Archives for 2013

The next attraction in our Summer Haunted Attraction series comes to us from Britain, in a story written by Brady MacDonald from the latimes.com website; enjoy!

A unique new haunted attraction opening this summer at a small United Kingdom theme park will combine a walk-through horror maze featuring live actors with a dark ride journey inside an abandoned mine shaft.

The Hobs Pit maze and ride is set to open June 2 at Pleasurewood Hills theme park in Lowestoft, England, located about 100 miles northeast of London on the North Sea coast.

The 30-year-old amusement park has been promoting the new attraction with a clever viral marketing campaign that hints at the ride’s paranormal back story.

As the story goes, artifacts found on the site of an abandoned mine where the ride is being built suggest demonic activity. A journal from 1835 indicates that a group of crazed miners trapped in Hobs Pit turned on each other with pickaxes. Those who managed to survive the slaughter eventually fell to their deaths down a shaft that led straight to hell.

The new attraction pairs two theme park staples that are rarely if ever combined. The ubiquitous haunted dark ride can be found at theme parks both big (Haunted Mansion at California’s Disneyland) and small (Ghostwood Estates at Pennsylvania’s Kennywood) while horror walk-through mazes have become standard fare at annual Halloween events.

Year-round walk-through attractions with live actors still remain fairly rare at theme parks around the world. Universal Studios Hollywood offers House of Horrors every operating day with actors portraying the Mummy, Wolfman and Frankenstein. The U.K.’s Alton Towers has used the Sanctuary scare maze outside the Halloween season as a back story preview for the 14-inversion Smiler roller coaster opening this summer.

“It is the first one not only for Pleasurewood Hills, but the first in the UK and we’ve heard stories it’s the first one in the world as well,” the park’s general manager Alexis Camelintold the BBC.

Hobs Pit will be developed by the Pleasurewood Hills staff along with help from a pair of Hollywood veterans who have worked on attractions at Disney and Universal theme parks. Special effects expert Rob Ostir (“X-Men: First Class,” “Thor,” and “Tron: Legacy”) and voice actor Corey Burton (“Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” “The Transformers” and “Phineas and Ferb”) will provide creative direction for the new ride. The back story and show scenes for the attraction were written by Sean Alexander, an illusionist at the amusement park.

Hobs Pit, which is expected to begin “soft opening” test runs on May 25, will replace Woody’s Fairytale Fantasy dark ride and a nearby Main Street shop.

Even though summer hasn’t officially begun yet, our countdown to Halloween has, so each week we will bring you a different summer haunted attraction from across the country and around the world.

Today we bring you a story from hauntednight.com about  Japan’s ‘ghost houses’ where people go to escape the heat of summer and scare up some chills; enjoy!

Visit a “Ghost House” for Summer Chills

It’s the dead of summer, and you’re suffering from sweltering temperatures and oppressive humidity. You want to cool off, so you head to the local pool, a water park, an air conditioned shopping center, or your local haunted house. Uh, did you say “haunted house”? That’s right. If you live in Japan in the middle of summer, it’s not uncommon for people who want a “summer chill” to visit one of Japan’s many haunted houses or “obake-yashiki” (literally, “ghost house”).

The obake-yashiki is often open only in summer months and in large amusement parks or entertainment venues. It’s believed that the scares and chills you experience at an obake-yashiki can help cool down the body amid the summer heat.

So exactly what is an obake-yashiki? A haunted house—yes—but it differs somewhat from the North American convention of a haunted house both in terms of presentation and scares.

Traditional obake-yashiki are often centered around old ghost stories and supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, such as yurei (ghosts that return to the physical world because a person has died a sudden or violent death or with unresolved hatred, revenge, love or sorrow), yuki-onna (the “snow woman” who preys on men stranded in the snow), and rokurokubi (a supernatural being that appears as human during the day but at night has the ability to stretch its neck to great lengths to feed on people). Scenes with characters resembling these beings are not uncommon in a Japanese haunted house.

