Hauntworld Hot News Summer 2006

So many things have happened since the Transworld Halloween and Party Show so where do we start?  Let’s start with a BIG NEWS FLASH…

Cydney Neil, who’s often mentioned in Hanf-O-Damos, has always said she’s going to close her haunted house but never does.  Well, she is finally going to shut the doors for good.  Yes, you heard it HERE first…Rocky Point Haunted House will be no more after this next Halloween season as well as one other spring promotion they’re planning.  We got word that Rocky Point will have an auction for everything inside the haunted house sometime next June.   To celebrate the impact Rocky Point has had on our industry: Hauntworld Magazine will have the EXCLUSIVE story and highlight the history of the attraction in our next issue.  The magazine cover will feature a collector cover that will blow your mind…stay tuned.

Speaking of Hanf-O-Domas, I wonder if he will have to turn in his crystal ball now that it’s officially come to pass that Cydney Neil is finally closing her haunted house.  We will report on that in the next issue which will include his predictions for 2007.

More breaking news…the owner of the Jekyll and Hyde Club in New York is opening what should be one of the nation’s best haunted houses this September.  The haunt will feature three different attractions built and designed by Halloween Productions, Inc. of Saint Louis. The haunts will be part of a larger Family Fun Center that will open in spring 2007.  The haunts include MASSIVE Disney style facades, over 50 animations, and detailed theming.  Check out their new website at http://bayvilleadventurepark.com/ or http://bayvillescreampark.com/.

 

Several rumors are swirling around about what will happen with Transworlds haunted house seminars.  Several different people are vying for the rights to organize the seminars next year including IAHA.  Dennis Gorg will no longer produce seminars for Transworld Exhibits.  Stay Tuned.

Scarefactory recently built some animations for Pirates of the Caribbean retail store in both Las Angeles and Orlando. 

Speaking of Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney recently upgraded the ride with computer animation, new scenes and several multi-motion lifelike Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) animations.  One of the new CGI sets includes a waterfall and the image of Davy Jones speaking to the riders.  The ride has been closed for the past three months and its re-opening coincides with the opening of the new movie.  The ride has entertained over 500 million guests since its opening in 1967.

This information was released by Midnight Syndicate… Midnight Syndicate's "Out of the Darkness" is a retrospective disc spanning the band's history from 1994-1999.   Featuring over an hour of the best songs from their self-titled debut, "Born of the Night," and "Realm of Shadows" each track has been re-recorded and re-mastered for your listening pleasure.   The CD also includes several previously unreleased tracks including some samples from movie scores to horror films Edward Douglas directed/scored before forming Midnight Syndicate. 

WHACKY HAUNTED NEWS: 
Dr. Lady was elected MAYOR of his own town.  Yes, you heard that right Dr. Lady is now the MAYOR of Chatfield, Ohio.  I doubt he’ll have any trouble getting his haunted house open this October.  Congratulations Dr. Lady!

Rodney Geffert of NightScream Productions, Cleveland, Ohio recently held his haunted house auction organized by Norton Auctions.  The auction drew over 500 bidders and grossed over $250,000.00.  Rodney claims he will hold another auction next year around the same time of year.

Eastern State Penitentiary recently announced a ‘first of its kind’ haunted house, called Night Watch, where guests will be given flashlights to find their way through the attraction.  Sounds cool…visit them on the web at www.TerrorBehindtheWalls.com.

Rich Hanf and Chuck Williams recently handled the IAHA fundraising auction at Transworld.  This was by far the most exciting, entertaining and best organized auction IAHA has ever had…kudos to Chuck Williams and Rich Hanf.  The auction raised over $10,000.00 for IAHA.  You can visit IAHA on the web at www.hauntedhouseassociation.org

On other Cydney Neil news…she recently opened her haunted house during the summer for a one night only event called ‘Scream Break’.  The event drew over 2,000 paying guests and raised over $30,000.00 for charity. The idea of ‘Scream Break’ sounds pretty cool!  I’m sure other haunts will be doing the same thing down the road…isn’t that what all haunters do?  Take good ideas and run with them!  LOL

Field of Screams is once again doing their 3D glasses buy…here is the information:  Don’t miss your only opportunity to join this order and receive the best prices on your 3-D glasses! We are fortunate that APO allows the haunted industry to do this order, since it is the only one of its kind. Please call Field of Screams at (717) 285-7748 or email Christine at Christine@fieldofscreams.com with any questions or for more information.

