[0:22] Hello, everyone. I'm Jonathan. I'm Crystal. And this is Haunt Weekly, a weekly podcast beyond a distraction, entertainment industry, whether you're an actor or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to you this week exhausted. I think everybody's exhausted. I don't think we're alone. I'm going to assume, unless you're listening to this much later, that this is true for you as well, because we're literally recording this on the two during what for many haunts is hell week recorders on tuesday um the day two days before halloween the 29th basically and so yes we are exhausted and even though we haven't been open the past couple of nights we've been trying to get work work done and sleep and sleep yeah and sleep yeah well in last thursday i got a sniffle so yeah now i've got haunt crud yeah haunt crud going around a bunch of other stuff so anyways this week we do not have formal notes as we do a lot this time of year and as we've talked about in the previous few episodes no time restrictions we're not aiming for a specific time frame on this we've got a lot to talk about and we're just going to go until we're done if it's early if it's late i don't care it's an episode and it's going to be interesting because we get to talk about the first two nights of our haunt season two out of three are in the bag we're going to talk about decomposed haunted house which we just went to and we get to talk about a fun little game yeah.

[1:51] Um can you say the name chrisley the annual ghost town pumpkin festival yeah we talked about it last year we will talk about it again this year including an extremely amazing edition that i think you're going to want to stick around for it this is a free game people yeah i'm not kidding you the game is free yeah we paid two dollars to get the hats i recommend paying at least two dollars for the pay more to get the hats i mean but yeah get the hats paid support these people because they are working their ass off as we'll get to at the end of the podcast but anyway before we do all that please do check us out at all the places we exist we're at hauntweekly.com hauntweekly on x slash twitter hauntweekly on facebook and youtube.com slash hauntweekly is the youtube channel find us wherever you get your podcasts from pay special attention to the facebook page when we do live streams when we have guests and we have been talking to a few people who we may have as guests in short or after season um so stay tuned there may be happenings there.

[2:49] So beyond that, every week on our Facebook page, in particular, we do ask a question of the week. And last week's question of the week was, how has your haunt season been so far? Are you up or down all around? What's going on? And Sean Fenner said, those I've talked to in here in New York, including our haunt, have seen good crowds. Most are up. Chris Gay said, our weather has been perfect. So our totals are almost tied with 2022, which was our busiest year ever. We've had busier individual nights in the past years, but those have usually been partnered with a rain out in the night before or after. I understand that. Yep. Kind of nice that we're busy, but steady and not overloaded. Yeah. The weather, it seems, in most of the country has been haunt season's best friend. Yeah. It's been pretty solid here, too, to be honest with you. It's been a little hot for my taste, but it has been very dry and very clear, not humid. very, you know what I mean, just generally good weather. Yeah. Max Jink says it's been a pretty chill year so far. The only bad thing was that COVID went around our cast the last couple of weeks. That sucks.

[3:56] No. Jeremy Back said, It's been fine. Just lost my grandpa last Saturday. I'm so sorry to hear that, Jeremy. Working at the Haunt is helping get through it. It's always nice to have something to focus on. Something you enjoy. Something you love to focus on. I mean, yeah. I understand completely.

[4:19] Ryan DeBoss said, Smooth, steady, and enjoyable. which is three words i've never seen use to describe on season but all right no shiver haunt scv said we did a yard display this year instead of a walkthrough and it's been a delight turn it on go inside watch horror movies and relax yeah and actually our light display our yard display is going to be a topic we have to cover in a minute yeah because i it might cause some issues on halloween night yeah we we might we'll get into it we'll say that and reggie just simply set up and that they did their first time with pre-sale and time ticketing and they actually uh sold out no sorry they did not sell it they could not believe how much more tickets they were selling because of it and this is a journal just sorry someone else said they sold out they did say they sold out they did yeah oh yeah okay i don't have my glasses on yeah that's not my fault oh no it's not but yes so it sounds like even though we were a little bit worried about this season is that for most haunts it's actually a pretty positive thing though a self-reported survey of course has a ton of problems but still i'm glad to hear that at least anecdotally the people who listen to the show seem to be having a decent year um haunters we've talked to have said they've been down but only slightly not like a worrying amount and and they did mention the thing that came up in the question week that it's been more steady than these driving crushes which I wish that were true at our haunt.

[5:49] Yeah shall we get into our haunt since we're like six minutes in, um first two nights are in the books we only operate three nights out of the year friday and saturday before halloween and halloween night which is thursday so two days out from when we're recording with us um we've had about 160 people i forgot to get the exact counter off the uh device before i came in here to record but it's about 160. Uh 60 the first night 100 the second and those numbers are not where i want them to be honest they're they're low they're down compared to where we were especially pre-pandemic still yeah but we had a major handicap and it wasn't the weather no we were competing with taylor swift yeah like i cannot explain to anyone.

[6:41] Not who's been to a city where taylor swift is especially like a medium-sized city like new orleans just how all-consuming this was the past few days i'm not a fan of taylor swift I don't hate Taylor Swift. They got no real passionate feelings one way or the other. I like some of her songs fine, but I'm definitely not paying $20,000 for a concert ticket. No. Even if I had $20,000 to blow on concert ticket, I doubt I would do it. But...

[7:09] The point is, I have very ambivalent feelings, which is like the worst kind, because now I get hate from both directions. But that's just the way my life is these days. Yeah, it is.

[7:20] But anyway. It was super consuming. Yeah, there were a lot of extra people. Yeah. It meant that we couldn't go to some of the places in the city that we would normally go to. We basically, we live on the west, what's known in New Orleans as the West Bank side of the river. We actually live in the city of New Orleans, to be clear. We pay Orleans Parish taxes, have a New Orleans address, all that jazz. But we're on the opposite side of the river from the French Quarter, the Superdome, all that stuff. And we just made a blanket rule. We're not crossing the river, if we can avoid it at all. Not only did we not cross the river, we also did not go down to the point, which is where the ferry is, to get across the river. Yeah. Because by Thursday, fans were already showing up at our favorite bar down there. Yeah. it it was like in like one of the days it was going on we went to target yeah and i'm trying to put this on some geography it's on the west bank side of the river but it's about five miles further away from the downtown center than we are yeah like there should have not been.

[8:23] Tourists don't make it over here that often no no tourists don't and i swear to shit the target it was overloaded with with swifties it really was it was wild i did not expect so many swifties to be that far away from the city center like i knew the superdome the central business district french quarter uptown all that would be overrun yeah that happens every big event it doesn't matter if it's a super bowl it doesn't matter if taylor swift it doesn't matter what it is it always happens i did not expect them to reach you know all the

[8:54] way to the furthest reaches of the West Bank. Yeah, I have not seen him out there. Yeah.