The first thing you may notice when visiting an obake-yashiki is that it is downright creepy. The traditional obake-yashiki makes little use of blood or gore and instead relies on the “creep factor”: a run-down old building, an abandoned house, furniture and items scattered in disarray in a dimly lit space, a room with antique-looking Japanese dolls, some missing limbs and heads. Not exactly scary, but creepy to the core—just what’s needed to build up the tension and prepare the visitors for the real scare that is to come.

The obake-yashiki is often set in a traditional Japanese setting to re-create the environment of ancient ghost stories. Just as a dark, cobweb-covered, Victorian-style parlor room with wall pictures askew may invoke an image of a haunted mansion, an old, damp and creepy Japanese-style room with rotted tatami mats and torn sliding doors invokes the same haunted feel in the obake-yashiki. There is an increasing trend of using hospitals and schools as other haunted settings, as well as scenes that are directly tied in with recent J-horror movies.

The largest haunted attraction in Japan is the Haunted Hospital in the Fuji-Q Highland amusement park just outside of Tokyo. Once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest haunt in the world, at 900 meters or half a mile, this 60-minute walkthrough is filled to the gills with creepy ambience, well-positioned scares, and talented actors.

Another thing you may notice is that “ghost houses” are very heavy on decorated sets and static props and make less use of animatronics than their Western counterparts. The level of haunt technology in Japan is not on the same level as that of the U.S., the leader in innovative haunted props. Though more and more haunt technology is making its way from other countries to Japan, most static and animatronic props in the obake-yashiki must be made by hand and, therefore, require more time to achieve the same result.

As in Western haunted houses, Japanese ghost houses also employ actors at key points within the haunt, but more as a startle than as a “scream-in-your-face” type of scare. You won’t find a chainsaw-wielding actor chasing you up and down the halls. Japanese ghosts are thought to haunt a specific place—the place where the hatred, sorrow, or violent death occurred—thus ghost actors are commonly positioned in a scene within the haunted house that reflects the location where he or she was wronged in mortal form.

Contrasts of black and white are common elements of characters in the obake-yashiki. The long, black and disheveled hair and hollow black eyes set against the clown-white makeup and traditional white burial kimono is the standard look of yurei in the Japanese haunted house. Think Sadako from “The Ring” or the ghosts in the “Grudge” series. Adding in some fake blood against the monochrome makeup and costume makes for an even more dramatic contrast.

Despite the many differences, the common element in both Japanese and Western haunted houses are the constant screams you will hear from frightened visitors who ultimately become “chilled to the bone”.

A great source for the background to the Japanese perspective of horror can be found in this excellent article.

158 days to Halloween! 

While that may seem like a long time, especially since summer hasn’t even begun yet, it really won’t be long before the chills and thrills of the Halloween season will be upon us.

Most haunted houses and attractions will open for business in mid-September and this year most will start their season on the most iconic date in the haunted calendar, Friday the 13^th!

Preparation for the Halloween season begins in late July/early August with hauntrepreneurs getting everything ready for the busy fall season. Believe it or not, reservations for haunted attractions including haunted house rentals, haunted props, haunted hayrides, haunted mazes, etc. start booking in late summer and haunted attraction vendors can be completely booked by September 1^st!

Here at Your Custom Haunted House, we specialize in all things Halloween so feel free to check out our Gallery, Transformation Videos, and Rentals pages to get ideas for your next haunted event, then contact us and have your best Halloween ever!

In the final part of our three part series you’ll find out more about how some farmers use haunted attractions as an extra service during the fall season to extend their farming business. Our final farm highlighted in this series comes to us from headlesshorseman.com, read below to find out more about this creative farmer.

Featured on The Today Show & Weather Channel!

Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses is located in Ulster Park, NY, part of the Historic Haunted Hudson Valley. The property incorporates over forty-five acres of naturally landscaped property that includes foreboding woods, surreal ponds, fruit orchards and more.

