Transcript

Welcome to Haunt Weekly, a podcast for the Haunted Attraction community.

[0:22] Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast for the Haunted Attraction and Haunted Entertainment community.
Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you.
And we return to you literally publishing on New Year's Day 2024.
That's two holidays in a row. Well, that's kind of what happens when you do a weekly podcast and like the first one falls on Christmas and you know, kind of how it works.
These are week apart holidays. But yes, indeed.
So we felt there was nothing more appropriate to talk about than our 2024 Haunt Predictions.
Plus, because Crystal here decided to keep us honest, we look back at our 2023 predictions and figure out how badly we fucked those up first.
Yeah. So we'll be doing both of those things. If that's not what you want to hear, there's plenty of other episodes out there.
Please check them out at HauntWeekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Twitter, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly.
You can also catch us wherever you get your podcast from.
Pay special attention to the Facebook page as we will be doing announcements hopefully sometime soon about future live episodes.

[1:29] All right. Well, first thing this week, work we did for our haunt was functionally none with the holiday week. Yeah. It's been a very weird holiday.
Like normally with the holiday season, we get like two weeks totally off.
Yeah. And we have all this extra infusion of time. And you've actually been slightly busier than normal this holiday season.
Well, and part of that's that I don't get two weeks off. I get two days.
And not even fully those in some cases. Yeah.
So, yeah, this is an adjustment for both of us, I think, and for all of us here, really.
Yeah, because what would usually happen is we'd take three days off of those two weeks, completely veg out, and then be bored and have to go do something.
Then we go do haunt work or go clean the house or whatever.
And that has not happened. And not only that, we haven't had a lot of uninterrupted time off, so to speak.
But we did want to take the holiday week and, you know, try to relax as much as possible. And that's what we've done.
We mentioned last time around our haunt-related New Year's resolution is to do work every week.
Yeah. And I think that's what we're starting beginning tomorrow.
We have Thursday, Friday, and night, Saturday day, and Sunday afternoons, pretty much every week from now until whenever that we can do stuff.
And we just need to set aside like an hour or two, basically, is the theory.

[2:53] Well, speaking of haunted attraction New Year's resolutions, we asked you what yours were, and some interesting answers definitely came up.

Interesting haunt-related New Year's resolutions from listeners.

[3:02] Imaginarium Sanitarium said, try to have an agenda and stick to it so we're not scrambling mid-season. That sounds familiar. Very familiar.
Greg Packard said, try to do something every day.
Pete Blackwell said, every day is ambitious, by the way.
Yeah, but I mean, it could just be do a sketch for your, you know, for a design or something.
Pete Blackwell, to design my scare so I don't kill myself or minimally severely injure myself.
Yeah, that's a... That's a good one. That's a really good one.
Yeah, you should do that for all of your actors, too. Make sure that they're not kidding.
Yeah, not just you, everyone. Think of everyone. And don't get into the habit of thinking, oh, they're young.
Well, and not only that, but I mean, I've gotten told many, I got told many times last year, last season, by one of our actors that you really should have thought of your safety when you were building your scare.
It's like, yeah, but, you know, I was too busy thinking all y'all. Yeah.

[4:06] Luckily, your scare wasn't really that dangerous. No, there were just a couple of old tiny nails.
Yeah. They kept catching my costume. to. Yeah.
That's the type of thing that sometimes unfortunately happens with our own scares.
Like you said, we're so careful with a scare. We know someone else is going to be working.
Yeah. I mean, we would have, if anyone else had been going into that cubbyhole, we would have sanded it, grinded it. Yeah. All of those would have been gone.
It would have been super gone. And it would have been coated in rubber or something nice and smooth.
Yeah. We do that for others, but yeah, Yeah, you're right. We are worst and hardest on ourselves.
Yeah. Perpetually. I'm willing to put myself at more risk than I am others. Yeah.

[4:50] Okay, well, on that note, this week's question of the week is also deeply related to the topic.
What are your predictions for the Haunt season in 2024?
Let us know. Hauntweekly.com, Hauntweekly on Twitter, Hauntweekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Hauntweekly. Leave a comment, send a message, do whatever floats your boat.
We will definitely be reading it.
All right, we are getting into Haunted Attraction Conference season.
It is an even number episode. So it is time for us to do conference reminders.
Crystal, would you like to get us started? Sure.
January 23rd through the 25th in Las Vegas, it is the Halloween and Party Expo.
It will be at the Mirage, and there's hundreds of vendors, must qualify as a business, not open to the public.
And you go to Halloween...

HalloweenPartyExpo.com and Google Sheets Issues

[5:40] What do you need? You need to stop moving around HalloweenPartyExpo.com.
I can't tell where my box is lit up and yours is because you're moving all over the thing.
We found the one problem with using Google Sheets for this. I think we just found it live.
All right. After that, February 9th through the 11th, it's HauntCon 2024 in Daytona Beach, Florida at the Hilton Daytona Beach Oceanfront.
They will feature a bus tour visiting four haunted houses, a haunted-style luau.
Now I officially know how to spell the word luau for the first time in my life.
And there's a costume ball, a comedy show, and more. HauntCon.com for more information.
Okay, March 7th through 10th, it's Transworld's Halloween and Attraction Show in St. Louis, Missouri at the America Center.
It'll be featuring a zombie showdown challenge.
I have no idea what that even is. Nope. They just got a graphic for it.
Yep. Party at City Museum.
Also host a Christmas show on site. ha-show, H-A-A-S-H-O-W dot com for more info. Alright.
And finally this week, April 12th through the 14th, it's Fear Expo live at Owensboro, Kentucky at the Owensboro Convention Center. Free admission.
They have the Ultimate Haunt Tour featuring a tour of, I believe it was six different haunts before the event, costume contest, and more.

