Thread: Tell us how you became a Haunter! Tell us your story!

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Here is a small history of how we came to become haunters!

At MockingBird Drive Haunt, we (me and my lovely wife), have been haunting for 6 years, since we moved to Orleans (east part of Ottawa). Where we used to lived before (Gloucester, Ottawa, we had zero kids around and no one decorated. So, on Halloween night 2007, we simply bought 3 tombstones, a few lights and a hanging skeleton for our tree. A simple vampire and skeleton costume for me and my wife, and she spray painted a castle on a huge old used canvas as a background in our garage. That night, we got around 500 hundred kids, all amazed at our haunt and how scary it was. We were surprised at all this, being a huge horror and Halloween fans, we fell in love with Halloween that day. My wife, from Brazil, experience her first real Halloween that night too. So, the next year, we bought a few more props, even built a few on our own (not knowing sites like here did exist) and again, we got around the 500 mark.

The next year after, people started to call us "the Halloween house!" in the entire neighborhood. After that year, I manage to score lots of good props very cheap after Halloween. So, the 3rd year, we got even bigger. People asked us to contact the local newspapers and TV stations. Thinking we were still just doing this for the kids and never taking it very seriously, we laughed it off. But one night, we did for fun, and the next thing we know, we were on CTV and a local Newspaper did a interview with us http://www.orleansstar.ca/photo/Hall...heights-402965 (the pic it still there). But the coolest was yet to happen, on Halloween Eve, after my very sick wife, with the flu, picked me up from work at noon. I was in a very bad mood, as at work, they did Halloween contests, and I had won nothing, deemed too scary, including my cubicle. Being upset and exhausted, arriving home, I changed into my pajamas, made some hot soup for lunch and was ready to crash on the couch. Suddenly, my wife gives me the phone, telling me that we had a message from the 2nd biggest local TV channel (ACHANNEL Ottawa). We had been chosen as "Ottawa scariest House!" and won 1000$ in gift certificate for SPIRIT. I was sure she was joking, as no way, this was real. Yup, we did won, and we had only a few hours to come pick it up too. We got dressed, and drove back downtown, grabbed the prize, and drove directly to Spirit. The manager flipped out, not knowing anything about it. After a few moment, explaining what happened, we choose of course, all animatronics. That night, my wife passed out on the couch, I assembled all of the them, never dreaming of owning such amazing props, as we could never afford them on our own. This was the start of something new, as we just realised that Halloween, was never to be taken never again, lightly at our house.

Now, in 2011, we have now become one of the biggest Halloween in Ottawa (that we know off), tripling our haunt from last year. We have been again on CTV every year since 2009, also been this year in Ottawa's biggest newspaper, a huge 2 page splash, on Halloween's weekend edition. We expanded our haunt to the breaking point, with a huge front maze, a walk around the house, the entire backyard, including the deck, the garage changed into a spider room and a huge cemetery (a combination of 3 lawns).

Somethings I need to point out, all of the work, it's only just me and my wife alone, (and with some help from my best friend, David, when he could). Also, our budget is small, only a few hundred per year only. The secret of my expansion, I manage to score some amazing deals through out the year on "used sites", hunting stores for great deals, and scoring some entire haunts, for free!. As we reached our maxed storage capacity and size, we can only improve our haunt for next year. Also, our neighbors all expressed desires to be actors in our haunt for next year, as they had huge fun this year, messing with the kids in our haunt (L).

Sadly, all is not just fun and games, as this year, it was our lowest attendance, only the 200-250 kids came, the lowest we ever seen since we have been haunting. Also, I been in great pain, as I injured badly my back at the start of October. I am hoping to get better as soon as possible, as we have already have lots of new plans for the year 2012, on Mockingbird Drive Haunt!


here is my galleries at Halloween Forum
http://www.halloweenforum.com/member...or-albums.html

my youtube vids
http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?feature=mhee


I had the article in Ottawa's biggest newspaper, Also a vid they took of me in my basement, but my links don't work no more
(will see it another day...)

and here on CTV Ottawa tvchannel (3rd year they come!)
http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/loca...hub=OttawaHome
October 27, at 6:00 minutes in. This is the 3rd year they come. Always a blast.