It has been named World’s Best Haunted Hayride by AOL News, voted America’s Scariest Haunted House in the Northeast by MTV, voted “One of the Best Haunts in the country” by Hauntworld.com, voted #1 “America’s Best Top 13” by Hauntedhouseratings.com.

In addition, it has been named #1 Hayride in America by American Airlines Magazine, as well as #1 Haunted Attraction in the country by Haunt World Magazine, also receiving top ten national rankings from CNBC, AOL, USA Today, Fangoria Magazine and “named #1 on the Planet by The New York Daily News”. Headless Horseman is a theatrical experience like no other!

Our attraction includes a one mile hayride, a labyrinth style corn maze, six professionally created haunted houses, four food concessions, as well as Ghoulish Gifts, Magic Moon Gifts, Scarewear and Witchy Woman gift shops.

Additional nightly entertainment includes the ALL NEW Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular starring John Shaw and from Las Vegas Lady Diabla, the world’s youngest female sword swallower.

The Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular is an act like none other you have witnessed before, all of the stunts are REAL! Done with humor and audience participation. SEE these human marvels for yourself LIVE and in the RAW!! John Shaw and Lady Diabla will leave you amazed, entertained, laughing, and gasping in awe. The Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular will be the show that you talk about for years to come.

John Shaw and Lady Diabla travel throughout the world and are one of the most sought after THIRLLSHOWS on the globe!! You will soon see for yourself why The Original Synners Stunt Show Spectacular is The Wonder Show Of The Universe!!! They perform nightly starting at 8PM on our main stage next to the Mansion of Dahlia Blood.

Our attraction is designed and built by professionals from the lighting, costume, sound, set design, special effects, and make-up industries. We employ over 250 actors and staff trained to provide a memorable and enjoyable evening for the whole family.

Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses
778 Broadway, Route 9W
Ulster Park, NY 12487
845-339-2666

In part two of our three part series you’ll find out more about how some farmers use haunted attractions as an extra service during the fall season to extend their farming business. Our second farm highlighted in this series comes from a wallstreetjournal.com post, read below to find out more about this creative farmer.

Farm House to Haunted House: Making Hay with Horror

By Sarah Needleman

Glenn Boyette used to be afraid he’d lose his family farm. Now he’s busy making money by making other people scared.

Over the past four years, Mr. Boyette has built three haunted houses and four other Halloween attractions on his 100-acre farm in Clayton, N.C. That has left just 40 acres for harvesting hay, sweet corn and watermelon—crops that, along with tomatoes, used to claim the entire land.

“We raised livestock and produce for many years and it just got tighter and tighter,” says Mr. Boyette, 58, who took over the farm from an uncle in the late 1980s and over time saw profits dry up.

From the months of September to January, he says, about 35,000 visitors drop by to experience the haunted houses, 3-D adventure, spinning vortex, haunted trail, corn maze and a Christmas light show. Tickets cost between $7 and $25. Revenues, says Mr. Boyette, have doubled since the shift away from farming.

“People love to be entertained more than they love to eat,” he says.

Looking to diversify their sources of income, small farmers are expanding their “agri-tourism” or “agri-tainment” operations beyond the traditional pumpkin-picking, hayride and petting zoo.

They’re erecting haunted mansions, dizzying corn mazes and other elaborate attractions on their properties. In some cases, they convert them into holiday spectacles and other themed exhibits to keep visitors coming for a longer season.

“We realized this was going to save our farm,” says Randy Bates, who turned his Gradyville, Pa., family farm into a more than $1 million annual business from one that only grossed roughly $50,000 a year.

Travis Dove for The Wall Street Journal

Clayton Fear Farm proprietor Glenn Boyette now uses most of the 150-acre farm for Halloween and other exhibits.

Sales began booming in the late 1990s, soon after he added the Bates Motel, a haunted-house attraction, to the 82-acre property, plus a haunted hayride and corn maze. Now instead of working a second job on top of farming to make ends meet, Mr. Bates runs Agritainment Inc. full time all year round.