Kevin McCurdy recently turned his haunted house into a Christmas event and believe it or not did better with Christmas than his Haunted House event.  Kevin didn’t stop there because he then did Mystery Dinner Theater Shows inside his haunted house to SOLD OUT crowds.  To top it all off he’s now doing outdoor Science Fiction Movie Drive-Inn shows at his location.  He’s turned his location into a 50’s Drive Inn movie theatre complete with several themed movies.  Kevin has proved once again that he’s one of the most creative guys in the industry.  In a future Hauntworld magazine expect a feature article about this subject from Kevin McCurdy.  Visit Kevin’s website at www.thehauntedmansion.com.  Last but not least,   Kevin made a new ‘Secrets of the Haunted Mansion Part 5’ now available for sale at www.hauntedhousesupplies.com.

If you haven’t heard yet, Rob Zombie will direct a new Halloween movie…expect our very own Wayne Toth to create all the make-up FX for the film.  Good luck Wayne! Visit Ex Mortis website at www.exmortis.com

Ghost Ride Productions recently announced they’ve moved from Los Angles to Seattle, Washington.  Visit Ghost Rides website at www.ghostride.com.

The guys from Netherworld haunted house recently announced they would open their doors for this years IAAPA show in Atlanta.  Folks, I don’t know why you skip this awesome show year after year but the show is filled with tons of haunted vendors and on top of it you’ll get a full blown tour of Netherworld Haunted House.  Make your plans NOW to attend the 2006 IAAPA tradeshow.  Visit them on the web at www.iaapa.org

Several new updates have been made to Hauntworld.com

Hauntworld’s haunted house forums have never been going stronger.  We have a strong group of 2,200 haunted house owners, actors and everything in between now trading information at the Hauntworld online forums.  You can join the discussion by joining our forums here http://hauntworld.com/phpbb/index.php

Hauntworld broke an all-time traffic record for a non-Halloween month. Hauntworld had over 415,000 UNIQUE visits to Hauntworld.com in June.  The traffic record for a non-Halloween month was this past March when we did over 401,000.

Traffic on Hauntworld.com is up FIVE times from this time last year...this time last year attracted about 90,000 visits per month now we do 400,000 plus...If Hauntworld goes up 4 or 5 times in October that would put us at around 3 to 4 MILLION visits this coming October. Hauntworld.com is RANKED as the #1 Haunted House website on the entire WEB ... currently we’re ranked 62,900 most popular website on the entire planet! We’re expecting Hauntworld.com to shoot up to or inside the top 10,000 sites this October.

When you consider the traffic we’re getting do not forget you can buy featured banners on our exclusive haunted directory www.findhauntedhouses.com.  Currently normal listings are still FREE.  If you have yet to list your attraction - do it today…our new updated system allows customers to find your haunts by zip code, type of haunted attraction and leave a review on your profile and rank your haunted house.

Additionally, the haunt owner has the ability to erase reviews as you choose, upload images of your haunt, upload your logo, downloadable coupons and much more.  Remember once you create an account on our system you can update, change, and upgrade your listing whenever you want by logging into your account.  Please take full advantage of what we’re offering and upgrade and update your listing today…its FREE!

If you’re one of those 200 plus haunt owners who bought featured banners from us at this past year's Transworld show and haven’t emailed us your banner please read…

If you have NOT sent in your banners for findhauntedhouses.com you had better send them NOW directly to: darkrides@sbcglobal.net. If you bought a featured listing send me your banner, URL of your site, state, and slot you bought. Times are wasting!!!

DO NOT DELAY. We also still have banners available in certain states contact us today.  

Other Hauntworld News…

Hauntworld.com will add a search feature, which allows users to search our site like a search engine. So instead of piling through thousands of pages to find what you're looking for you can just search for it. The search feature will search ALL of our sites like a real search engine.
Coming Soon…

Hard to believe that we could improve our haunt directory anymore but yes we’ve added even more features…keep reading.

