SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: Legendary Haunt Tour

Okay, haunters! Here is the question: who will be attending this weekend's Legendary Haunt Tour?? This year, the Tour will be traveling around my home state of Ohio, visiting the top haunted houses across the state.

And I'm super stoked to announce that I have been given the chance to work the queue line at the world-famous Akron Haunted Schoolhouse & Laboratory for the event!! A HUGE thanks to Dave at the Schoolhouse for allowing me one more opportunity to stretch the Halloween season by another week and letting me get my haunt on just one more time this year.

I will find you...

This year's tour will be hitting The Dent Schoolhouse (please say hello to Pumpkin Smasher for me!), the U.S.S. Nightmare, The Factory of Terror, and the Haunted Schoolhouse & Laboratory. That's one heck of a lineup and tour goers are in for a great time at some incredible Ohio haunts!

If by chance you will be going, please be sure to find me at the Schoolhouse and say hi. I will be in the amazing, newly renovated queue line area, waiting for you in the shadows...

  

Ohio. The (Haunted) Heart Of It All.

So ask yourself this question. "If I could live anywhere in the U.S., where would I live?"

I bet your answer wasn't...Ohio.

And that's okay. We don't have the glitz and glamour of say, California, or the rugged mountainous beauty of say, Colorado, or even the warm tropical beaches of say, Florida.

But we do have one thing. And that is HAUNTS. Yep. Haunted Houses. We have more haunted houses than any other state in the country. Not Pennsylvania, not Texas, not even California. OHIO. And it's "official." We now have ONE HUNDRED THIRTY haunted attractions in the Buckeye State.

New survey finds Ohio leads nation in the number of Halloween haunts and attractions.

My local newspaper ran a story, picking up on The Scare Factor's state-by-state totals of haunted attractions, and Ohio once again came out on top. And while I have seen this list numerous times, I actually don't take a lot of stock on the numbers. But it is nice to live in a state with such an incredibly rich history of Halloween and haunted houses (it's a big part of why I still do what I do!). So take that, California!

Check out the entire article here. They have a nice writeup on why we have so many haunted houses and a list of the state's Top 10, although The Haunted Schoolhouse & Laboratory at number 10 is downright criminal. (And it's great to see them give a shout out to Highbury Cemetery friend Randy Skalos and his truly incredible home haunt, Haunt on Williams!)

Jaycee Haunted Houses 1975

There is nothing better for me than to get that warm, fuzzy feeling of Halloween days gone by. The nostalgia of my childhood trick-or-treating is something I reflect upon frequently when I now set up my annual yard haunt, trying to capture that magic to share with my neighborhood today.

Growing up, my parents took me to my first haunted house back in the early 80s, put on by a local Jaycee chapter in Parma, Ohio. By today's standards, it was pretty silly, but it was that moment that changed me forever! I HAD to go to other haunted houses!!

I came across this amazing video last year, but somehow never posted it. It's a mini documentary about those first haunted houses that were put on by local Jaycee chapters. It's a wonderful and hilarious look back at where the haunted house industry first got its start nearly 50 years ago.

If you're a fan of Halloween and haunted house history, this one will should give you the warm fuzzies, too. Enjoy!

The Must See Top 31 Haunts of 2017!

Another weekend is approaching fast, so why not make the most of a nice October night and attend a local haunted house?

Haunted Attraction Magazine has released its "31 Must See Haunts of 2017," and while there are a lot of seasoned, well-recognized names, there are also quite a few names that I haven't heard before.

Be sure to check the list and see if any of your local haunts made the list. I'm thrilled to see The Haunted Schoolhouse and Laboratory, a very local Akron, Ohio haunt now in its 44th year, made the list. But I'm also excited to see all the new names that would someday make one hell of a road trip! As it stands right now, I've only been to 3 on this list. How about you?

See the full list here.


