The Haunt: Finale!

     Okay, dear readers, the Haunted Library is finally over! So, as promised, I'm doing one more post about it, looking back on what I would (and likely will) do differently next year. Now, you may have heard the phrase "pics, or it didn't happen," as it turns out, none of us remembered this, so we have no proof that we ever performed this haunt. I have a few phone pictures of a few props being built, which I will put on a page HERE with the maze, but without pictures of everything installed in the library, I'll excuse your skepticism. As for the video I mentioned, It exists, but is really just five minutes of black with occasional flickers of faces and light. it's pretty lousy, so I've decided not to put it up.
     Now for the good news. On Friday, we put the haunted house up starting at about ten am, and finishing at about 5:10 pm. With a total of four actors in the haunt, we managed to scare the daylights out of a total of 378 guests, and earned as many dollars for the library to buy books with! Or, in other words, the Haunt was a huge success! While we didn't manage to get everything working that we wanted to, we put together enough of a haunt that people were going through more than once, and had a fantastic time.



     Now to talk about what worked, and what didn't. I'll go through room by room, and break it down for you. First of all, outside, we had guests wait in line, as "Lurch" greeted them, and took their tickets. Casey did a fantastic job as lurch, making great jokes about the unlikelihood of their return to the land of the living.
     Then guests are greeted by the gypsy, who stopped them a moment, and foretold grave danger in their future. Here was were the haunt taught us our first two lessons. One, guests will head toward whatever path seems most obvious. That is, behind the gypsy, they could see a well-lit pumpkin patch, and would instinctively head towards it. Rian had to make a lot of warnings about previous groups who had gone that way and not made it back, in order to guide the guests down the right path. The other thing we got from Rian as the gypsy was called the "Gypsy Blessing". Wherein, when a child started the haunt out too scared, she would wrap them in a scarf and grant them, protection from the monsters ahead of them. She'd shout the phrase Gypsy Blessing, and the monsters would know to go easy on the next group. It was a great idea, especially considering how many littler kids we had go through the haunt.
     After that was the entirely disappointing pepper's ghost. The problem with the pepper's ghost came from two things, the fact that we didn't have enough darkness around it,  and the fact that it was freestanding. The ghost stood on it's own stand, and we could see the edges of the glass, which ruined the effect, and with too much light, the reflection was very faint. Oops.
    Next was the vortex, another disappointment, but one that ended up working in another way. The vortex managed to have all of the fabric hung, and it became a creepy, narrow hallway of draped fabric. Unfortunately, we didn't manage to get the projector working on the vortex, so it was really just a long, dim hallway. What happened instead, was that shadows from the forest managed to splash colors and branches on one side of the hallway, creating a creepy effect. Another interesting thing that happened was that I was able to spook people from the outside of the tunnel using my shadow, and a good old fashioned shout.

     Then, at the end of the hall came the first real scare. My friend Brad came to the haunt, and brought a nice scary mask. Classic. when guests reached the end of the hall, he was hiding behind a small metal bookcase. he'd smash his hand on a shelf and leap out, scaring the pants off of just about everyone. It was a simple scare, but so effective that he literally knocked two kids flat on their backs, just with fear.
     Then guests moved into the cave, my favorite area of the haunt. We slung plastic low enough that children were okay, but their parents all had to duck to pass through, and hung string from the ceiling. The strings had an amazing amount of creep-out factor, tickling faces, and feeling down-right weird. The bubble wrap worked very well too, drawing attention downward, and helping people get spooked by the strings. The biggest downside of this room was that it didn't get dark enough to keep eyes from adjusting, and people could identify the bubble wrap.

     Next was the cave of mirrors, which was a fair bit of fun, because Rian painted some very cute eyes on the three tall mirrors, which ended up floating right on the faces of our guests. Then, while they are having fun staring at the mirrors, Brad would pop out behind them, and keep them moving again.
     The spider taught us another lesson. We needed to pay attention to where our guests' attention would be. Because they had passed through a room where the floor had tricked them, they were watching the floor, and many of them didn't notice that they were walking underneath a giant spider. We could also have avoided them missing it by getting the motion working, which unfortunately, I wasn't able to do. But, as they left that room, I would jump down from behind a wall and startle them, which kinda made up for the let-down that was the spider.

      Then guests moved into the forest, which was too brightly lit, but proved to be a lot of fun anyway. Across the middle of the hallway, we set a pair of tables, which, if we had had more time, we'd have put trees on top of. But since we ran out of time (more on that in a bit) we just left the bare tables. what was cool was that I managed to work that to my advantage, scaring people in there. I would follow guests, wearing zombie Makeup, and acting as intimidating as possible, and let them worry about me behind them. Then they would pass around the tables, thinking that they were safe from me. Then, i would leap onto the table and scream at them. It worked Fantastically.
Then they would round the low stone wall, and enter the pumpkin patch, where my dad, Weasel, would hand them a dum-dum lollipop, before they headed to the seance again.

     The biggest problem we had with the haunt was that we were under the impression that the library would have students in it until ten thirty am. So, we had to load everything in at ten thirty, and install everything as fast as possible. We ended up opening about ten minutes late, and we really rushed the lighting, and didn't get a lot of props installed. The classes all decided not to come in, but we didn't know until ten thirty, so we continued on with the original rushed plan.
     Next year, the plan is to start by loading in the day before, and hopefully have the walls up before we come in on Friday, giving us an entire day to do props and decorations, and setting aside about an hour for lighting, to make sure that everything is appropriately dark and spooky.

    Anyway, to sum up an entirely long post, I overestimated the amount of time we'd have in the haunt, expecting to be able to cram more in than we actually did. But, everyone had a good time, and we've learned more about how to make the process more efficient and spookier next year, so i'm calling it a win!
Happy Halloween Everyone!