's just fog billowing from behind you.

It was a beautiful effect. It was literally like, so how bad do you want this thing? Exactly.

You can have it, but you have to earn it. Right. And it was working all night and I don't remember if maybe I had caught one of the roadblank on the side of my pants or I don't remember what what had caused it but i i there was i think it was a little girl i can't remember but it was a little boy and was it at his older sister okay his sister was taking him around yeah his sister was taking him around right he had come up the steps he i was he was terrified he was he saw me he stopped

in his tracks and started backing off like oh my god and then his sister kind of laughed and pointed out that she's like the grim reaper's wearing white tennis shoes you're fine yeah i Don't worry. Don't worry. The great weavers were in tennis shoes. I looked, obviously she can't see me. I have, but I looked at her like, come on, man. And John has never gotten over that. She didn't have to point it out right there. Come on. That was kind of the moment, man.

Oh, well. She also had a point. She absolutely had a point. Perhaps that could have been something that I had proposed a little bit. I mean, sure. But it's such a great story. We tell it all the time because it's so much fun and just a big part of what, Halloween is about for us.

Maybe that's the annoying part. We have kind of taken that and now we are a little bit more careful with the costume pieces that we are picking out and being more deliberate about making the choices if we don't want something seen it is black a key rule photo one if you don't want to see it paint it black unless you're unless you're dizzy then you paint it go away green but yeah they're working in the day whatever gets the job done exactly maybe that's the takeaway all

depends on your budget yeah well when you have that mistake or something, just remember, in a few years, it'll be a great story. In a few years, it'll be a great story. And for all you know, that great story could also be something that, you know, the big sister's always teasing the little brother about. If you were so scared, and I had to point out that Grim Reaper was wearing tennis shoes. I hope that they tell that story in that family. Like, I hope that they remember it.

Maybe Grim Reaper just wants to be comfortable. He's got a long night ahead of him. He just wants to be comfy and put on some tennis shoes. Planning ahead. head by black tennis shoes by black tennis shoes yeah.

Maybe the worst part about that is even that i was like yeah that would have been a really easy thing to correct too yep dang it that makes it much worse but our pitfalls changed quite a bit as we got better at just better at our craft because we stopped missing those those easy things and our pitfalls got a lot more complicated like 2020 when we did the drive by sanguine creek and the when i envisioned how this was going to work you know we're at the end of a cul-de-sac.

I assumed people would just kind of drive around the cul-de-sac and then And pull, you know, stop in front of our house, watch for a few minutes, and then drive off, right? And for the most part, that's exactly what happened. Until the busiest night. Yeah, until it didn't. Busiest night of the year. This was the weekend before Halloween. So not Halloween weekend, but the weekend before Halloween.

And everything was going smoothly until one person decided to park by turning into the side of the cul-de-sac. And pointing their car at our house.

And stopping there with their lights on staring right at the house and as other people came behind them they also they saw this one person stopped there like oh that's what we're supposed to do, mob mentality is a pain in the ass what because like the amount of critical thought that people People will put into coming to a event or an unknown situation like this. Like they're going to follow the crowd, right? Oh, they've been here for a while. They must know what they're doing.

I'm going to do it this way. We must be doing it this way. We're going to do it the exact same way. And that I'm not going to say ruined the entire night, but there was no way to correct it for the entire rest of the night. Because people would pull in, park, stay there for a few minutes, watch the show as they wanted to. and then back out and go. And people were just taking their spots as they were backing out and going.

And we never got to a point where enough people were gone that we could correct it. Right. And so how do we avoid that? We've come up with a couple of ideas, but one, we stopped doing a drive-by haunt, which I think helped because what made that one in particular really difficult was the show was at a very particular part of our yard, right?

And if you wanted to see the show you had to park basically right in front of the crypt the next year we did a walkthrough haunt where people could actually get out come walk around the grounds and and participate in the haunt that way and so it didn't matter where they parked they could park anywhere along the street walk up and and come to the haunt and so it was less of a problem, I think it could potentially be more of a problem if we end up having a larger crowd later. Yeah.

And honestly, I don't know that we have a solution to that yet. Beg the forgiveness of the neighbors before it happens. Well, I always, I'm not going to say bribe the neighbors, but you give them booze. Let's just say it. I have occasionally given my neighbors booze as thank yous for being so supportive and letting us do what we want to do. And for the most part, it has worked. Like, we've not had a really crabby neighbor problem in a long time. Reached those wheels, man.

