Haunted Attractions, also known as, Halloween Haunted Houses, are actually a one billion dollar industry in the United States. Last year, polls indicated that on average, nearly 19% of Americans including visiting a Haunted Attraction in their plans for celebrating Halloween!

To get an idea of how many haunts there are across the country, visit hauntedhouse.com and take a look at the haunt directory. I think you'll be impressed (not necessarily with Virginia - check out Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania for instance).

Many of us remember going to charity haunted houses when we were kids: Black plastic or sheets hanging from the ceilings, kindly looking volunteers and bored teenagers in jeans and masks saying boo. Spaghetti worms and grape eyeballs. I'm here to tell you that the haunted attraction industry has grown and matured tremendously since then.

In St. Louis, Sandi, Ryan, Nick and I had the opportunity to visit three professional haunted attractions, including The Darkness, which is over 40,000 square feet of fun, packed with scores of actors, the most amazingly detailed sets and state-of-the art animations.

Haunted Attractions are a very specialized form of theatrical entertainment, and consist of the same elements that make up a staged theatrical production: Actors, Sets, Props, Sound, Lighting and Special Effects. Like any specialty, haunt production comes with its own set of challenges in all of these areas.

Haunted Attraction Conventions allow professional haunters to converge and see the latest products and technology used to assist in creating the ideal haunted environment. Typically the show room floor is full of vendors displaying amazing animatronics, costumes, masks, props, special effects, illusions, show control devices and a host of supporting services for ticketing, insurance, advertising and the like.

In addition to the vendor displays, a series of seminars is presented by leading haunt operators covering a diverse set of business topics including safety, marketing, sponsorship, crowd control, event theming, actor training, attraction design, and product-specific demonstrations of lighting, sound and control systems.

As part of our new Central Virginia Haunted House Enthusiasts group, the four Transworld attendees from Blood Lake Haunted House plan to put together a presentation of the trends and concepts they saw at Transworld (and the upcoming National Haunters Convention in Pennsylvania). Our goal is to continue to build the fan base for haunted houses here in the Old Dominion.

If you like haunted houses or the horror genre, please add Blood Lake Haunted House on Facebook or join our CVHHE group, and invite your friends too! And if you haven't been to a haunted attraction in a while, give one a try this October.

Scott

---
Scott Bergman is the owner of Haunts of Richmond Ghost Tours and Blood Lake Haunted House in Richmond, VA

http://www.hauntsofrichmond.com

http://www.bloodlakeva.com

---