Happy Halloween
It’s Halloween, and the 20th anniversary of one of my favorite nights ever. Twenty years ago tonight I was part of Haunted House Productions, the group that put together Seattle’s annual KUBE/Coca-Cola/Tape Town/Variety Club Haunted House.
Ah, but this wasn’t any old cardboard walls and peeled grape eyeballs sort of operation. Nope, this was the Haunted House that people said “rivaled Disneyland”. We spent 9 months building the thing, which was packed with 10,000 square feet of stuff. We had a flooded room, a rat room, an entire city street, 3 mazes that people were lost in for upwards of an hour (they were painted solid black, with absolutely no lights), a saw room, a cave, “meat grinders” that fell from the ceiling, and a tilted room – an entire room built inside another room, tilted at an angle. Walking through the house took at least 30 minutes, and we’d have people lined up waiting to come in for up to 3 hours. It was that big.
Our building was on the corner of 4th Avenue and Royal Brougham Street in downtown Seattle – right next door to the Kingdome. (There’s an I-90 freeway onramp there now – it was torn down 6 months after we moved out.) The building was once home to Swift & Premium Pork Producing – little piggies came off the trains behind the building, went in one door, and came out the other as bacon, ham, and sausage. Yes, it was an honest to God slaughterhouse once. Swift moved out sometime in the 70’s, and the building was used as a warehouse for years, until it was finally slated for destruction as part of the I-90 project. So we got to use it from 1981 – 1985 for our charity haunted house. (In 1983 we moved uptown for a year, but came back in 1984 when the freeway construction was delayed.)
It really was the time of my life, “working” with the haunted house. I say “working”, because it was all volunteer labor, and in the end we all spent more money out of our own pockets to make it happen than we’d ever be able to recoup. There were about 60 of us who spent our spring and summer building the place, then another crew of about 200 volunteers helped us run it for the two weeks we were open.
I, along with four friends, ran the security department. The biggest threat to our actors at the time was drunks who’d try to take a swing at the ghouls or who’d try to help us tear the place down, but unfortunately while we were still open. So we had hidden security towers in place, and entire crews of people who “roamed” the house, looking for troublemakers. I caught an amorous couple going at it doggy-style in one of the mazes one night – I should’ve told them that they were screwing in an empty cement corner where thousands of pigs had their throats slit, but it probably would’ve turned them on more. But for the most part it was a blast – we worked hard, raised a ton of money for the local children’s hospital, then partied well into the night.
It really was the greatest learning experience I’ve ever had. I met so many different people, picked up a lot of interesting habits, and had a lot of fun. Oh, sure – I was flat broke, and the pressures to “get a real job” were huge, but it was still worth it.
In some ways I wish I could still do The House. But I think I’d rather keep the memories the way they are. Wonderful memories. Things like a six-foot sign saying “Shut Up, Melissa” (she really did talk a lot), Sargoth the puppet, the lady who peed her pants in the house, the $5 bet, “Sneaky-Creepy” (hide & seek with the lights out), fire extinguisher wars, Dogs of Death, the hidden passageway into the safe, groupies, top hats, Miss Wendy the DJ, Rah-Rah-Robbins, B.E.M.F., Rebel, “Some Guys Have All The Luck”, Drunken Stupor Wednesdays, and a bathroom vandalized with the most interesting graffiti you’ll ever see.
I love those memories. And trust me, there are 1,001 more. Someday I’ll have to sit down and write the story of them all. But for now, I’ll just remind you of these 3 Halloween hints:
1 – Beware of Captain Cavanaugh. (You would’ve had to have been there.)
2 –If you value your digestive system, don’t eat the hot dogs.
3 – Have fun.
Happy Halloween --
Ah, but this wasn’t any old cardboard walls and peeled grape eyeballs sort of operation. Nope, this was the Haunted House that people said “rivaled Disneyland”. We spent 9 months building the thing, which was packed with 10,000 square feet of stuff. We had a flooded room, a rat room, an entire city street, 3 mazes that people were lost in for upwards of an hour (they were painted solid black, with absolutely no lights), a saw room, a cave, “meat grinders” that fell from the ceiling, and a tilted room – an entire room built inside another room, tilted at an angle. Walking through the house took at least 30 minutes, and we’d have people lined up waiting to come in for up to 3 hours. It was that big.
Our building was on the corner of 4th Avenue and Royal Brougham Street in downtown Seattle – right next door to the Kingdome. (There’s an I-90 freeway onramp there now – it was torn down 6 months after we moved out.) The building was once home to Swift & Premium Pork Producing – little piggies came off the trains behind the building, went in one door, and came out the other as bacon, ham, and sausage. Yes, it was an honest to God slaughterhouse once. Swift moved out sometime in the 70’s, and the building was used as a warehouse for years, until it was finally slated for destruction as part of the I-90 project. So we got to use it from 1981 – 1985 for our charity haunted house. (In 1983 we moved uptown for a year, but came back in 1984 when the freeway construction was delayed.)
It really was the time of my life, “working” with the haunted house. I say “working”, because it was all volunteer labor, and in the end we all spent more money out of our own pockets to make it happen than we’d ever be able to recoup. There were about 60 of us who spent our spring and summer building the place, then another crew of about 200 volunteers helped us run it for the two weeks we were open.
I, along with four friends, ran the security department. The biggest threat to our actors at the time was drunks who’d try to take a swing at the ghouls or who’d try to help us tear the place down, but unfortunately while we were still open. So we had hidden security towers in place, and entire crews of people who “roamed” the house, looking for troublemakers. I caught an amorous couple going at it doggy-style in one of the mazes one night – I should’ve told them that they were screwing in an empty cement corner where thousands of pigs had their throats slit, but it probably would’ve turned them on more. But for the most part it was a blast – we worked hard, raised a ton of money for the local children’s hospital, then partied well into the night.
It really was the greatest learning experience I’ve ever had. I met so many different people, picked up a lot of interesting habits, and had a lot of fun. Oh, sure – I was flat broke, and the pressures to “get a real job” were huge, but it was still worth it.
In some ways I wish I could still do The House. But I think I’d rather keep the memories the way they are. Wonderful memories. Things like a six-foot sign saying “Shut Up, Melissa” (she really did talk a lot), Sargoth the puppet, the lady who peed her pants in the house, the $5 bet, “Sneaky-Creepy” (hide & seek with the lights out), fire extinguisher wars, Dogs of Death, the hidden passageway into the safe, groupies, top hats, Miss Wendy the DJ, Rah-Rah-Robbins, B.E.M.F., Rebel, “Some Guys Have All The Luck”, Drunken Stupor Wednesdays, and a bathroom vandalized with the most interesting graffiti you’ll ever see.
I love those memories. And trust me, there are 1,001 more. Someday I’ll have to sit down and write the story of them all. But for now, I’ll just remind you of these 3 Halloween hints:
1 – Beware of Captain Cavanaugh. (You would’ve had to have been there.)
2 –If you value your digestive system, don’t eat the hot dogs.
3 – Have fun.
Happy Halloween --
posted by Tommy G at
10:58 AM
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