[0:00] Hello everyone, I'm Jonathan, I'm Crystal, and this is Haunt Weekly,

[0:05] a weekly podcast for the honored attraction and entertainment community. Whether you're an actor, owner, or just plain aficionado, we aim to be a podcast for you. And we return to this week, uh, hey, sorry, last week, we'll talk about that in a minute, and also late for this week, for reasons we'll also get into in a few minutes, so much apologies for that, but it has been a crazy couple of weeks for us here at Haunt Weekly Towers, in the Haunt Weekly Empire. You didn't know we had a tower, did you? No, I thought we were on a pile of dirt. It's not really an empire. Honey, we live in New Orleans. We don't even get the dirt. That's true. It's like a water table. Exactly. We're basically floating.

[0:51] Well, on that depressing note, please check out more Haunt Weekly. We're at HauntWeekly.com, Haunt Weekly on Facebook, and YouTube.com slash Haunt Weekly. Catch us wherever you get your podcasts from please do check us out at all the places we exist, all right so as we mentioned um we did not do an episode last week and like i said we'll talk about more why we didn't and we're late this week so what work did we do for the haunt in that time.

[1:22] Absolutely none is the answer correct um yeah let's just go ahead and get into that topic a little bit because basically we accidentally went to st louis during trans world yeah and you know it was fun but we didn't get.

[1:40] To see any haunting people because we weren't planning for you guys to be there at the same time as us yeah we had planned i mean we had literally planned this trip in october of last year yes when sean three as i'm calling him i see sean the third was born um was announced well yeah you're right actually goes all the way back to when he was announced yeah i'm talking like february last year about a year ago yeah yeah so way before yeah right before trans world so yeah we called st louis first trans world yeah we we basically you know looked at the holidays and how the grandparents would be splitting up and said we want mardi gras yeah and mardi gras was a great one st louis does recognize mardi gras right it sees that mardi gras exists but it's not a real holiday here here if you're not actively partaking in the celebrations it's a huge headache yeah um you can't get anywhere every trip is delayed and most businesses that are in the area this is true literally take either at the very least lundi gras and mardi gras and a lot including schools take the whole week yes so it's lundi gras mardi gras ash wednesday and the thursday and friday after are all from school so basically you know through from londy gruff the first fish fry is off.

[3:01] And the result of that is it's a mess. It's a nightmare. And so it was a natural holiday for us to call. We don't do Mardi Gras as much as we do. And when we do do Mardi Gras, we do the earlier in season stuff anyway. We're not really typically lining up to do things on Mardi Gras or Lundi Gras Day, especially. Right. And there's not any parades that we're really excited about seeing. If you've never done Mardi Gras, you should definitely do all the things. Oh, yeah. But we did it for multiple years and, well, we're old. Yeah, when we first moved to the city, neither of us had jobs, really. Right. And we didn't have a lot of money, so we did the parades. Yeah. They're free. You're just standing on a street corner. Exactly. And we literally, I think, did damn near every parade on the uptown route, if not every actual parade. Yeah. We came very close to doing them all. And we lost interest in most of them. Now, we did go to other parades. We caught ones that we missed. We didn't see any French Quarter parades. We didn't see Crew to View that first year. And we became Crew to View fans later and went until they got too big. And we also didn't see Cleopatra, which was on the West Bank at the time.

[4:09] And we saw them, and then that was it. We saw them. We were fine. Yeah. That was the famous incident where we were ducking Mardi Gras beats. Yes. That was the incident where it was rain delayed for multiple hours. Most of the crowd had dispersed, so we went home with 80 pounds of beats. And, yeah, we weighed them. Yeah. Because that was the only way to measure them was pounds. Yes. So, yeah.

[4:34] We've done Mardi Gras. We've done it out. It made sense for us to go. So, we didn't recognize. In fact, we did not realize Transworld and us would be on the same weekend. No. Until like a week or two before. A few weeks. About a month before, actually. Yes.

[4:50] Well, not even a month before. It was very sudden realization. Yeah. Oh, yeah. We're going to be there that weekend. Because the dates weren't exactly the same. We were planning on getting up later. We were traveling Friday, Saturday, and going back after Transworld ended. But yeah, the dates had a lot of overlap. And so, yeah, we were not expecting anyone, any honors to be there. We had made tentative plans to go and crash the party at the Marriott on the Saturday. That was the best opportunity for us.

