Thread: Have you ever said, "Never Again?"

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C'mon, now, 'fess up. Anybody who's been doing this for awhile has made some major blunder, either with a prop or a scenario that they regretted.

For me, it was our "Beelzebub Room".

I hooked up with a guy who raised Blow Flies and Blue Bottles for live bait, the Pet Trade and for Horticulturalists who needed pollinating insects in Greenhouses. He was areal afficionado, had it down to a Science. Three days before the Big Event, he gave me five trays containing around to 2,500 pupating larvae. We were to turn on the Heat Lamps 24 hours before we wanted them to hatch. Well, idiot that I am, I kept them in the Furnace Room. Yep, they hatched early, about 8:00 PM on the 30th. The buzzing was freakish and kept the kids awake, they spent that night at friends' houses. And then there was the smell. These things need to eat, if they don't, they die like, well, Flies. Of course they feed on decaying flesh and fecal matter. Oh, the wife was CRAZY about that.

So just before the Big Event we released them into the "Lord of the Flies" Room. Beelzebub was a 7' tall animatronic puppet that turned his head and lunged forward. The flies looked awesome, iridescent bodies under Black Lighting. The air was thick with them. Too thick. I had prepared a 20 second spiel about how Beelzebub had "risen up from the Underworld to reunite the Philistines". Yeah, right. You couldn't even open your mouth, the flies went straight down your throat. They went for your eyes, your ears, your crotch, it was almost unbearable. The guys from the TV Crews flat refused to go inside.
Because the flies were so bad, we ended up running right through Beelzebub's Room, from the Werewolf Cage right through into the Mad Scientist's Lab. Even moving straight through we had kids, teenaged girls screaming and crying, hysterical, breaking right down. Parents were cursing. To make matter worse, the fool who gave me the flies had mistakenly given me a tray of Deer Flies, and boy, could they bite!
My "Air Locks", doubled Curtains at either end of the Room, couldn't contain the flies. A big horde would escape with each group going through. By 10:30, we were down to about 300 listless flies, the rest were either dead on the floor or buzzing around the basement. That night we left all the basement doors and windows open, and made a run down to 7-11 for six cans of "Raid". The next morning was Garbage Day. I met our neighbor, Old Bob, taking out the trash. He said that his trash cans had been just COVERED with flies, he'd never seen anything like it.

Yeppers, never again.

I worked for an Iranian guy who was selling products off the books and funneling the money thru London back to Iran.

I told myself after that...never again. :-/

I swear that was the greatest story I have EVER heard about Halloween...

I am still laughing...

but yunno, great idea if it would have worked.

Melty

Wolfman , i had chills just thinking of the flies everywhere yuck ...lol ....that is one phobia i have : a room with bugs like that all over ......isssshhhh...but great story

OMG...I am at my desk at work cracking up. That hassss to be one of the funniest stories I've EVER heard!!!! Still laughing...you poor thing! Bet your wife still brings that one up...I sure would!

Like a lot of things in Life, the Fly Room seemed like "a good idea at the time". But, surely, some of you have stories of similar fiascoes. There are a lot of new Members here at HalloweenForum.com, let's not allow them to them make the same mistakes that we pioneers did.

Wolf, we have a "mosquito" room about every other year. Those years when the temperatures don't drop and we have plenty of rain... those suckers will fly in and carry off the citronella torches themselves.

I moved my party to Nov. 5th a couple years ago because of a Hurricane, and we ended up with only 1/2 a dozen people showing up! I was soooo pissed!

I mean, the Halloween stuff was all dirt cheap, everyone could have bought costumes and not even sweated it!

I had changed the date around 5 days before the party (which was to be the Saturday BEFORE Halloween) so everyone at work knew and anyone else was easily emailed. They all said, no prob, they'd be there.

And then, the Hurricane (we live in FL and had had a few that year, 2005) goes and turns so we only got some rain and it didn't even rain on the party night, just a light sprinkle early in the day!

I said that was my last party! But of course I had one last year and am planning this year's!

Ish - because we KNOW some people will show up without costumes (you know the type), we keep a bin of masks and costumes out on party night for them.

That's funny as hell