Beginner seeking advice from veteran haunters

[Jim Warfield]

Yes, Staff problems!

This season was the worst fore this.
Even though people carp about having not enough money, I had several normal seeming adults ask me to work here for those monetary reasons, then never even show up!??
$10.oo an hr. isn't enough?
Most of the work tasks here are not awfully demanding in my opinion but then I am the nut that did all this hard work and as I was doing it had people tell me I would be dropping dead from the work.
Nope.

[tchaunt]

You will probably find it hard to get cast people to show up on a regular basis just because you gave them party at the front end or conclusion of the haunt. If you are open for many nights, they will start to flake out on you unless there is some money reason why they HAVE to go. Perhaps you can tell whatever the charity that they must provide X amount of people or their % drops, so that their peers are applying pressure to get the cast there.

I'm always amazed how many people volunteer early on and how few actually show up. Homework, chores, errands, flat tires, angry girl friends, sickness, laziness and a million other excuses all come up. The more nights you are open, the bigger the problem. Plan for this and always overstaff, especially as the season drags on.

I kinda' expected some people would do that. Even just talking to three of my friends, I got a good example. The first kid basically said, "I would like to help you with a haunt." But on the first day, he was giving me great room ideas, but these ideas would cost hundreds of dollars to build.
The second kid seemed excited at first, but later on, she lost that fuel. She was in it for an hour, and then dropped.
The third person, who I thought would be most valuable to add to my team, said she wanted to help, but she never helped me with anything. She jsut sat there talking about Doctor Who and Torchwood.
I figured these three friends were a perfect example of what to expect later on in life when I do get a haunt started.

If I do a charity haunt (I still haven't decided which way I want to go), I will require a minimum of people to fill in that night. For every two slots not filled, the charity's percent will drop by 5%. But at the same time, that could turn out bad. They could end up giving me people to work with who had no experience, just to keep their money. I'm not sure how I'd do that. It could be difficult training people in jsut an hour on how to scare and teaching them the rules of scaring (I.e.: No touching visitors; No aggressive actions toward customers, even if hit/kicked by customers; Never stay within arm distance of a person any more than 5 seconds, preferably shorter; etc.).

This season was the worst fore this.
Even though people carp about having not enough money, I had several normal seeming adults ask me to work here for those monetary reasons, then never even show up!??
$10.oo an hr. isn't enough?
Most of the work tasks here are not awfully demanding in my opinion but then I am the nut that did all this hard work and as I was doing it had people tell me I would be dropping dead from the work.
Nope.

Heck, I would work at any haunt for that. I love haunts (even though I've never been to one). Getting money along with getting to scare people would be a bonus.

[Jim Warfield]

Room Ideas

Room ideas will cost several hundreds of dollars to make happen, unless all you do is turn out the lights.
This could work if you leave it dark and are a comanding storyteller, and if you can see in the dark, and if you are nimble footed and can seem to be in three places at once and if you don't tire easily, getting clumbsy falling on people and then getting chitt beat out of you by a granny.
Heck, sounds like you would only really need one room!

[tchaunt]

Room ideas will cost several hundreds of dollars to make happen, unless all you do is turn out the lights.
This could work if you leave it dark and are a comanding storyteller, and if you can see in the dark, and if you are nimble footed and can seem to be in three places at once and if you don't tire easily, getting clumbsy falling on people and then getting chitt beat out of you by a granny.
Heck, sounds like you would only really need one room!

I'll be lucky if I can do a home haunt this year. This kid was giving great ideas, but they would be far too expensive for the first few years. I saved his ideas, because they will be great to add when I have enough money. But here's one basic concept he was talking about, but the idea was never fully finished:
Build a structure that looks like a portion of roller-coaster tracks. Paint all walls, the floor, and ceiling pure black. There will be a section of black tracks (that will be virtually invisible in low-light conditions), and the regular tracks that from a 'Y' shape. The train (roller-coaster car) will 'fly off the rails' onto the black tracks. As the car approaches the wall, two fog machines go off. When the car triggers the motion sensor inside the hidden compartment, some explosion effect goes off. The car then gets pulled (by chain-lift) back to the hidden compartment at the start of the tracks.
The explosion is supposed to take place fairly close to the guests.