[5:26] And I'll tell you how far it got. We had tickets for the train system on our phones pulled up. Right. We were looking at that as our means of getting back home.

[5:38] We were going to drive there. We weren't terribly far by car. And Ellie was either going to pick us up from the train station or pick us up from the hotel. But ideally from the train station near the hotel, a couple stops down. And we looked at it and we just kind of were too tired yeah we'd literally been driving five hours that day we'd gone from memphis to st louis pretty much and then we had spent another five or six hours with family yeah and it was a stressful drive for multiple reasons but you know but then we spent the time with the family we were literally sitting in their house watching elimination chamber any wwe fans out there know that we did get to see the john cena heel turn live yes that was pretty cool even me as someone who hasn't really watched wwe in a long time thought that was very cool seriously fuck john cena i've always been in the fuck john cena camp yeah um so that was cool but yeah and we just when the time came to start preparing to go we just didn't have the energy. And we pretty much went back to the hotel room and we found another place to crash for a little bit. That was walking distance. That was walking distance. And we basically kept it very chill. And we'll talk more about what we did do later. But yeah, so we're sorry that we missed you all.

[7:04] Um, and the result of that was we didn't really get back until super late Tuesday night. Wednesday night was dead because we were dead. And by the time we would have had a chance to write and record a show, it would have gone out too late. It would have been too close to this one. Yeah. And we did take our recorder with us because we thought maybe we'll have time on the trip to do it. That was... That was naive as hell in hindsight. because we're trying to go to a party on the same day that we traveled forever yeah i mean we spent time with uh the baby uh baby's mommy daddy uh the mother's family who we don't know them at all that's not the direct line um that's the in-laws basically and basically we got to realize that we We are absolutely beloved by everyone for being absolutely chill grandparents, but always being careful to ask permission. We got to FaceTime with all of our extended families and the baby. Yeah, and that was their first time meeting him. Oh, man. It was a lot of great stuff, but it was also very tiring. Very tiring, great stuff. Anyway. So that is why we did not get an episode last week and why we have been dead this week.

[8:20] But yeah, we are recovered. We've also been battling some illnesses likely picked up on the trips and the other thing that's been going on, but that's not as serious. So, yes, that's what happened.

[8:29] Sorry about that. It has been a very, very wild couple of weeks, which is why I appropriately titled this episode Trans World Hangover. Though for us, it's more of, you know, St. Louis trip hangover in general. But for the pond community, it's more relatable to call it the Trans World Hangover. So, on that note, actually getting to the topics we have and getting into the notes, every week we do try to ask a question of the week. The last week we asked you, what are you looking forward to most at Transworld? Haunted the Roxbury said, new props and the opportunity to network with other home and pro haunters. Networking was really good this year. That's what I heard. Yeah, and Chris Gay said, same thing as every year, hoping for new, innovative, and affordable scare props. Good luck on the affordable part, my friend. Good luck.

[9:23] This week's question of the week makes enough sense. What was your trans world highlight? Let us know, HauntWeekly.com, HauntWeekly on Facebook and YouTube.com slash HauntWeekly. Leave a comment. We will post the question itself a day after this goes live. So feel free to join the conversation there on Facebook is where we get most of the feedback from.

[9:46] Alright. Well, on that note, it is an even-numbered episode.

[9:51] Which means it is time to do conference reminders. And it seems like a major conference might have happened since we last did an episode. Maybe. I mean, we might have just mentioned it. A dozen times or so. Yeah, but... So, does that mean there's a new conference in the conference reminders? Yes, it does. But first things first, April 4th through April 6th, it is April Ghouls in Athens, Georgia at the Southern Brewing, featuring a haunted trail, bands, vendors, and more. Hauntfest.net for more information. Then April 24th through the 27th is the East Coast Haunters Convention at Oaks, Pennsylvania, the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center. Pre-Haunt Tour featuring Brighton Asylum and Fright Factory. Friday Haunt Tours featuring Hershey Park and Field of Screams. It's paired with the East Coast Christmas Show.

[10:48] EastCoastHauntersConvention.com All right, then. April 25th through the 27th, if you're on the other coast, it's the Spooky Swap Me going April 25th through the 27th Then, Los Angeles, California at the Heritage Square Museum. Great place to buy gently loved items, including costumes and decor. Created by the co-founder of Midsummer Scream, SpookySwapMeet.com. May 10th, it's halfway to Halloween Expo in Ann Arbor, Michigan. At the Washington Farm Council Ground. Hearst Show, food trucks, local haunted house collaboration. Halfway to HalloweenMI.com. You know, this is a great collection of conferences, because basically you've got an East Coast, a West Coast, a North-ish, and a South-ish. Yep. It's kind of cool. That'll last exactly about three more weeks. So one more conference reminder, I'll get to make that joke.

