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  • Still writing the haunters how to book and seek input.

    Ok guys Im still writing my how to haunt book. I would like some input as to what you might need out of this book. So far Im covering the basics but thought id ask if there was there was anything important that haunters feel needed to be addressed with a haunters book. Would this be better as a book for beginners or intermediate haunters as well ?
    I'm only doing this to impress 2 people ... The fire marshal and the customer that's it !!!

  • #2
    I haven't posted on these forums in over a year because Im focusing on my education. I need my nursing license to make enough money to fund my future haunt. Anyways the biggest I wanted to know first starting out with this industry was SPECIFICS on construction. That was always the hardest thing to find good information on. If you asked anyone they would just give me generalities. No information that I couldn't already figure out. I would want actual specific step by step info on wall panel construction the best way to tie them together how to create a seamless scene. Parts lists tools list. Pictures before and after and in between. If I wanted another business aspect book I would buy how to be a hauntreupeneur. And I already have that book. I want like a textbook of the science the math behind construction and design. That's what interests me. I want detail on how pneumatics work so I can further understand how the animatronics in my haunt work. I also need detailed info on how to setup the pneumatic system that operates animatronics.
    Its A Verbal Orgy on Steroids!

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    • #3
      Books....

      Mad Wax Sculptor,

      Maybe you should consider writing two books. As you have suggested not everyone is of the same skill level, so perhaps a two volume set? Beginning and intermediate volume. That should give a little something for everyone. I would look forward to seeing what you come up with. Any new book published is a window and insight to another haunters brain! Never can have too much knowledge.

      Oak,

      Please understand what I'm about to say. I'm not attacking you or talking down to you but you need to do a little more research.

      First you state that no one will give you construction information. Well that seems a little hard to swallow as there are two books (I know of for sure) that address how to build haunt wall panels.

      Tim Harkleroad's: Make You're House Everything You've Ever Haunted
      Doesn't contain any designs or room suggestions. It's more of a nuts and bolts approach of how to build. It's been a while since I read my copy but as I remember it is pretty thorough. It tells you materials needed and even the tools to use. Can't be much more specific than that.

      The free online JB Corn Book series.
      These have been floating around for a while. Some have disagreed with some of J.B.'s philosophies and design ideas, but the haunt wall panel construction topic is as sound today as it was then.

      I think Allen Hopps was talking about either some video how-to's or publishing his own book on the topic. Just have to know what you're looking for and dig a little deeper. Allen is always willing to help out someone who asks for it.

      Then there is Leonard Pickle. In just about everyone of his articles on haunting he (or at least his articles in the past) have mentioned the materials he uses. He has talked about using 2x3's vs. 2x4's to cut down on weight and being slightly cheaper. Heck I've seen people use 2x2's for the frame. You have to find what works for you. The key here is experimenting. The goal is to make them light enough to move around but strong enough to take customer abuse. Most everyone uses a sheet of plywood as one panel that is 4'x8'. Thickness of wood depends on application. Will it be in close proximity to guests? Does it need to be double sided? Some people build their haunts to withstand nuclear annihilation.

      Jim Warfield uses welded steel to make some frames for his haunt and props.

      You have to remember a haunt is a like a work of art. They are subjective. You could ask four different haunters how they build their walls and get four different answers.

      Now if you ask Larry exactly how his interlocking wall panels work he is not going to give you the answer. You must realize he makes his living off selling haunted houses. That would be like calling Coke and asking if they would give you the recipe to their top selling soft-drink. Some things are considered company secrets. If you interested in interlocking walls do a search on how to build tongue and groove connections. I'm sure there are tons of carpentry forums with many years experienced carpenters that could answer your specific questions.

      All of these can be found with a simple google search or a search in the forums.

      Now you cannot claim that no one has been telling you exactly how to do it. I have given you a treasure trove of info. Hopefully it will help you.

      Gahaunter
      Last edited by Gahaunter; 07-22-2011, 11:26 PM.
      Lee D. Sanders

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      • #4
        Great post Lee, good to see you lurking around still.
        www.Stiltbeaststudios.com
        http://www.youtube.com/user/Stiltbea...s?feature=mhee

        Comment


        • #5
          Nice post Lee!! Well stated. Is it just our business??? Or is it because of forums like this that people move from asking help and ideas to wanting every step handed to them for free???

          If I wanted to start a restaurant and sell hamburgers I can get books on business plans, hiring procedures, marketing..ect. but a steo by step on how to make a hamburger?? I can't go to McDonald's and ask them to give me a step by step procedure...well actually they will...it's called a franchise!! Of course to get them to help you you need $250,000 in NON-BORROWED cash!! In other words actually a quarter million dollars of personal, spendable, cash in hand!!!

