Thread: ever worked in a haunted house?

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I have worked in several over the past 15 years, mostly while in high school and college. I learned a lot from them, especially the one where i got to help design and build the haunt in the fall and do all the sound tracks for the rooms. If you have a few weekends in october to contribute at a volunteer haunt (or feel like putting up with the BS at a paid haunt) you can really learn a lot about prop construction, setting a scene, lighting, how to develop the right path for the audience to take, maximizing space, and you get to scare the crap out of people for several hours at a time!

The experience is invaluable and look at it this way, some places even pay you for it!

Helped with the HFWHH at the Horrorfind Conventions in '07 and '05, and that was a blast!
Wow, a lot of work, too!
We got there Thursday and Friday, built it Friday, ran it Friday night and Saturday, did a lights-on tour Sunday then tour it down and packed and headed home.
What a crazy weekend, only talking about the theme/rooms/props online and schlepping it all to Maryland from all over the country, setting it up and a couple of rehearsals, sound checks and BAM!
Loved it!

I did last year, was a blast, learned a lot and scared a lot of people!
Hope to do it again next year.

My wife and I volunteered for the first 13 years at St. Matthews Haunted House. The group would start meeting in the summer to discuss room designs and assign props to start working on. Come Oct. 1st (or first Saturday closest to Oct. 1st) we'd start setting up the walls in the gym and basically work each day until 10-11pm setting up (weekdays, we'd get there as soon as we got out of our regular jobs). Then working the house was always the best. Wouldn't have a voice left at the end of the night.... . Then on the last Sunday, we'd tear it all down and store the walls and some props in two trailers until next year.

I'd have to say my favorite room I did was the Roach Motel. I raised palmeto bugs for a year. The room was actually a black hallway with a arched lighted entrance saying "Roach Motel". The floor was raised a couple inches and clear plexiglass. I built 3 large lighted trays that each night I would fill with the roaches and slide underneath the floor. There was a photo beam to trigger the lights in the trays. So as people would enter through the arch into a dark hallway, once the photo beam was tripped, the floor would light up and they would look down to see several hundred large roaches crawling around under their feet! Then as the rounded the corner into another dark hallway, we had peanut shells on the floor so they would hear a nice crunching sound as they stepped.

Was a member of the local Jay-Cees organization and helped design, put together and worked for many years in their haunted houses. Had to stop once I hit 40. It was a blast and very rewarding, being able to be a part of it from start to finish. Oh the crazy afterhours of cleanup with beer under strobe lights! *sigh*