[11:46] But, yes, indeed, what is coming up in your haunted attraction-related conferences.

[11:55] So, yeah. Anyways, we talked a lot about what happened while we were going to St. Louis, and I won't rehash all of it here. But, yeah, we are very sorry we did not make it to the party. We really didn't want to. But after so much driving, so much family time, so little downtime of any stripe at all. Yeah, because basically it takes... We worked a full day on Friday and went after work the first eight hours. Yeah, six to seven hours, six to eight hours, somewhere in that range. We got a little bit more than halfway. Yeah, so we worked a full day, drove most of the night, got up, did another drive. And then we were just tired. Yeah, and we only got like a couple of hours in the hotel room before it was time to show up. And we'll go into how the trip nearly went sideways. Well, we can say one of the things that went sideways was that as I was approaching, I found out that my aunt died. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not a beloved, no condolences needed, but... Family drama, family stress. Yes. Yeah, it's a... Her family's always a complicated situation. Yeah. I mean, if she ever decides to write a book about her family, it will become a bestseller.

[13:23] But it'll have to stack it in fiction.

[13:27] Because no one's going to believe that shit. I think it would be better as a stand-up comedy routine. Alright, we'll get to working. oh it's half written it's fine we got to get to work in your public speaking that's what this is about though speaking to the microphone and speak your truth but yeah you could easily get an hour a netflix specials worth of material about them don't say an hour from check a netflix specials worth of material is much better way to put it yeah isn't it easily not even a challenge probably you could get two if you stretched um but yes indeed it was a very stressful tiring trip so very sorry we didn't get to see you all but um it was still a very good trip overall very glad we went very glad we overcame some initial hurdles and some initial challenges because i mean the the just leaving was a nightmare everything kept going wrong yeah and and anyway but we got through it all and honestly I'm very very glad we did so here's the thing we didn't get a lot of a chance we didn't get a chance to go to Transworld we didn't get a chance to tour the aisles or anything like that.

[14:40] Um, and we also didn't get to speak with people at the event, but we have spoken with a fair amount of people after, and we have spoken and we've done a lot of reading. Haunters Hangout, um, Haunt Hub is sometimes surprisingly insightful on these things. All of our friends just posting their stuff. All of their friends posting their stuff, and a lot of our friends contacting us, DMs, phone calls, getting in touch with people, just finding out what was going on, what the big deals were, and so forth. So, yeah. We're going to be talking about the trip. And we're going to start with the Transworld recap. But, yes, we admit, we didn't go. So, if that's not what's interesting to you, that makes it completely invalid, you can fast forward to another segment. No problem. We've got other interesting stuff to talk about. It's a potpourri episode. Work with us here, you know? Yeah. So, yeah. We're going to discuss Transworld, but we're going to be sticking to what we have read and what we have heard. and all the stuff we've said has come from multiple sources and some of them from many many many sources, So, anyways, Transworld Recap from two people who didn't go.

[15:52] That should be fun. Well, okay. Like I said, from everything that we've seen, it's been kind of a mixed bag this year. Yeah. Like, people were excited to be there, which, obviously, you know, it's a commutative kind of atmosphere with everybody knowing that you're all interested in haunting. Um but it seemed like some of the vendors and things had a rough time yeah from from a social standpoint it was seemed like it was great yeah um from a purely social standpoint it was great i mean i've seen the videos and the postings from the zombie prom which was the new event this year, and it looks like that went over pretty well um looks of a good crowd it looks like a lot of people were having fun. I didn't hear anyone, you know, having too much bad to say about the social aspect. And of course, all the photos that you expect of people hanging out, having dinner together.

[16:50] Goofing off, making jokes, laughing at Tater, you know, usual stuff you expect, from all the posting and to that end it seems to have been going absolutely great and honestly i gotta say on a personal note thank you all for sharing those photos it sucked not being able to go it sucked you know feeling old i went to bed that night feeling old and lame and and and seeing all those photos and all those posts and the videos and everything brought me some brought some tears to my eyes and made me feel a little more like i was there you know yeah and that's I really appreciate that. Thank you for sharing. And yeah, from the social side, I can't say anything remotely negative. Everyone seems to have had a great time. Yeah.