He says some of the more than 60,000 guests who visit his farm every year aren’t fooled when the last room of the Bates Motel becomes Santa’s workshop in November.

“Kids have said to their parents, ‘I’m not going in there. It’s scary,'” says Mr. Bates.

Scott Skelly designs and cuts corn mazes for farmers like himself, charging on average between $2,000 and $5,000 per labyrinth. The larger the field —and the harder for humans to navigate it—the higher the price.

The 22-year-old started his job as a hobby when he was just nine years old. That led him to self-publish a book on the subject in 2004 while a high-school sophomore called “Corn Mazes: Is There a Pot of Gold in Your Corn Field?”

This year, Mr. Skelly designed 20 mazes, double the number in 2009. He says the increase reflects the hard times that have fallen on many small farms, including his own family’s 220-acre ranch in Janesville, Wis.

While prices for major commodities such as corn and soybeans have climbed of late, small family farms have struggled in recent decades.

Only 45% of the 2.2 million farms nationwide show positive net cash income from farming, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2007 census report, its most recent. The rest need to supplement their revenue with other sources to cover their expenses.

Prices for milk, corn and other farm commodities “depend on supply and demand, and so farmers can’t necessarily get a high enough price,” says Mr. Skelly. “With agritourism, farmers have the opportunity to name their own prices and make a lot more money.”

The Haunted House Association, a two-year-old national trade group, estimates there are more than 500 farms in the U.S. that feature Halloween attractions.

That’s a hair-raising statistic for some farmers’ neighbors, who must put up with piercing screams, buzzing chainsaws and flashing lights throughout the month of October or longer.

Conestoga, Pa., a rural township with 3,800 residents, added its first noise ordinance soon after Bob Hershey set aside more than half of his family’s 46-acre farm in 1986 for a haunted hayride.

Mr. Hershey, who’s added several attractions, including a 3-D pirate ghost ship, says he receives about 15,000 thrill-seeking visitors at his property every fall.

Many farmers say they recruit family members and friends to spook visitors by dressing up as knife-wielding zombies, killer clowns and movie villains like Freddy Krueger. Sabrina Kent Doolan says she pays a friend to ride around her Jamestown, Ind., farm as a headless horseman on weekends leading up to Halloween.

“It actually started out as a horse farm, and it just wasn’t cutting it,” says Ms. Doolan of her 170-acre property. “We were doing a whole lot of work for not nearly enough money.” In 1999, she decided to give haunted hayrides a try and later transformed a barn into a haunted house. “My dad thought I had gone nuts,” says Ms. Doolan, who also hires local schoolchildren for ghoulish role-playing. “It just took off like wildfire. It’s grown every year.”

Farmers have a natural advantage over big-city haunts in scaring patrons, thanks to the popularity of horror movies set in remote areas like “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” says Brady Armour, co-owner of Unit 70 Studios, a Columbus, Ohio, monster maker.

Some of his best sellers are farm-related props such as animated demonic scarecrows, pumpkin-faced ghouls and “Pigzillas”—giant pig heads that shoot out of a box, spray water and thrash around. All items are handmade and cost more than $400 each. An animated, 10-foot-tall grim reaper retails for $5,100.

Mr. Armour says he’s seeing more orders from farmers in recent years for all sorts of props, including dummies of phantom pirates, rotting corpses and mad scientists.

“Farming in general can be a scary business,” he says. Adding haunted and other attractions “is a way for farmers to meet their fears head on.”

Corrections & Amplifications

The 220-acre ranch owned by Scott Skelly is in Janesville, Wis. An earlier version of this story listed the town as Jamesville. Also, Glenn Boyette says his farm is 100 acres. A previous version of this article said his farm is 150 acres.

