Revenue screams: Cashing in on zombies and clowns

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OKLAHOMA CITY – Chainsaw-wielding maniacs? Zombies apocalypse? Clowns springing out of portable toilets?

No sweat, said Trey Bishop, operator of the Asylum in Nowata. He’s inured to blood and guts. What’s really scary is not having a haunted property leased well before September to open for Halloween fright-seekers.

“I used to do temporary locations from season to season a long time ago. Honestly? That’s not very fun,” Bishop said.

Bishop has owned his own building since 2011, expanding the Asylum’s horrors to meet demand each year. Even in far northeast Oklahoma, Bishop said he attracts thousands from Tulsa, Oklahoma City and out of state as far away as Salt Lake City, Utah.

Bishop will open his commercial haunt over the last weekend of September, as is customary for the industry, according to Brett Molitor, vice president of the national Haunted Attraction Association. The holiday season for haunts seems to be creeping earlier, Molitor said, with more operations opening by mid-September and even a few as early as Labor Day.

Molitor said that, like Bishop, most commercial haunters quickly learn that it’s better to have their own space than try to rent something, primarily for customer safety. Molitor runs two attractions of his own in Indiana.

“It’s difficult to find a place and make sure you’re up to fire code enforcement each time you move,” Molitor said.

Local officials tend to be concerned about fire sprinklers, solid building construction and easy emergency egress, not so much about the condition of chainsaws and guillotines, he said. A few years ago, the industry developed its own CHAOS program to establish Certified Honest Attraction Operating Safety standards via professional development classes and certification.

Professional haunted site operators want to keep their customers alive, healthy and happy, he said and, aside from arranging body parts, training werewolves and designing mazes, HAA members need a lot of time to let carpenters make serious repairs with real tools.

Construction hasn’t been much of a problem for Justin McCracken’s haunt in Cache. The owner of McCracken Portable Toilets & Septic arranged his stalls into a labyrinth for visitors to navigate while being stalked by clowns. McCracken said he’s looking forward to playing the part of a terror he calls Spooky Dooky Baby Clown, a name that’s largely self-explanatory. Suffice to say the characterization involves a horrifyingly soiled diaper.

Proceeds from McCracken’s Scareport on Airport – so branded because it sits on an abandoned airfield – will be donated to benefit the high school sports booster club. The concept has proven surprisingly attractive to residents of southwest rural Oklahoma, he said, with strong attendance growth each year.

Coulrophobia, or the fear of clowns, is still a common element of commercial haunts, as is the fear of hockey masks, dismemberment and torture. However, zombies have been trending strong for the last decade, Molitor said. Some HAA designers are experimenting with dinosaurs this year, he said, “although I don’t know what the attraction there would be.”

An even bigger trend now is heightened interactivity as haunts set up axe-throwing ranges for visitors outside their main attractions or arm them with paintball guns to shoot at costumed actors. Commercial escape rooms, which lock customers together until they solve a series of puzzles, are being converted to Halloween themes as well, effectively making them micro-haunts.

At the Newcastle Nightmare, Daniel Schuldt has turned the property equation upside down. He owns the field where he runs a haunted forest trail and zombie-shooting adventure and leases the unused space during the rest of the year to paintball sports enthusiasts. The zombie hunt, which he advertises by driving a pickup truck with a cage mounted in the back for infected humans, involves a trailer mounted with paintball guns. Riders get to snipe at zombie actors as they lumber toward the vehicle.

Customer engagement grew organically at Guthrie Haunts ScareGrounds, owner John Pagonis said. Each year the north Oklahoma City metro attraction holds a swap meet the week before grand opening. It was originally an opportunity to trade previous years’ Halloween decorations among other spook enthusiasts, he said, but it has grown into a significant community gathering before the behind-the-scenes, soft opening of the ScareGrounds.

Pagonis said he doesn’t necessarily feel the need to follow a theme, but this year he added a new twist on the rural B&B idea, turning part of the property into a “dead and breakfast.”

“Some people expect themes; others don’t care so much,” Pagonis said. “As long as they’re scared, they’re happy.”

Bishop agreed with Pagonis that a good mix of startles and horror keeps customers coming back; he doesn’t even need the Asylum advertise because word-of-mouth has been so successful.

As for themes, Bishop was careful to clarify that his attraction is a fantastic interpretation of the horrors that people visit on each other rather than a reference to insulting cultural clichés.

“I focus on cruel and unusual experiments on healthy people,” he said. “Health care is a serious matter and shouldn’t be made fun of. Real mental illness isn’t scary.”