[17:43] But the trade show floor, things have gotten dicier. When the conference began, our feed, in fact, when we were literally going up. Right. So that Friday into the Saturday, our feeds got overrun with people complaining about resellers and not crafters on the floor. Right, and reminders to buy from small businesses instead of going to these that have now shown up, apparently. I mean, and the honest truth is I don't know if they've always been there and just for some reason this was the year to call them out. I mean, the year we were there, they didn't seem that prevalent. No.

[18:27] But maybe there were just more of them this year. Or just maybe there was more attention put on them. But there was post after post after post of people calling out resellers. And one particular post kept sharing a lot, which was about a black dress you can buy on Amazon for like $30 to $40. Yeah. And apparently it was being sold at Transworld for a much higher price. Yeah. And that's one of the weird things. Because, like, I've gone, not at Transworld, but at HauntCon, I've gone and bought some clothing from there. But it was much cheaper there than online. Yeah. I mean. Because you expect to get deals at Transworld because you're in person. No, you're not paying for shipping. No. That's the main thing. You're expecting they're going to be offering their best discounts. Mm-hmm.

[19:23] And just in general, that's supposed to be the place to shop. And so, yeah, part of that is making sure that everyone knows that Transworld is the best deal. Because from the seller's standpoint, they're trying to encourage the sales there, too. it's the easiest for them to deal with and process. Right. You know, they can, and true to them, one fact that is overlooked is they will get lower credit card rates, transaction rates, because card present transactions, like at a POS, at a trade show, are lower than card not present transactions, such as over the internet. Well, and I'm sure that it's also seen as beneficial because it's building the beginning of a relationship with a new customer. Or a returning customer, you know. Yeah, there's tons of reasons the vendors want to put on their best price and best face. But apparently there was an issue this year. It was at least a large-ish number of resellers that put off a lot of the buyers who were there. Yeah.

[20:27] And, yeah, and then comes the feedback from the vendors we've gotten. Mm-hmm. Which is they said traffic was down fairly significantly. Yeah. And everyone seems to have met their goals. No one said they didn't meet their goals. They wish they hadn't come, anything like that. It didn't get like that. But it said that it was quieter than last year, quieter than the other years they've been there. And they only met their goals because of a few big sales. Yeah. One of the things I found weird was we actually looked at buying just a day pass to go on Sunday because we had a little time that morning before everybody would be available. Yeah, because apparently now we're old and now we get up early enough to catch the doors. Well, I mean, not even catch the doors, but we had until like 2 in the afternoon, which we'll get into what we actually did. But we could not find a day pass for Transworld. You either had to buy it all or none. It's like we only have three hours maybe. It may have been an option earlier. Yeah. Like if we bought tickets earlier, if we thought about this earlier. Like I said, we came to the realization that we would be there that week silly late. We just never put those two things together in our lives. Right. And it's because, you know, the dates for my vacation were not the dates for Transworld. No.

[21:48] So they, yeah, they never like, they weren't the same. Yeah, the dates for your vacation overlapped Transworld, but were not the same. Yeah. It's like the Venn diagram problem, right? Yeah, like these are my dates. Yeah, these are Transworld. Those are those dates. We did not realize we'd be there that Saturday and Sunday.

[22:11] So, yeah. Now, the thing is, I don't necessarily think that the lack of, the seeming lack of purchases is any fault of Trans World right now.

[22:30] Basically, look around, Jeff. I mean, look, read the news. Everything is fucking chaos right now. And people don't do major purchases during times of chaos. They postpone those purchases. Right, because we feel uncertain right now. And when you're uncertain about the financial future, you don't want to spend a lot. You know, if I normally would spend $100K, let's say, on big stuff at Transworld, Well, facing the uncertainty and the tariffs and everything else that's going on and the possible economic issues, is that $100K better spent going to something else to keep my business going? Or is it better spent on buying those props? Or do I split it 50-50? Any way the wind blows, they're not confident about the next season. It's going to hurt buying in the previous season. I mean, one of the things I've learned going to a lot of conferences is that trade show floors are often canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the economy.