[7:01] FearExpoLive.com Just to give an update, date we have been following i got about uh 24 25 um conferences to be followed yeah we've been saddened by the number of cancellations for 2024 already yeah so it's looking to be a rough year for haunted attraction and haunt related conventions but we do have some new ones coming up including east coast haunters convention which has been announced but unfortunately like no information is available for that's april 25th through the uh 28th it's in the oaks pennsylvania but very little information is available about it.
So even though it's not officially one we were going to cover, EastCoastHonorsConvention.com for more information on that one.
Be there when information goes live because we may miss it.
Yeah. All right. Well, back on this week's topic.
It is, as we said, we are both recording and publishing on New Year's Day, January 1st, 2024. And so we just wanted to talk about what we see happening for haunted attractions in the year 2024. It's a natural demarcation time.
Screw you, Neil deGrasse Tyson. It is a special day.

Predicted Trends for 2023: Haunted Theme Parks and Escape Rooms

[8:13] Cosmology is not taking everything from me. But before we look ahead, we're going to look back to what we predicted for 2023.

[8:23] Unfortunately for all of us.

[8:24] So, let's just kick it off. Go for it. First one. We said there'd be more haunted theme parks.
Yeah, we talked about how we thought there'd be more haunts either breaking up into multiple attractions or new openings would feature multiple attractions.
Doing lots of midway stuff, so keep people there longer.
Diversifying, too, along the way. Yeah. And I think that came somewhat true.
I don't know if it was like 2023 was a breakout year for it.
Right. But I do think it is an ongoing trend. I do, too.

[8:56] I know that at least one haunt in the area has added that, and another has plans to.
So I do think that it is coming true, but we're just a little bit ahead of the curve.
Yeah, and like you said, it's been a trend for years. This has been kind of the path we've been seeing the whole industry go.
So in that regard, it was kind of a cheat prediction because you're just putting the pieces together.
You're not really predicting something new. But still, you're right.
We may have been a year too early on that one. We also, when we were not here too early on, though, was the additional closure of more escape rooms.
That definitely happened.
That industry is in heavy, heavy retraction still.
Yeah, and I don't think it's so much affecting as many haunted houses yet as it is, you know, the little strip mall ones.
Yeah, and it's also, it's not affecting those that are in heavy tourist areas.
No. Like, I've noticed the ones in and around the French Quarter here seem to be doing fine. Yeah.

[9:55] But, like, the ones that we, like, when we went to St.
Louis a while back, I remember we checked, and there was all these little ones in various places that didn't make sense to me for there to be one.
But we actually had fun at some of them.
These were not bad escape rooms. I want to be 100% clear on that. Right.
But, yeah, they're not there no more. And, unfortunately, that's going to be true, I think, across the industry.
We also predicted more VIP-style events. and in this we both mention like, New events that were totally for, you know, higher cost, higher expense things.
We're thinking like the Vault of Souls type things. But also more VIP events at haunts, like more behind-the-scenes tours, and maybe some more VIP add-ons for haunts, like the bar at New Orleans Nightmare.
Yeah. So that covered a lot of ground in that prediction.
Yeah, we left ourselves broad on that one. And in doing so, I think it counts.
Yeah. But I think that one also isn't very impressive. I think there's still a lot of room to grow there.
Yeah, definitely. And in fact, I think one of our predictions here kind of loops back around on this one a little bit. So, yeah, moving on.
More year-round business models. Haunts are always looking for that. That was an easy one.
But I don't believe that anything took off here. I don't think anyone's found the new thing.
Because it was escape rooms. And then it was Christmas shows.

[11:23] You know, spooky holidays, basically. Yeah, I don't think that anything new has really come out of it.
Yeah, and I think that's one of the problems, is I think so many haunts invested so heavily in the escape room trend as their year-round go-to, that once that market got saturated and once that market hit its cultural maximum, them um i think there's a lot of people in the industry scrambling to figure out what else they can do especially for haunts that are not in a tourist area yeah well and i think that a lot of haunts market their escape rooms like other escape rooms do which i don't think is beneficial to anybody no because it should be you know marketed as an immersive escape is experience you know not a just an escape room where yourself puzzles in a you know because there's a there's a different, a definite delineation between what you get in a strip mall escape room versus what you get in a haunted house the average haunted house escape yeah i agree with that a hundred percent um i That is rough. Yeah. But yeah.

[12:44] Uh, we also last year predicted more haunt conglomerates over the course of the year. That one's kind of hard to judge.
Yeah. I think there was one that came and went, but, um, yeah.
I do know more haunts have been purchased by conglomerates. I think that did happen, but yeah.
So that didn't, I don't know if that one came to fruition or not.
That's a, that's a tougher one. Yeah.

