Chainsaws - Yes or No?

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Originally Posted by thehauntedhollows

We need to take it up a notch and bring something even better into the haunt world- thats a whole different discussion though.

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I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree...I'm over all the gas/electric powered home improvement/gardening tools haunts use to try and scare people...

...funny and contradicting story: Last night I went to Walmart at around 10 when the crowds start to thin out and the cleanup and stock crews appear. Well, I was leaving and outside I could hear a loud noise which at the time I believed was a passing truck, exited the doors and it turned out to be a leaf blower and it actually startled me because as I was walking out of the exit the guy with a leaf blower turned the corner into my path. I was a bit embarrassed internally because a leaf blower had just shocked me, but thought how simple a scare that is...haha

A maniac opens the door, allows them in. The same maniac controls all the light in the room as he tells them about the house.
"This house has been haunted since 1925."
He sincerely continues the involved story which spans several decades and happened in numerous parts of the house.
Also explained are his reasons for bothering to tell it all, building to the eventual possible death of the storyteller!
They finally leave this room.
They aren't sure if the storyteller was acting or not or just a very disturbed indivual?
They might debate whether or not it was "acting" or not?
I usually add some attempted humor to deflect or soften the truth:"They are in a house that has quite a haunted history/reputation."
(And everything I told them has actually happened here.)
I practise telling the houses's story in an interesting style or fashion but it is all true.
"Acting?"
Who is doing that?
Not me.

Unfortunately, we're not allowed to use chain saws in Tallahassee haunts anymore because of a stupid ordinance they passed after that retarded kid actually hurt someone in his home haunt eight or so years back. I'm sure others have already posted this story before, or you saw it in the news, but he nearly cut some dad's arm completely off near the elbow. (They were able to reattach it, but he couldn't write with it or use it for work after that.) The plaintiff supposedly won $1.7 million in court, but I never heard what how much they actually collected. The family had home owners insurance but the liability limit was just $200,000.

The tragic part is that the guy just stood there while the retarded kid came at him with the roaring chain saw. His kids ran out of the way like everyone else had during the night, but their father had to be "brave" and prove to everyone he knew the gag and that haunted house chain saws didn't actually have chains on them. Well, as he (and the rest of us) quickly learned, not everyone follows the rules. He should consider himself lucky that the kid was shorter than he was, otherwise he might have lost his head! (And good luck reattaching that!)

Personally, I think the parents are to blame because they knew their kid was limited mentally and yet they still let him be involved with such a dangerous stunt. (They claimed they gave him another saw to use but he switched it when it started having trouble starting up.) The truth is, I wouldn't trust a regular 15-year-old to operate a chain saw, and I never would let a retarded guy anywhere near one, even without the chain. Heck, if he just hurt himself, it would be a lawyer's wet dream!

Oh well, bad things happen when people stop using common sense, and that includes when otherwise intelligent people see someone coming at them with a running chain saw and they decide they are going to just stand there and not get out of the way. My advice: Duck when people fire "blanks" at you, dodge when they swipe "plastic" knives at you, and when you hear a chain saw getting fired up at night in a spooky place, RUN LIKE HELL (especially if its a haunted house). Because you never really know who's behind the latex mask.

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Originally Posted by Todd Shumansky

I think chainsaws are almost always associated with haunted houses. They are a necessity. Its simple and it works. Why mess with it.

Unfortunately we can't use any real chainsaws inside the haunt due to firecode so it cuts down on ability to use them. We always station one at the exit so they can scare people when they exit.

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While I'll agree that yes, they are overdone, chainsaws have become a staple in haunted houses, much the same way clowns have become. It may not be original but the formula still works after how many decades??

That many people will never return because they don't want to see or hear another one..ever!
If anyone thinks I'm kidding about this, think again.

Including chain saws in the haunt for me are like being a rock musician who is expected to play their number one hit in every concert, even though they are SICK to DEATH of it. It's so cliche, and yet, if you skip it, the audience feels cheated.