HOAs, on the other hand, no. HOAs are their own set of problems. Indeed. Honestly. Though, like, I think we've been pretty lucky even working with our HOAs for the most part. Like the, I have been very deliberate about not buying houses in HOAs because the first house I bought was in an HOA. And after that, it was like never again, but that was where we built the zombie apocalypse. That was where we built Arkham and yeah, They were willing to turn a blind eye, I guess.

You had enough people who were supportive of what you were doing. You did have a high child occupancy. There were a lot of kids in that neighborhood. So you definitely had some help there. But yeah, a lot of it really is just going to depend on your HOA. It's going to depend on your neighborhood demographics. graphics.

And it's, you know, going to depend on how old your neighborhood is as whether or not you've got a neighborhood that's like super old and everyone's like, well, I mean, we kind of sort of have one versus a brand new neighborhood that's like, oh no, no, we must look pristine and perfect. Like you guys don't even have lights on.

You guys don't even have real trees. Calm down. Yeah. Like the best advice I have for working with an HOA is one, you know, read the bylaws, know what the bylaws say, what your limitations are, what your constraints are, and how far you can bend them. The other half of that is engage with the HOA early about what you want to do and how you intend to do it, because there may be a way that you and the HOA can actually work together to put on something kind of cool.

If you can get a HOA-sponsored haunt, now the HOA is on your side and you're not having to battle them. Engage early, engage often, and know your rights under the bylaws as well as your constraints under the bylaws. And make friends with your neighbors. And make friends with your neighbors. If you have an injury issue, you can rely on your neighbors to back you up and be like, yeah, we really don't care. This is fine. Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Especially the ones with kids. Say it one more time, John. Especially the ones with kids. especially the ones with kids yep what other what other pitfalls you guys remember not testing the sustainability of makeup.

Tell us more or less so as we were first getting started and our first one getting started where i was really doing the makeup and we were really doing makeup this is the zombie apocalypse again apocalypse in 2014 and me being very very recently out of grad school and just now starting a full time job i did not actually have much of a budget so i was putting together all of the makeup with a couple of cheap things from target

and whatever beauty makeup i had on hand now fortunately i had quite a bit of that but i was definitely using things in ways that they were not meant to be used And as a result of that, my sister ended up with a stained red forehead where I had given her a double tap with red lipstick, lip gloss, that stained a lot more than I thought it would. And she ended up going to work the next day. Out of oil and gas. Double tap bullet holes in her forehead.

I think her boss is like, you know what, if someone shoots you in the head, you can take the day. Honestly, knowing where she was working and knowing who else was working there, a.k.a. my father, that was not going to be the case. I remember a few times my sister used concealer on her forehead.

She just went in and wore a hat and said, but yeah as you're using makeup especially if you are well not even especially if you aren't using makeup at all always do patch tests to make sure that nobody is in a conspicuous place spot so again you're checking for allergies you're checking for staining you're checking huge with latex latex allergies are no joke and you know always check because everybody's skin is going to react differently.

You could end up giving your sister two bullet holes that's eight or four. And for about three or four days. So yeah, that was another fun pitfall. Yeah, always test things out beforehand. Always test things out beforehand. Again, test things early and often, and that does include your makeup. That is a fun one. Yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, that's outstanding. And we've had other makeup-related pitfalls since as well.

It was Weishi's Haunted Ship. so the second haunted ship that we did where we were trying to do like burn makeup in you know 20 or 30 minutes and when we did the initial testing of it it was taking a while like.

If i remember correctly i was not the makeup artist i would have to drag jazz in here to to really get the details but i think she was like to get the really good effect she was spending hours on on the on the makeup and when you're prepping you know 30 actors you don't have that kind of time to to really devote to any single one of them and so day of we ended up having to drastically cut back the realism of the makeup effects in order to get everybody done in

time for opening i think we gave ourselves like four or five hours to do all the final setup makeup costuming getting all the effects turned on all of that the the last minute stuff and it was just not nearly enough time to to do all the makeup that we wanted to the degree that we wanted so we ended up scaling back like on the fly but it's what you guys did the frozen too isn't it that That was where we did the Frozen 2.

And at least the Frozen guy got his makeup first. So his was pretty spectacular still. Yeah. Go ahead. And that's something, as you're putting together the makeup, You know, it's always nice to remind yourself that we don't we don't have FX budgets and times constraint. So find the shortcuts because there's a lot that you can do with just lighting an atmosphere that will allow you to cut some corners on your makeup.