[13:11] Um, social media breakout stars. ours i i'm really shocked we did not see this one yeah i have seen so i have reels with haunted house stuff in it and i've seen several who have come up who i've actually met yeah um and that was kind of cool but nothing that went mainstream like i'm waiting for the moment in which you know the teens and ellie's family yeah or don or someone that we know that's not super involved involved in the haunt industry right now and doesn't already have their feet hyper loaded with this stuff right is like oh did you see the new trend on tiktok or whatever it's so and so from blah blah blah haunt and he's oh i'm waiting for that moment and i don't think that happened no i'm surprised given a just how good a lot of these reels are because i mean you're talking about it these shorts these reels these tiktoks these whatever's yeah a lot of them have been really fucking good yeah and there's you know there are spooky characters out there that aren't haunted related that are gaining some traction that have been sent to me you know organically yeah but they're few and far between and they're not really haunts they're just kind of spooky kids doing weird things or funny things so yeah it's it's interesting um the rise of tech slash ar my my God, I kind of wish this one had come true.

[14:38] Well, yeah, it kind of did, it kind of didn't. Okay, explain your argument.
Well, we picked the wrong egg.

The Impact of AI on the Haunted Industry

[14:47] Which is funny because we did the video after the launch of ChatGPT.
We should have fucking seen this one coming.
But anyway, moving. Yeah, you're right. AI, we honestly, and this might be coming up later, spoiler.
Yeah. It's hard to know right now what role and impact AI is having on haunting because we can be relatively assured people are using it, but they're not being transparent or talking about how they're using it. Yeah.
So, yeah. Yeah, but the haunted industry has always been very counterintuitive to me because from a pure tech standpoint, the smartest tech workers I've seen in my life are in the haunted industry.
You want people that can build anything with a Raspberry Pi.
You want people that can wire entire systems into a haunted attraction and just do these amazing things.
Yeah, haunters are your go-to team.
Yeah. But as far as integrating technology into the attraction, engaging with it for promotion and so forth, haunted attraction websites are just famously bad.
There's no way to describe it. It's famously not our forte as an industry, it's our digital presence.
Which may be one of the reasons why we didn't have a social media breakout star.
But we just did not have that. We do not have that, and that didn't particularly change. Yeah.

[16:13] And finally, from last year, we said haunt preservation because we saw a lot of long-term haunts closing.
And we thought maybe there would be more effort to preserve the legacy of the haunts that have been around for more than 20 years.
And we didn't really see that. No, and in fact, we get news stories all throughout the cycle.
And one of the news stories coming up in 424, their next news episode, is about a long-term haunted house that closed last season.
We covered the closure in September, but now it has been completely torn down and it's just gone.
And it's incredibly sad stuff.
But it's also the norm in this industry, unfortunately.
So anyways, that's enough looking back. Let's turn our eyes forward and look to the future.
And do you want to start? Because, I don't remember, I don't know the order we went in with this one. We just have a mishmash of things you said and I said.
Yeah. All right, but moving on, you take the first one then.
Higher ticket prices. This is an easy one. Yeah, this is a cheat.
This is a little hanging fruit.

Haunt Ticket Prices Soaring Above Inflation

[17:23] Obviously, haunts want to make more. So, the easiest way to do that is to raise ticket prices, even if it doesn't make sense with inflation and everything else. Yeah. Yeah.
We actually have a spreadsheet at one time where we charted local haunt prices and how they went, how they grew over the last 20 years.
Because we've actually here in New Orleans, if you count New Orleans Nightmare slash House of Shock, it's like one unit.
We've been pretty lucky because all the four major haunts have a lengthy enough history.
You can get a good sort of, not necessarily a 20 year one, but you can get a good long look at their history.
And one thing you find very, very quickly is that ticket prices have consistently gone up significantly faster than inflation. Yeah. Yeah.
And in most cases, I mean, there are cases like with Decompose we talked about, Decompose being one of the exceptions, they're still new.
Right. But, you know, the increase in price was not met by an equal increase in product and the size of the offer.
Decompose actually did grow significantly. They grew by about a factor of three.
Well, and Rise did too. Yeah, Rise did too.

[18:36] 13th Gate and Mortuary have the same problem of being in... They're bound by their area. Yeah, by the space that they have.
Yeah, and I think New Orleans Nightmare is too at this juncture.
Yeah, I'd agree with that.
So, yeah, you know, but the ticket prices have gone up significantly faster than inflation.

[18:56] And inflation's kind of weird right now. Everyone's talking about how high inflation is, but A, it's not if you look and compare it to other countries.
We're actually doing way better than like Europe and these United States.
And second, it's not as high as people make it out to be. but it feels high and sometimes the feeling is more important than the reality on these things.
And the result of that is I think we're going to see haunts move up on their ticket prices more and sigh, I think we may start to get to a point where that actually causes the customer some hurt.
Like I said, this has been a trend for some time where haunts have been raising prices faster than inflation. There's no reason for it to stop in 2023.

[19:38] But I do think that this does kick us into the second prediction. Yeah.

Customers Pushing Back: Lower Attendance Predicted

[19:43] Which is that customers may start biting back at that.
The second is lower customer attendance. And it's now, it's always difficult to talk about what Haunt Numbers did broadly.
But I'll say this, every owner we have talked to about last season was down.
Yeah. Everyone. And part of that is because if they were open during the pandemic, there wasn't as much competition.
And so you got more customers, whether or not that was a good idea or a bad idea, that's for your own judgment. Well, and it was also driven by the fact there wasn't much competition. and there was this desperate hunger for things to do in the meat space.
People hadn't been to concerts. They hadn't been to bars. They hadn't been to a movie theater. To do something in the physical world.