With all the challenges facing American small farms today, many farmers choose to call it quits on generations’ long family traditions.  But there is one out of the box idea that some farmers have found as their financial savior: to add a Haunted Attraction as an extra service during the fall season to extend the farming business.  In this three-part series you’ll find out how for some farmers this attraction not only helped in saving the farm, but became a full time income stream that turned out to be more profitable than the farm ever was!   In fact some farmers stopped farming altogether and became successful Haunt-trepreneurs.  The first farm highlighted in this series comes from an ohioshaunted.com post, read below to find out more about one of these creative farmers.

The Haunted Farm: True Terror in Pleasantville

By Noah Wullkotte

City Blood speaks with Kim Hicks, owner of The Haunted Farm in Pleasantville, OH. This seamlessly innocent farm becomes a person’s worst nightmare as darkness falls. Are you prepared to learn about this fall haunt tradition or will you perish while visiting The Haunted Farm?

What’s the history of The Haunted Farm?

This farm was owned by the same family since it was built in 1806 until we purchased it in 2000.  The back barn was the first built.  The front barn was built in 1825 the same as our house.  The last of the family to live here were two brothers Marion and Neil Watson.  They were very eccentric as which everyone was driving the tractor and it broke he would be the one to fix it.

Marion was known to take his pigs to market by taking the back seat out of his NEW car and loading the pigs into the back seat area of his vehicle. And it has been told that he could fatten up his pigs faster than anyone around. Neil Watson was an educator and committed suicide on the property because he was dying at the time and did not want anyone to take care of him.  Marion was the last to live here and we purchased the historical homestead after he passed away.  The family relatives still visit to this day both living and dead.

What can people expect to experience at The Haunted Farm?

The Haunted Farm consists of a haunted barn maze, haunted corn maze and haunted hayride.  We have a bon fire, stage for live entertainment (i.e., bands, body suspension, etc.) and the crow’s nest shop which is our concession and gift shop. If they are lucky they just might get a visit or a touch from one of the family members. We have captured on security cameras two distinct figures walking through the front barn while not in operation, and numerous individuals from the hayride have stated that they have encountered flickering lights and an individual in the back barn.

What are people’s favorite attraction at The Haunted Farm and why?

I have been told that the haunted barn maze is the best of the three attractions.  It is an in your face scare and more extreme than the corn or hayride, and houses many of our icon characters.  It is also the oldest of the three attractions. There is an outdoor courtyard in the center of the barn that contains a lingering fog which is not produced and is there every year especially during the Halloween season. This barn is also known for having items not function in the manner they were intended.

Last year we had a prop that was to move back and forth, and as I watched on the camera it started moving side to side.  I decided to go to take a look and found it wasn’t even turned on and was moving. So you never know what you might encounter.

What is involved in organizing a large event like The Haunted Farm?

The Haunted Farm is a year round process.  As soon as the year has ended we start the planning stages for the next year.  All of our key characters meet once a month to go through actor training, brainstorm on set design and go over things that may need improved from the previous year.

Tell us a little about the back story that’s used for The Haunted Farm?

The back story was written by me when the farm was first put into operation in 2000. The story explains that the farm was once owned by the Watson family and was one of the largest farms in the area.  It tells how drifters (people looking for work) were brought here to work, but never left and were hung on cross in the field where their blood was used to feed the crops.  They were also fed to the livestock as nourishment.

It was said that farmer Watson made a deal with the devil himself to ensure that his farm, crops and livestock would flourish when no other farm would be successful.  When work became more plentiful the town children started to disappear. The town people suspected the family and it was then that they found human remains around the pig and chicken pens, along with remains hung on crosses in the corn field.  The Watson’s were never found.

What are different ways you keep The Haunted Farm safe every year?

Every year the Haunted Farm goes through a life safety inspection from our local fire department.  We also have several CPR certified individuals on staff at all times.  The number of CPR certified increases every year as we have them locally trained.

How would you compare yourself to other haunts in the state of Ohio?

