I don't know if anyone still needs to hear this, but: It's a bloodbath out there, people. Swarms of faceless trolls are nipping at our heels. Charming vampires feed on our vulnerabilities. Life in the 21st century has become a horror show. Every day is a fresh hell.
But that doesn't mean you have to be out of style.
Last weekend in Rosemont, about 140 days before Halloween, I attended the Midwest Haunters Convention, a long-running trade show for haunted attraction professionals: mask carvers, fake blood dealers, creepy contact lens salesmen, would-be zombies for seasonal work, haunted general managers of houses. Unlike the much larger Halloween show held every February in St. October. They represent only a fraction of the estimated $500 million spent annually on haunted attractions (itself a fraction of the estimated $10 billion spent annually on Halloween), but they also need inspiration. They need to know what's horrible and now, what's stomach churning and what's trending for the killer floor.
In: Evil nurses.
Outside: Evil clowns.
What follows are a handful of the trends that will rock smart goblins and haunted mansions this fall:
1. Burlap sacks
Midwest Haunters, as expected, was full of creatively disturbing, cutting-edge masks coated in gore. Raging Greens. Decaying nuns. Revenge road kill. But the hottest looks—if the cosplayers are any indication—were simpler, rougher, and more improvised, something that any geek in a garage could throw together on a budget. Think eye holes in cheap sheets and strips of paint for mouths — and that's it! PJ Marinelli of Lifeless Creations in Pittsburgh said he wanted to make affordable masks that wouldn't sacrifice impact. As Brent Wilson of the Haunted Attraction Association put it: “I think people understand today that there's something far more incredibly disturbing about the idea that any weird Joe out there could throw a sack over his head and become a horror.” .
2. Custom fog
Why stock up on dry ice when you could push 40,000 cubic feet per minute of high quality swamp gas? The leading purveyor of disturbing weather systems is Froggy's Fog of Tennessee, and among its newest technology is the Poseidon A2, designed to create a layer of fog that will hug the ground of any decent graveyard. Mix in one of Froggy's 59 scents – including charred corpse, raw sewage, gasoline and pumpkin spice – and you're world building! For something more attractive: Fobbles F4 or F8 shoot a continuous cascade of large bubbles containing small clouds of mist inside each bubble.
3. The cheerfully demonic
Let's face it: The real sick people out there rarely growl. Sometimes they smile. Or sometimes they are toys. Say Chucky Chic. One of the hottest trends is mixing gore with candy-colored gore. Pumpkin Pulp of Muncie, Indiana harness shop offers a mask of a killer clown woman with pink pigtails and cupcake horns. Owner Brian Blair said it's partly a reaction to “how many women have come into the haunted attraction industry in recent years.” They also sell demonic barns with animal masks, from cows to catfish. Chad Smith of Unsub Masks out of Champaign had an even better idea: When a local costume shop closed, he bought their mascot costumes, distressed the fur and added fake blood. He narrowed the eyes of a bunny and added a fake robotics panel to a Barney character. Chuck E. Cheese went rogue, indeed.
4. Crazy props
Last fall, as the pandemic began to subside, haunted houses had one of their biggest years in recent memory. “But they also noticed that wait times were so long that many had to come up with new ideas to keep visitors busy,” said Wilson of the Haunted Attraction Association. Some created games for people to play in line. Others paid more attention to the oft-neglected rooms that visitors pass on the way to frighten. That means more immersive atmospheres, more attention to the creatures that haunt the lines, and more bloody props. Hence the constant work of creepy teddy bears and baby devils sticking to a shelf. Pittsburgh's Sapien Studios was selling baby spiders that crack with minimal effort and fetch $650 with milky “cave boy” eyes. Mason Lauster, of Indianapolis-based Slaughterhouse FX, said many attractions are now looking for unique, ready-made items that will tie a room together. The days of axes are over. Now you need a wrench adapted to a large saw blade.
5. Rotting pumpkins
We're talking specifically about sculpted decaying pumpkins that last a season and beyond. Sometimes animatronic and growling, sometimes looking out with eyes, classic and static. This is the cottage industry for South Carolina's Toxic FX, which offers 10 variations on reliably formatted evil lanterns. “We just thought, in this business, you can't go wrong with pumpkins,” owner Blake Phillips said. Judging by the steady stream of customers at the convention, business is booming. Among their pumpkins: Grumpkin, who looks grumpy, and Drunkin, whose long pin head looks stiff. Each costs $85 or $125 with a lighting kit.
6. Hyperrealism
We're talking disturbing replicas of rotting legs, peeling trunks and worse. Michael Chaille of Ghost Ride Productions — who has built haunted house sets from a cast of real people for 22 years — once heard from an attraction that visitors were concerned about a woman curled up in a fetal position on the floor. Little did they know he was one of his props. “The public has seen it all before, but it doesn't seem real,” he said. So on the table in front of him at the conference were heads (seemingly) frozen solid. He makes an urn with a melting face and several versions of bodies cut in half. Again, at a glance, it looks real. But then a glance is all these things. “We have six to 10 seconds to be impressive with a piece,” he said. “People are moving on. They have seen expensive animatronic monsters. They expect it now. The thing is, nothing beats smart.”
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com