[9:00] It was wild and but i know from here talking to a lot of people like i don't think it was like directly like people went to taylor swift instead of our haunt because a she did three shows they could have come on an alternate night yeah it was that nobody wanted to drive or get around the city exactly our first two nights were limited i think to people just in the neighborhood pretty much no one came from the east bank to hear for the same reasons we didn't go to the east bank yeah i mean it's the same reason it is so it's like i totally understand so i think that kept our numbers down well we had beautiful weather both nights a little warm but great weather and it looks like we may be getting light rain on halloween i'm keeping an eye on the forecast still, um but that's an annoying potential problem yeah but all that being said uh the two nights i've got to say though other than the numbers being a little bit down were damn near flawless yeah Yeah, and the second night was amazing. Yeah. It just was.

[9:59] Yeah, the second night, going back to what people were saying in the question of the week, it was never a crush of humanity. Right. We never had a full queue line. We didn't have the line down to the street like we've had a few times. We weren't, oh, my God, we're going to die. But it was steady. Nobody got a very long break. You got to take a few minutes here, a few minutes there. Right. But there was no, like, waiting 30 minutes for someone to show up right.

[10:22] Yeah. Opening night, it was like there was this crush of humanity at the beginning. Full queue. Huge line. And then when they cleared out, it died. It just fucking died. Yeah. And it died for like an hour. And it was really frustrating. Yeah.

[10:37] And we were not running. We opened at 7. We were not running anyone in line. Like 7.15 to 8.15. Now, more people showed up between 8.15 and 8.45-ish. And then on until like 9.15. But, yeah, that hour of just after we got through that initial crush. And then nobody there really i don't want to say like upset me but it really frustrated me, because it's like if that crowd we had gotten in the beginning had just staggered out a little bit it would have still been pretty good but that's not how it went down um so yeah but you're right saturday was great because we actually had an over full cast yeah for the first time ever because you know that i build in extra spots for actors in case we get extra actors all of my extra spots were full like that's never happened yeah if someone else had showed up i don't know what they would have done legitimately uh no have them help in the queue line i put them with feral and have them do queue lines i don't know i i legitimately don't know because we did not have anything built for them we had nine people in that garage and this is not a big garage i remind the court 625 square feet four rooms that's all so we had at least two people in every room.

[11:54] But it was humming. Yeah. And it was really, really good. One thing I'm very proud of this year that, you know, my contribution was the layout. Yes. That has worked a treat. It really has. One of the other things I've noticed, and we were talking to some people recently about how to slow down people. Yeah. Is that it seems like, because we have a fairly bright haunt this year. Yeah. Like, the lighting is fairly bright. And that's by design. Yeah.

[12:26] It seems like people are going slower through it because they aren't scared of the dark. Well, yeah, and I think one of the issues a lot of haunts have that are dark is you're in one light point, you see another light point, X number of feet away, you just run to close that gap of the dark. Exactly. And because, you know, we, and that's, and then think about what you do when you're, like, walking on the street at night. If you like there's a gap between the stoplights you probably move a little quicker between the stop between the street lights or is that stop by street lights but you know what i mean you probably do that yeah and so having a slightly brighter haunt and using other tricks to hide our scares has been amazingly effective and i think combined with the new l's and breaking that line of sight um yeah and it was really funny the first group that went in on friday night first group took for fucking ever yeah and i'm sitting there outside going jesus christ i just nuke our throughput with this layout and i'm sitting there in my head going okay we can take down this wall before we open them i'm trying to i'm trying to fix it in my head and they come out the other side i put the next group in and they go exactly the right amount of time about two minutes ish inside and every other group after was exactly the time and no one ran because it used to be the problem was I'd be outside in front of house feeling like I was on a prank show.

[13:51] Because I'd put a group in, and they'd appear at the exit so fast. I swear they just got twins in the same clothes to play a joke on me. But no, it just turns out they just the entire haunt. And if you do that in this haunt, you'll be out in like 10-15 seconds. It's not a long walkthrough unless you're taking the time to actually enjoy it and get scared and have fun with it. Mhm. So, yeah. Yeah, we only had one customer that was a little shit.

[14:22] But, you know. But as you said, she was at that age. Yeah, it was a little girl. She was at that tween age where nothing is good enough. We had, like, disemboweled her. She would have complained about the quality of our knife. It was that type of thing. This isn't rusty enough. I can't feel the stabbies or not. It'd be like that.

[14:42] You can't abide that. Because the thing is, the reviews from everyone else was absolutely glowing. I think these were some of the best reviews we've ever had. People were very impressed with what we did. We've gotten more interaction on Facebook afterwards, too. People actually going and seeking out and leaving reviews. And one thing that's happened a lot I've noticed on our Facebook is people who have come through are doing the ultimate review, which is going back, commenting, and tagging their friends and telling them to come. Yeah.

[15:15] That is the ultimate positive review. That's way better than a five-star rating to me. Yeah. So I guess we should start at front of house, now that we're, you know, into it a bit, with the art display. Yeah, okay, yeah. The art display this year, I think we talked about it before, but to recap, we didn't do, like, a big spectacle. Like, last year we had the giant wrestling ring. Before that, I think we had, like, a bike doing the jump. We had all these big spectacles. We decided we weren't going to do a big spectacle this year. They're really hard to build in that day. They're really hard to build. And, like, the ring was a bastard because I had to go outside at least once a day, usually twice a day, to put pipes back into place because every little bit of wind would shift it. And, of course, animals would bump. Oh, the fucking animals loved it. Oh, God.

[16:10] Loved it in not appropriate ways. No, all of the cats would get on top of the ring and lay down with the skeletons, and all the raccoons would be underneath. Not realizing the weight and everything is destroying it. So, yeah, that was a problem last year. So we said we're not going to do a spectacle. What we did is we got about a dozen skeletons. I think that's like 14 or 15. Yeah, it's closer to 15. And we made them all up to look like famous scientists. We focused mostly on cosmology and quantum physics, areas that I'm passionate about, but we threw in some other scientists too that were interesting.