Honestly, a good actor/story teller could have an entire $12 haunted house set up in one room. It would be harder to please a lot of customers (low through-put) but it could really work out.

[Jim Warfield]

Mud Versus Diamonds

Mud is pretty common, diamonds are much more rare.
250 people well entertained and impressed versus 600 people of which 25 were entertained and 575 forget that they were ever there.
"Yah! But I got their money!"
Will they be back next time?
Hollywood actors and other entertainers will be hailed and thought of as "An Overnight Success!", then read about the last 15 years they spent practising their craft. 15 years makes a long "night" by most people's life-expectantcys.
Very few jump right into anything and become or see a huge success.
When it comes to big successes most are built from a series of small ones, all put together over time.
As you struggle to figure things out it might be better to have smaller audiences to better mask those early novice attempts.
Most of us only really learn important things by "Doing", get "doing", it makes the successful future happen, someday.
When I began leading people through my house 21 years ago, I didn't have a clue......of course I sort of made this work in my favor.
HAHAHAHA!

[Mike Goff]

To some degree, the quality of your show, and the amount of customers you can send through are inversely proprotional. To increase one, you must sacrifice the other. The better your show is, the more people will come and the more you will have to remove bottlenecks and long dramatic scenes. It can be a vicious cycle, and some haunters become a victim of thier own success. If you get a sudden increase in traffic, more than your show can handle, the whole machine can fall apart. When a show is pushed to it's limit, it doesn't take much to tumble the house of cards.
Imagine the buisiest night of your haunting career, you have so many people that your actors are exausted, and dropping like flies. Your scenes are cluttered with customers walking heal to toe. Your customers get aggitated for waiting in such a long line, only to get a second rate show, because the group in front of them triggered all the scares before they got there.
There are ways to combat this, raising your ticket price can slow down traffic to a managable rate. When you get to this point maintaining your show quality can get very tricky, and very expensive. You will push your creativity to it's limit.
For now, I would advise you to build the best show that you possibly can for the amount of traffic that you expect. Big crowds will come when you are ready for them.

[tchaunt]

Mud is pretty common, diamonds are much more rare.
250 people well entertained and impressed versus 600 people of which 25 were entertained and 575 forget that they were ever there.
"Yah! But I got their money!"
Will they be back next time?
Hollywood actors and other entertainers will be hailed and thought of as "An Overnight Success!", then read about the last 15 years they spent practising their craft. 15 years makes a long "night" by most people's life-expectantcys.
Very few jump right into anything and become or see a huge success.
When it comes to big successes most are built from a series of small ones, all put together over time.
As you struggle to figure things out it might be better to have smaller audiences to better mask those early novice attempts.
Most of us only really learn important things by "Doing", get "doing", it makes the successful future happen, someday.
When I began leading people through my house 21 years ago, I didn't have a clue......of course I sort of made this work in my favor.
HAHAHAHA!

I assume the first example was in response to the one-room-haunt thing and me saying the through-put would be low. I do see what you mean. But honestly, if the show/story was good, people would tell people about your haunt, who would then go and tell more people about it. If it was truly like a treasure, then the lines could end up being pretty massive. Instead of being a ticket-for-entry style haunt, it would have to be more of a reserve-tickets kind of haunt.......if that makes any sense.

I realized (much to my dismay) that you have to start out with a severed head being your main prop with a few black-lights being the most expensive special effects. But before I even start that, I want to know what to expect when I do try to go "pro" (for charity or for money). That way, I won't by 5,000 sq. ft. of thin black material for walls. I'll start by maybe using it the first year and then the next, I'd start to buy/make wall panels out of treated plywood.