The difference between the Haunted Farm and other attractions is that we want to be different. Our attraction is different in the fact that it is located on a historical homestead and family farm. We try and keep the atmosphere as close to the environment as possible. Every haunted attraction is different in the shows that it develops and we are also great fans of other. So we would like you to decide for yourself.

What is your most popular item at The Crow’s Nest Shop?

Out of all the items in the Crow’s Nest Shop, I have found apart from the Haunted Farm Treasures that the sweat treats from the Checkerboard Bakery have been great favorites along with the beverages.

Are there any funny stories you can tell us about The Haunted Farm?

Every year the actors love to keep track of the customer reactions, (i.e., peeing pants, crying etc.), I was very startled to find out that it received a call for lights on because one customer had lost their DENTURES. I have had another call of a girl from OSU all dressed in white jump into the pond when the chainsaw started and refused to move, when I went back to the area she was still standing there but only for a moment.  The character had decided that she was not coming out so he was going in; needless to say that she ran the whole way to her car without her shoes.It is always funny to watch the customer gag when they find out the butcher is cutting a REAL deer carcass and then rips a piece of flesh off in his mouth.

What haunts inspire you to improve The Haunted Farm every year?

I have several friends in this industry, swapping ideas and thoughts with them very often throughout the year helps to keep the creative juices flowing.

Is it hard to come up with a confusing design for the corn maze and why?

The corn maze last year was very confusing.  We had some customers that were lost in the maze for over two hours. The corn had grown to a height of approximately 12 foot in places. Even the actors had a problem with it after we were open.  Every year a design is created, but it never turns out exactly as planned.

Who are some of the people who are responsible for the success of The Haunted Farm?

There are really too many to count.  Since we started the Haunted Farm we have been partnered with the local FFA organization.  We have many individuals from that organization that have been with us for many years and one individual that has been here ever since we started.  The Haunted Farm is more than just a seasonal thing, but has turned into one large family and everyone is responsible for its success.

How did you transform The Haunted Farm into a Christmas event?

Two years ago we created the Christmas Nightmare.  The Haunted Farm barn maze was transformed from Halloween to Christmas.  The barn contained evil elves, Santa, characters from Disney’s Nightmare before Xmas.  Before entering the maze you had to state whether you were naughty or nice; that determined how the characters in the maze acted.  The plot was to find Santa in the maze and he would give you candy canes etc.  All the skeletons and pumpkins stayed in place from Halloween and wore Santa hats and had candy canes. It was a very hard thing to accomplish in a 3 week time frame.  Last year we did not do the Christmas maze, but it will be returning to the farm this year, along with many other holiday activities. Everyone will just have to wait and see as to what they are.

Describe The Haunted Farm in 2 words.

How about 3 words….FARM FRESH FEAR…..that pretty much says it all.

How has the haunt industry changed your life?

Halloween has always been my favorite holiday.  After starting the Haunted Farm I have made so many new friends and met so many interesting people that I would have not otherwise known.  It has also given me the chance to help individuals that are less fortunate than us.  So, that being said, I think it has been one of the most rewarding and fulfilling goals that I could have ever accomplished.

What would people be surprised to learn about The Haunted Farm?

Every year before the opening of the farm we have visited the original owner’s gravesite, and every year the farm has flourished not to mention has had several seen and unseen visitors. I can definitely say the HAUNTED Farm does live up to its name.

Well actually we never left, but the site has been dormant for quite awhile and we apologize for our absence…

We are back and better than ever with a new and improved layout and we promise to post lots of new pictures and videos, as well as blog posts to keep you all updated on what we are doing here at Your Custom Haunted House, and share some fun facts and trivia!

We’d also like to let you know about our new and improved (and active!) Facebook business page Your Custom Haunted House; it’s full of pictures, videos, fun facts, etc. and is a great way to interact with us and share our love of all things Haunted; so please be sure to visit and ‘Like’ our page!

Feel free to comment, subscribe and be sure to visit our site often; Happy Haunting!