now, it's your turn! I want to know of how you started your haunt!
JM

We lived in a first floor flat for the first two years of our marriage. We'd put out a couple jack o lantersn and got maybe 50-60 TOT's in our neighborhood. The first year we purchased our home, we had considerably more space to work with but we started small. I put a newspaper stuffed dummy on our foyer roof with a flood light on it. The neighborhood had more kids and we got some favorable comments on our "spooky guy". The following year I made three osb tombstones, painted them flat gray and hand lettered some cheesy epitaphs. Lit them with as green flood light and people thought it was pretty cool. I think the next year we bought a cardboard coffin from Halloween Express and I laid in it dressed as a vampire and scared the heck out of a lot of kids. This was probably the start of the haunt itself and we added more each year; more tombstones, a static stirring witch prop, some fake rats/bats and spiders. Our TOT numbers grew and we were starting to be known as the Halloween House (aren't we all!). I discovered this forum in 2003 and the flood gates of creativity and experimentation opened wide. Ditched the osb stones and started carving my own. Built a cemetery fence and columns, got into more realisitic lighting. Had some more money for some better props. The first walk through happened several years ago when we set up a small scene on our back patio and allowed guests to walk down our driveway, then turn around and walk back. As the numbers grew, so did the opportunities. The castle facade across the drive helped with crowd control, which by now had become a concern. It also allowed us to develop different back stories for each year. We expanded the haunt to include the garage and our back yard, with different scenes and scares. It's now a complete walk through. We had requests from friends of our kids to help work the haunt so we never had a shortage of helpers. We have now expanded as much as we can and build about 75% of our own props and scenes. We've gotten into basic animatronics and have really tried to focus on detailing certain scenes, which we find people really like. We now get between 600-700 visitors a year and it's become a big production for our family! We love it! I wish I had taken pics of our early years. What a contrast, but it's been fun growing Eerie Manor to what it is today and we have some neat plans for future years too!

Mama did it!!! Its all her fault for creating this lil demon seed of Halloween! Lol! Ever since I was a wee young chap, she would decorate and dress up like a witch, elvira or an evil queen! She also took me to all the "R" rated horror/slasher type movies which I totally loved! Just cover me lil eyes while blushing when the nasty scenes came on...

I would go trick or treating every year from the stroller all the way up to my tenth grade in high school. That was back in 1990 when I finally called it quits with TOTing and started haunting! My mom even passed down many decorations to me when I moved out at the age of 19 to start my new life! So it was grand in many aspects! I loved it all and was hooked beyond belief! Some called me weird, evil, crazy, psycho and the devil!!! I just bowed with honor saying, "Yep, I sure am and wouldn't change for nothing!"

So there you have it, my story and "Haunted Lifestyle" as I know it! One day I too shall pass this down to my kids which already have that sinister twitch come every October!

Happy Haunting to all, and to all a good fright!

My Mother, Her Mother, my Dad, my Aunts and Cousins all dressed "UP" for Halloween.
The free creative unlimited mental venues of expression as I saw in Halloween were always very inspiring to me and still are.
There was ONE Very Glaring Thing Wrong with Halloween though.. it only was a one-night holiday.
" Little jimmie" fixed that though as a 38 yr. old (almost) Adult when I bought then finally opened The Ravens Grin Inn, open now almost EVERY NIGHT approaching the 25 YEAR MARK!
Last night November 19th 2011, 8 people each paid me $13.oo to be inside my house. They drove from 50 to 100 miles away and I can honestly brag that they all had a real fun, stimulating 90 minutes as they were guided through my place by me , of course!
I have redefined Haunted entertainment somewhat here by doing what is on my mind and my agenda.(Life is too brief to waste it copying )
No Hollywood Monsters, no gore, buckets of Blood, butcher shop, no serial-killer's bedrooms, no hospital wards or asylums, rather a really old house with a definate haunting reputation and haunted history/Story, a house fulled with my ideas and strange artwork and ideas.
99% of the time I tell the haunted history of this house with a lot of attempted humor so as to not terrorize anyone .. and all of this seems to have been "working" now for all of these years since this has been my day and night "Job" now for .. 22years.

I have been collecting for years as a nightclub decorator. I had clients over the years throw Halloween parties, so i charged a fee, bought the props, expanded. That ended cause i couldn't deal with nightclubs any longer. Then as the creative director for a real estate company, we decided to do a Haunted Garden as a community event. This was our second year.