To some degree, the quality of your show, and the amount of customers you can send through are inversely proprotional. To increase one, you must sacrifice the other. The better your show is, the more people will come and the more you will have to remove bottlenecks and long dramatic scenes. It can be a vicious cycle, and some haunters become a victim of thier own success. If you get a sudden increase in traffic, more than your show can handle, the whole machine can fall apart. When a show is pushed to it's limit, it doesn't take much to tumble the house of cards.
Imagine the buisiest night of your haunting career, you have so many people that your actors are exausted, and dropping like flies. Your scenes are cluttered with customers walking heal to toe. Your customers get aggitated for waiting in such a long line, only to get a second rate show, because the group in front of them triggered all the scares before they got there.
There are ways to combat this, raising your ticket price can slow down traffic to a managable rate. When you get to this point maintaining your show quality can get very tricky, and very expensive. You will push your creativity to it's limit.
For now, I would advise you to build the best show that you possibly can for the amount of traffic that you expect. Big crowds will come when you are ready for them.

I do see what you're saying, and it makes sense. But for me, I don't have to worry about through-puts for a while. I don't even have a home haunt yet. I'm jsut trying to get my toes wet before I dive in to the whole haunt industry. (Refer to reply to Jim's message)

[Mike Goff]

It is very refreshing to see a 13 year old appreciate the importance of knowing an industry, before venturing into a buisiness or hobby. This alone demonstrates that you will probably go very far, no matter what you do. It is also important to know your market, and know your customer.

Your market is the area that you will be operating. Some markets are quite tolerant of varied degreas of Halloween celebration, others are not. Some markets will not blink an eye at a $10-$20 ticket price, while others would be offended by anything over $5.

Pick an age group of customer and know them. I've seen haunts that attract 8 and 9 year olds, 40 year olds, and everything in between. What is cool to a 40 year old, probably won't be for an 18 year old. Know this and understand it. The 40 year old will probably tell you diffferent, but as long as you know, there is no harm done.

BTW I've seen some first and second year home haunts line them up around the block, don't sell yourself short. Be realistic about your goals, but NEVER impose limits on the possibilites. I think that the biggest and best attractions in the country are ran by people who know no limits to possibilities.

[Jim Warfield]

That complete show.

Walls, floorspace, displays, but then what about showmanship?
A very difficult thing to accurately define or teach. Figuring out the things that people will be entertained by before even you know what those items are because you are going with the flow of stimulation emitted by the customers?
Sure it happens all the time, once you overcome any sort of mind-locking stage fright.
A performance is like an anthletic performance like throwing then catching a ball. If you are throwing but there is no one there to catch, then you will have more difficulty figuring this all out .
Responding to overwhelming positive responses can be as debillitating as a very negative responses.
We all have gotten such things in varying degrees.
As far a having to have a severed head as your first prop?
Steven King wrote something like terror is more that dark at the top of the stairs, rather than seeing something that we can then degrade and diminish once we see it and define it and explore it's weaknesses.
Have the severed head on a poster, mention it , become obsessed with showing to everyone like you are on a nutcase mission to do just that, get them all worked up, then the lights go out for 5 seconds screams are heard but the head is never shown....they will be looking for it for the next time they come back.
Keeping the mystery can keep them remembering it and returning.

[tchaunt]

It is very refreshing to see a 13 year old appreciate the importance of knowing an industry, before venturing into a buisiness or hobby. This alone demonstrates that you will probably go very far, no matter what you do. It is also important to know your market, and know your customer.

Your market is the area that you will be operating. Some markets are quite tolerant of varied degreas of Halloween celebration, others are not. Some markets will not blink an eye at a $10-$20 ticket price, while others would be offended by anything over $5.

Pick an age group of customer and know them. I've seen haunts that attract 8 and 9 year olds, 40 year olds, and everything in between. What is cool to a 40 year old, probably won't be for an 18 year old. Know this and understand it. The 40 year old will probably tell you diffferent, but as long as you know, there is no harm done.

