We are a small haunt in our second year. It's pretty much a friends and family operation. Our goal is to be as scary as possible without needing a waiver. Our main competition locally is another haunt which relies more on props and funhouse gags...We rely heavily on actors and our creative settings and rooms.

After last year the other haunt contacted us wanting to "partner up". You see, our main business the rest of the year is paintball. We do the haunt in our indoor paintball arena building. The other haunt wanted us to bring our actors, props, and equipment and add a zombie paintball shoot to their haunt. When they explained it would be a 60/40 split of just the zombie shoot profits of course we declined. Why give them 60% just for providing a venue when we already had the venue. So we added a live zombie shoot to our own haunt.

Since then we have caught them trying to get 'spies' into our haunt with video recording devices. We have had our yard signs disappear and in their place is a sign from the other haunt. And yesterday we had an inspector show up saying they got a call about an illegal haunt. We are a paintball business zoned commercial, licensed for entertainment, and fully inspected with 7 million dollars of liability insurance. Inspector concluded nothing illegal going on here.

Is this type of behavior normal? I mean really? If a small haunt on a shoestring budget is that threatening to your haunt which has been established for over 20 years...well maybe you need to change something. Or realize we are going after a different demographic. Most kids don't make it through our haunt. I've seen (and made a few) grown adults cry. We're scary, it's what we do. You, well you advertise to families and kids. Big difference.