[23:41] Because people get uncertain, they stop making big purchases, and that's like the dominoes starting to fall. Yeah, because if companies are doing that, individuals are doing it too. Yeah. And then the companies that profit from those big purchases, well, they're not making as much money. Right. So they're going to start spending less, including on people, and then it's just a domino effect. It goes all the way down. But yeah, and that's one of the things that... You kind of hit the nail on something there, which is the attitudes of big buyers at events like this. Like, I'd be very curious to find out what goes on at Halloween and Party Expo. How they do. Because that's another really big buying conference that's connected to this industry. But basically... Um the big buyers often have their finger on the pulse of what the consumers are thinking and vice versa yeah exactly and so where goes one usually goes the other if your big buyers aren't certain then neither are your average neither are the customers and that could mean a lot too because maybe i'm not buying a hundred k and halloween stuff but maybe i'm planning on spending a hundred on tickets to your haunt. Now, what if I feel, oh, I'm uncertain those $100 really could be useful in paying my phone bill or something. You know?

[25:04] I love that you went to phone bill. I was trying to think of a bill that was less than $100. That's like our cheapest bill. Yeah. I guess I could have said water bill. I didn't just pay that. That was under $100. Yeah. I was trying to think of bills that are under $100, sweetheart. Okay. There ain't many of those. No. No, there are not. So, yeah, I don't know. I don't think it necessarily is anything Transworld related. No, I do worry a little bit about the call-out of the resellers because the new companies are the future of Transworld. That's one of the things. Now, to be clear, none of the major haunt companies that you think of were called out for this. No. No, you know, your Fright Props, your Foggy's Fog, CFX, none of them. That's not who we're talking about here. Basically, if you're thinking about the trans-world trade store, think a little more to the right of them. Going toward what they call the, what was it, the Thanksgiving section? Yeah. More toward that area. Unfortunately, there are a lot of great people in the Thanksgiving section. Don't get it twisted. And you really should explore it. But it's also where a lot of the newer vendors get put.

[26:12] And sometimes they don't work. Sometimes they don't work out so well. Anyway, so that's what we didn't do. For those things. So what did we do? Well, one haunt-related thing we did get to do, thank you, was? Terror Tacos. Terror Tacos. Yes, we finally got to go. Last time we were in St. Louis, for Trans World, actually, Paul Laner from Haunters Against Hate posted a picture of him being taken there. And we were at a different taco place having dinner with our stepson who said this is a good taco place and we didn't know about terror tacos and I'm like, why didn't you take us to the Haunty House one? We will have you know that we have since corrected the behavior of our stepson harshly.

[27:06] He has been punished severely and forced to have our grandson. No, none of that is true. None of that is true. I don't think we even mentioned it to him. No, we didn't. Not really. But anyways, this is definitely now a stop on our St. Louis recommendation. So go back to the previous episode and edit this in. Stealth edit for us. It's a heavy metal goth vegan taco place. It opened in March 2021. And honestly, I look at this as a place to go to. Yes. but but if that is truly not an option and I understand things are crazy and we're gonna get into some issues in a minute they do have delivery.

[27:51] Including to the Marriott. Right. I checked.

[27:55] It is pricey. It is a $20 minimum, which if you look at their menu, can be a little hard to hit.

[28:02] And they do a delivery fee of, I think, almost $11.

[28:06] But yeah, get you and some friends together in on this. You can make it work. It'll be great. Yeah, but I mean, part of going there is to go there. Exactly, and I agree with you. And look at all the decorations. Yeah. But if you have to get delivery. Yeah. If you've already been. If you are especially if you've already been yeah it's definitely very doable now like i said a few words of warning place is really small like maybe six tables seven tables yeah something like that was in that range yes if you have been there and have not gone to the bathroom you have to go to the bathroom yes oh yeah god yes because i made everybody go oh yeah oh yeah okay she goes to the bathroom and comes back and says even if you don't have to go to the bathroom you have to go to the bathroom. Yes. I believe that was a direct quote. Pretty much. Both me and Ellie. Yeah. So yeah, it is small. They do have a couple of outdoor tables too, I think. Yeah, but that kind of mitigates it too. You really want to be inside. Yeah, you do. You're going to need a car to get there from where Transworld is. I mean, it's not really close to public transit. You can do a combo of a train and a bus and get there in about 30 minutes without too much walking. But it's 15 minutes by car. There is fairly reasonable parking in the neighborhood. Yes, we were able to get one right out front after going around in circles for a little bit.