BTW I've seen some first and second year home haunts line them up around the block, don't sell yourself short. Be realistic about your goals, but NEVER impose limits on the possibilites. I think that the biggest and best attractions in the country are ran by people who know no limits to possibilities.

Thanks for the compliment.
Honestly, right now, I probably couldn't pull off even a small home haunt. I am still rampaging through sites and free e-books all across the internet. I have the basic knowledge it takes to be an okay-scare actor. I could easily make all the rules for the haunt. As far as building the haunt, I'm not ready yet. I don't want to dive in yet, because I really don't know all-that-much about the specifics of haunting. For instance, I don't know:
-What system is best for playing ambiance music.
-How to trigger props/lighting to come on.
-How to use a control board to do this, that, and the other.
-Where to get an affordable fog machine that doesn't overheat in 20 seconds (like the crappy one I got from Kroger's does)
-What to make wall panels out of.
Those are just a few of my questions. Hopefully, I will get Kelly's book tomorrow. I ordered it on Christmas Eve, so I figured Monday would be the earliest I'd get it. I pray that the book has some of those answers in it. If not, it's going to be a long 3-months of questions.

I'm not even 100% sure (probably about 85% right now) on how to set up rooms to maximize the opportunities for enhanced scares. I have never went to a haunt in my life. I didn't go to any when I was little because I got scared easily. I don't go to any local haunts now, because they should've been shut down a LONG time ago. They do all sorts of flat of stupid stuff around my area. There is one haunt where you crawl through a small tunnel that's maybe 3 feet wide and really short. I think you can already see what's wrong with this. The sad thing is, that's just one thing I've heard about local haunts that I would never do.

Walls, floorspace, displays, but then what about showmanship?
A very difficult thing to accurately define or teach. Figuring out the things that people will be entertained by before even you know what those items are because you are going with the flow of stimulation emitted by the customers?
Sure it happens all the time, once you overcome any sort of mind-locking stage fright.
A performance is like an anthletic performance like throwing then catching a ball. If you are throwing but there is no one there to catch, then you will have more difficulty figuring this all out .
Responding to overwhelming positive responses can be as debillitating as a very negative responses.
We all have gotten such things in varying degrees.
As far a having to have a severed head as your first prop?
Steven King wrote something like terror is more that dark at the top of the stairs, rather than seeing something that we can then degrade and diminish once we see it and define it and explore it's weaknesses.
Have the severed head on a poster, mention it , become obsessed with showing to everyone like you are on a nutcase mission to do just that, get them all worked up, then the lights go out for 5 seconds screams are heard but the head is never shown....they will be looking for it for the next time they come back.
Keeping the mystery can keep them remembering it and returning.

I just mentioned, for my first year, the most expensive prop I could afford would be a $12 severed head (probably from Big Lots). I just worded it weird when I said it first. To be honest, for my first year, I will probably just have a few of my friends scare act (after I teach them the rules, of course) in some scenes. I will also attempt to build a few illusion scares......I've been trying to figure out 'Spinal Tap' from the Headless Horseman Haunted Hayride's 'o6 season (the one where the theme was The Black Spider Shideshow--the one featured on Travel Channel's show Halloween's Most Extreme or something like that). I recorded the episode the second time I saw it. I then did frame-by-frame on my tv as I dug my nose into the screen trying to see how it was built. I have figured out most of it, I just can't figure out how to put mirrors in there (because the dude said something about mirrors).

I don't know if you remember our chat about the 'Dot Room' earlier this week, but I had a dream about a way to adapt it (yes.....I dream about haunted houses). Here's what I came up with:
Paint all the walls, the floor, and the ceiling white. Have the actors dress in black out suits. Have actors wear the blank, white masks. The lighting should be really low (just enough to notice the masks). When guests walk back, the actor should dart across the room.
Just a basic idea I came up with last night (I take credit for it even though I didn't directly make it [I dreamt it, so I did and didn't think of it]).

