2000- "humble beginnings"
After a good 3 years of scaring people on our porch, and not trick or treating. We decided to take a stab at our own haunted house. We teamed up with our friend Natalie. As 5th graders, we designed and planned very small haunted house. We had a 50ft roll of black plastic, a strobe light, a 2ft black light, a big cardboard box and some cheap store bought cobwebs. The haunted house wasn't more than 30ft long. You would walk up the driveway then enter the haunt and head toward the front door. There were make shift walls that led you up to a table (the cardboard box) and sitting on the table was candy and a "prop head" when the kids went to get there candy the head would come to life. The kids would go screaming and running out.
2001- "really? again?"
Our Second Haunted house was pretty much a glorified version of our first Haunted House....kind of like Evil Dead 1 and 2....anyways. Our parents still weren't to keen on the idea of doing a haunted house at their place, so we asked our friend Nathan if we could uses his walkway. The benefit of doing it at Nathans instead of Natalie's was Nathan lived right across the street from our parents. Whereas, Natalie lived in a different neighborhood. Being the clever 5th graders we were, we decided on dong the same haunt because it was going to be a completely new set of kids going though. We had a lot more help this time around. We had someone out front doing traffic control, and three extra scares inside. This year we had an added fog machine and some tombstones and a card board coffin. Overall it was the same idea as the last one. You walked up to the "table" with a head and candy on it and the head would come to life. Then on the way out we had an actor pop out if the cardboard coffin and a second actor jump out from behind a pillar.
Check out the video below
2002- "Via Flore" Haunted House
Its times like this that we realize we kind of born to do this haunted house thing. Why you ask? We were involved in boy scouts back in the day. (yes, we made it to eagle scout) It turned out one of the dads did a huge haunted house in his back yard. During one of the meetings he proposed the idea of: "you help with the haunted house and depending on how much hours you log, a portion of the money made will go to your summer camp fund." needless to say, we were on board before he finished that sentence. We helped every weekend in both September and October. For two 7th graders, we were in awe. The haunt had everything, pneumatics, animatronics, motion sensors, presser mats, lights, sounds, props, actors. And the best part....everything was homemade! We logged over fifty hours each during the build.....the most out of everyone else in our troop. The walls were metal pipe with tarps zip tied to them. Over all there were 11 scares. Six of which were done by actors. The other five were done by a prop of some sort. You would enter the haunt and walk though a graveyard filled with fog, tripping a motion sensor to make a hand come out of the ground. Continuing on you walk under a spider web and a giant spider drops a few feet just so it legs would brush against your head. Then off the right was a man sitting in a chair. When you first walk by him nothing happens. Next you come to the first hallway. Both sides of the walls have latex gloves that are filled with flour and are stapled to the walls. Two of the hands were real and tried to grab you. As you venture on you come to this little bridge with springs in the floor. So when you step on it, it falls a few inches. Then you turn the corner and you are face to face with a giant wall of masks. One of the masks comes to life. You round another corner the "fake mask" jumps out ad scares you for a second time. Next you turn another corner and Jason jumps out at you with a chainsaw. You turn another corner and trip a motion sensor and this blue flood light shines on this boy being hanged and the boy quickly comes to life and starts gasping for air. Next you enter a room with nothing but a strobe light and a guy in a scream mask jumps out at you. Finally you go through a door and your back in the graveyard. As you walk past the man sitting in a chair you assume he's a prop but then he springs to life and chases you out of the haunt with a chainsaw.
2003-"lets try this again"
After getting a taste of what a big amateur haunted house can be. We finally get our parents to let us use their back yard. This was our first real walkthrough. We had an over abundance of help from our fellow eighth graders. We had close to fifteen people help us. With all that help, it was the first time we realized that it was fifteen kids WE were in charge of. It was a tad stressful for two teenagers. We wound up having 200 people go though our little haunted house that could. It was nothing more than pvc pipe and black plastic. It had all the same props as our first two haunted houses. The new stuff was our old costumes stuffed with news paper, a cauldron with real cow bones in it. (Our dad stopped by the butchers for us)Finally we had homemade tombstones and some extra black lights. Scare wise, it wasn't planned very well. Everyone's scare tactic was to just jump out and scream at people. By the final scare people weren't all that scared. Either way we had a blast. Check out the video below
2004-"hiatus"
After our backyard haunt, we jumped right in and started planning out next one. BUT. It couldn't be at our parents anymore. They got the back yard landscaped and there wasn't room to do a haunted house. Neither Natalie's nor Nathan's house were suitable for what we had planned. Long story short with the start of high school we decided to take a break from doing a haunted house and just do a yard Haunt. We mixed our haunt decorations with our mom's cute decoration, and called it a day. That year we took our little sister trick or treating.
2005- "work, school, marching band, boy scouts"
As you can tell from the title, we didn't do a haunted house. We did another yard haunt. We both entered the work force and balanced school, band practice, and boy scouts all at the same time. Halloween was put on the back burner. Luckily Zach got a job at Party City. So our yard display got amped up with his store discount. We took our sister trick or treating again that year.
2006- yard haunt/ tot/ work
2007- yard haunt/ haunted house hunting
2008- night terrors
2009- the final resting place