[29:32] If you've got a car, you've got transportation in the city, you're going to be better off. And the final thing is that it is slow. I suspect they are processing a lot of to-go and internet orders. It took, admittedly, we went there on Sunday morning, right? Yes. Sunday, or Sunday early afternoon. Yeah, Sunday around 1230. Even then, it was about 30 minutes to get food. Food um so go hungry because the food is huge yes there were leftovers lots of leftovers i mean to put in some context i only got like one quesadilla thing here and even though i mean we got that i had that and some chips and cheese that we all chips and salt chips and queso that we split, and i still could barely eat half of it and i i'm the eater i'm i'm the black hole of food in the relationship.

[30:29] You know, I... Yeah. And I couldn't do it. And the taco platter you split with Ellie, half of it came home too. Yeah. So, yeah. Be mindful. It's huge food. But hey, we did get to sit with the skeleton version of Ghost. The musician Ghost. Yeah. That was fun. So definitely recommend the place. It is very cool. The food is amazing. we have fallen in love um in recent years there used to be up until super recently a very cool vegan deli not far from us they've since moved across the river um but yeah uh with with vegan food and imitation i'm just glad vegan imitation cheese doesn't suck anymore yes what it comes down to um we also and i'll keep this one real brief we checked out a place called dogwood social house, um and and this was in Belleville so you would have to have a car technically no this is O'Fallon Illinois O'Fallon right they also have one they have several in the area uh the hotel was in O'Fallon um the family's in Belleville yeah that's why she thought that,

[31:38] But we did not know what to expect there when we went in there, really. But if you're looking for some ways to expand your haunt and introduce some new games and social activities, I highly recommend checking out this place.

[31:55] Think of it as like a not-named brand Dave & Buster's. Yeah. There's a good way of thinking of it. That seems appropriate. adult food adult beverage uh and a decent sized arcade with a lot of great machines but i would put but as a haunt owner i'd be focusing on the other amenities like the shuffleboard darts pool cornhole jenga they have bowling lanes some of them have full-size bowling lanes some of them have these smaller arcade bowling lanes um you have to go on their site and figure out which is which and axe throwing and they also have probably my favorite thing in the universe right now which is self-pour beer yes it's charged by the ounce yeah i thought it was a little weird when i saw on their site they charged by the ounce but then we learned how it worked and it became my favorite thing ever and i learned one of the most important things in the world to me i can when asked pour a perfect guinness yes i knew i could but now i have proof this is true And they also have karaoke rooms, which I think that would actually be really fun for a haunt to have. Yeah. You would need, if a haunt to do it, you would have to get more than the regular ASCAP via my license. You'd have to get the sync or the karaoke license. But there are companies that handle that as well.

[33:16] Yeah, I think that would be a great idea to have karaoke rooms. Exactly. That would just be fun. Yeah. Especially, like, if you have to wait for your turn to go in. Oh, man. And yeah, take a haunt with like a long queue. Yeah. And you pay X amount of dollars to spend the queue in the scary oaky room. Mm-hmm. And then you get a buzz when it's time to go and haunt. No. I like this idea. That would be fun. And I don't even like karaoke that much, and I like this idea. Yeah. Shit. And also, they have great food options. We never actually ate there, but... Right. It all looked amazing. It all looked amazing and smelled good and stuff. Yeah. Made me hungry.

[33:56] So, yeah, those were the two things we definitely did. I don't think I would ask people to check out Dogwood, but other than maybe check out their website and see their offerings and see how it works. Yeah. But definitely, next time you're in St. Louis, Terror Tacos has to be on the list. And like I said, the shame. Yeah, just put that on your trip when you're in a car and going to go and check out the year-round Halloween shop. Yeah, exactly. Johnny Brocks, right? Johnny Brocks, yeah.

[34:29] And Johnny Brocks is awesome, too. all right so on that note everyone we're going to end this with a question that we have put before ourselves and we have decided to discuss internally and that is should haunts be doing saint patrick's day events yes now crystal's taking the lead on the research here so i'm just going to let her kick it off okay well we're just going to do a quick history of saint patrick's day yeah history lessons we're not going to be able to get into it and then we'll you know but, But you'll see where we're going with this. So it was created to recognize St. Patrick bringing Christianity to Ireland. St. Patrick is credited with driving snakes out of Ireland. Fun fact, Ireland has never had snakes, but they did have druids, which is what he actually ran off. Supposedly ran off, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[35:25] Anyway yeah but it so saint patrick's day falls during the lenten season every year and it's the one day that people observing lint are able to break their promises to not have alcohol or certain foods yeah and that's one of the things i looked up was apparently saint patrick's day was not celebrated the same everywhere in ireland even right some places the pubs shut down for St. Patrick's Day. It's the opposite of a drinking holiday. In other places, like you said, the pubs open up. Right. Right. But, you know, in the States, it's pretty much amateur hour for drinking.