[16:48] And what we did is we decorated them, and then we attached QR codes to them. Yeah. So you could sit there, you could take a guess on who the scientist was, and then check the QR code and find out. Right. And I've got to say, the Yard display has had amazing response to this. This is the most popular Yard display we've done. People really like scanning those QR. I thought the QR codes were going to be something that the nerds would love. Yeah. I figured the QR codes would be like, my people would love it. Like, I know I would love this. Right. And I figured it would be, no. Well, that's what we do, is we do things that we love. Yeah, and the yard display is even more so that. Yeah. Like, the yard display is totally just for our own shits and giggles at the end of the day. And I think that's what made it, like, so good this year, was we literally just did what we wanted to do. Yeah. And just what made us laugh and what made us smile and gave us fun. Like, I love our Schrodinger with the little cat in a box. Yeah. He's adorable. I love Plonk. And Plonk is probably the all-time favorite. I don't know where the fuck you found that tiny skeleton.

[17:57] Dollar Tree. Probably. Yeah. And I'm glad your miniature painting skills finally came to fruition, trying to paint the mustache and hair on him. Yeah. Mustache and hair, and I made a tiny little pair of glasses for him. And it was so funny. One of our actors who hadn't seen the display, but knows a lot about the stuff. He's like, so what's up with the tiny skeleton? Who's that? That's Max Planck. And he looks at me and goes, oh, that's messed up, dude. That's messed up. Yeah. I don't get it. Well, and I was worried about it because I thought that, you know, kids wouldn't find it as fun. Yeah. You know, because it's like, oh, well, we're going to see skeletons, but it's also a learning experience. We've got to learn stuff. Yeah. About science. But, no, from what you've said, like, the kids that have come through have loved it. They've been scanning the QR codes, and they've been, like, skimming the Wikipedia articles on their phone to learn about these people. Yeah. It's been a huge success, which is a fucking problem. Uh-huh. Because on Halloween night, the trick-or-treat area, which is the front yard, gets slammed. And we've already had a minor, admittedly minor, problem of people pulling up and then spending like six weeks in a yard display. Yeah. And never making it into the haunt. Some of them never make it into the haunt, and some of them make it after way too long.

[19:22] And this yard display is not designed for a large number of people. It can handle a decent crowd. As long as they keep moving. As long as they keep moving. And that's just it. What we've encouraged with the QR codes is lots of stopping. Yeah. And I think... I think our front of house crew is going to be really pissed at us. I'm really glad Ellie will be here Halloween night. Uh-huh. Because we'll have her and our two usual trick-or-treat crew people. And so that gives us a full house up front. Yeah. Combine me and Farrell, obviously.

[19:54] So we'll have our team there, and we can help kind of move things along maybe. But, yeah. And one thing we're going to tell people, and we're going to leave the display up until at least the 7th. Yeah. And one of the things I've been thinking about and that we may do is post a picture, make a sheet of all the scientists. That's a picture of the scientists with the QR code underneath so that they can take it with them and not have to stop for as long. Yeah. To get the photos. That might be something to whip up real fast. Yeah. But, yeah, it's such a great display, and it went over so much better than I thought. Yeah, me too.

[20:29] I mean, I really, because, I mean. I thought we'd give one or two people, like, get in the QR code. Well, it's like the neighbor that came by on the second night, the one we met during Ida. Right. And she and her husband were dressed up as a car, as a king and a queen. Yeah. And they came through the haunt, and they went through the thing. They're total nerds. And they loved it. And I figured, yeah, that's what I thought would be the audience for this. These are our people. Yeah. We have said this.

[20:56] These are our people. And, of course, they're going to love it. But, no, it's been everyone.

[21:01] I did not realize QR codes would be this fucking popular. I really, that's just that I guess when we did the display, because one of the reasons we went this route was time. We did not have a lot of time. We had to get the display functionally done before we left for St. Louis for the baby shower. Yeah, we basically had three days. Yeah, we had two full working days, two weekend days, and like one half day. That was it and so we couldn't build anything huge and we were like okay well qr codes we'll just do that and that i felt like i was cheating and taking a shortcut but no it's turned out to be probably the most popular thing we've done in a long time yeah now i'm wondering if we shouldn't put our rules on the on a qr code in the line jonathan just slapped his head if you didn't right i'm pretty sure that came through in the audio just fine um oh jesus i did not think of that uh-huh i am wrecked i'm sorry that that's no the problem is it's a great idea well yeah because people are actually using it i i mean i really underestimated how much people use qr codes i thought the fad had passed i thought we'd be bringing back covid memories when everyone had to scan a QR code to get a fucking menu. I thought we were bringing that shit back. No, everyone loves it. It's crazy. And it's like, wow, okay.

[22:27] I actually watched a video about how QR codes work, and that's a fucking amazing thing all to itself. But yeah, the yard display has just proven so popular.

[22:39] Even like Halloween, the yard display typically does get more total people than the haunt just because some people like parents will bring their kids. Parents will roam around the yard display and the kids will swing by after, but the parents don't go in and haunt. That type of stuff happens all the time. So the yard display does typically get more people Halloween, but the other nights, most people ignore the yard display. Or if they do, they just take it. Yep, it's a yard display and go on ahead. Yeah. It's not like this where they're spending 10, 15 minutes in the yard display going through. I mean, we did it to ourselves. We did. We can't blame anyone but us. No. but Jesus it was not the expected response yeah.

[23:20] So, yeah. No, that is frustration one. But then, anyways, we get to the Q line itself, which had gotten knocked askew in Francine. Right. We did take a hurricane. Luckily, one of our actors is a gorilla and was able to literally just yank it back into shape. Right. And they call themselves that. That's their term. Yeah. He refers to gorilla. Every time he does that, he goes, gorilla strength. Yeah. Pretty much exactly how it frames it, too. Yeah, they do. So, yeah. But anyway, so that was good. We realized, oh, there was two problems with the Q-Line, though. Yeah, that was the lights. First one was the lights. The Q-Line lights that we had finally kicked the bucket. We had a few lights out, but they finally kicked the bucket. So what we did is we just went through and bought more flame bulbs. Those get better ambiance anyways, and it brightens it better. That's working great. The other problem was the goddamn donation box. Yeah. That was fun. I went out literally the day, this was Thursday, day before opening. I went out to do light checks on the queue line and the donation box. And the donation box, I noticed all the lights work.

[24:39] But see, the donation box we have is kind of like on an elevated lectern. And we have a skeleton underneath who looks like he's holding up the box and it's a very, very cool box design. I really do love it. It's one of my favorite things we've built. But I noticed that that skeleton underneath it was getting a lot more light than I remembered. And then I looked at the bottom and the wood at the bottom of the donation box was OSB and it just completely rotted out and there was a giant hole and upside down volcano in the bottom of it. And so basically I had to go first remove the skeleton and when I went to remove the skeleton it disintegrated in my hands like something out of Indiana Jones so then I had to remove that bottom piece everything else in the nation box was fine.