          Now just because we as haunters usually are friendly people and creative people that like to share (or maybe just show off a little!) It is assumed that we are supposed to take everyone that wants to be our competition and train them to compete with us???? Again as Lee stated, not being a pric* or anything here, just stating facts.

          Most of the pro haunters out there learned the same way, school of hard knocks. It COST us money and usually a lot of it, to get where we are today. No one was there when we made the thousand dollar mistakes! We learned it as a cost of doing business. As to be fair, many of us have still done things to help by posting and writing articles or the like.

          I've written a couple articles on the Trailer Haunt concept. They are a basic overview on the style of concept so that you can see if it would be something that would work for you. I constantly get requests from future haunters that want me to hand them a step by step procedure, how to guide. When I suggest that I can be hired as a consultant to provide such info the response is "..well I though since you already did your haunt you could just lend me your floorplans and how you did it!!"

          You can't get your foot in the door with McD's without a 1/4 million, (actual final cost 1 to 1.5 million), a cheap franchaise is $100,000 + yet people want to start a haunt business for $1,000 !!!! And when you don't provide all the info for free, YOU are the rude one!!!

          I'm all for sharing individual ideas and individual procedures, heck I ask for them and help provide them also. But it doesn't obligate me or any of the other posters to provide all the secrets!!
          R&J Productions
          Las Vegas, NV
          www.LasVegasHaunts.com

          Comment


          • #6
            Look guys I haven't been here for a while for this very reason. Ive been a member here almost four years now and whenever I come on to give inPut I get attacked. It doesn't phase me anymore it's happened too many times to recall. I love Halloween regardless the way you guys feel towards me. I will one day get to fullfill my goals no matter the persecution I faced here. Ive bought the books and DVDs and downloaded the efiles of information. I've built my own panels trying to bri to life what I've learned. I was just trying to tell the guy how I felt when I first got here and hard it was trying to soak up the information.

            Hey mad sorry for creating an issue on your thread just wanted to help.
            Its A Verbal Orgy on Steroids!

            Comment


            • #7
              Oak,

              Again, you are taking things too personally. I am not chastising you. I'm not talking down to you or persecuting you. You are always welcome here as is anyone else. Everyone has to start somewhere.

              I gave you several answers to things you said you had been looking for (with examples) but you've now contradicted yourself. If you were finally able to find all the dvd's, books, etc. and learned how to build your walls, why would you complain and say no one would give you that information? You obviously were able to find the sources like every other haunter in America. What was so difficult about that? In other words how did you find it? Unless of course you were too lazy to do the initial legwork and actually pay for a book or dvd. If that's the case, it's my opinion anyone too lazy to do the leg work doesn't deserve to be a haunter. This is not an easy business. It encompasses many, many skills from many different trades. As RJ has tried to outline no one is going to do everything for you. If anyone expects that then they are in the wrong business, period!

              Being a haunter is all about learning. It never stops. No one knows everything. When we stop learning we die. This includes haunters. I would consider myself an experienced haunter. Been haunting probably longer than you've been alive. That's not a slam. It's just that I understand you are younger and I am good bit older than you. I learn or gain insight every time I read a book, magazine article, forum post, dvd, or even an online tutorial. Example: I learned a great way to make a low-cost, fairly permanent, blood for props from one of Allen's videos just last week. Case in point! Is his the only way or right way? No it's what works for him. It might also work for others. I'm itching to try it out.

              There will probably never be one go to source, or one book that covers everything on how to be a haunter and how to start a haunt. There are so many variables. If one were to write book like that, with many different examples, different perspective, it would be an encyclopedia. To be done right it would be an exhaustive project that would require lots of time, effort, and money. The closest thing I think we have is a book that is comprised of many years of Allen Hopps forum posts compiled by another person into book form. I've not seen it but it's on his site. I have no idea how many topics are covered or how thorough it is. It's certainly worth a read as is any source of info. It's almost literally impossible for one book to cover everything.

              In the meantime we will have to make do with finding the info from several different resources. Here's an idea, Oak. Why don't you make it your crusade to start up a helping-new-haunters, type operation. Maybe you could start a haunt lending library from some of the materials you've sourced (as long as you get permission from the content owners). Heck maybe I'll write up a resource list for newbies on various topics regarding haunting and Larry can post it as a sticky on top of the forums. Sort of a topical FAQ to haunting. Then as new materials come out people can add to the list or if a book or dvd goes out of print we can remove it.

              We are all in the same boat and are all here to help.

              Meanwhile, I have hijacked Mad Wax's thread long enough (I'm sorry buddy). Let's hear more/discuss his upcoming book *plug, plug, plug*

              Lee
              Lee D. Sanders

              Comment


              • #8
                There are half a dozen ways to build walls and an infinite way to set them up in a building. Actually doing a build for photos of all the different styles and even determining how much weight they can hold, or what abuse they can take would require Discovery Channel budgets and yes, this is demanded to be provided for free.

