November 1st 2007

Last night was the final show of the 2007 haunted house at The Farm on St. Mathias.

I will be posting a complete walkthrough once I have all of the pictures from the haunt.  For now, I'll post some raw photos...

The entrance hallway
Right inside the entrance there is a secret door that leads into one of the actor areas.  From there the actors could either follow behind the guests or greet them through a couple of drop panels hidden in the portraits.
One of the windows in the hallway contained this prop.  A lot of people were reluctant to pass the window once the curtain was blown in at them.
Around the first corner was another hidden drop panel under a strobe.
The first bath hall had another actor in a closet
Immediately after the actor (in the same closet) was one of the pop-up props
Around the corner and across from the shower door was the leaning prop. About the time that our guests noticed the leaning prop the shower door would open and they were greeted with a shrill scream from behind.
In the middle of a very dark section of the haunt there was another hidden drop panel.  No way for the guests to avoid being in very close quarters with their hosts here...
After winding through another dark area and past yet another closet scare they came into the door room.  14 doors and only one way out... Behind half of the doors there were more surprises to be found.
Many guests got to meet this years star of the haunted house.  He had a wicked wit and seemed to have an answer for everything.  He also took credit for the lovely painting in the door hallway - "Do you like my paintings?" <laughing>.
One of our hungry door room monsters guarding the control room.  We had to turn the emergency lights on a couple of times to escort panic stricken guests out of the haunt via secret doors - the control room was kept relatively undecorated to keep it brighter and easy to access.
The only way out of the door room was past the straw bales and this (somewhat) static prop/actor <grin>.
Across from the straw bales and guarding the door to the next area was our pet cat spike.
After dodging spike our guests entered the dot room where they were greeted by another host hidden in the room.  The photo to the right doesn't do the room justice.  The dots are brighter and the black background darker - but then if it wasn't so over exposed you'd have missed the actor...
Once our guests found the hidden door in the dot room they had to pass yet another closet pop-up to enter the bathroom.
Our giant cockroach hissed and spit at the guests as they tried to look closer at the clogged toilet.
Another host was in the shower and demanded that they vacate the area immediately.
After the 2nd bath our guests had to find their way through the broken mirror room.  The room is filled with mirrored streamers hanging from the walls and ceiling.  A colored whirling light made it difficult to navigate through the room.  There was of course a monster hidden in this area as well - a lot of people ran right into him <grin>
At the end of the broken mirror room there was a broken door that housed another pop-up to help usher our guests out the exit door. Our broken mirror monster would sometimes follow them quietly from behind and then chase them down the exit ramp and back into the forest trail.

The haunt had 6 different soundtracks and more mood lighting than I care to remember...  It all came together so well that we had numerous people so scared that they had to be removed from the haunt via secret door.  There were quite a few wet pants scattered throughout the weeks haunting.  Despite the occasional "accident" everyone said that they had a great time and can't wait for next years haunt...  Neither can I.

The haunted house took from 3 to 8 minutes to complete (most people went through in about 5 minutes).  There were 23 potential scares inside the haunt.  Some were optional - behind doors you didn't have to open to escape.  We tried to vary the scares a bit from group to group and night to night so that even returning guests might find something new on the following visit.

The entire haunt was built in just over 4 weeks (including all of the walls, props, lighting, sound, electrical and pneumatic - everything).  Guess how many people were on the construction crew...

...two.