[25:26] Bad because we had just put up the fucking power tools. We had just put them up when I discovered, no, I have one more board I have to cut. We've got to get the workbench, we've got to get the circular saw, we've got to get this shit back. And so we had to take it back out and put it right back in because it was two cuts. Fix the bottom of it and then put a new skeleton in it and I like the new skeleton we got in it. It's one with glowing red eyes. It's one of the posing states. One of the posing states from Home Depot. The ultra posing states. So then the fingers can be moved. And no, I didn't do what you're thinking I did with it. But I do love it because the red eyes compliment the glowing red inside the donation box. Yeah. It looks really badass. It does.

[26:12] So that was a last minute fix. And then after those problems, I was showing one of our actors around to see where a spot would be and how it was going to be lit. Yeah. Turned on the projector, and power died in half of the garage. This was on Thursday again. Yeah. That was not a good price. Turns out, what had happened, and, okay, you have to understand, this house, before we got it, we got this house in 2007. them. Before we got it, whoever lived here before was clearly the world's worst electrician. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that is an accurate statement. Like, go out to our fuse box right now. You'll notice something that...

[27:03] We learned this on Thursday. We don't have a main breaker for the house. Yeah. We can tell where they tried to put one in because it's all melted. And even when you look at the individual circuits nothing makes sense in what is connected to what no it is totally fucking random i have no idea if this guy just got copper wire super cheap and just felt like yeeting it everywhere because it is no logic to it whatsoever and so i thought logic that we'd blown trip the circuit yeah but then i noticed half the lights in the garage were working half weren't and i knew that the garage was on one circuit.

[27:47] It shouldn't be. I don't think that they are, though. I think that there's at least two. Because that's how half of them are on. No, half of them are on because the circuit was broken halfway. Okay. Because what happened is they, whoever they are, put in these two-by-two receptacles in the ceiling. And when they connected them, did the power pass through via the outlet itself, using some very sketch wire, I might add. Yeah. That's putting it generously. and because we were running a large fan and a projector basically that wire and the two screws got overloaded and luckily it failed in a safe way no fire no damage and it was a two dollar fix at the end of the day um but still wow we got it all fixed i mean once again pharaoh would talk about you know our resident gorilla is their term not mine um um he they came in and they actually, tested everything found the flaw and was able to fix it we were back up and running with very little cost yeah and they're going to come back after season and do the same thing with all the other outlets get it so they can handle the current that they're supposed to be able to handle.

[29:00] Um because the reality is other than the fan we had running we really weren't running anything hydro no we weren't it's just the projector and a couple of box fans to keep it a little bit cooler we really weren't going that crazy so when that went out that went out first thing in the day I actually told them I was at an order and then I noticed the donation box that evening.

[29:23] And I remember I brought dinner home that Thursday and, set it down on the table and the bag of fries and tots we had just dumped itself on the floor. And I remember nearly breaking down in tears from so many relatively small setbacks back to back to back. I mean, it really did feel like this was going to be a curse season. Yeah. Like every turn there was something else in our way. Everything was two steps forward, one step back. Yeah. We can't get any momentum going. Mm-hmm.

[30:02] You know, nothing's going the way we want to go. All these problems. Everything's breaking. And luckily, we stayed up until 5 a.m., basically, Thursday night. We got everything in good shape. We got about five hours of sleep, maybe. Maybe, yeah. Got up that Friday and basically finished everything we had to do. We were actually, by the time people were arriving at 536, the actors were arriving. We were largely done. We didn't have much for them to do other than sweeping and a handful of odds and ends tasks like that. Security was done by that point. Sound was not finished but was good enough for the first night um yeah things like that was rough but i'm so glad we got it done and like i said we got that crush of humanity at 7 at p.m friday night they all went through they all gave the ravest reviews i heard lots of great screams lots of people reacting and man man, such great words, such kind words on the way out. And then basically the haunt worked, it all came together.

[31:27] And it was amazing. Yeah. And then the second day, we fixed a few things that we noticed needed fixing. Mm-hmm. Because there's always something. Oh, yeah.

[31:37] I was able to make some additions to sound design. Right. We did get a later start, so we were still doing some things as we were getting ready to open. Yeah.

[31:48] But. But overall, we didn't have any major breaks.

[31:52] No. Or any major flaws. Nothing broke. broke nothing really the only things we really had to do had to fix were things that we didn't have time for the day before like adding the additional boo boxes for sound um adding more black light paint to the black light room more black light paint, addressing you know what i mean those types of things um none none of it was oh shit so and so destroyed this prop no no nothing was destroyed um nothing broke yeah there was an issue with, people knowing where to go um and i think that's just because one of the little lights that's up is turned the wrong way i think i should i need to move it yeah thursday yeah those are things that like when people don't know where to go and haunt and i've been kind of watching when we go to haunt Yeah. I've been deliberately not going first. Because I have haunt instinct. Right. I'm usually pretty good at guessing where to go. So when we went to Decompose, and we'll talk about it in a minute, we brought Davis, one of our actors, with us. We had them go first. Yeah. Because I wanted to see how someone who had never been to a haunt before navigated a haunt. And yes, they've worked with us for two years now and had never been to a haunt outside of ours. Nope. They've never actually been through a professional haunt, so we had to buy them tickets and put them through.

[33:18] And that was fun. We'll get to that in a minute. But, yeah, lighting is like 90% of direction. Yes. Is what I have learned. And one of the problems we've had at a lot of haunts we've been to this year has been they have an actor area. And you can see through the curtain or whatever they have up. And it's fairly brightly lit. Obviously, it would be for the actors or for the emergency exit. But it's brighter and more obvious than the way you're actually supposed to go. Yeah. Yeah, well, and I think with the first turn out of the first room, the problem is that I put the light onto a sign, but it dead ends at a corner instead of putting the light actually on the sign shining down the hallway. Yeah, it needs to kind of go toward the right. Yeah, exactly. So that way it indicates some directionality. Exactly. Yeah, I get that. That makes sense. Yeah, it does. But in the five minutes or whatever I put it up, it was like, this will work. This will light it. This will tell them where to go. No, no, it didn't. We tried putting arrows and everything else. That didn't work either. Yeah, it was very frustrating. But it did end up working.

[34:33] So, yeah, the first two nights of the hall, I think, were great. It was a little slow Friday night. We had some extra dead time. Yeah. But we had a great night. Saturday night, I think, might have been the best night of haunting we've ever had. It's definitely in recent memory, yeah. Yeah, definitely one of the best in recent memories. Steady crowd, great crew inside, good crew outside. Everyone's having a good time. Yeah, and I have to give a shout-out to Jason, who's new for us this year. Because...