[36:04] Well put. Yeah. The significance of green, it represents shamrocks, which St. Patrick used to explain the Holy Trinity to pagans. It is not a four-leaf clover. It is a three-leaf clover. Unless you don't know what a trinity is yeah and it's used in the country's flag uh it's also but green has always been an important part of irish history um so the 11th century the book of the taking of ireland has and i'm gonna butcher this name and i'm sorry gold of gloss um which is gold of the green what old green i think yeah it's a gaelic tale where he was bitten by a venomous snake but saved from death by moses placing his staff on the snake bite and then his descendants settled in ireland which was the land of free of snakes but because it turned green everything has been like green has been important to the irish people well i mean green is also kind of the color of ireland it's known as the emerald isle it is that is true too.

[37:19] But anyway moving on um leprechauns uh we want to talk about this for a minute because they're probably more complicated than you might have realized yeah i didn't realize any of this until you put it in the notes. Yeah, so they're based on a 19th century derogatory depiction of Irish people. And in 2014, the ancient order of Hiberians successfully campaigned major retailers to stop carrying leprechaun costumes because of the offensive nature. I legit had no idea. Yeah. Yeah. And today, St. Patrick's is celebrated in many, many, many more countries than just Ireland. Yeah. In fact, it's been exported very, very far and wide, it turns out. Yeah, and it's in more countries than any other national holiday.

[38:17] Yeah. Well, I still think that, you know, the greatest donator of national holidays is the England, because they're the greater Donator of Independence Days than anyone. That's probably very true. But that's a separate problem that's really related to this. Yeah, you're not celebrating England for that. You're celebrating getting rid of them. That's a different thing. Who wouldn't? Right.

[38:41] Oh, anyway. But yes, and also there was a history of exclusion of LGBTQ people, because they were banned from participating in New York celebrations until 2014. Yeah. Which is like, that's 11 years ago. Yeah, exactly. But it's a Christian holiday. This podcast is almost older than that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, but since it's a Catholic holiday. Yeah. And they still face, like LGBTQ groups still face a lot of challenges trying to join in the parades and the official celebrations in New York.

[39:19] And here's like the thing as far as like in the united states that makes saint patrick's day kind of a weird holiday is as you discussed a lot of the origins of the characters the colors and the costumes and the focus on drinking come from offensive um places but what's interesting is that there's two things that have changed over the centuries in the united states since saint patrick's was started to be celebrated here the first is that irish are now primarily seen as white people yeah that was not always the case in the united states right i mean look into new orleans history for evidence of that um and the other thing is now catholics are considered christian in the united states that was not the case either until recently no and in fact it It caused a huge kerfuffle in my religious class at college, World Religions, because there were Protestant people in there saying that Catholics were not Christian and why were we learning about them underneath Christian banner.

[40:30] It is. No. And the reason for the banner of Christian to have been expanded is largely politically motivated. Yes. It's something that's very important to understand. Because the reality is people underneath this banner of Christianity do not all believe the same thing, even remotely. No. They disagree on many very fundamental things, including what the Holy Trinity is, for one. Mm-hmm. So some very fundamental things. but they throw this banner over saying hey we're all christian let's come together for.

[41:02] This yeah and they make they pitch that tent as big as they can for political gain that's what largely happened so those two things have changed and one of the reasons why many people do see it as okay to do saint patrick's day as we do is because now you're poking fun at a white christian holiday but that isn't the history of how we celebrate it right so now that we've talked about that history um why do haunts do it no okay well it provides an opportunity for an event not in october those leprechaun movies are in everyone's conscious yeah and and it's apparent and most haunts it seems think it real easy to decorate uh set your leds to green and bish bash bosh exactly i mean it is an easy change um but yeah but why to stay away from it It is a religious holiday that's based on a national identity that has a complicated past.

[42:03] It has derogatory characters. As we just discussed. And it's an exclusionary holiday. Like, it excludes a lot of people. Yeah. I've always said on this podcast and elsewhere that haunts are not great for doing nuanced things. No.