[20:32] Especially with friends and family they haven't seen in a while.
There was a desperate thirst for that. And yeah, people would pay just about anything for that, especially given that there was the stimulus money sitting out there for a lot of people that help them with their bottom line and help make haunts more affordable.
So yeah, 2020, 2021, haunts were open, did gangbusters numbers.
I don't think that's a positive thing.
I mean, I just don't. I'm sorry, but it's just also the reality.
I think 2022, there was still some carryover from that. Last year, we started to see the fall off.
People are now more adjusted to being out in the physical world. And I think.

[21:15] People are getting prices. Because like I said, emotion often matters more than what the actual dollars and cents are doing.
Yeah, and I think that we're seeing a leveling off now after that big bump from pandemic years.
We're seeing a leveling off, but it still looks like a decrease for last season.
One of the things we have to keep in mind is our core audience is young, typically male, like 13 to 29 range. Yeah.
And these individuals are often very sensitive price, either not having income of their own or having a, they're at the beginning of their career.
They have limited income of their own. Yeah.
You know. Well, then you have the opposite side where I know several people who have not been to haunts in a couple of years who wanted to go and then looked up the ticket prices and said, I can't afford that. Yeah. And didn't go.
Yeah, because you're not, you're never, you're almost never buying just one ticket. Right. Right. You're usually buying at least two, sometimes three, four, five, whatever.
Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, I remember, you know, we wanted to take some of our crew to see Decomposed.
And one of our things is we pay to go see Haunts. We don't, even our friends.
Yeah. We do not get free tickets. We believe in supporting and paying our Haunters.
And, okay, yeah, John totally blocked us on that and intercepted us.

[22:35] We bought the first time. But we did buy the first time. And we did buy when we brought the whole crew. But I remember thinking we have to set aside we're bringing five people.
Yeah, we have to set aside Something like I think three hundred two hundred fifty dollars basically. Yeah, is that the end of the world?
No, but is it is a significant amount that even though we had to think about pretty hard.
Mm-hmm but now it means so yeah, I think we're hitting a point where the prices are starting to make people balk and there's really only anecdotal evidence of that and.

[23:07] But we're going to hit a point as an industry where if we keep moving the ticket price faster than inflation, we're going to hit a ceiling.
People are going to start balking because even though we do provide a unique experience and one that people do cherish, a memory experience, which is something that young people, as it's been shown, are willing to pay for.
Young people today want to pay for experiences rather than things.
And that is incredibly positive. And I'm so happy the kids are all right.
Yeah. Tight moment here. Yeah.
But, yeah, that goodwill only gets us so far.
Yeah, because haunts are also a terrible bargain for value for your buck. Yeah.
In terms of, like, minutes of entertainment versus, you know, per dollar.
Yeah, we're not a good value. No. We never have been, never will be.
No. But, yeah, so I do predict we're going to have another down season this year.
But I'm hoping I'm wrong on that one. I would love to be wrong. Yeah. But moving on.

Decline in Conglomerate-Owned Haunts: Pruning Underperforming Properties

[24:07] So, fewer conglomerate-owned haunts. This one actually came about not based on the list from last year, but something I had been thinking about.
Because corporations are going to cut underperforming properties.
At some point. At some point. And it's a numbers game.
I mean, they look at the bottom line. That's how every business model works.
Um, so I think that they're going to cut some of those and may prune too much.
Um, yeah, I think this is an interesting prediction.
I do think we're going to see issues where haunts, um.

Haunt closures and corporate haunts facing challenges

[24:53] Where a lot of older haunts are going to struggle to hang on in the coming year or two. I do think we're going to see that.
So we're going to see, I think, haunt closures probably. But you were the one that raised this to me.
And you were explaining how basically you think after, especially, this is a prediction we won't probably see until after this season.
It'll probably be afterward when these corporations are looking at the numbers and go, oh, no, this is two years of this haunt being down.
Underperforming. Yeah, we need to... By their numbers. Yeah, we need to cut loose.
And the problem is, and this is something that's really frustrating in all creative industries, is that corporations will set expectations that may not be realistic.
Yeah. Even if the haunt does an incredibly good job, provides an incredibly good product, and sells relatively well, if it doesn't meet expectations, whatever the fuck that means. Yeah. Literally.
Well, and sometimes the expectations aren't put out clearly.
No. You know. They rarely are.
Yeah, I've never been. The expectations are set in some corporate document hidden away usually.
Yeah, exactly. That nobody sees except the person who wrote it.
And then they go, oh, didn't meet expectations.

[26:08] And then, yeah, we're going to cut you loose. And it could be exactly that.
I do think this could be a year, especially if it is another down season, we could see corporation corporate haunts starting to look and say okay who's our weak link here or who do we think are our weak links not necessarily who actually is because that's part of the problem is like haunters and small business owners can make a decision to invest make drastic changes pivot corporations it's usually a cut or don't cut decision yeah exactly you know there's only two alternatives so yeah i think in that regard you're absolutely right we are going to see some degree of reckoning um and and i'm going to come back to this later on but yeah but this is something i think this is going to i think people are going to clap back at them that's all at the corporations or us at the corporations oh not at us we're picking this yeah um but yeah i i agree that this is likely to happen this may also be something that comes up more next year after three three years of issues.
Yeah. But it's also not an unreasonable thing to say after two.
No. Because corporations are going to struggle to justify haunts that they perceive as losing money.
Yeah. All right. Man, this is a heavy list.
It is. It gets better towards the end. As usual with this show. Yeah. Yeah.