[35:06] You know i had seen earlier in the day japes posted something about training for kids kid actors yeah um and then we got a message on facebook saying hey my my kid wants to come and work with you yeah and normally we don't accept people who are very young because we've had some things in the past but we're like okay if you can be on site with him you are another parental figure right you are.

[35:35] Another parental figure um then he can come and the mom agreed i was shocked actually i was shocked i thought that would send him away um and the kid has been a fucking star yeah he is like in his spot he is excited he is far more professional than the other actors we have yeah we showed him where his his spot was whenever we were doing the walk through with him and his face just lit up and he's like that's mine and it lit up and it was great for us because he picked the spot in the loft which an adult can theoretically do yeah but it's not really comfortable for adults no i wouldn't want to stay up there too long but as a kid he can just stay up there and bang on the drum all day he's great yeah he's having a ball yeah he he's loving it and i just i'm so happy that we took the chance me too yeah i mean everyone worked out i think i don't think anyone's been rough this year and we haven't had any problems i just i'm so impressed that this 10 year old has his shit so together yeah it's it gives me hope for the future yeah he's he's definitely gonna keep doing this we're gonna see we're gonna hear about this kid in 25 years 20 25 years or so when he's open his big mega haunt in the area yeah we're gonna hear about him.

[36:58] And he's going to be telling the world about how we were the first haunt he acted in it. I just have a feeling. Yeah, well, I mean, we were also his first haunt to go through. Because he's been coming here for years. Yeah, I know. He's easy. Which I didn't know whenever they just randomly reached out. Yeah. So, no, he's great. I mean, I usually, like you said, we don't allow kids. But I'm glad we took a chance on this one. I really was very hesitant to take a chance. But sometimes it works out, man. So, yeah, these were just two amazing nights of haunting all in all. The layout worked great. The scares are working well. Everybody's doing a good job in there it seems like reset times have been nil we've been cranking people through when we have to it is it's been fuck near perfection um the only issues i think we have is one is we're having some minor issues with the new walkie talkies uh-huh nothing too serious we're just having to kind of learn how to work with them.

[37:55] Uh the falling wall gag we built is not being as effective as i thought it would be Yeah, same. And I think that it's because the original falling wall that we built was eight feet wide so that you could get a group in the middle of it and then have the fabric actually fall on them. Yeah. Now, whenever, because I knew that people who were untested in the haunt were going to be working it, we put a table in front of it so it doesn't actually hit anybody. Like, the fabric doesn't hit anybody.

[38:25] Well, mainly we're worried about the 2x4 hitting people. Yeah, exactly. I didn't want one of a new actor working it and hitting somebody accidentally with a two by four and hurting them. Yeah. Because we are about safety first. And yeah, this was a situation where being safety minded may have completely nerfed a scare. But it's OK, because now, thanks to Jason and the ceiling, we have two very effective scares right after. You've got the sliding door and then you've got Jason and you go into the next room, which also has a very good scare. Yeah. um that is one the third room i think is the most creative thing we've done in a long time i am so freaking happy yeah you should be this was a this was a combination of our work yeah but you you had the main idea so you get to explain it so when cleaning i found my really old dark room light and the preface really old here um we're talking it looks like it was made in the 60s. Yeah. And it is meant to handle incandescent and old-style bulbs. 700 watts. Yeah. That's not a small amount of wattage. No. Especially in the age of LED. But yeah, sorry. Yeah. So my idea was because we talk about how you can change the entire feel of a room by just changing the lighting. We've done that.

[39:48] Mid-haunt. So when you walk in, it goes from, because if you remember, we're doing kind of a steampunk thing. It goes from Edison bulbs to blacklight in seconds. No, not even instantly. Yeah. And it stays that way while you walk through it. And what we did is we put the Edison lights on the, basically, the house lights for the thing, and we put the black lights on the enlarger circuit. Yeah. Because this is meant to time how long an enlarger runs. Exactly. So that the image is burned into the paper for the correct amount of time before you put it in the chemicals. So all the actor has to do is knock it over to like five seconds, and the lights will switch instantly to blacklight. Yeah, and they've been turning it to 20, just to make sure that people get out. Because it's always going to be at least 20 seconds before the next group enters. Yeah.

[40:51] But yeah, I mean, that's been working great. And then we've got our, for the fourth room, we have the slam wall. Yeah, which we had last year. Which we had last year. But we've redecorated everything. We redecorated everything to look like a shipping container. And then on the exit, we also had a little pop-out boo spot for one of our larger actors. Because remember previously, in a previous episode, we talked about how we did the surprisingly mammoth task of moving all those walls down. Yep. Taking down that entire section, moving the walls down so we'd have access to the lights. But it also created a boo hole. And so you get one more scare as you're leaving, after you get hit by the slam wall. It is working beautifully. And once again, that is something I thought we did out of abject laziness. Fuck it, we'll just put a thing over it and call it a boo-hole. Yeah. But no, what happened is when that breakaway wall hits, everyone jumps for it, but everyone turns to face it. Yeah. Because they're startled and scared, and now there's an actor engaging with them. And so now they're facing, and now whoever's in the boo-hole just pops out from behind and David Pumpkins their asses. Exactly. It's just so beautiful.

[42:06] Our best haunt tactic this year was accidental. Well, okay, so accidentally on purpose. We did think about it because if we hadn't thought about it, we wouldn't have moved the walls. Yeah. Well, we said we wanted access to the hot water heater, light switch, and all that stuff, too. Yeah. We needed to move those walls for practical reasons, if nothing else. It was just it was a lot of fucking work, and we didn't want to do it. Yeah. And it was legitimately like a day's worth of work, a full day, just to move those because of how fucking nailed in, screwed in everything was.

[42:43] So, yeah. All in all, everything in the haunt's working great. I'm really excited about Thursday. Yeah. Yeah, we will be down a couple of actors. Yeah, but... All spots, all the main spots will be filled easily. Yeah. And I don't think we're going to have anybody, any dead zones. The two we're losing, we're working the same scare, and that scare only requires one person. Yeah. And, in fact, I think it may be more effective with one person. Yeah, it probably will because people won't think of it as a performance to stop and watch. Exactly. I did see that happening. One of the problems with the new layout is that I can't, see what the actors are doing in the next room. Yeah. You as stalker have lost your line of sight as well as the customers, the visitors. Yeah. So that's, yeah, that is a minor problem. That's something that we may want to address another way. One thing I can do, and I just thought about this is I can give you access to the camera live feeds. That's not going to help in the moment, but it's not a bad idea. It's just not going to help in the moment. Okay. It was just an idea. And then literally spitballing here, let us know we're recording, you know? Yeah, I know. Yes, we do.

