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Check out my website at http://muddyriverhaunt.webs.com/
hi, my name is Stephanie and I've always loved Halloween. I started decorating my house at the age of 10 and it continued into creating my own Haunt. By 16, I constructed my own Haunted maze with over 8 individual rooms in a family member's backyard,seeing that I did not have enough space to work with at my place. I started making themes for each year and this love for everything spooky turned quickly into a sort of obsession. I am now 21 and still Haunting! I create everything myself (with help of course), I build my own props, I built an air-compressed animatronic for the first time 3 years ago and I now manage to put on a scary show with over 25 volunteers every year. I'm always looking to learn from the experienced haunters and continue to make my Haunt better and more professional-like every Halloween.
Last year (2009) We did THE DOLL FACTORY and it seemed to be a crowd favourite. We did not have as many TOTers as usual, only 900 in total, but it felt like a lot more since many people went through multiple times. I had 18 actors, dressed up and a total of 8 rooms...The sewing room, the makeup room, the assembly, caged room, burlap room, tailors office, storage room and shipping. This year was a great success. We raised $500 for QUAGGA, a local cat shelter! Thanks to everyone who donated.
In 2008, we did a pirate theme haunt, I did not build a large structure this year because of time issues. I am a full time student and I work, plus so many other commitments that I find it hard sometimes to put everything together. We still had about 500 people go through, without any advertisement and a change in location.
I had a good number of Trick-or-Treater seeing that I did not advertise at all and many people did not know that I would be doing anything this year. It was nice to do a small-scale Haunt since I could witness all the scares and really enjoy the whole Haunt (instead of being a part of only one room or one scene). Change is good!
In 2007, I had an Asylum theme, complete with 9 separate rooms, including a Waiting Room, a Check-In counter, obviously a Doctor's Office, a Criminally Insane hallway, a Surgery Room (you know there were chain-saws! and REAL ones too!!), a Solitary Confinement Chamber (and a Hannibal-looking actor! I love it!), a Freezer were we hang the bodies, and maybe some that are still alive, and a wicked Morgue Room. The structure was 25 by 60 feet, the walls are constructed with thick black poly so it is completely pitch black in there even during the day, and I had 23 actors dressed in full costume just waiting behind any corner! I had over 1 500 T.O.T, which is pretty much the limit for one night, we could not have jammed another body in the Haunt. It was an amazing night, I had a lot of press, 2 newspapers, 4 T.V channels and I put up many ads. We also raised over $800 for an animal shelter so I want to thank everyone who donated.
It was a great year!
Hope everyone had a great Halloween this year.
IDEAS IDEAS
In the future, I would like to possibly have a haunted house inside a hall/community club. I like the idea of renting out a large hall and building my haunt there every year. (avoiding problems such as weather, since I do live in Canada.)
I am interested in Haunters who have done this type of setup and their experience doing so!! Message me if you have ever done this or have tips....
Happy Haunting!
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Always nice to make a new friend!