                What I had to do was get in the car and drive a couple hundred miles to help a brand name haunter set up walls for free before I could figure out how it is done. And I have a pretty good ability to read information and realize what a drawing is telling you to make. Still getting out there and putting your hands on half a dozen haunts in the only way you can select what you would like to build for free.

                And if you put the information out there for free, I find it gets picked apart and one wall build example would be scrutinized by arm chair idiots, in effect not appreciated.

                I have been to one of House of Wax earlier haunts and if anyone could do a tutorial on how to build walls and what to build them out of it would be Patrick. Over the years I'm pretty sure he has done everything and made walls out of all kinds of materials. This being said, you wouldn't like it anyhow because in reality he has come up with a philosophy even I have learned from and copied. I know it isn't well recieved to not spend lots of money on doble sided fully detailed walls because I'm sure all of my projecting how inexpensively things can be done if you use what materials are available on the cheap comes off as half assed rather than genius.

                So putting things out there are going to be ridiculed rather than treated as secrets. And especially after putting so much effort into things and putting it out there it can be dissapointing. On the other end of the scale I have run into a number of people seeking help. again traveled hundreds of miles wth no intention of charging anything and been told "Well that isn't how so and so says to do it in his book" My modern response to this is Screw you then call the guy who wrote the book and when he is of no help do it yourself and well see you open your haunt 10 years from now instead of right now.

                If you are combative and unable to have a conversation to learn information being provided for free, you immediately fall to the bottom of the list and have to go do it and learn it all the hard way like I had to. Then 10 years later idiots are saying you know you were right. Every number you spoke was totally spot on, how did you do that?

                It costs lots of money to do all the research and it doesn't happen visually and by feel to be second nature until you actually do something besides look at pictures, drawings and read descriptions of how to do something. You might not really want to know McDonalds process for making burgers, you just want to see the money come in at levels that requre an accountant. It is all magic.
                sigpic

                Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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                • #9
                  On teaching everyone that wants to know everything for free? You aren't necessarily setting up your competitor. I find that every haunt seem to attract a different type of customer, be it high school and college, families or post college with a more refined taste for a good haunt. Each is a level of achievement and as random as the population of an area. The example I stick with is all of the country an Autozone, a Pep Boys and some other auto parts store will be built right next to each other. One services the do it yourselfer, the other serves the do it for me I will pay crowd and the other catched the slack as the other two have pissed off all the customers with all their little policies and games and lack of inventory or compasion that someone's car needs a part. There is a wider market and if there are 4 places near each other the advertising of each one benefits them all even though they are totally seperate corporations.

                  As far as haunted stuff goes, as you increase the quality of your props and overall concept, developing not competitiors but co advertisers and other freinds in the area with haunts allows you to sell off old props or entire haunts. You created your other kind of customers. Then after a few decades the first haunts you made things for or gave advice are in a position to pay for work or products or haunts. So don't kill yourself on the helping anyone, but helping people that already know everything need to just stick it.

                  We used to make fun of buy the book, see the CD series, read the magazine article (buy a subscription) get the T-shirt and pay for the special decoder ring. Still there must be some way to deal with the 80% of people that show up on the internet and really have a lot of mental issues to get over first. Yeah buy the books. That's what you should do.

                  Oh, not all the possible options in the world were in that $175 book series. It never really showed how to do anything. Imagine trying to figure out McDonalds only don't get paid ANYTHING to work there. Oh yes and travel a hundred miles to do it every day. Just to see if you can do it. For a couple of years. And then tell everyone for free. Or show up with decades of knowledge and tens of thousands of dollars in haunt stuff and make some charity lots of money. Keep paying industrial level storage expenses. That's how I roll.

                  With that being said, Patrick if you need any help or information at all get ahold of me. You could be the next Kelly Allen!
                  sigpic

                  Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

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                  • #10
                    Mean while, Allen Hopps is working at a place that has been built by everyone that ever was. Patrick worked there for a while. He could just walk around and take photos of all the crap that has been collected at this one 10 haunt event and demonstrate every cockameme way of doing anything. Why it all sucks and why you shouldn't try this at home. Or better yet, why you can't do that in another state.

                    Every location and the codes runs the gamut from look ma I built shit out of busted up pallets and I painted a skull on it! isn't it neat? to you mandatorially need to build things like they built the new mall, do you have a couple million to put into our community? Can you fund the new 12 inch water line that needs to go 10 miles down this highway? Lets see your tax documents before I waste any more of the tax payers time. Who is your architect.