[43:54] But, yeah, I'm very happy with how it went. It's been a great season. Numbers are a little down. Thank you, Taylor Swift. Hoping for dry weather Halloween. Yeah. If not, if the people that have come through are the only people we have, there's not a lot changing next year, I don't think. No. No. The layout is not changing. No. The layout's not changing. The layout's good. The layout's too good now. I feel like this, I think, is legitimately the best layout we've ever had. We'll redecorate. But we're not changing this layout. A, because we don't change layouts every year anyway. And I've got to say, and this is just sort of inside baseball here. We've always talked about how we were going, our last year was going to be announced. We weren't going to go finish a year and then turn around and go, sorry, we're done now. We're not doing it again. Right. We were always going to say, look, this is your last year to see us. We were going to give people a warning.

[44:47] And we got big 20 coming up. The big 2-0 is coming. And we had been talking in the run-up about making this, you know, our last season. Yeah, between family changes and health changes, it's actually really hard to be as active. A couple of you reminded me when we missed that episode a few weeks ago. We mentioned injuries, and then we came back and did an ultra-long episode and didn't talk about our injuries. Just back stuff. Yeah. That's it. It's as simple as that. Our backs are shit. Yours was especially shit since The Beast in Kansas City, but mine's been shit since 2006. Yeah. And it's one of those things that just hasn't gotten better.

[45:32] It's just back stuff a lot. And one thing I noted a lot this season was the issue we had was less a matter of time, but a matter of energy and ability. Yeah. You know, 20-year-old us could have knocked out this shit in the time easy just by not sleeping for a day or two. Yeah, I was expecting that. And, I mean, we didn't sleep much on Thursday, but. We fucking paid for it. Yeah, we did.

[46:00] But yeah, overall, it has been a great year, though. And the conversation has changed a lot about quitting next year. Yeah. I don't think it's going to happen. Yeah, and for those of you listening, we were seriously considering next year being our last year. It would make sense to end on 20. It would, and with the addition of, you know, a 10-year-old now who is enthusiastic about the haunt. Like, where else is he going to go, you know? I'm very happy with everything. I mean, we were always going to do something. In fact, one of the things we talked about was not doing the walkthrough haunt, but instead focusing on the yard display. Yeah. Which is what one of our commenters for the question of the week did. And that makes sense. I mean, that was one of the ideas we had. We're going to do something. Trust me, we're not going to piss off the Halloween gods again. No. We did that once very early in our relationship and paid for it dearly. No, no. We will appease the Halloween gods one way or another. But at some point, we're not going to be able to build and run the inside haunt. We're recognizing that. Yeah. But I don't think this is the time to make that announcement. I think we've got too much left in the tank. Yeah. Both creatively and physically. Well, and now we don't have to move walls for a while. Yeah, that'll be very, very helpful. That was one of the reasons this year was so rough was it was a major rebuild. Yeah, and we did a lot of very strenuous work right before we went on the Kansas City trip.

[47:28] We didn't do ourselves any favor. Yeah, we... Yeah. Yeah, I'll just leave it there. So yeah, first two nights, great. Minor caveats aside, I think all in all, we did a great job,

[47:42] and I think it's been a very good season. So let's move on. Okay. Decomposed. Decomposed. Speaking of having a good season, Decompose Haunted House out in Houma, about an hour away from us, our good friend John Carroll. So, usual disclosure here, we've known John 15 years now? Something like that, yeah. It's a crazy amount of time. We've all been avid home haunters. We've moved in the same circles, and we watched his journey from home haunt to pro haunt very closely, and it followed, and even helped a little bit on it. But, no, he's a great guy, and we love him, and we're so happy that he was able to open his haunt. But, man, okay, we bitch about our setbacks. Yeah. We ain't got shit on John, man. No. No, because Francine wiped out his entire ticket booth. His whole front of house, basically. Yeah. And including all of his tickets for this year. So if you go, you're getting one with a year from a previous year. Yeah. Last year or the year before. Yeah, we bought FastPass just to make sure we could yeet money at John. Yeah, we got 2023 tickets. Yeah, we got 2023s.

[48:54] He's a... But he is a great guy, and he runs a really solid haunt. And one thing I love about him is we were actually just hanging out and chatting. He was talking about all the work he's doing with the actors. Yeah. And that work has paid off. It has. It really has. They start actor training in January. Yeah, which is early by even my standards. Yeah, so he's got a tight crew there.

[49:18] Yeah, and that's one thing I noticed going through. It was about an 18-minute haunt. Um but the actor timing was impeccable no room after room after room after room and they did really good jobs of not touching but doing some very uncomfortable personal space intrusions yeah davison was very uncomfortable a couple times um yeah as we said he this was his first time to a haunted house a professional one um so it was fun and you know the there are i think that they listened to our black wall episode because there are scribbles on lots of the black walls now yeah and it did catch me i caught myself reading them multiple times yeah and they did a very smart thing i think they just had members of the cast write various things yeah because the handwriting was never consistent. Like even on the same panel, you'd see like multiple handwriting on it. I wouldn't expect it to be anything else. Exactly, it was really smart. Yeah. Because the thing about John, and believe me, we're the same way, is he likes to build everything himself. Yeah. He and his couple of people, he has his team, he likes to build everything himself. I get that. Yeah, I'm trying to think. I don't know that there's an animatronic in the house.

[50:41] I thought there were a couple but not many there's certainly not many yeah only at most two you know yeah and very minor ones yeah it's very actor driven haunt and it's actor driven in a good way because he also does an incredibly good job of giving actors things to do drop panels excellent actor hiding spots are provided um actor reach throughs he loves punching holes in his walls for actors that reach through. Actor pass-throughs, things like that. He does a great job giving his actors things to do. One thing that was neat when we went through was they did have a girl in the chainsaw. A tiny girl, too. A fairly small girl. She was a tank. I wasn't fucking with her.

[51:25] She was the cover advertisement for Last Night and Tonight. Yeah. They shot photos of it. She was doing good. I think, like we told John, she might need to be better positioned. So that way she's more of a surprise when you see her. Yeah, but... That's a minor issue. That's a minor issue. That was her first night working the chainsaw over there. And we were the very first group in. We kind of dicked them. Yeah, that was... I'm just saying. We specifically dicked any actor that was doing the role the first time. Yeah, because they had a lot of cancellations for Sunday night. Yeah. And to be fair, this was their first and only Sunday night of the season. They've run Friday, Saturday. Yeah. But they had just started Hell Week. Yeah. So that was...