Staffing issues persist in the haunt industry

[27:31] Um, so here's another heavy topic.

[27:35] Staffing issues are going to continue. Yeah. And I just don't see a way out of this one.
I think this may literally be the safest pick.

[27:45] Yeah. If you ask me my safest pick, I would probably put this one even ahead of higher ticket prices.
Even though I have graphs and charts to prove the higher ticket prices, I feel safer with this one.
Yeah, no, I agree with that. and it's because people are going to want a living wage.
I mean, even if it's just seasonal work or even if it's their first job, you know, as a teenager who's just entering the workforce.
Now, I don't think this is going to impact home haunters, you know.
Or charity haunts. Or charity haunts so much.
Especially if they're only open a few nights out of the season.
I don't think this is going to impact you. The issue is, is that for a person to become an employee at a haunt, they have to justify the opportunity cost.
Now, if your hours don't overlap with their day job at all and they don't mind not sleeping for a month, then it's not a big deal.
A lot of people can do two jobs and not have A impact B. And that's fine.
That's fine. But those people are increasingly few.
Yeah. Yeah, they are, and I think it's going to be really hard to get people to want to do that.
Yeah, because the issue is this.

[29:07] Nobody, even if you pay $15 an hour, even if you pay a really good wage, X number of nights per week for basically a month...

[29:17] It's not a salary. It is not something that anybody can sacrifice, risk, damage their main job, their main source of income.
And with a lot of people doing gig economy stuff, a lot of people are working weekends and evenings anyways, like your Uber drivers, your delivery people, and so forth.
They're often working Friday and Saturday night. Those are their primo hours to make money.
Yeah. So your gig workers can't give up that in order to work at a haunted house for just a month and then have that job disappear come November 1st. Yeah.
Now, one of the things I would like to see in the haunt industry, but I don't know, I'm pretty sure it's not practical, but I'd like to see it, is to find out the minimum number of players you need to be open per night and find a way to make that their full-time job.
Or at least, you know, a three-quarter time job.
Yeah. Well, one of the things I didn't put in the notes, but I've been thinking about as I've been going over these, is I think we're going to see a move in haunt design to try and get away from so many human actors.
Yeah. We're going to see haunts sort of borrow from the year-round haunts, which may be staffed by one or two people. Yeah.

[30:30] But they're designed so that the person going through through gets a lot of touches and interactions and human-driven scares but it's just one or two people doing it yeah and they don't even have to be seen for some of those scares um that way they don't look like it's the same person in the same place exactly um so yeah i think that's something so that's maybe a bonus prediction is a but i don't know if you're actually going to see that in 2023 if it's gonna be something that's more gradual because i do think we're going to see see more emphasis on that because paying and recruiting and paying haunt actors is problem for most haunts the biggest expense yeah for most pro haunts it is the single biggest expense and single biggest problem um yeah staffing issues every haunt i go to it's it's an issue yeah and and it's even haunts that have never had haunt staffing issues ever in the past yeah i've I've been reporting them in the recent years. So this is a very real thing.
And, you know, I think we're going to struggle with it. And the struggle is going to increase because here in New Orleans, homeowners insurance rates are going up. Flood insurance rates are going up.
That's impacting literally everyone who lives here.
Yeah. Plus, you've got the bubble coming up in a couple of years where there are less kids who are going to be college-aged.
Like whenever I worked at the university this was a big worry like there's a significantly.

[31:58] Significant drop in the number of younger people available to work yeah and yeah those college age kids that make a i'm sure a significant part of your staff yeah they don't exist anymore yeah they're not going to exist in a couple years not not in the numbers you're used to them existing um yeah that's that's another serious issue so we're gonna have to find ways to target and recruit older actors yeah because we can't go much younger yeah no that's the floor we can't go much lower When we don't really want younger. No.
So, yeah, the staffing issues in the haunt industry are going to continue.
I think this one's safe not just in 2023, 2024, but 2025. I think this is going to be...
We could just put this one in every one of these prediction episodes until we stop doing them. Yeah.

HR Services for Haunted Houses: A Big Swing Idea

[32:47] But this is a hope. Yeah, this is your big swing, so go for it.
Yeah, this is my big swing. I want to see an HR service like a temporary agency, but for haunts.
I know it's been tried like decades ago, but I really think that this could be beneficial.
You know, you set up or even like setting up with traditional temp agencies saying, hey, if you have anybody who comes in who doesn't really fit with office work, can you send them my way?
Yeah, it's not a bad idea. That kind of thing. The main issue with a traditional temp agency, though, is they are going to charge way more.
They are. You're going to pay out the nose for that. Exactly.
But I would love to see an HR services solution for the industry that gives fair prices to haunted houses.
Us because it's you know this is one of the few areas that i think that a haunted house focused.