[Greg Chrise]

After walls, coffins, showmanship comes who will come to the party and how will they know when and where?

Even at age 13 you can be a millionare, if you indeed find a sponsor of proper age. Obviously the problem is raising funds, getting people intrested and having it all come together years down the road. Even for those of age, there are many years that go by before anything comes together so you just have a head start. Perhaps even a few resources others don't have like unregulated person to person inviting to an event on school grounds. There must be a proper way to invite people and not get into trouble you may need to investigate like the bill board if they have one or following to surrounding areas where other kids hang out.

Keep you blog going no matter how mundane you might think it is, lots of people are very interested in your opinion and progress. Have a MySpace page for the haunt and perhaps use this to get each and every school kid on your friends list as well as anyone invoved in the haunts Myspace pages. When the time is right you can put out a bulletin that "It is on"

Make a schedual to spend only so many hours a week on these dysfunctional things and don't requote everything on the forums to respond to to save time for yourself and everyone else reading. Only school teachers do that kind of stuff.

To raise some funds, sign up for some affiliate programs for selling costumes or props for Halloween home decor and have that on your blog for people to possibly buy and you get a small percentage of the sale. I know of a 14 year old with a blog that got noticed as being enterprising by a news paper and a bunch of pro bloggers made his liks go everywhere to inform everyone about it. He got so many hits he made well over $2,000 in one weekend while his original goal was to make that in a year at $6 a day. Then he screwed up and quit having reached his goal.

Focus on doing things in a manner that don't take money like creating your displays from dumpster finds and what has been put out for trash combined with ingenuity and Used or dollar store paint. Walk into anywhere that sells paint and ask for the mistakes. Learn how to mix the colors together to come up with something scary looking.

Figure out where to store you stuff that you have made. Maybe it is a small club of people that must somehow raise $10 each to pay rent on a storage unit that costs $30 to $50 per month. Figure out how to haul serious quantities of crap around by bicycle and wagon. Take bicycle dumpster alley cruises wih everyone involved and make stuff out of nothing. Don't eat anything out of there. You'll have plenty of time later in life for that. (just kidding)

Become a bargain shopper. Many of the stores that sell Halloween stuff have rooms in the back that they keep hidden for the next year and if approached might sell things at 50% off just like the day after Halloween. Every day is Halloween.

Walking around and riding bicycles is how you find stuff everyone else whizzing by in cars never sees and never gets to ask about. For every member in your group is another area to find things some might consider junk but, are in fact the raw materials you need.

Not being of legal age, think the other way around. You are going to have a Halloween gathering that happens to include a small haunted house and lots of decorations. Lots of older folk don't know what a haunted house is or why you would want to act out psychotic behavior like that. It has fun mid way type games for $1 and general hanging out. All a place people can come that is anti drug, anti alchohol and anti meet all the neighborhood preditors hoping the candy isn't poisoned.

Join forces with other unofficial clubs of your age group. It might be 5 guys that screw around with bicycles or 10 people that all get together and listen to music. Each of them has their own little network and resources to bring to the party. Everyone must know be personally invited to help or attend and be updated electronically. Secret text messages?

Thinking a little big, it might be an event in an open field type city park that is in and out in 3 hours. With proper permission of course but, very low fees to reserve an awning covered picnic area. Think like Teenaged Mutant Ninja Gypsy haunters. Everything gets set up in hours, there is a gathering with things to experience and then everything disappears. Not really walls and 2400 SF, more like a bicycle rodeo and props on shoping carts.

Perhaps other events can be used to draw people like the spectical of soap box derby coffin races? Then VIP's are determined as they actually have $2 in their pocket and this lets them get a map to the secret haunted house the authorities don't know about. They get to study the map, they don't get to keep it, so it doesn't fall into the hands of the enemy or the authorities. A bicycle limosine might take them there.

Maybe it is all based off of a bicycle event, a competition to decorate your bike for Halloween, a judged event. Everyone entering for a trophy must put up and entry fee.