[42:21] We're not the correct format for a nuanced conversation about... I mean, this podcast isn't the format for it either. No. You just saw the terrible run we made in a nuanced conversation in the past 10 minutes. I'm pretty sure we pissed someone off with that. Oh, I'm positive I pissed a lot of people off with that. Yeah, I'm trying to pronounce Gaelic alone. But the point I'm trying to make is haunts are not nuanced. And dealing with difficult, nuanced topics really isn't something we do well. And so trying to do them just puts everything at risk. And it seems like such an unnecessary risk because there are so many other things you can do. Yeah. Like halfway to Halloween in Michigan. No, no, no. No, in general, halfway to Halloween. Yeah. Yeah, April 31st through May 1st are generally the days that it falls on, depending on the year. Apparently, you could celebrate it any time around that. People know what it means. I have a great idea for a haunted attraction thing that you could do. It falls around St. Patrick's Day every year right now. Would not offend anyone at all. And it would be one of the scariest things a haunt could do. What you do is you do a special opening for the day of time change for Daylight Savings Time.

[43:47] Yeah. Tell me when I'm telling lies, motherfuckers. This is perfect. And then you can have, like, lots of clocks in there all set to the wrong time. Exactly. It doesn't matter what time it is. Come lose an hour with us. I mean, this markets itself, people. God. And people fucking hate it. I don't know anybody who loves Chang'e. I don't know anyone either. This is one of the most unifying things in this country right now. Yeah. I don't think there's anyone in favor of it. Keep it one goddamn way or the other. I don't care. At this point in my life, I stopped having a favorite between the two. Yeah. Well, another thing is you can make up holidays. You can literally just do a theme every month based on a holiday that you make up that ties into your story. Or celebrate a character's birthday by throwing open the hot doors and say, come and celebrate, you know, Bernie's birthday or whatever.

[44:47] Um also it's worth noting that valentine's day is still fairly close it's about a month before st patrick's so if you're doing a valentine's thing and a st patrick's thing you're doing two things barely a month apart and valentine's day i think is way safer yeah and if you're wanting to do that many things throughout the year just go year round yeah just have a recurring schedule for when you're open year-round. I mean, yeah. And this is the issue with trying to tie your openings to holidays in general. Yes. Is that it gets attached to the holidays, and God knows if any industry has

[45:25] a problem being attached to holidays, it's this one. Yes. The sweet baby Jesus will be attached to a holiday. Mm-hmm. And that's a huge, huge limitation of this industry that we probably should not do. It's not an issue in Japan, for example. No. Their scare houses are open year-round. Right. Most of the rest of the world celebrates spookiness not attached to Halloween.

[45:52] They might have spookier seasons, but we have that, too. I mean, I still think even if we got completely detached from Halloween, I still think autumn and winter would be the better seasons. Oh, definitely, because that's what people are thinking about because of history. But it would take a few generations. But we could get a year-round culture in the U.S., I think. But one thing to think about, and this was actually going around in the Haunter groups, was a comic about what people think a haunting at St. Patrick's Day is like. Yeah. And it was all the stuff that Crystal just talked about at the top in bright rosy colors. And then what haunting at St. Patrick's Day is really like. And it was like frozen temps in layers of coats and things like that. So that's the potential downside to year-round haunts, especially if you're outdoor in any capacity, is that it may just be way too fucking cold. No. Or it may be way too fucking hot come summer in a lot of places. Or rainy or whatever. Whatever, yeah. I would not want to do an outdoor haunt in August, in July or August in New Orleans. Because even in the dead of night, that shit is still like 80-something degrees and 3 million percent humidity. Yeah. Your clothes stick until you're going down the trip. Now I'm walking like the zombie because I don't want my pits to stick together. It's great.

[47:20] Well, and that lovely image. Thank you very much for joining us for the past 45 minutes or so. Hope it was entertaining and useful. Hope there was some food for thought there. Definitely check out other Haunt Weekly episodes. You can find our podcast homepage at hauntweekly.com. We're on social media, on Facebook, Haunt Weekly there. Find us on YouTube at hauntweekly, youtube.com slash hauntweekly. And anywhere you get your podcasts from just search for guess what haunt weekly until next time i'm jonathan i'm crystal and we will see you all next week as we work to get back on goddamn rhythm we've got some great stuff lined up for you though we'll see you soon.