  

My 2017 Begins

It was November 5th, and a thick, dense fog had set into my brain. I had just managed to put every last extension cord, costume, light, bin and prop back in its proper storing place and I was done. Drained empty. After an especially grueling 3 months of constant planning, late night building and hurried set-up for the big night, burnout had taken a firm hold of me. I had experienced it in years prior, but never to this extent. I barely wanted to think about Halloween. I knew what I had to do…

I had to put it all on the shelf. Leave it and not touch it for a while. Turn off the light and walk away. Besides, I still had a full Disney family vacation plus the yearly grind of the upcoming holiday season to get ready for. It would be nonstop, all the way through the end of the year.

Fast forward another 3 months. I made it through the vacation and the holidays with relative ease. I’ve also had time to focus on other hobbies and projects while clearing the mental clutter. This has allowed me the time to fully recharge my Halloween storage tank. A much-needed readjustment period.

So after the short, but vitally-important break, the craving to reimmerse myself into all things Halloween has returned. That spark of creativity that had dwindled to a flicker has been reignited.

I’m back, baby!


I hope everyone has had a nice, post-Halloween holiday season and is just as ready to dive back in as I am (if you haven’t already started!). To kick things off, I wanted to go over a couple of updates for Highbury Cemetery, 2017.

First, a few updates to the blog. The new icon is up on the menu to the right that will take you to the 2016 Halloween photos. Some decent pics of all the new props that were out on display.

Second, the text menu at the very top has (finally) changed. You can now go directly to the Highbury Cemetery YouTube Channel. There are a few videos up, but I have made it a priority to get more quality videos up in 2017, starting with my delayed 2016 haunt video. Truth be told, I wasn’t very happy with the photos or the video that were shot, so I ended up shelving the whole project (no Dead With Dave Home Haunter Awards for me this year!). I will be revisiting it in the coming weeks and will piece something together. I also hope to share some more videos of the novelty Halloween record and tape collection that I have amassed over the years. I currently have one up and it has received a lot of views and positive feedback.

And you will also notice a brand new link in the menu above. If you haven’t seen it on Pumpkinrot’s blog yet, I’m happy to announce my brand new Highbury Cemetery Instagram page. I’m pulling the best of the best of my Halloween-related photos and sharing them all in one spot. With the rich photo controls in Instagram, I can really create some wonderfully atmospheric Halloween images. Sorry, no lifeless selfies here…

A photo posted by Highbury Cemetery (@highbury_cemetery) on Jan 16, 2017 at 9:04am PST

A photo posted by Highbury Cemetery (@highbury_cemetery) on Jan 13, 2017 at 4:59pm PST

A photo posted by Highbury Cemetery (@highbury_cemetery) on Jan 13, 2017 at 4:52pm PST

A photo posted by Highbury Cemetery (@highbury_cemetery) on Jan 14, 2017 at 8:31am PST

Plus, with a new year comes new haunt ideas. I’m currently brainstorming a slew of new prop ideas as well as the cemetery-standard tombstones which I hope to churn out over the next 9 months. I’ll be documenting each new prop as it gets completed, as well as going back and giving a proper, thorough how-to on 2016’s enormous prop, the Walk-In Crypt.

And finally, I hope to be hitting the road a bit more in 2017. The Midwest Haunters Convention is a given, but I’m actually toying with the idea of getting to Transworld for the first time in March. Not much time to make a decision! Also, I hope to get out and visit more haunted attractions this fall. I hope to cross of the Dent Schoolhouse in Cincinnati, Erebus Haunted House in Pontiac, Michigan, and Hundred Acres Manor and The Scarehouse in Pittsburgh off of my Haunt Bucket List this year. I also hope to check out my local haunted house, the Haunted Schoolhouse and Laboratory, which will be starting it's 43rd season under new ownership. Ambitious, I know, but the Halloween spirit has been reawakened.

And it feels good to be back.

The Scare Factor's Haunted House Directory

I came across a cool new website yesterday - The Scare Factor - an updated online directory of all haunted attractions across the US and Canada. What a great resource! All haunts conveniently collected by state and reviewed in one location.

And who knew that my home state of Ohio was the hotspot with an incredible 95 haunts listed!?! I will definitely be using this site as a reference during the October haunt season this year. Time to start saving up now...