I think it's important to remember that for the most part, people are only going to see any given character five seconds, 10 seconds at most. You need the impression of an injury or whatever more than you need the detail. People are not going to have the time to take in detail when they're seeing this character and then freaking out and running for it. They're not going to take in the details. You just need enough to give that impression so that they understand what you're putting across.

So it's a different type of makeup. You want to do the really, really detailed, that kind of in-depth for your photo shoots, for your advertising, for your marketing materials. And devote that to any of your hero characters, the ones that are going to be seen. Your line character is somebody that's going to be in the spotlight and have a lot more light and time that your patrons can spend looking at them and going, huh, how's that put together?

Exactly. But in a lot of cases, you will be more successful and less stressed by running shortcuts, painting in big, broad strokes to get an idea across rather than. Detail think of it as make a bob ross painting not a michelangelo painting, with them happy little ghouls happy little ghouls you know happy little mistakes it's okay that the eyeliner suddenly went this way because that's now this weird line that's going to make them look really really weird so think bob ross painting

not michelangelo yeah i like that You can get... I've been watching a lot of Bob Ross again. Bob Ross, Hogan's Heroes, it's been good. But you can do a lot with broad strokes, than trying to get into those details. And occasionally, especially with haunts, sometimes those details can actually muddy up the character that you're trying to create. Sure, sure. Just out of curiosity, you may have told us, but I can't remember what it was.

When you two went to the west coast hunters convention and leslie you got the like really high-end professional makeup like that how long did that take just out of curiosity i mean he did that during a one one hour session so it probably took five minutes no yeah really oh my god that probably took about five i was probably about a five ten did he have any of that set up ahead of time.

So it was all just applying directly to your face? It was all, yeah, it was, he melted the gelatin and did the application. We should put out, sorry, really quick, we should put out that this was like a, if I remember, like a zombie kind of. Yeah, this was my eye. Part of the face missing. It was like her eye was melting. Yeah, that's it. Okay, so just as a description. That was done.

He heated up the gelatin. We did a temperature test because anytime you're working with something that you heat up, gelatin, latex, etc., you always want to test the temperature of it for everybody's safety and then it was basically just like make a drip make a drip and then he just connected a whole bunch of lines did a little bit of i think paint on it and we were done like it was real fast incredible but also like who was doing your makeup less

well okay this is a professional hollywood makeup artist worked worked on Buffy, worked on all sorts of other things. So again, somebody who does this professionally is going to be a lot faster than, you know, say me trying to do that to myself. But again, as you're doing this, it was a very, very effective makeup that did not take much at all. Yeah, yeah. What was his name? Rallis, Rallis Khan?

Rallis Khan. Rallis Khan, yeah. Who, like, if you don't know him, Google him and you'll see some of his work. Like, he's absolutely phenomenal makeup artist. And I mean, he's been doing it for, he's been doing it professionally for years. So like his ability to just whip something together like that unmatched, like we, we could not match. What year was that? Was that 16? That was either 16, 17 or 18 somewhere. Cause we were always in Oregon. Yeah. I'm trying to find the picture.

I'm doing the exact same thing. I'm scrolling back through the hunting Facebook page, trying to find the picture. And if I find it again, I will definitely post it as part of this. That's still an even, even so that's still incredible. That's five ish minutes of work. That's yeah. That's insane. How much of that is just the, the media that was being used, that gelatin part of it was also just the gelatin. Fair. Like you couldn't do that with latex is my, is kind of my point.

You could do that with latex, but not as quickly. Yeah. Okay. So that was 2018. Oh, you found it. Yeah, I did. Yeah. That was basically dripping a bunch of gelatin on my face of two different colors, building it up and then putting in makeup to fill in some of the gaps. That that's it's, it's super cool.

I was impressed it's outstanding there it is I was just like man that had to have taken a long time but apparently it did I'm going to download this we should show that up on social media and then here's the, I'm sending you a picture of because I was able to pull it off on one piece and I'm pretty sure I still have it so theoretically I could even actually reapply it and use it again, that's impressive that was a thing okay i like your froggies fog lanyard as well naturally.

Yeah the cool thing about those gelatins like because you pulled it off and you could totally, reapply it so like you could make a whole bunch of these ahead of time and then just slap it on people in the makeup room night of so that in order to speed up your your makeup prep, so is leslie is slap it on the correct term or do you violently throwing it at someone's face I like violence. Okay, so hold on. Is that really better than me saying I endorse theft and that

you endorse violence? The Haunting You podcast is not endorse theft or... I didn't say I endorse it. I just said I like it. Totally different. I don't think it is. I'm not suggesting violence. John suggests theft. John recommends theft. That's actually an interesting point. I'm just saying that I enjoy it. Leslie is keeping it on herself, whereas John is projecting it onto others.