[52:18] But no, it... But hearing that, like, he was talking about how they had flooded three times in the past year. Yeah. In addition to the hurricane. That's not counting the hurricane. Yeah. I mean, he's like, I'm like, dude, I can't bitch about half of my garage going out around. No. This whole first half of the episode would be bitched about all the minor disasters that happened. Yeah. I feel like a petty bitch right now. Oh, yeah. Because, I mean, they have had so many struggles. And part of it is because the property they're on is really low-lying, even by Louisiana standards. I think there's a reason that was a blimp base. Yeah. I.e. things that float.

[53:01] Then there might have been a reason for that but yeah i mean i i hope they're able to either get the flooding issue sort of get in a location or do something to address that because having to do that much work there wasn't a whole heck of a lot different from last year but given all that they've had to repair fix grow and you know i mean yeah the fact that even opened is amazing It is. Honestly, I mean, yeah. Do I like new things? Yes, I love new things. Yes. But I also understand that there are limitations.

[53:37] So, I mean, Decompose is still a great haunt, especially if you haven't gone last year. It's one of the more affordable haunts in the area, too, despite having won the longer walkthroughs. Yes, and it's, you know, definitely one to keep your eye on for future years. Yeah, if I know anything about John, it's that he's not sitting still. Yeah, there is a future plan for him to be on, so y'all will get to meet him. Yeah, he's got, yeah, but he is someone who's always looking for the next come up, looking for the next way to get bigger, badder, better.

[54:12] And like I said, we've known him 15 years. He's only been a pro hunter four of those. Yeah. 11 years we knew him as the guy, as this lunatic who was building home haunts in his driveway and then storing the panels. Yeah, a couple of rooms in a year. And just storing the panels. And I'm like, this is madness. No, it's actually brilliance. it's just an incredibly patient game and he is an incredibly patient man it seems very long game he's got he's got the long game and the commitment side of this down so yeah i i really enjoyed it davison really enjoyed it and one of the things i learned following him was there was only one time davison did not know where to go yeah i i would have known where to go being me but that's because a i've been to decompose three other times and other one is i've been to so many haunted attractions i know to not go that way it's someone who's first time with haunt and they only got stuck or confused once in an 18 minute haunt that's pretty fucking good compare that to when we went to the beast and people were confused every couple of minutes and some of that was on purpose by design and some of it was not.

[55:26] Yay! Anyway. Anywho. Yeah. So. But, yeah, it's definitely worth going through. They did add a few new, like, prop lights, the little popper ones. Yeah. That strobe whenever you get close to them. They also did redid the first scene a little bit. Mm-hmm. Add a new surprise. Yes. We'll just say there's a new shocking twist to it, if you will. It is actually quite fun. I did not see that coming and was genuinely surprised by it in a pleasant way. But yeah, the changes were fairly small. Do watch out if you are photosensitive. The haunt is still ADA compliant. Yes. Wheelchairs can't access it all the way through, which is unique among haunts in this area. And there are no continuous blinking lights. Yeah.

[56:24] And you know the actors were great the costumes were great davison kept going on about how great the masks were yeah there were a lot of great masks i'll agree with that yeah yeah so it it was just a really good show overall that's a lot of fun, i really enjoyed it i don't i mean like i said i obviously all the caveats this guy's our friend go go into this but i don't think i'd be saying much different if he weren't my friend, no because we were seeing people leave and laughing and going out the the exit door and not going back in well the funniest moment was talking about people getting confused we were standing outside talking to john we're near the exit but we're way off to the side so we're not in any traffic flow chat with john and then three high school looking kids yeah come walking out the fire exit that's right next running they bolt out the fire exit and it's like and everyone's like what's going on that's not where you're supposed to come out yeah and apparently they had gotten chased into the fire exit line and so they had to go back in after rounding up one of them who i swear probably was in another parish by the time no two of them did not go back in it was a it was a group of four two of them refused oh i thought it was a group of three no it was a group of four shit i didn't see the first one at all yeah yeah the motherfucker must have been fast he was.

[57:49] Um yeah call him the flash yeah but yeah so they the the ones they could round up went back in And then came running out the actual exit like 30 seconds later. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, it's one of those things where he usually has an actor, you know, near the doors so that there's nobody, nobody can do that accidentally. Because you have to have your exit signs in order to be compliant with fire code, stuff like that. And you can't cover them up.

[58:19] He's very good about safety. Oh, yeah. Um, but since he was down like half of his actors, there was nobody to work. Yeah. And someone running through the hall just took a wrong turn. Yep. And you know, that's rough, but it's also, like I said, we only, like I said, Davidson, complete noob. Yeah. Only got lost once. I think that's a pretty good stamp of approval. Yeah. And he also did not realize that there were, they were down actors at all. No. because the actors that were there were doing such a good job yeah they felt full to me and they were using scene actors more like zone actors they were allowing them to go into the next room and continue and that's like i talked about how he builds a lot of pass-throughs and reach-throughs this helps with the actor down issue because now if there's not an actor in that second room room two room one actor can reach through and do something with it exactly just got to space out the customers a little more and since they weren't running a huge line it was Sunday was fairly tame they can basically do that so I thought like I said I thought it was good.

[59:28] I genuinely did. I think it's a great haunt for the price. The hardest part for us is the drive out there. Yeah. But I do love seeing John succeed, despite literally Mother Nature trying to kill it. All right. And the final thing we wanted to talk about this week, which has brought us joy, is the Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival. Now, we talked about this last year, right around this time, actually. Yeah, because this is about the time you found out about it last year. Well, basically, for those who don't know, the Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is an annual virtual pumpkin carving festival. It's the best way to describe it. Some of those carvings are freaking amazing. Like, I have no idea how they did that with the tools given. Yeah, the carving tools are not precise, is the term I'm looking for. Yeah. And some people got really impressive like photo almost like photorealistic art on these like with shading like it looked like an actual artist did it on paper, it's a really impressive show but anyways the idea behind it is you are a ghost, you carve a pumpkin you get to leave it among the thousands of other pumpkins at this festival.