                    I'm just saying, this could get real good or there is maybe no way to focus all the info for public consumption. One way was to put out there how to build the mall. The free internet has been about making shit out of pallets and wondering why you have mother issues.

                    There I made myself laugh, I'm done.
                    sigpic

                    Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Greg I always love your insight. You and Warfield should do a weekly internet haunt radio show. Greg you gave me an idea. I might offer a chapter of this book to other haunters who might like to input a little of their own experience and advice. Oak There are many haunters here who will tell you just about anything haunt related except for exact attendance numbers lol. I'm more than happy to answer any questions you might have just shoot me a message and and we will start there. Anyone interested in contributing a credited article or how to please message me and I will start a master haunter chapter dedicated to you.
                      thanks
                      I'm only doing this to impress 2 people ... The fire marshal and the customer that's it !!!

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        I am adding a link to my youtube site it has last yrs entire haunt tour on it .Please check it out. I Hope you enjoy it
                        http://www.youtube.com/user/madwaxsc.../3/Ay9zeKmZwQ8
                        thanks
                        I'm only doing this to impress 2 people ... The fire marshal and the customer that's it !!!

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          That show with Jim Warfield and I is on every night already, it happens on the old telegraph system. Unless the damn injuns are hangin on the wires.
                          Last edited by Greg Chrise; 07-24-2011, 04:34 AM. Reason: Woo Woo Woo Woo
                          sigpic

                          Another fabulous post from the U.S.Department of Wild Imaginings, now in spectaclar stereo, sponsored by the Adhesives and Sealants Council, suggesting ways to stick things together since the 1800s. Not fabulous in a gay way. Your results may vary. Illinois residents add 8% sales tax. These posts have been made by professional post makers, do not try this type of posting on your own without extensive training, lovely assistants and a trusty clown horn.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            you guys are right my bad. I shouldn't have taken it so personally. I did eventually find the information. And i completely agree anyone new can find the answers to their questions by simply asking them. when i first started out the best advice i could have gotten was to not ask those questions to you guys during the rush between now and October because you guys are cranky because of the stress. And that would be the best advice I could give to any new haunter.

                            Seriously guys i did take it a little too personally and thanks for being cool about it.

                            Still looking forward to what you come up with with this book Mad or possibly several books.

                            You could do a several part series. One part is the business end. Write a business plan, get your research done on the land or the property. Deciding between leasing and buying. Budget issues, state codes, the water line. Obviously the biggest chapter in this segment would be the fire marshal and all the goodies he'll ask you to fix(dependant on the state ofcours). You could give your readers topics to read more into, resources that you've found to be helpful on the internet. Or a specific website to go to to learn more about that topic.

                            Next book could be imagination and design. How to get your ideas out on paper. Learning how to properly or rather effectively writing understandable haunt "blueprints". Of course like you guys said there are a million different ways to skin a cat but you only need one way to get an idea of how complicated it really is. you could describe your personal experiences what you found to work and what you found not to work.

                            construction. Now this one would be your way of doing things. than you could give other ways of doing it as examples. You could let the reader decide which way could work best for them. Or even better they could figure out which way would be most cost effective for them.

                            these could either be books or chapters it all depends on how much you would wish to share. I never said for free. Just like on Batman Dark Knight

                            If you're good at something why do it for free?

                            There are a multitood of different ways to do all of these things. thats why every great haunt is different because each crazy and sadistic mind thinks of a different way to do it. This information would just give new haunters like myself a place to begin so they can form their own sadistic way of doing things.
                            Last edited by oakhillshaunterTHEFEAR; 07-24-2011, 08:49 AM.
                            Its A Verbal Orgy on Steroids!

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Is It "Wise"?

                              To want to create a book when nobody buys them anymore? Borders =bankrupt, ex cetra... Some may want (or need?) to have everything spoon-fed to them at their conveinence.
                              The very first statement in any Wanna-Be Haunter book should be the question...Do you personally have enough of a "Fire In Your Pants" to make it ever happen?
                              Second question: Are you pursuing this because you "Love" Halloween or love scaring people?
                              If you are the "Man", boss, owner, you may never get to enjoy those perks again because the multitude of other tasks and your full schedule of directly related "activities" will take your October Clock, or anyway it better....
                              I have such fun here every night , but I have worked on this business everyday(dam near) for the last 25 years, my full time "job". If I saw 50 people every night here it could not happen for me. If I saw a ton of customers every night of October , I would not have my peculair fun either.
                              In season I have hired help and I only get the customers for 10-15 minutes. My real fun is the rest of the year, Spring, summer tourist season and Winter when some real patrons, connossouirs, fans frequent my house in small personal groups.
                              See my post today under "Actors" to see what I call "Fun".
                              hauntedravensgrin.com

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