[33:55] Um corporation or entity is necessary yeah ticketing i don't think that it's necessary i've never understood why there's so many haunt ticketing companies tickets tickets yeah exactly get over yourself i don't understand that but i would understand this completely and it would also give people you know they could do all of your initial.

[34:18] Uh trainings the background checks because how many times have we reported on sexual predators in haunted houses in the past couple of years it's disgusting and we need to find ways to stop that or at least mitigate it yeah at least say yeah we tried yeah at least you prove good faith effort you know yeah and it would also be a place for people to report if they have a bad experience at a haunt that, hey, you know, you shouldn't recommend people work here or.
Or not work with this manager here or something like that. Exactly. Yeah.
There's a. Go ahead. There is. There's a definite benefit to having a middleman between employees and management.
And that's one thing I've noticed at haunts is they don't have HR people typically dedicated HR people. Yeah.
Their HR person has a million other jobs. Exactly. And the reason I say that and say that it's a third party that's not buddy-buddy with the owners or with the managers and everything is because people are going to be afraid to go to that person if they're in a situation that they need to report.
Yeah. And we've seen it time and time again. Yeah.
That's not a bad point, yeah. Because they're afraid of getting fired, they're afraid of retribution, even though retribution is legal.
And they're afraid of hurting people they like that aren't the person they have the issue with. Exactly.

[35:45] They don't want to hurt people that don't need to be hurt.
Yeah, I mean, this is something that I see a big need for, and I think that it's an opportunity for the right person.

Opportunity for a Specialized HR Solution in the Haunt Industry

[35:56] Yeah, not us. Don't ask us to do it, please. We are terrible at this.
But technically, you have an HR background, and my dad was HR his entire career.
Well, you and I recruited people after Katrina to work on sites.
I mean, we know how to do this. Yeah, we actually are very good at it.
But we have day jobs already. ready and we are happy with and even you know i don't want to get into hr yeah hr requires a very special personality yeah that i do not have yeah it's a it's a very unique personality yeah you like firing people i i i enjoyed firing people way more than hiring people yeah exactly i was very good at the firing part yeah no i like i like uh interviewing people and figuring out what what their strengths are, and then helping them reach their goals. That's what I liked about it.
But regardless, yeah, I do think this would be something great to see arise in 2024.
I think this would be an awesome thing, this idea of an industry-wide.
And like you said, this is one of the few areas where we are unique enough, weird enough, that even though we're a small industry, having a specialized solution makes sense.
Yeah, and you could have, you know, it can be done remotely.
You can do initial interviews of, you know, this haunt's looking for this type of person.
You know, they have these qualities for an actor.
And that also takes out some of the haunt's bias, too. Yeah. I mean.

[37:26] I agree. This would be a great thing. I don't know if it'll happen or not, but I like your big swing. Yeah. Your big swing makes me happy.
Okay. I also think coming up is going to be an increase in home haunting. Mm-hmm.

Rise of Home Haunting and Pushback Against Expensive Haunts

[37:41] Basically, we were just talking about how the haunt industry is getting more and more expensive for customers.
And I think one of the ways there's going to be pushback against that is an increase in home haunting.
And supposedly we've already kind of seen that in some environments.
Like a lot of people talk about Los Angeles being very, very home haunt heavy.
In part because it is so difficult and expensive to go to a regular haunt.
Yeah. At least in part. It's not the sole reason.
It also doesn't help that you have all those Hollywood people.
Yeah. They've had that for a long time.
Yeah, they have. That's true. We have seen more stories about places in Florida who have home haunts and things like that. Including in places that have a large number of pro haunts, like the Orlando area, for example. Yeah, exactly.

[38:26] Which is surprising. So, yeah, and here's the thing that I think is really changing, and I was noticing this as we were touring through Home Depot and Lowe's and other places, like, before during season last year.
And this has been happening the past couple of years. years just how baller the prosumer market has got yeah like you can buy a 12-foot skeleton pretty much year-round if you can if it's in stock you can buy it year-round and it's a reasonably affordable we would have one if we had a place to store the fucker well we've talked about it and we've talked about why we we don't yeah and there are other reasons admittedly yeah and and part of Part of the reason is that it's so easy for people to get, and we've seen so many in our neighborhood, that it wouldn't make us special.
That's why we don't do it personally. But the prosumer market is very strong.
Yeah. And it's never been easier to find information about how to build a haunt and how to do various things in a haunt.
I mean, it just gets more and more accessible each year.
And I think especially as there's this push upward in ticket prices and many people feeling excluded from the pro-haunt market, we're going to see this growth in home haunting.
I think it's going to lead more people to visit home haunts and more people to set up home haunts. Now, I don't know if this is going to lead to more people decorating or not.
Yeah. Because decorating seems kind of weirdly cyclical.

[39:54] Yeah. Well, and it's, I don't know.
I have seen in the market more gothic aesthetic decorations.

[40:06] But that's just for people to go and buy year-round. That's just...
But for decorating itself, I don't think that a lot of people do both a home haunt and a decoration.
Yeah. I think you usually pick one or the other.
We're weird. But we're going to see, though, I think, more people getting involved in this, doing yard walkthroughs, doing home haunting, whatever.
And I'm hopeful for that. It's going to be a lot of fun, I think.