[1:00:42] And basically you get to roam around and look at things and they have various activities you can do they have a haunted hayride, they have a uh hedge maze they have a tower that you can climb up yeah a uh platforming tower i think what i would call it for the purpose of video game fans out there, and last year we talked about and we hid a haunt weekly pumpkin that no one found yeah so i choose to believe you know in town um this year i've hidden another haunt weekly pumpkin in town um and it's in the classic world it's in the main one but good luck finding this one it's even harder this year but in addition to hiding that one we have also hidden a bernie baxter one that you made yes and a yarn themed one crochet hooks a yarn ball and um knitting needles, yeah and ellie made and we all went and explored and the new addition this year is a whopper yeah As they describe it on their site, you investigate an escape room style manner with tricky puzzles. Expect roughly two hours of puzzling. Yes. Now, we read that and we said bullshit.

[1:01:57] We're froze. As we're sitting down at like 11 o'clock last night to do everything. No way. No, motherfucker. We got this. We're hardcore escape room people. Let's go. Yeah, it was two hours. Yeah, yeah. It was legit two hours. Yeah, we got to bed after one. Now, admittedly, some of it was some struggles with movement on Ellie's part and trying to get around. But it is, it's not, I wouldn't say it's like super challenging. I did ask for a couple of hints, but I didn't come anywhere close to using up my coins. No. I think I found like 25 coins. I might have used like four or five of them. Yes. And if you are going to do this, note that there are boxes of pens at the events. So you have to find the pens so that you can get the rewards for them. Yes. Okay. And by pen, you mean like P-I-N. You go on your shirt. Yes. I know. I don't enunciate. No, I don't. That's the problem. No, because I was thinking also you want pen and paper handy when you start this. Yes, you do. That was very frustrating. And then you went up, went to the bathroom in the middle of it, and didn't bring pen and paper back. By that point, I had given up.

[1:03:15] I just decided I would be guide. I was right. I was guide ghost, your answer.

[1:03:22] Yeah, but it legitimately does take two hours. I wouldn't say it's exceptionally hard. No. Like I said, I don't think many of the puzzles were that difficult. No, I figured out how all the puzzles were supposed to work. It was just hard to do it without pen and paper. But there's so many of them. And there's one point in it where you will go outside, and you're like, okay, I'm done, right? Yeah. No, you're not. That's not even the halfway point, really. No, it's not. Well, if it is the halfway point, it's just barely. Yeah. Now, Ellie didn't get outside at this point until much, much later. Yeah. So she may have actually done it in the right order. Yeah, I don't know. I don't really know. I don't know either. I don't know if there is a quote-unquote right order. But here's the thing. The aforementioned Bernie Baxter and Yarn Pumpkins are both hidden inside the escape room. You can hide pumpkins inside the escape room. Yes. I did not know that was a thing until this. They are both hidden in the escape room. I'm not saying where. But so my Haunt Weekly Pumpkin is in the town nearby. I'll just give you that one because I don't think you're going to find it. But theirs are hidden inside the escape room. I do think it was worth playing. But do make sure to actually allow yourself the two hours. Do bring pen and paper with you. Yeah, or some way to take notes. Yeah, some way to take notes in a hurry.

[1:04:52] Yeah, it was a lot of fun, though. It was, like I said, it was never super hard. It was never confusing or anything. But I found, and this is an unusual problem in an escape room, it was so big I found myself getting lost. Yeah. And I generally have very good video game instincts. Yeah, me too. And the fact that the doors kept closing behind you. Yeah, every time you would load in or load out of something, the doors would close. And also, okay, another thing to warn people, there's a mechanic in the game that's easy to miss. If you drop an item or the item, quote unquote, falls out of bounds, it'll reappear at your lost and found chests, plural, chests that are in the love. There's one very, very close to where you're going to need some of those items. Yeah. I'll just say that. And there's one also in the main floor. Yeah, you should never have to walk too far to get to one of your chests. Yeah. That's what I'm trying to say. There's one right as you start it, basically to your left as you enter it.

[1:05:53] That is the one you will probably never use again after you read the note in it. Because I don't think anything... You know what I mean? Well, if you know that there are more. If you know there are more. But if you're listening to this and then going to play. Yeah. I would highly encourage it. I mean, and here's the crazy thing. This game is free, technically. You can name your own price. It's on itch.io. I'll put a link in the show notes, or you can just Google it, whatever.

[1:06:17] It's free. You can name your own price. I highly, highly recommend paying at least the $2. Yeah. Just because, A, you're going to get more than $2 out of it, trust me. and also support the creators of this because they are having to pay server bills. This is an online game. This costs them money. So please support them. And the hats are just fucking cute. Yeah. And one of the hats you can get this year is a baseball cap with the pins in it. And here's the thing. I looked it up today just to see if I had everything. There are four pins you can find in the world. In the classic world? In the classic, I think in any world, but in the classic world. Because I think the other worlds are just duplicates of the same world, but with no two pumpkins. Oh, okay. Yeah, I didn't know how. I'm pretty sure. I haven't gone to another universe yet. It's kind of like World of Warcraft has multiple servers type thing. It's something like that. But, you know, there are four pins and they're each tied to major things you can do in it. I managed to pick up all four. Fucking Jumping Tower. being the bane of my existence.

[1:07:29] Seriously, go collect all four pins, leave a pumpkin, heart some pumpkins, award a pumpkin or two. It's a good time, and it's a great way to relax. They do usually keep it open a few days after Halloween. So if you really can't do it until after then, then that's fine.

[1:07:49] Go by after. But there is supposed to be a special event on Halloween night at a specific location. So that might be worth checking out too but yeah it is just a wonderful wonderful little game find our pumpkins complete the two-hour virtual escape room yeah i cannot believe i'm saying that seriously yes and if you go and you find all of our pumpkins screenshot them yes send them to us and we'll see about sending you something no we still got some swag around here we can send out i think i can always make more well it's homemade swag i think that's it yeah on that note everyone thank you very much for joining us for this very rambly episode of haunt weekly hope you found it entertaining useful in some way please do check out all the other places we exist hauntweekly.com haunt weekly on x haunt weekly and facebook and youtube.com slash haunt weekly is our youtube channel find us wherever you get your podcasts from pay special attention that facebook page

[1:08:54] We're hoping to get back into the live stream side of things sooner rather than later. Until next time, I'm Jonathan. And I'm Crystal. We'll see y'all next week for episode 624, meaning it is divisible by four.

[1:09:08] Therefore, it's time, unfortunately, to do the news. And it's going to be basically all of October. You know, yeah.

[1:09:20] It's going to be a downer of an episode. I'm sorry, y'all. Well, there ain't shit I can do about that. Well, see y'all then. Happy Halloween.