New features will go live in the next few weeks such as ...

Haunter Profile: Just like MySpace your listings on our system will allow you to create a user profile that will include a blog. Yes you can have a haunted BLOG right on our system inside your profile. You can create a profile on yourself, pictures you name it. FREE

You will also be able to upload a downloadable coupon, activate a buy ticket button, link to Google maps or mapquest and last but not least you will be able to add links on your profile to other haunted sites you or haunted friends have. All of these updates are coming really soon...keep looking for them.

People keep asking me ‘Hey Larry why is it my listing is last on your haunted directory when it use to be first?’  Let me explain…we have a new feature installed onto the site called ‘trackbacks’.  Log into your account, click on your listing and you will find some coding for a special ‘findhauntedhouses’ banner.  Take that coding stick it on your site, and when your guests click on the banner it gives your listing a ‘trackback’ credit and moves you up or down in the listings.  The more trackbacks that come from your site to our site the higher your listing goes…in other words if you don’t add the special banner, your listing will eventually sink to the bottom of the page.  Those who have the highest amounts of ‘trackbacks’ will be listed first, so on and so forth.  I hope this explains everything!  

Hauntworld has upgraded the front page to some degree...we've added links to our haunt directory state by state right off the front page and have added new sections like Halloween, Horror and much more ... those are links to sites we've reviewed. We can add your sites for free if you fall into any of those areas. We'll also be adding a new TOC page and eliminate the sidebar TOC page. As well as eliminating all STYLE sheets from the site which screw up how some people see the site in different browsers.

We've launched several new sites to help us gain some traffic for the haunt season... they include:

www.HauntedAttractions.com
www.HalloweenHauntedHouse.com
www.HauntFinder.com
www.HalloweenAttractions.com

We’ve also launched about  35 STATE SPECFIC sites such as: www.hauntedhousekentucky.com or www.hauntedhouseflorida.com.   These sites are aimed at specific keywords for Google's search engine.  All of these sites feature Hauntworld.com haunted listings for that specific state.  These sites should start appearing on search engines over the next month or two…our goal is to send as many unique visitors to your haunted house as possible.

Speaking of search engines…

Hauntworld.com search engine placement has NEVER been better in preparation for the haunted season...

Major Keywords like Haunted House and Haunted Houses

Hauntworld.com

Yahoo (Haunted House #5) (Haunted Houses #5)

Google (Haunted Houses #4) (Haunted House #9)

Ask (Haunted House #1) (Haunted Houses #1)

On Yahoo HauntedHouses.us another site we own is listed… (Haunted House #2) (Haunted Houses #2).   

Depending on what keywords you use we might come up #1 and sometimes we have four of our websites in the top 10 on certain keywords. We're all over the place...

Last year on Google, Hauntworld.com was listed on page 15 under keywords Haunted House and Haunted Houses but not this year…so we’re expecting much higher traffic counts this October.  

Enough with Hauntworld.com

Halloween Productions, Inc. is planning on holding a Hauntworld Magazine open house to visit our haunted houses ‘The Darkness’ and ‘Fear Fest/Silo-X’.  The event will be announced on www.HauntWorld.com towards the middle to end of July. Keep checking the message boards.
If you ever wanted to see ‘The Darkness’ now is your chance…The new Darkness is simply awesome!  You will also take a peak at our ‘Tombstone Haunted Hayride’ at our Silo-X location.

Last but not least…Hauntworld Magazine and Hauntworld.com printed over 200 collector t-shirts and mailed them FREE to everyone who requested them through our message boards.

That’s right; anyone who wanted one got one at NO cost to them…Hauntworld is your friend, your alley, your supporter and your key to communication.  We’re with you from beginning to end.  Hopefully next year we’ll print a new t-shirt and send out 400 next time! Several haunters sent us photos of themselves wearing the t-shirts.  Thanks!

Well that about does it folks…have a great haunted house season.  I hope there is no war with IRAN, no floods, no outrageous gas spikes or anything else that might take people attention off of Halloween!  Good luck and I will pray that it only rains on days you’re not OPEN!

Happy Hauntings
Hauntworld Magazine