And for the record, I was kidding about the earlier post on the chain saw ban here in Tallahassee. That "retarded kid who used a REAL chain saw" story is a variation of one I sometimes tell in the haunt if people are backed up before the illusionist room. They are sometimes waiting a minute or two in the London Town scene and we stall them by telling an atmospheric ghost story that prepares them for what they are about to see. They've been in the haunt for about 15 minutes at that point so they are pretty jumpy and suggestible by then. Telling a good horror story when they are psychologically primed like that is really a delight. You get wonderful results, even from people who would normally laugh it off. The story of the real "fake" chain saw is one I sometimes tell just to mess with their minds so when the guy charges out with the saw, they are far more likely to BOLT. Plus, it's a reminder that you never can never safely assume anything, especially in a haunted house. After all, if YOU were a maniac and wanted to kill people, what better place to sneak into, put on a mask and slash away than a haunted house? Everyone would ignore the screams and assume the attacks were all part of the act. (Not that I want to give the psychos out there any ideas!)

I have worked a chainsaw for a haunt for 2 years now, and its a hit and miss with some people.

When it was used outside, it worked most of the time, but what killed it is that our exit dumps directly into the parking, so people heard and already saw me go after others with the saw and they expected me when they reached the end.

The haunt I worked at is a wharehouse that was used to paint and fix cars, so theres a room that has massive ventilation fans that allowed us to use the chainsaw inside the haunt, where noone expected it. What really caused the scare was the way our lighting was set up, as customers walked towards a strobe where I stood behind it, so I clearly saw them but they never saw me until they heard the roar of the saw. it worked great.

I will agree that chainsaws are becoming the norm and that people need to change things up. I really like the leaf blower Idea, and If im correct a have seen a few haunts use pneumatic drills to cause loud noises against walls and such.

"Chainsaws have become a staple of haunted houses"
This is your mission:Go to a hardware store..buy a box of staples...take them home...now dump the box open on a table, break them apart, stir them up...they kind of all look the same don't they?
Raise your hand if you want your artistic, personally expressive haunted house creation to just be a "Staple".
"Pretty, shiney, all the same...all cranked out by a machine, all the same...?

Our daytime business is all about family friendliness so we decided make some rules for our haunt. One of them is not traditional weapons. Chainsaws are on the fence in my opinion and my sister didn't think they should be incorporated into our haunt because every other haunt has one. I racked my brain all year to think of something else that has the same impact, Loud, looks real, feels real, smells real, IS real, ingrained in us to be afraid of, and makes people actually run away. We ended up using one in our finale and I am glad we did. People were like mad trying to get away from it. If someone knows of another simple tool that is that effective, I would really like to know.

leaf blower is a neat idea...

How about an electric knife? A really rusty and noisy one?

But seriously, it's hard to beat the noise and murder/ mutilation connotations that chain saws have built into them, thanks to various movies. Plus, they are very dangerous even in the hands of experts. I knew a fellow who could only whisper because his chain broke and whipped around his neck and ripped out his voice box. He had a big nasty scare too, but was lucky to be alive. And while living near some California public lands, there were several lumberjacks who were killed or mutilated when Earth First (environmentalist extremists) pounded metal spikes deep into the trunks of trees scheduled to be harvested. The saws hit the spikes and bounced back into the lumber jacks. I never heard they caught those responsible for it either.

Terrible events seem to happen where ever I lived. While in San Francisco, we had the big Earthquake. It's like being Typhoid Mary or something, leaving a trail of death and destruction in one's wake. The latest tragic news item was learning that five Mormons raped and murdered little kids in Lexington, Mo., about 30 years ago (but were only now discovered). That's the exact time and place where I went to high school. We had a Mormon math teacher, and he was nicest guy, really REALLY kind. In fact, I've never met a Mormon I wasn't impressed with. But what's chilling is that three of the rapist/killers were lay ministers at their local church, and I'm sure if I had met them, I'd have thought they were great as well. I guess it all goes to show you never really know who's behind the mask!