I hate that you're both right. Yeah, that's okay. Les, this is going to be your new profile pick on the Haunting You website. I thought it already was. I thought it already was my profile pick on the Haunting You website. I don't remember. Carly Carly Carly oh I think I'll say I don't remember anymore okay it's either Harley or this yeah yeah anyway yeah so that's that's our makeup experience I think, Maybe that's an idea. You can go to a convention and just keep it on.

Get a professional Hollywood-level makeup artist to do it and just keep it on. And then just keep it on for six months afterwards. You're ready for the show. So it's all the better. Or unless it is Halloween, maybe you just want to scare the crap out of your co-workers. There you go. There you go. I'm always in favor. Nothing wrong with that. I'm picturing Leslie doing that in the office and then just politely waving to everyone. Hi!

Good morning! Yeah, exactly. So one other pitfall I really want to talk about, weather has often been a pitfall for us, particularly the great equalizer. The great equalizer is right. Right. Oh, my gosh.

We have had bomb cyclones two or three times right before opening, which has taken down our pillars and broke my sign in half and knocked down walls in the haunt and broke my tent because it filled up with water. The number of times that we have had significant weather events right before opening is surprising. Let's put it that way.

And impressively, none of them in Colorado. and impressively none of them in colorado like it's done here has been a little bit surely maybe that went a little bit i mean we certainly never got buried our senior year john i remember being disappointed because it snowed on halloween and we had like four inches of snow on the on the ground or so like it wasn't a significant snow oh but it was enough to deter people from coming out i don't know that night being a little disappointing it was

i remember the people it was a lower turnout and the people that did come out where it was a lot of.

Like carpooling driving from one house to another so that kind of it just kind of takes some of the fun out of it it really does but it didn't break anything either which no which is you know an advantage to not having complex builds but i think we have had we have been forced to basically weatherize our haunts you know if we're having to have it set up for an extended period of time prior to opening it has to be able to stand up to the weather and so there's

there's a couple of ways to do that you know a lot of pro haunts will rent a or own a party tent 50 foot by 100 foot party size a party style tent and then build their haunt underneath that and so they have a a weather-resistant roof that protects everything from underneath. Honestly, I think that's the way that we need to go just in general. I've tried to do it with much smaller tents. Like when we built sanguine in 21, I was just getting hold of whatever tent I could get hold of.

And like, so I've got like a 20 by 30 foot backyard tent. I've got a 10 by 30 foot backyard tent, but the problem with them, the, the poles are freaking tiny. Like the nicer of the two has one inch thin metal poles. The other one, it's like half inch or three eighths inch thin metal poles. And if any water gets trapped on top of these things, water weighs seven pounds a gallon. That adds up very quickly. And it has broken my tents in the past.

So if you're going to go that route, make sure you're investing in something that is worth the money and can stand up to the weather. And then if you can't do that, then you have to build in a way that is not going to be affected by the weather. And so like the walls that we had up were heavily braced, not only because, you know, when people get scared, they tend to throw themselves against the walls and the walls have to be able to not fall over.

But also because if it took me three weeks to set up sanguine creek estates and that means three weeks worth of weather that those walls have to be able to endure so it was built incredibly rigidly to to account for that we also had to make sure that if it were to rain water had a someplace that it could go my driveway happens to be at the bottom of a bowl so all of the freaking water just comes rushing down onto my driveway and we've got

a big old drain right in the middle of the driveway that it all drains to. I had to make sure there was still access to that. It ended up working a little bit because all of the wall panels, quote unquote doors that we had are flat and there are no flat surfaces anywhere on my driveway. And so as we're building, we ended up with gaps underneath the walls, just all over the place, which was perfect because it allowed water to continue to drain even though the walls were up.

So that ended up working out absolutely perfectly. Oh, but the freaking wind, like I had these two foot by two foot by 10 foot tall pillars out at the top of the driveway with the arch that had Stangling Creek Estates. And that stupid thing got blown over three or four times. I loaded it up with cinder blocks. I had six cinder blocks in each side to weigh that thing down. And it still got knocked over when the bomb cyclone came through.