Raise funds by having a car wash expecting a $5 donation per car. You might be able to buy a fall guy who is over 18 for $100. Until then the game is to spend the next 5 years gathering as many potential customers that also will magically get jobs and have money by the time you go legit and build as much crap as possible. Every year all fresh new decor that the combined 5 years of built props and collected costumes WILL outfit a 2400 SF haunt.

There you go with some ideas. Try not to get busted where you are forced to do with out a telephone or internet connection until you are 21 or have your parents fined somehow.

I will disavow any knowledge of you or your Mission Impossible team. This forum post will self destruct in 5 minutes.

[Dr. Giggles]

I have something to say i noticed you said you almost had the knowledge to be an OK scare actor. Why do your limmit yourself? This is what i want to know, this is what limit possible greats to be mediocre actors. I have been acting in haunted houses for about 8 years but i had 6+ years of drama under my belt before that so getting into a chracter and showing the patrons what really makes me gnash my teeth almost came as second nature to me but no knowledge anyone can tell you or you will read will prepare you for what will happen or will teach you what to do when you don your first costume, make your first grown man cry and so on. I know im kind of rambling but yes experience you will learn how to scare people with a look, a stance, a well placed garbled growl, you will learn how to get under their skin make them WANT to physically be somewhere else. You will get punched and you will keep going and possible bleed on the fellow that punched you for a scare. This is the life of the haunted actor and i love it, all of it, so when you say you know enoiugh to be an OK scare actor it gets to me because judging by what iv read and all this you seem really passionate about it and thats all you need. I know once again im rambling so yeah
*Steps down from soap box*
Haha

[tchaunt]

@ Greg:
Uh........just wondering, what would get me busted so bad that I couldn't the internet? I'll ask you that way I don't have to figure out.

Also, about the quote thing, I just usually do that to help people know who I'm replying to (in case multiple people have posted since I was last on).

I will do my best to keep my blog going. For me, nothing is more annoying than any website where the last update was made four years ago. In my opinion, a website like that should be took off the web. Sadly, I will have to stick to anything beside Myspace (my mom is the in-school suspension [AKA A-room] teacher so she hears the worst of the worst cases on myspace. Basically, my mom doesn't hear the good things about Myspace, so she has banned me from it). I'm just wondering, do you think it would work if I made my own social networking website just for my haunt?

Could you mention a few of those affiliate programs? I haven't heard of that type of program before (just for costumes) and I would be more than happy to try it out.

I live in a small city (Campbellsville, KY), so we don't have many building projects that go on. I'd be lucky to find a opossum hide in the garbage. Actually, on second thought, that would make a pretty realistic prop!

I do have one thing to my advantage.......my parents own a 2 1/2 car garage.........and they never use the 2nd car or the 1/2 car (I guess that would be a motorbike or something). That translates into, I have plenty of space until it's time for college.

I did manage to get a $125 fog machine for $25 one time. Sadly, it overheats pretty quick. It can output fog for 2 minutes for every 5 minutes of downtime. I works for parties, but probably won't be too good for a haunt.

It would be nice to have a party like that, but most kids my age are going through the 'My $#!t is better than you, so I'll rub it in your face' stage where they think they are even better everyone. I don't think they would be able to handle a party very well. I'd probably have to do something like, form a secret society that meets in my garage once a month or something. I would watch people closely to see if they could handle working with a haunt. If they aren't arrogant, rude, and trouble makers who seem to love scaring people, I'd probably invite them to sit in on a meeting. If they seem interested, I could invite them to join the club. Then, after I get quite a few members, we may start promoting ourselves.

What in the world is 2400 SF?

