Transcript

Rich Hunter · WashCo Insider

speaker-0: Every October, the West Alexander Fairgrounds transforms into one of Washington County's favorite Halloween traditions, the West Alexander Scarefare. Now entering its fourteenth season, the attraction has grown into a full-scale haunted experience built around plenty of creativity, a dedicated crew, and of course, a whole lot of scares. Joining us today is the man behind it all, Rich Hunter. To talk about how Scarefare got started, what it takes to build a haunted attraction, Rich Hunter, when we come back. ⁓ Rich, thanks for joining us today. before we get into Scare Fair, tell us a little about your background, yourself, and and how you got involved in the in the fairgrounds in West Alexander. speaker-1: ⁓ well I've been on the Washington Co or the West Alexander Fair Board for ⁓ I don't know, sometime in the early two thousands when I started. I've been on the board of directors there. And that's kinda when things got started for me with the fair. The Scare Fair came about. Certainly much later than that, but that's where it got started for me. I was born in West Alexander, grew up there, still live on the family farm, so speaker-0: And your your family's been intimately involved with the fairgrounds for we were just talking what, fifty, sixty years? speaker-1: Yeah, it l at least that. ⁓ my grandfather was president of the fairboard for fifty plus years, I think. And my uncle's currently the president of the fairboard. So our family's had involvement with that since probably the forties or the fifties and my my daughter's actually now on the fairboard too, so speaker-0: great. Yeah. And so I mean it's not just it's not just the scare fair that ⁓ that you're operating. You're very involved in the West Alexander Fair, which happened here just a few weeks ago. but let's let's talk a little bit about the scare fair. Were you always ⁓ the haunted house kind of guy? Never. Never. speaker-1: I I don't know that I'd even ever been to a haunted house before. speaker-0: Well how did how did the idea for the whole thing come about? speaker-1: So I I guess you gotta think in terms of the fair first. So our fair the buildings in the wintertime we use them for storage for RVs and campers and boats and things like that. ⁓ in the springtime, those are all moved out and then there's events held almost every weekend all spring and summer, reunions, ⁓ different kinds of parties, wedding receptions, things like that. And that goes on all summer. Then we have the fair in September, and then our only dead space where we little really didn't have any income coming in was September and October. a friend of mine who was a biology professor at West Liberty University, we were talking about that one day, and he said, well, with his club, they used to have a little haunted house in the dorms, and that was something they used to make some money in that as much space as we had in the buildings we had, he thought that would be a perfect thing. So we brought that up to the fair board and everybody seemed to agree we'd give it a shot and that's how things got started. speaker-0: Well thinking back fourteen years ago, when you think about that first year and how I assume things have changed over those fourteen years, y what are some of those changes that you've seen and like what what did that first year look like for you guys? speaker-1: It was it was not much. ⁓ we had one building, ⁓ probably had ten actors, maybe fifteen people total working the event. A couple hundred people showed up, but hey, we made a little bit of money the first year and thought, well that that that's great. But ⁓ since then I look back on it now, ⁓ it's been kind of a slow growth for us. I think we've managed a ten to twelve percent increase from the time we opened every year up until the current year. ⁓ And that's a good thing. Everybody wanted to s all of a sudden have five thousand people show up the door, but it honestly we would not have been able to handle that. What we knew our first year going in, we wouldn't we would have been overwhelmed totally. speaker-0: Well, at what point in that first year did you think we might have something here? speaker-1: When we passed the break even point, ⁓ w when we started it out, the Fairborg gave myself and three other guys who were on a kind of a committee three thousand dollars to get it off the ground and see what happens. I I remember having a vote for whether or not we could buy this $150 prop that ⁓ the first year because it it was pretty it was that tight. But ⁓ when we turned to profit, I was like, you know what, we most businesses aren't turning to profit in the first year and we already did, so I felt pretty good about that. speaker-0: Well I think, you know, and this is across the board with all events, when when visitors show up, they see the finished product. They see it, you know, clean and bright and just all of the things that are. Yeah. ⁓ what they don't see is the months of work that went into building that. And so can you talk a little bit about ⁓ that process? When do you guys start each year? speaker-1: You can, yeah. It it's a little difficult for us. It's it's good and bad. we start the fair ends fair starts on Labor Day, it ends the following Saturday. We clean up on Sunday and I start on Monday. So it's a quick turnaround. And I you we've got three, four weeks to get it done before the the the gates open. ⁓ because we're we're what's referred to as a teardown haunt, a lot of haunts have Buildings that are specifically for that haunt, they stay up year-round, they make little tweaks to the rooms here and there, things that they want to change. With us, it's a complete teardown and restart at the beginning of every year. So it's a lot of work and it's really stressful trying to get everything done in time. Sure. But the finished product for the