Mark’s Haunted Garage

Preparations for Mark’s Haunted Garage 2008 are well underway. All 5 rooms are planned out, including the new “secret” room (no more on that, or it won’t be a secret anymore, and it will spoil the surprise). I’m prepared to put 2 of the rooms together right now, and hopefully a third room will be done in another week or 2, and a fourth room is pretty simple, so that should go together quickly. I’d say I should have no problem being done by Halloween.

A little information for those of you who have not visited Mark’s Haunted Garage previously. It is located at 34 Hidden Meadow in Penfield, NY. At this point, I don’t believe I have enough of a following to be open more than just Halloween night, so your only opportunity to visit is on October 31, which is a Friday this year. My normal hours are 6pm to 9pm. Since it is a Friday night, if I have people still coming at 9:00, I may keep the garage door open. However, if you arrive near or after 9:00, and the garage door is closed, Mark’s Haunted Garage is closed for the year. Please don’t knock on the door and ask to go through.  Once the door is closed everything is turned off, and I’m not going to turn it all back on.  Please try to come before 9:00.  The Garage isn’t that big, so it only takes a minute or three (depending on how much time you take to actually stop and look at things) to go through.

Now, for all you parents with small children. Mark’s Haunted Garage is meant to be spooky, not gory. I plan to continue in the style I’ve done in the past. There may be scenes with things like skeletons, witches, demons, ghosts, and other assorted monsters. However, I do not do blood and guts. Personally, I find that disgusting, not scary, so I don’t do it. There is also no profanity. As a result, if Mark’s Haunted Garage were a movie, I would rate it PG. There are things in it that young (and sometimes not so young) children may be scared of. I know my 3-year-old son is afraid of some of my props, even when I tell him exactly what is and is not going to happen. However, there is nothing in Mark’s Haunted Garage that I wouldn’t want my son to see or hear. So, young children are welcome if they have the courage to come through. Just remind them of the policy: touch nothing, and nothing will touch you. If that is not enough to encourage them to come through, please don’t force them. We will be happy to give young children the candy even if they are too afraid to go through the garage. Just inform the person outside the garage, and he’ll take care of you.

Lastly, if there is anyone who thinks it would be fun to help operate the Garage on Halloween night, I could still use an actor or two to patrol the Garage that night. If you are interested, please send me an email using the address mark250 at markshauntedgarage.com. Note that this is a temporary email address that will not work after Halloween. This is to prevent spammers from getting a hold of this address and using it to spam me.

Hope to see you all on Halloween night.

The WNY Haunters held their fifth gathering of 2008 at Leigh and Keith’s house in Rochester on Saturday, July 26. 25 adults attended, which smashed the previous record of 16 adults. We welcomed 3 new members to the group: John, Joe, and Greg. Mike even made his 6+ hour journey to join us, and he brought his “Gus” animatronic with him, which Jim tinkered with to see how much of it worked. We did have a little rain, but our hosts had the foresight to rent a tent to keep the rain off us. They also did an excellent job with the food. Keith’s pulled pork was as tasty as ever.

Pictures of the event can be found on the group’s web site.

Last year, to get some publicity for the haunted garage, I put a different static prop in the back yard each day that weather permitted so that the kids in the Harris Hill schoolyard could see it. The days I was home to see it, I know that it drew a fair number of kids over to my fence. However, I got the impression that the kids were expecting something to happen, but nothing ever did. I only used static props.

For this year, I am considering putting some animated props out there when whether permits, especially talking ones. However, I had some concern that the school personnel might find that too disruptive. While they probably had no legal recourse to prevent me from doing it, I didn’t really want to make waves, especially with my son heading to that school in a couple more years. So, I sent an email to the school principal, Marc Nelson, to get his opinion. He asked me to schedule a meeting with him, which I had today. It was a very short meeting (which I pretty much expected), and it was very positive. He told me he had no problem with it as long as it wasn’t gory or anything like that. I assured him that it definitely would not be. I don’t do gore. He also didn’t want the kids leaving the grounds, to which I pointed out that my back yard is fenced, so that wasn’t a problem, either. Otherwise, he had no issues with it, so I guess I have a green light. I’ll probably get started on a talking routine in the next week or so, and I’ll probably do more than one.

The fifth gathering of 2008 for the WNY Haunters is scheduled for Leigh and Keith’s house on Saturday, July 26. At this point, the talk is that we will just do a couple of demos and no projects since we have a number of new members that may be coming to their first gathering. The demos are Shane and Faith’s method for creating an FCG puppet using packing tape, and Leigh’s Fun-kin carving techniques. The plan is also to get a new group picture at this gathering, as our “current” picture is over 2 years old and shows members who are no longer members and is missing members who have since joined. So, hopefully everyone can come so that they can be included in the new picture.

As of this writing, I have not yet been asked to build the haunted house for Spooktacular at Harris Hill elementary school this year. Since I had been asked by this date last year, I am assuming that I will not be doing Spooktacular this year, which means that I can dedicate all my time to working on my own haunt for this year. If someone should ask me at some point later this year, I will consider their request based on how close it is to Halloween when they ask and how far along I am with preparations for my own haunt. I am still very interested in doing it this year. I just hope that if they do ask me, there is still enough time for me to do it right and not sacrifice my own haunt in the process.

The WNY Haunters held there third gathering of 2008 at Katy and Alan’s house in Liverpool, NY. 15 adults attending, including our newest member, Bill. From what I could tell, Bill will fit in very nicely. Several of the members built the project for this gathering…a rising spirit. Pictures taken during the gathering are posted at http://wny-haunters.markshauntedgarage.com/2008/gathering3/index.php

I was in the basement with my 3 year old son, who is into pirates big-time. He saw the coffin and asked me what it was. I told him it was for the vampire. He looked at me and said, “Vampirate?” I said to myself, “Hmmm. Possible new prop idea?” He’s only 3 and already getting interesting ideas, even if he doesn’t realize what he’s doing.

The third gathering of 2008 of the WNY Haunters has been scheduled for Sunday, May 25 and Katy and Alan’s home in Liverpool, NY. The Make-n-Take project we are planning to build is an animated rising spirits display, as demonstrated in this video.

The WNY Haunters held their second gathering at Mark and Susan’s house in Penfield, NY.  11 adults attended.  The forecast called for a high of 73 and rain all afternoon, but it got up to 83, and it didn’t start raining until about 3:30, so we were able to spend a lot more time in the back yard than I expected.  We didn’t work on any projects at this gathering either, but Bogie did make a list of projects we can work on during future gatherings.  I will be posting those projects in another post, hopefully in the next few days.

The WNY Haunters held their first gathering of 2008 at Josh and Emma’s house in Romulus, NY. 12 adults and 2 children attended. We didn’t work on any projects during this gathering. It was just a time to get together, chat, discuss old experiences, and plan new ones for next year. Katy and Alan showed off their new toy they had picked up just that morning — a new hearse. Josh and Emma did a great job hosting their first ever gathering. The food was excellent and plentiful. My son Allen had a great time playing with Tyler and Shane. I enjoyed myself. It was great seeing everyone.