J.B.Corn's books on haunting are the most useful and accurate I have read on building and running a haunt. Philip Morris' How to Operate a Financially Successful Haunted House is a what got me started in this business. Michael Cruz's Field of Screams is a good solid event marketing book that gives you a plan to get people to your event.

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The triangle grid theory. Airbrush makeup. Sponsership. A really good theme followed from beginning to end. A lame theme followed from beginning to end.

The Pickel theory of haunting. Bad air props. Hanging plastic in between each scene. When your in a haunted basement and a train is coming at you from a dark hallway. Who has trains underneath their house?

I own, with a couple others, Into the Dark in Litchfield, Il. It is a small 5500 sq. foot attraction in the basement of an old Masonic lodge. We have dirt floors and 11 foot ceilings. We have an all underground theme and built caves in part of the attraction.

This will be our second year and we are going into it with a wealth of hard earned knowledge about the industry and operating a haunted attraction. This year we are focusing on acting, or actors, animations and our haunts infrastructure.

In our first year we made every mistake you can, all of the typical stuff that your warned about in every book and magazine on haunting. We read them, we knew the mistakes, and we made them anyway. Then we went "Oh yeah, that's what they meant."

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