One summer night in 1995 a friend/neighbor complained that no one ever had a Halloween party. Since I've always enjoyed Halloween I volunteered to do it. We had a party with 10 friends and put up some of the lamest decorations except for one. I used newspaper to stuff some clothes and bought a foam skull to put in front of our organ. Sally covered him with webs, autumn leaves, spiders, a rubber mouse and a rubber snake which was my 3 year old sons toy. I also bought a bunch of colored bulbs and replaced all the lights in my house. We had a great time and even with the lame deco it just looked so cool. Okay maybe it was the alcohol because I've seen the pictures and it was lame.

So that started the annual event and of course every year we had to add a little bit more. The drive to get better came from my friends who would always say it's a shame the guy at the organ didn't look like he was playing it. Well it took me 4 years but I finally made him move. I used a motor from one of the kids electric cars and built this whacked out machine that would drive a spindle that would pull levers attached to fishing line to make the arms go up and down. I also added a bunch of bats and spiders in the living room that would do the same. It went over big even though all of the lines snapped by 3 hours in to the night. Everyone still appreaciated the work and were amazed by it.

Over the years I built a toe pincher, faux fireplace, electric chair....and bought lots of stuff....

I found the Hauntforum back in 2005 and it's been a great inspiration for me. Now I buy less and make more things myself. It was good to see that I wasn't the only crazy one.

I continue to do it for my friends and family who appreciate and are amazed by what we do.

My parents were always mild Halloween enthusiasts. Picking out pumpkins and costume patterns (mom always sewed ours) was a big deal, and we always had a yard filled with scattered, mismatched decorations. After I got married, my husband and I had a few very boring Halloweens in an apartment with no trick-or-treaters, and it was almost impossible to rally friends to go out in costume. I missed the awesome Halloween memories from my childhood, so I decided then and there that I would be the one to make Halloween happen. We bought our house two years ago and I was absolutely ecstatic to finally have a yard to decorate, even if it was only with a few floodlights and some hanging reapers and spiderwebs. With these humble beginnings, we were already "the good house", as so many of us are. The next step was to politely commandeer the neighborhood Halloween party (our neighbor and friend that had thrown it the last four years admitted that she really never liked doing it, and always half-assed the food and decorations). After a very successful first party filled with friends, family and neighbors, everyone declared that we were "in charge" of Halloween from then on. I joined this forum this several months ago, and I can't believe the creativity it has inspired. I have a prop/project list that will last me a very long time, and I look forward to slowly building our haunt for many years to come!

well it ties into my love of horror, when my grandma took me to the re-release midnight showing of f13 part 3d in 3d, i became obsessed. then at 12, with 4 measly strobe lights and a ton of ambition, i created a haunted trail for the kids in my neighborhood ( thank god i did it good and no parent sued, lol) then at ages 16-18 i redid it and had a ton of recongnition, mostly sheer good scares and not so good prop creativlty(sp). during my family moved and the new house didn't have the land, so i became a collector, got back into poster onesheet collecting and have been blessed to obtain some originals i thought i could never acheive to get.as my collecion my space in my room shrunk, Mt aunt then moved, at age 20. It took me a bit to get the big picture in my 18-19 years so i didn't attent collage. so now back at my Aunts, she has a huge bonus room, that has became my horror room, so while out of the haunt scene i was surrounded by horror, then my family joined this campground and i became the director of there haunt. found this site and the rest is history, though its hard to split my cash between my horror/fishing and new aquired haunt obesession fueled by this site.. well with the above, guess nobody would read my bio, lol though if you asked some of my family i am just weird becasue i breed ball pythons and my love horror is out of control,and was destined to happen. so i am destined for hell lol, but my breeding snakes, a hobby and hardly make over even, but if i do i put into haunting as well

ps, wrote on ipod, it my be a hard one sry

Early on I felt the special thrill of Halloween, my parents sort of got me into it early by dressing me up and taking me around the neighborhood when I was small. Then I learned to have fun over at friend's houses with cheesy rubber skeletons and horror records and things, and figured out that it was fun being spooky! I saw a couple of commercial haunted houses when I was small also, and this was thought-provoking. A love of monster movies and such provided a general enthusiasm. Then, in high school, I had a chance to get involved with a local March of Dimes haunted house (early 80's). This was a real doozy, a huge walk-through (still perhaps the largest single walk-through I ever saw, with dozens of themed areas...a story in itself, I assure you!). I picked up more tricks and ideas as time went on, worked on haunted houses from time to time, and decorated my own place. Always loved doing it, with whatever materials and tools there were available! Like so many here, I do it for the sheer love of it.

of course i am sure most of do it to feel the split second of time when we got it, the whole second were we feel like we were a child getting candy, or to re-live a special moment