Apr 7, 2007

Scary Haunted Houses Require Creativity, Commitment

If you’re thinking about adding a haunted house to your October agritainment activities, Leonard Pickel is the man to talk to.

Pickel gave a presentation called “Haunting Safely on a Shoestring Budget” during the annual conference of the North American Farmers’ Direct Marketing Association in January in Austin, Texas.

Pickel is the editor of Haunted Attraction magazine and has years of experience designing haunted houses. He built his first haunted house in 1976 as a fundraiser for his college dormitory. It grossed more than $1,000, according to his Web site, www.leonardpickel.com. Information also can be found at www.hauntcon.com.

Pickel is now a leader in the haunted house industry and has a wealth of knowledge to share.

“The key to a Halloween event is advertising,” he said. “When you increase marketing you increase attendance.”

The first thing you need to do is put up a Web site.

“If you don’t have a Web site now, get one immediately,” he said.

Basic information should be included on the site, including the name and location of the attraction and the dates it is open.

Radio and billboard advertising drive people to haunted houses. Pickel said $2 to $3 should be spent per person on advertising. For example, if you market an event for 20,000 people, you should spend $40,000 to $60,000 on advertising.

As far as construction, you can buy a new haunted house from a design company – which is expensive – or buy a used house or build one yourself. Whatever you do, set a budget and stick to your business plan. Also, you don’t have to build your dream attraction right away. You can start small and add new details every year, he said.

You’ll have to learn to deal with building and fire inspectors, some of whom won’t approve of what you’re doing, he said.

The design of the attraction should be fairly straightforward. The ideal is to guide customers through a single pathway that makes a u-turn, so the entrance and exit are right next to each other and people going in can see the excitement from people coming out.

“You don’t want a true maze,” he said. “You want a winding pathway.”

There can be problems with haunting a maze, especially a corn maze you use during the day. People stumble about in the dark and end up damaging the design. It’s best to keep the haunted attraction and the corn maze separate, he said.

Pickel has visited dozens of haunted houses. One thing he often notices is that a group of people will walk into an ornately decorated room and an actor will “boo” the first person in line and spoil it for the rest of the group. Actors should be given multiple sites to pop out of, he said.

“Make sure you don’t scare the front of the group from the front,” he said. “In each one of my scenes, I designate what part of the group to scare.”

Some people, mostly young males, are impossible to scare, so you might as well keep them entertained with fun characters and interesting storylines. Pickel pointed out Grisly Gothic Gables, an attraction in Philadelphia, as a good example of creative storytelling. The Web site, www.grislygothicgables.com, has detailed information about the fictional Grisly family. The story changes every year, he said.

Tickets shouldn’t cost more than $15 per person. People shy away if the cost is higher than that. However, if you divide your attraction into multiple elements and charge separately for each element, people will pay more than $15 – they just don’t want to pay it all at once, he said.

Multiple elements also break up waiting times. Customers don’t want to wait in line much longer than 15 to 20 minutes.

Another way to make money – and shorten a customer’s wait – is to offer VIP passes. For example, if a customer pays an extra $10, he or she can move to the front of the line. You also can charge more by taking pictures. People love to have their picture taken on a hearse or a coffin. Pickel advised against offering food at a haunted attraction.

It’s tough to find good employees, but people are cheaper than animatronics, which aren’t that scary and require an employee to run them anyway, he said.

The most important thing is to give customers what they want.

“They want you to scare them,” he said. “They want you to do whatever it takes.”