So if you can like drill or drive something down into the ground of a couple of feet do it absolutely freaking do it drive some rebar down and then attach your your pillars to the rebar that's probably what i'm going to end up doing next time yep or like when i build the crypt i the our crypt is built out of foam panels and it breaks down into what one two three four five six parts and so there's a very rigid wood frame that i actually attach to my kids swing

set and the swing set was put in by the previous owner it has four by fours that are cemented into the ground it is incredibly sturdy and i just screw stuff to that to create the frame for my crypt. So if a really bad storm is going to come through, I can take my crypt down in about 15 minutes just by taking the six pieces off and putting them away. And the wood frame is nice and rigid. It can stand up to just about anything. So one, build it to stand up to the weather.

And if you can't, build it so that it's easy to take down if there's going to be bad weather. Yep. All right. Any other good pitfalls you guys wanted to talk about? Out. Do you have anyone legitimately falling into a pit? Always put the tiger in after you leave. Make sure you always know where you put your pit, especially if you put a tiger in it, or if you're putting sharpened sticks in the bottom, you don't want to fall into your own pitfall.

What else makes good pit animals? The first thing I think of is alligators. Oh, water and snakes. Yeah. I mean, if it's Indiana Jones, sure. Electric eels. They can be lazy, but they will absolutely kill you, given half a chance.

I mean really anything that makes it difficult to get out or stabs you as you fall down you can certainly go you know via Kong style and just put sharp bamboo at the bottom I mean it is a, standard classic terrible thing to do to other people all of those I, thought Leslie would be excited I asked my son the other day what his favorite, animal was and he instantly replied alligator Gator. Outstanding. Outstanding. Just one? He was just like, all of them. All of them.

All the gators. Love it. He may, but he also occasionally he'll answer that question with dog too. That's really cool. That's so appropriate.

Alright, John, you want to give a quick rundown of our social media and all the places that people can find us? You can find us at facebook.com slash haunting you. You can find us on Instagram at Haunting University. You can also find us online at our Huntington University webpage. You can download the podcast anywhere podcasts are found. Apple, Audible, Spotify, Google Podcasts, anywhere you can find podcasts, you will find us there.

Like the podcast, subscribe. We also love to hear what you think, so throw a rating on there for us. And then if you have time, drop us a comment. Let us know what you like, what you don't like. If you also enjoy theft, we would love to hear that. John in particular would love to hear that I have to tell you a couple people have come up to me at conventions just to tell you John that they also approve of theft so they are out there our numbers bro.

We ride the Haunted U podcast does not condone theft or endorse theft no one thing that would also be fun is if you, shoot us a either yeah on social media send us a comment with your pitfall what set has maybe not worked out for you so absolutely absolutely give it give us a comment tell us how your pitfalls and how you've overcome your pitfalls i think we are hopefully you all got some good good tips and tricks out of this episode or

in the very least enjoyed our stories of some of our past failures, If you want to hear more about that, definitely add subsequent successes. That's absolutely accurate. I like that. Definitely go check out some of our earlier episodes because we dive much more in depth onto all of these things, particularly in our post Halloween episodes. So look for whatever one is in November, usually around November 15th, and you'll hear even more pitfalls in depth.

And stay tuned for our halloween episode where we will once again bring you some of our favorite scary stories fairy tales and other things to fill you with horror and dread exactly got my my copy of the grimace fairy tales the nice not sanitized versions oh that's gonna be good i'm excited i gotta just start doing some research yeah so stay tuned for all of october good luck everyone who is opening their haunts or if you've already opened your haunt if

you're about to open your haunt or if you're still building getting ready for halloween best of luck to you and if you have questions as you're going through that building process reach out we are always more than happy to talk about talk about anything that has to do with building haunts if you have questions reach out to us on any of our social media and we will do our best to help you create the home haunt of your dreams.

So from all of us here at Haunting You, best of luck with your show season and happy hunting. We are incredibly grateful to all the sponsors who make this show possible. Music. Especially our premium sponsors, the Chamber of Haunters, Fear Expo, and VFX. You can learn more about our premium sponsors by checking out the websites, chamberofhaunters.com, fearexpolive.com, and vfxcreates.com. Check out our website, Haunting You, for more information on everything that we do.

Music. Haunting You is a production of the Rocky Mountain Home Haunters, LLC. All audio clips and sound effects are used under a Creative Commons attribution or public domain license from Purple Planet Music at purple-planet.com or the Sound Bible at soundbible.com. Please see the show notes for more information on all the clips used in this episode.

So wait, are we back to clunting people for sport? hold that thought because I want to have that conversation hey there's your end credits right there.