customer, it's different every year because of that. So that works out to our advantage. speaker-0: That's great. I was gonna ask you about that. Does the the theme kinda change or is it ⁓ like how do you guys change it up from year to year? speaker-1: A lot of it's placement of some of the things we have. a lot of props can be used in different ways and we do that of course. But we tend not to theme ourselves. A lot of haunts do. ⁓ the reviewers that come in and talk to us always laugh that it's it's more of a throwback to the old eighties and nineties style where there's just a little bit of everything. And we play off that too, because everybody has their own kind of things that scare them. Yeah. And there's not one thing. So we got a little bit to jump everybody. speaker-0: And who comes up with the ideas? Do you have a committee that kinda speaker-1: Yeah, there's a group of probably ten or fifteen of us that have worked together for years and years and years and just kinda kick stuff around. speaker-0: I know when we had talked before you mentioned that there's some some shows that you guys go to where you're kind of shopping new haunted attractions and things. speaker-1: Yeah, early on it was build what you can, pick up a couple of things from Spirit Halloween and away you go. Yeah. ⁓ we've progressed well beyond that to this point. So there's a trade show that takes place every year in St. Louis, usually in the spring, and it brings together all the haunt owners as well as all the prop makers. And these guys are fantastic. They do stuff for Disney, for Universal Studios, so there's some Big players in this and that's where we pick up most of our ideas and pick up most of our props. speaker-0: And I'm assuming you guys build some of the things yourselves too, right? Aaron Sure. Yeah, yeah. So for some of the more complicated things, how much engineering goes into we were talking earlier about like maybe some anim animatronics and and obviously we know working in this studio how important lighting is and sound and what are what are some of those technical things that maybe people aren't thinking about? They go through it, they experience it, but they don't think about the intricacies of all the details that you speaker-1: Yeah, we were discussing that before we started the podcast. The lighting's a big deal for us where you're trying to get as much light into an area as you can. We're usually trying to close that out and keep as little light in the area as you can while at the same time making it a safe place for people to get out to the fire exits if need be or something like that. Yeah, there's the good thing about a haunted attraction is when it comes to the engineering, if it doesn't look perfect, that's probably for the better. The wonkier the better sometimes with the haunted house. speaker-0: So having been through this fourteen years, what have you found to be harder? Creating something that is scary or creating something that genuinely surprises someone? speaker-1: That's usually one and the same. ⁓ the one general fear that everybody has is the fear of the unknown. So if you can put them in a position where they're anticipating and they're not really sure what's gonna happen, no matter what your scare is, you've got that level of anxiety up to here. That's where you want it anyway. So the littlest thing can sometimes scare them. speaker-0: Now have you guys ever built something that like sounded good on paper? You're like this is gonna work and then you got into it and you're like, This isn't working. I'm sure speaker-1: Over and over and over again. I'm a sucker for that, especially at these trade shows. You see something that looks absolutely amazing. You can't believe somebody actually built something like this. But it doesn't really have a scare factor. It looks really cool, but it really doesn't do anything. So sometimes I get suckered into buying stuff I probably shouldn't have bought and then you have to rework it a little bit to make it work. speaker-0: Yeah, you gotta test it on the human human element to see how it works. Now you've you've watched thousands of people go through this thing and and you've probably learned a a lot about what scares people. After fourteen years, what has actually taught you about like ⁓ what have you learned about what actually scares people? speaker-1: Everybody's dead. Like I said, the the fear of the unknown is probably the the thing you can get everybody on. But I tell my actors too, it at the end of the night when I see people coming out of the exit from the hunt, I don't care if they're screaming with their hair on fire or laughing like crazy. Either way, that's fine. As long as they don't come out yawning and bored. Right. All right. If they come out laughing, they had a good time. That's great. If they come out scared, that's fantastic too. speaker-0: And I'm sure it's different with with every person, but ⁓ do you tend to see more reaction from darkness, loud noises, actors, claustrophobic spaces or the unexpected? Is there certain things that tend to get ⁓ every time? speaker-1: It's har I honestly one of the cheapest effects that we have is simply a an air cannon. It's an air tank that runs off a motion sensor and shoots a little blast of air out that's loud and it startles you. And those things don't cost very much. You stick ⁓ in a corner somewhere where it's dark and people are looking for the big scare coming from somewhere and all of a sudden something shoots off at their feet and it it seems to work every time. I don't know why. speaker-0: I bet the people that come in there and say nothing scares me are probably the funnest ones to see go through it, right? speaker-1: Yeah, and those are the ones too, I always tell my actors there's gonna be somebody that comes in with the their girlfriend and nothing is gonna scare him and he's gonna be the big