Increase in Mid-Tier Haunts and Rise of Retail Spaces

[40:35] So, yeah, hopefully that one comes true. Yeah. And so in the fallback from the conglomerates and the rise of them, I see an increase in mid-tier haunts.
And I'm saying it this year for a very specific reason.
Corporate real estate has taken a nosedive. Yeah, corporate real estate has done the exact opposite of what residential has done.
Yeah, so retail real estate, it's a buyer's season right now.
And I could see someone who was like, has more money than they need for a home haunt, but less money than a giant pro haunt going in on a retail space.

[41:23] I think that that would be great. I would love to be able to see the first full mall buyout.
Now that's going to be a giant one. And I'm really, I'm talking about little mom and pop stores that unfortunately closed because they couldn't stay open during the pandemic.
And are now have been on the market for a couple of years and are available.
Yeah, I mean, even within half a mile of our home, even though the actual old Ace Hardware is now being rented, the units next to it are still largely vacant and could still make a decent midsize haunted attraction.
Yeah, well, and that's it, is that we see a lot of real estate that's available commercially and it stays on the market forever. ever.
Yeah. Like the old Kmart just sold this year and is becoming storage.
Yeah, a self-storage place. Yeah.
Which is sad. I hate seeing more of those go up. I really do.
Yeah. How much fucking self-storage do you really need? I know why they go up.
They're incredibly cheap to set up and even cheaper to run. I get it.

[42:35] Jesus Christ, come on, guys. Yeah. It's like there was this weird building boom in our area where like 14 different kidney dialysis places were built inside seemingly a year. Yeah.
There's not that many people on kidney dialysis, I hate to tell you.
Yeah, but we know how they actually are making their money, and it's not off the actual people.
No, no, no. It's very bizarre, and especially in these United States, it's very bizarre to have something that actually is truly universal, universal government-run health care for one very specific thing.
Yep, and you can get paid for it if you open up. Yeah, so anyways.

[43:12] But yeah, I think we're going to see a rise in mid-tier homes. I don't.
I know. We've discussed this. I think you're absolutely right, and I back you 100% on what retail, what the market is doing as far as commercial versus residential property.
Property but i think the the issues there are other issues including fire code compliance uh the staffing issues we just mentioned i think those issues hit the mid-tier haunts and then up upstart haunts so much harder than established ones that i just i can't see a major uptick i hope i'm wrong but yeah i think you're completely right if look if you've been wanting to open one these haunts and all you've been missing is the real estate is the place to do it you're not going to get much of a better chance yeah but there's so many other variables right now that i think are keeping haunts sort of those tier of haunts a open and b from being opened so i.

[44:14] Don't know i i hope i'm wrong but i i don't quite agree but hey it's an interesting prediction well it'll be one of the things that we'll talk about next year yeah about how i did it well we also are this one's a sad one and it sort of ties into a comment i made earlier about haunt design but that we're going to see an increase in next gen quote-unquote haunted attractions and more of the older haunts will be no more yeah um a lot of and frankly a lot of this really is a safe prediction just because that's called entropy and how well it's called you know people are getting older so they're going to close and and the younger generation are going to want to.

[44:59] Fill in the place that they love because one of the things we've learned in researching haunts that made it past a certain point is once you get past like 25 years the most likely reason you're going to close is going to be because the owner retired or resigned and there was no one there to fill the shoes tired resigned got health issues there was no there was no plan to pass the torch Yeah, exactly.
That is the most common reason for haunt past about 25 years.
Yeah, and I think that that's one of the reasons charity haunts actually seem to last longer.
Yeah. It's because they have a whole network of people working on it, and they can easily say, hey, you're going to take over when mom tires.
There's a direct succession path all the time.
Yeah, there's always a succession path with a charity, because that's how charities are structured.
Yeah. Yeah. But haunts, very often especially non-charity haunts, are structured in, hey, Bob made this haunt.
Yeah. And he's been running it for 30 years. What do you mean Bob's retiring? Yeah.

[46:03] Who's going to replace Bob? No one. Yeah. There's not another Bob.
There's no second Bob. There's no Bob 2. Yeah. So, you know, that's a big problem with those haunts.
But I do think we're going to see those next-gen haunts.
And I think one of the things we were talking about is how they're going to be designed, A, to offer a very different experience, but also with the modern realities of the haunted attraction industry in mind. Yeah.
Including limiting the number of people that have to be employed, have to be recruited, have to be maintained, so on and so forth.
I think that's one of the directions we're heading.
I don't necessarily think it means those haunts are going to be smaller, like in terms of square footage necessarily. necessarily, but you're going to see a different focus and a different structure. Yeah.
Okay, last year we predicted the rise in AR, and as the joke you already made, we predicted the wrong A.
Yeah, I think that, you know, we're going to see more AI-generated promotional material especially.

[47:06] Because, you know, we've talked about how haunts will go and get promo materials and videos from stock video places, places and just pay for it and use it and not use the actual character yeah and it's annoying you know the thing about it is this is we did an episode a while back about ai and haunting where we try to sort of guess some of the ways yeah ai might be used by haunting um the promo material is definitely one of the obvious ones you need images you need videos yeah uh you need copy.
They always look a little bit creepy anyway because they never get it quite right. Yeah.
AI generated material can be.

