I found out about the DHH from my roommate who is in the Foundations course at VFS. It turns one of his instructors puts on a huge event every Halloween. It a beautiful house in a great neighborhood and things stay pretty average throughout the year. But once June/July hits the owners of the house start transforming the dwelling into a Halloween spectacle that rivals even the best amusement park haunted houses.
The best thing about it is it's free and every dollar contributed goes to charity. The amount of work that goes into this is exhausting but the people that I met through the experience are truly unforgettable. There are about 70+ volunteers that make it possible and I was lucky enough to be brought on board to help out. Usually you have to put your time in to make it through the ranks but since they needed a hand in the sound department, I was a shoe in. In years past they've produced some video documentaries to show how the whole event is made possible and this time they wanted to bring up the production quality for this year's video.
During the day, the haunt is open to anyone who wants to walk through. This is usually when the kids go through because there are no live "spookers" in place. To get the full experience you had to go through after 6:30pm Monday-Thursday and it ran until 9:00pm, Friday-Saturday I think it ran until midnight. On with the pics!
First off, this is where everyone gets suited up. This reminded me of what your standard wardrobe department should look like on a film set, and this is all top of the line stuff.
And here's the walk through the haunt...
Mummies:
Romans:
Monks:
Hell:
Knights:
Witches:
Pirates:
Asylum:
London/Jack the Ripper:
Apocalypse/Planet of the Apes:
and the line up begins:
So this went on from October 15th-31st rain or shine. I eventually got shifted from the sound crew to help with crowd control and even got to spook a couple of nights. At the end of every night, we would gather everyone together and give the count of how many people walked through the haunt. During the week we averaged 700-800 people and on Halloween Night we broke the record having 1500+ people walk through! They had also broke another record and donated close to $69,000 dollars to charity!
OK, so one of the coolest parts of the haunt was when Bruce Greenwood stopped by. He knew the owners of the house and he brought his nephew in to spook for a night. Turns out some of his actor friends are in town shooting a film and he asked them if they wanted to stop by too. So Bruce convinced Chris Pine to stop by! Yeah Kirk from the new Star Trek. Now that was cool, just kickin it with Kirk with no one getting all star struck and cameras going off. That was one of the stipulations- no photos, no autographs, just there to have fun. They both should be in the video of course. There was a rumor floating around that Reese Witherspoon might show since they're filming their new movie in the area...but alas, no Reese.
It really was an awesome experience and even though some nights seemed like it would never end it was all definitely worth it. I can't wait to see the final video and see everyone again at the wrap party. I'll keep you posted.
All for now, now time to work on my December update!
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