tough guy. That's fine. Let him let him be that tough guy. We had some actors that were great at ⁓ improvisation and would say things to kind of cut on the guy and heckle a little bit and eventually you'd get him laughing and that's that's perfect too. Yeah, if you're not scared you're laughing, that's good too. speaker-0: So thinking back, ⁓ what is what do you think has been the single most effective scare that you guys have put together over the years? speaker-1: It's hard to say because everybody's just so different. we have a a claustrophobic area, which is basically a hallway with giant nylon pillows on either side that you have to squeeze your way through like between two marshmallows. And that one we actually had to put in well, we did it for another reason, but it worked out. We actually had to put doors on either side to get people around it because they were just they would not go through or they're too claustrophobic. ⁓ we did it initially as a a wheelchair accessible way to get people around. But we found out that people were using it more often because they just couldn't go through those pillows. Yeah, so speaker-0: Now, without ruining any surprises, can you tell us ⁓ about what's new for twenty six? speaker-1: Well the whole haunt itself is new. It always is every year because we have to rebuild it. ⁓ we do have some new maze areas which people seem to like, dark mazes. ⁓ and finally after all these years I've got my hero. We might have a Bigfoot hidden somewhere that actually looks like a legitimate Bigfoot. So speaker-0: Love it. Now, no event no event happens without ⁓ a really good team behind the scenes. Amazing. ⁓ and you guys have what, forty to fifty volunteers every year? speaker-1: Closer to sixty to eighty, yeah. speaker-0: Tell us about the you know, the people that kinda make this thing special. speaker-1: Fantastic. The the biggest thing for us is they're all volunteer. I I the only paid staff we have for the entire haunt is our security. That's that's it. ⁓ everybody else is strictly volunteer, and that's amazing. You don't see that anymore. ⁓ being on the board of directors for the fair, I know how difficult it is to find people to even on paid positions to get groups to come in and do things. It's just you can't find them anymore. But year after year after year these guys keep coming back. And it's amazing so many of them are high school age kids. ⁓ which you wouldn't think in the fall during football season tying up Friday and Saturday night for them, but they come out year after year and it's just been a blessing. speaker-0: Now, so where do you where do you find some of the actors at? Do they audition? What does that look like? speaker-1: It's mostly been word of mouth over the years. ⁓ people just show up. We have actor safety meetings that they have to attend before they can actually work in the haunt. ⁓ so people have worked there for a couple of years, they bring their friends, they bring their fans, and before you know it, you've got a whole team of guys once they realize how much fun it is. speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ I was reading an article, an old article maybe three years ago in The Observer Reporter where you were talking about how seeing some of the kids come out, maybe they're a little shy, maybe they're a little bit in their shell. Talk about that a little bit and and kinda how they progress. speaker-1: Yeah, it's ⁓ that's probably one of the nicest things to see. The Every year you get a couple of kids, and I've learned my lesson not to fall into this trap again. They come up and they wanna act, and you take all their information and you put ⁓ through the safety class and you realize, man, this this kid's really quiet, really shy. And if you're gonna be an actor in a haunt, you have to have a certain level of charisma and in your face and outgoingness. And you think, man, these kids are just This kid's not gonna make it. And every time they it just turns around and they the one one case in particular with a kid like that, I thought she's never gonna make this. This isn't gonna work. And on the second weekend, she came running up to me after the haunt and said, Hey, I just made somebody pee their pants. She was so excited. And then that person's now running a whole area of the haunt. And these kids, you know, they start out just being actors, and next thing you know, they're in charge of a room, they're in charge of an area, they're teaching the other actors. It's it's speaker-0: That's really neat. And i I think maybe even in the same article, one of the gentlemen had mentioned how, you know, his approach with different age groups ⁓ is different. So if he approaches a child, he's gonna be less threatening and you know, ⁓ maybe with the teens he's a little bit more sarcastic and ⁓ maybe a little edgier with adults, you know. So I think that's interesting that your actors have that freedom to improvise throughout the haunt. speaker-1: ⁓ completely. I I except for some safety things that I insist they adhere to, they're free to do whatever they want and then they improvise and it's and if I kinda just give ⁓ some guidelines, this is a room, this is kind of the theme I got set up for you, and then you come back and watch ⁓ the second weekend or something, then they've got their script all down in their head and it's just amazing to watch ⁓ take over. speaker-0: Now, do you have folks who have who have acted through the Scare Fair all fourteen years? Was there a lot of ebb and flow? speaker-1: n yeah, I've got probably a core group of guys that have been with us for the entire fourteen years or at least twelve years of that fourteen. So and they're the ones I really rely on when it comes time to build and and decorate and get things set up. And then some of those k guys had kids and those kids are now starting to be actors in the scarefare too