Music

Music is a very important part of any Haunt. It sets the mood, and can add a creepiness to almost any of your scenes.
Some of the better scene setting music that you can look into would be anything by Midnight Syndicate. Mostly instrumental, but some have singing or choruses that can be pretty creepy.
In the Jail Cell, I like to have a good heavy metal back beat to my scare. It actually helps to hide sounds that I don't want other people to hear, and can fill in the time between the customers.
The music that I have playing in the Jail area is a mix. Some of the groups that I have are: Anthrax, Mettalica, Thin Lizzy, Devil Driver, etc. I try to look for music which has a theme. Since I work the Jail Cell, I look for music that has themes that concern either being locked up, or center around torture and mayhem.
So if you are looking around for music, one of the best places to sample music is the internet. You can hear samples of many of the musicians that you are interested. If you like them, go out and buy a copy of their cd. The Indy circuit is another great place to check out.
If you know a band, you might be able to convince them to write music specifically for your Haunt.

Planning

Well, it is that time of year where we start planning for additions to the Haunt. As it stands right now, we are making a few additions that should be interesting.

Finally, got the old make up kit cleaned out and inventoried so now I know what I need to replace for next year. Really low on blood and I really didn't like any of the blood recipes that I used last year. Looks like we will be going back to buying blood unless I can find some killer recipes.

Going to the Haunt Convention in St. Louis this year. Should be pretty good. Hope to get some ideas for the Cave and really amp the action up for this upcoming season.

Problems for any Haunt

The key to a good Haunt is the personnel. The people that you have working for you must be willing to work together and actually do what they are supposed to do: Scare customers. It doesn't matter if you are a charity haunt, or a for profit haunt. The job is scare the customers.

One of the biggest problems that we had this year was making sure that actors stayed in their assigned areas. This became hugely noticeable about half way through the season. I had actors roaming the Haunt, going into others areas and ruining scares. This is pretty ridiculous. Now, we have a lot of kids that volunteer down there, but the adults that we had were just as bad. Especially on the last weekend. Now to me, the last weekend is just as important as the first weekend. Those customers are paying for a show, and a show they should have. Unfortunately, there were quite a few actors that felt it was time to play and have fun for themselves. From a customer service aspect, they really failed.

Now, I mentioned kid actors. Well, actually, most of our kid positions are behind the scenes. This is where we run into problems. The kids get bored, and don't want to do their jobs. My philosophy on that was to get rid of them. I would rather be short handed then have someone in their not doing their job. But there are others that are: "Oh, they are kids, let them do what they want to do." What, we are not supposed to expect a certain kind of behavior out of kids when it is a volunteer situation? Whatever happened to responsibility? You are going to benefit from the work that is going on, at the very least you should do the best of your ability. With the problems that I encountered this year, I am actually of a mindset to make an age limitation on who can work at the Haunt. My proposed age would be sixteen and older. That or automate it even more and take more kid positions out of there.

Season is Over

Last night was the end of our Haunt season. Quite a few accomplishments for the Lewisburg Haunted Cave and Cave Crew. Ohio Valley Haunts, the most prestigious Haunt Raters in our area ranked us 2nd place in the tri-state area. Active Dayton ranked us 1st place in the Dayton area.

This was a great year and an even better learning experience. I chronicle all that I have learned over the next few months. The main things that I will concentrate on are volunteers, children, and of course, stars.

I hope to work more on props, make up techniques, and a few other things that I wasn't really happy with this past year.

Welcome to the Cell

Welcome to the Jail Cell. First chance that I got to post some new pictures of this years season at the Lewisburg Haunted Cave.

Igor is Done

Igor is finally done. Another great job by my partner in crime Michael. Now it is ready to attach to a head.

Satan Completed

Satan is done. Can't wait to see it on the actor.