To build local buzz about our haunt, maybe we could write an article for the newspaper that can also be posted on our blog like the following:
'Nearly everyone in our small, rural town celebrates Halloween. It provides a time where we can express our dark side without being scolded by our parents. But our town lacks something that many towns have...a haunted house. Within the next year, we are planning to open a haunted house. Due to the costs, the haunt will start small and work its way up to being the thing everyone knows Campbellsville for. But we need your help to get started. Let us work our way into your minds. Let us corrupt the last drop of hope left in your dark, twisted mind. Let us scare you into believing that death may be more enjoyable than the mockery of life. Let us rip the nightmares from your restless nights and inflict the horror upon the world. Design a room based on your fears. Clowns, spiders, not being in control...anything will work. We ask that with your entry, you provide a small donation of $5. Though it is not required, your donation could help build the winning room. Your room. The most creative and original room will receive a free ticket to the haunt. But it won't be an ordinary ticket, it will be a VIP Party pass! That's right, you and two of your friends will get to be the FIRST people to go through the fresh, new haunt. If we manage to get over $150 in donations, the winning room may even be featured in the haunt. So enter your design today for your chances to win!'
I could provide a website where they could upload the picture/text document. Do you think that would help promote the haunt?

And just wondering, do you think that selling crap on ebay (like q-tips and air guitars) will help raise money? Or have they banned that by now?

Thanks for all the ideas!

@Everyone:
I just realized that this thread is longer than all the other threads I've seen in this forum. So I'd like to thank everyone who has helped me so far! I hope this thread will continue to grow.

[tchaunt]

@Dr. Giggles:
I say I have what it takes to be an ok scare actor because I haven't got to act yet. I'll go into my first night with the mindset of being a perfect actor and when I come out of it, I can then say whether I am a good/amazing actor. I will critique myself and improve. From what I've read from a few articles, the best way to learn how to scare is to just do it. So I don't want to sound arrogant and start ranting about my skills that I don't even know if I have yet.
(Wow. I was replying to the first or second sentence when I typed the above. I didn't even read the whole thing and it sounded like you were backing up my opinion! )

Also, I would like to say thanks for handling that like an adult. I have been a member of some forums/communities where, if someone has a different opinion than you, they will start cussing you out and acting like a stupid little middle-school student. And yes, I do realize I'm in middle school, but I am probably the most mature kid in my school. Honestly, I hate how so many people think that they are better than you and that they can stomp around.
When I start my haunt, I'm sure the preps who have mocked me for so long will come as long as they don't know who owns the haunt. But as soon as I see them, I'll go into overdrive. If I have to, I'll cut myself to scare the crap out of them. If I'm lucky, they'll be the first customers and get me in the mood!

The funny thing is, a year ago, I told one of my friends about wanting to start a haunt. He then told one of his friends (who is a snobby prep) about it. The prep was saying harsh comments like, 'My god! He's stupid! He couldn't do that if he wanted to!'. When that one kid walks through, I'll sneak up behind him and quietly hiss 'I did it. Now I'm no longer your victim of bitter attack. You're in my house, and I'm going to make it your Hell!' I'm getting that high feeling right now just thinking about it!
And I just realized that one thing reminded me of something else, which reminded me of something else. So I kinda' ranted on and on.

@Everyone:
Thank you everyone for helping me achieve my dream!! I wish there was something I could do for all members of Haunt World for being so nice to me and helping me!

[Greg Chrise]

Just do a google search on "Halloween Affiliate Programs"

SF stands for Square Feet, Square Foot or San Fransisco.

I'm not sure what gets people caught and busted these days? Having 20 computers in your closet all emailing people about your Halloween intentions? Each one asking for $1 contribution adding up to a gazzilion hits per second?
Or selling things that don't exist or that you don't own on Ebay?

The 1/2 garage would be for either a golf cart or a riding lawn mower. It sounds upscale to me.

There are freind like functions for your existing blog like MyBlogLog or Linked in, Grouply etc. You will have to look at blogs like yours to see what is being used normally. Myspace would be similar only a more widely used service. Generally kids your age aren't into making money on line social widgets so you would have to cultivate each one personally like a guest book or an email invite.

This would be better actually as it doesn't expose everyone to all the strange adults on Myspace.