at the time. So it that's been nice. speaker-0: I've been I I've worked in events for a very long time and and I've always appreciated the people behind the scenes and and there's always like these these special moments before an event starts. ⁓ but what's it like for your crew five minutes before the doors open each weekend? speaker-1: First weekend everybody's nervous. I mean it's to them it's f especially I can't speak for me, I've never done the acting, I'm that's not my thing. But for the actors especially, it's like the opening night of a play. So I mean they've got the butterflies, they're not sure what they're gonna do. But then it evolves by the second night even and second weekend of course of Shirley they they've fallen into a routine, they know what they're doing, they know where they wanna be standing, they know what they wanna say and it it's it's easy for ⁓ yeah. speaker-0: Do you ever see ⁓ friendly competitions between your actors who are trying to get the biggest reactions? Yes. speaker-1: Yeah. They if you've ever seen a fighter plane and they put little tick marks on the side of the plane or draw the little tiger hands. Yeah, the kids have started anytime they make somebody pee their pants, they're putting tick marks down and it's competition. And they've even explained to me how they can tell for sure because I'm like, How do you really know somebody they're like, Listen, this is how it works. This is how they stand, this is what they do, and as soon as they hit that pose, we know we got speaker-0: It takes me back to the days of retail. Those are ⁓ like customer satisfaction scores and That's great. Now I I know things change up from year to year, but you guys are kinda well known for your clowns. Tell us about that. ⁓ speaker-1: Yeah, exactly. ⁓ yeah, the clowns. Sam and Kathy Croft have been doing our clown stuff for years and years and years now, and that's become kind of our our moniker, especially among the reviewers. They know when they come down they're gonna see a bunch of clowns. ⁓ for whatever reason, that tends to scare people a lot and they love getting scared by clowns. So yeah, we have an entire building dedicated to clowns, plus some throughout and other places as well. speaker-0: Well, everything kicks off ⁓ October ninth, right? Correct. That's gonna be opening night and it's every Friday and Saturday in October, beginning October ninth, and seven to ten. speaker-1: Seven to ten and we close on Halloween night. speaker-0: Okay. And I saw that on October eighteenth you've got a special event coming up. Can you tell us about that? speaker-1: Little pilot project last year to see how it worked. I got a lot of feedback from people that say, Man, my kids would love to come and that's code for I would love to come, but I'm too scared. but my kids don't want to come and get scared. They just want to see everything. So that's Sunday we did program last year, worked out well. So we'll have all the doors open to the haunts, the lights will be on, there'll be no actors, the animatronics won't be turned on, so there's no jump scares happening. So the kids can walk through and just enjoy the scenery. ⁓ we also have a team of volunteers that'll be bringing out trunk or treat things to set up in the parking lot so the kids can come in costume, they can do trunk or treat, they can go through the haunt. And then we usually donate that money. Last year we donated everything made that day to the ⁓ the flood victims from Elm Grove. Okay. Dallas Pike. ⁓ I don't think they've come up with a fund for this year, but that'll be donated too. speaker-0: That's great. Now, if you wanna come in a group you can reserve a fire pit, right? speaker-1: Right, ⁓ groups are ten or more. We have two fire pits. Sometimes we'll stretch it to three depending on how busy we are. But it's just a small fire with some picnic tables set around. If you have a group of ten or more, you can reserve that for free for the night. ⁓ and then you also receive a group discount on tickets. And one of the sp unique things about our haunt too is after you've gone through the first time, if you keep your ticket stub. the remainder of the night you can keep going through again and again and again for only five dollars apiece. So a lot of times the people that reserve our fire pits or groups with ball teams or clubs and those kids will go through four or five times a night. speaker-0: So yeah. That's great. So ⁓ eighteen bucks for adults, twelve bucks for kids, group discount is fifteen for adults, ten for kids. ⁓ and then you have two escape rooms. Two speaker-1: Small escape rooms, five dollars apiece, yeah. speaker-0: Right. And if I have kids under eight, probably not recommended, right? Probably depends on the kid. speaker-1: Yeah, much like everything else in this business, it just depends on the person. I've seen literally kids two and three years old go through the haunt and laugh hysterically and have the biggest, best time the entire time they've gone through. We've also had to shut down portions of the haunt and escort teenagers out, you know, fifteen, sixteen year old, ten years out because they just couldn't take it anymore. So it really just depended on your child. We say not recommended for eight and below, but that's usually dependent on your child. speaker-0: Sure. Well, Rich, I can't thank you enough. We're ⁓ so excited about the Scare Fair this year. It is great for us from a tourism perspective to have such a cool attraction that is not just one weekend, but it's multiple weekends over the course of October. So best of luck to you guys this year. I'm excited to look at the reports at the end and see how many people showed up to check it out. ⁓ but again, yes, thank you for joining us. Absolutely. Thanks for tuning in. We'll see you next week on the Washco Insider. speaker-1: Hey, thanks for having me. It's been great.