AI-generated content for corporate-owned haunted attractions

[47:54] I can see why it would be appealing to some owners because rather than paying, like you said, for the stock footage, rather than paying a photographer to come in and do a shoot with your actors, you have to pay the actors and do all this and set it up.
Just go to whatever text-to-image image system you find, go beep, boop, boop, boop, and generate good enough, I guess, for your work.
Like I said, I don't think you're going to get, it's, AI does not generate the best results.
No. And here's the thing. I don't think that the small home or charity haunts are going to use this technology.
No. I think it's going to be the more corporate-y owned and minded ones.
And a good example here is the 13th floor.
We commented this season and last season about how the marketing material for New Orleans Nightmare had zero bearing on what was actually in the haunt.
Yeah. Like, I didn't recognize any of the haunted attractions they said were there as being part of New Orleans Nightmare. Did not.
No. There was no, and you can tell there's this huge disconnect between the marketing team and the boots on the ground building the haunt.
No. They clearly would not recognize each other at the holiday party.
You know what I mean? Yeah.

[49:10] It's totally different. So I could totally see companies like that, or even like large independent haunts, since they already have that disconnect between the marketing and the experience, just doing AI, at least having AI-generated content.
Um, you know, images. That said, I do think we are going to see an increase in the use of AI.
I would be curious to see if AI can do anything with the design process of a haunt.
Well, and I think that whenever we did that episode, we asked it as a question of the week, and there were several responses of people saying that they did use it in design. I could see it used in costuming. In fact, I'm thinking about playing around with that myself.
Well, I think one of the really good areas that AI, one of the things AI actually does well, and I have actually tinkered with it myself, is in generating ideas.
Yeah, exactly. Because I've actually sat down with ChatGPT and come up with ideas for plagiarism today, my day job.
And it kicked some pretty interesting ideas. I mean, in that regard, it was very much like chatting with just another person.
Anyone else bouncing ideas off, what do you think I should do for an article this week type thing.

[50:29] And, you know, I think that is an area where AI really can actually help and can help today.
But I think whenever you go from it helping you get the ideas to helping you execute the ideas.
Yeah. that's when AI really starts to struggle and does not produce the best work. It produces very fast and cheap work.
But if you want the best quality work, you know, there's no substitute for a human, at least not yet. Yeah.
But yeah, I would be very interested to see ways, and that's something we might want to come back to now that over a year has passed, and talk more about ways AI can be used in hauntings.
The way AI is used in general has changed a great deal. Yeah, so if you do use AI heavily, contact us, let us know for a possible future episode. All right.
And finally, this is kind of my bigger swing one here.
I would like to see more events targeting older adults.
This would include events that feature alcohol or possibly marijuana in states where it's legal.

[51:39] But center around more mature themes. memes and because the reason i would love to see this is a haunted attractions have been around long enough that they can actually ride a nostalgia wave yeah if your haunt has been around more than 20 years you automatically have a nostalgia wave constantly behind you of people that knew you 20 years ago yeah and remember you and associate that with a younger simpler better time for them and would love just to relive it again and might be willing to pay through the nose for some of that. Yeah.
So you have a built-in nostalgia wave there. And older, up to a certain point, you know, up to a certain point, older customers are less price sensitive.
Typically, they are higher mathematically, statistically, they're higher earners.
That makes them less sensitive to higher prices.
And they also open up more lines of business. Yeah.
And even if it was just like for a night, you know, 18 or 21 and over only, um a show for that just so that because i will pay more to go to a movie theater if i know that there aren't kids there yeah i 100 and i i feel the same way about haunts honestly because while it's fun to see the screaming little kids i've also been run over by those screaming little kids.

The Strength of Teens: Don't Underestimate Them

[53:04] One of the things i have learned working front of house is do not underestimate the strength of teens.
Yeah. Ever. No. I mean, yeah, I'm six foot tall. I'm 200 pounds.
I'm not a small, you know, person.
And I've seen these wiry little teens come through, but when they get a full set of steam on them, they can wreck your shit. Mm-hmm.

[53:28] They can fuck you up in ways you are not prepared for. I know. It's happened.
So, yeah, I would definitely pay extra.
I would like to see events targeted at older. And older in this case, I'm thinking like mid-20s and up.
I'm not even really thinking like us even in this.
I'm just thinking older than the typical, you know, 13 to 29 experience.
Maybe target the latter end of that range plus higher. Because, like I said, there's a built-in nostalgia wave that the haunted attraction industry, for reasons I'm not clear on, does not actively try to tap into.
If you have a haunt that has been 20 years or older, or if you're in an area with a haunt tradition that's over 20 years, you've got a nostalgia wave there.
And here's the thing. You could even, you know, target 21 years ago.
You know, every 21 years, you know, go to a theme that was 21 years ago in your haunt, if you've been around long enough, and pull that up. Say, we're bringing back this theme.
Nobody's going to remember when they went through as a kid what it was like.
It's going to be a totally different show, but you could say the theme is the same.
And if you've got any of the props, maybe put one as a special, you know, treat for those who get it, a little Easter egg.

[54:44] Yeah, I mean, the opportunity of the nostalgia wave, I think, is just a missed opportunity.
Yeah. Well, on that note, everyone, that is all for this week on Haunt Weekly.
We greatly appreciate you spending the past hour with us. Please do check out other stuff we do, hauntweekly.com, hauntweekly on Twitter, or X, I'm sorry, I'm never going to stop calling it Twitter. No.
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So until next time, I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And we will see you all next week as we continue the march through 2024.