Doom Haunted Attraction in Idaho Falls, Idaho

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Doom Haunted Attraction in Idaho Falls,
Idaho is now in their sixth season supporting

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the Local DARE program. That's coming
up on today's show from the Haunted Attraction

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Network. I'm Philip and this is
our sixty one day Hantedon or We're counting

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down to Halloween by celebrating Haunted House
daily via videos, podcasts, and in

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person experiences. This podcast is just
one part of this year's Hantathon. The

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best way to follow everything is by
subscribing to our newsletter or going to our

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website at Haunted Attraction Network dot com
and clicking on that banner. The best

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way you can support us as following
season is by sharing our Hantathon with someone

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you think we'll enjoy it. Okay, Doom Haunted Attraction in Idaho Falls,

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Idaho is a fundraiser for the Local
DARE program. We had Doom Haunt Attraction

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on the show last year, and
last year we got more into the founding

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and the creativity by but this year
I wanted to follow up with Brent and

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see how it's going and whether the
goals have really shifted or not. So

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this episode is more about the goals
of the program and the staff there and

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what it's doing for the community.
Okay, here's Brent to give us an

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update on how Doom Haunted Attraction is
going this year in Idaho Falls, Idaho.

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My name is Brent Wilson. I'm
the general manager of Doom Haunted Attraction

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in Idaho Falls, Idaho. We
are a thirty two thousand square foot indoor

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haunted attraction and we operate as a
nonprofit charity. All of our proceeds go

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to the Bonneville County Sheriff's DARE program
to help keep kids off of drugs.

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We have right now about eighty five
teenage SCARE actors signed up to come work

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as volunteers at the Haunt. This
is a safe place for a lot of

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them. I thought I had a
rough childhood. Now these kids here,

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some of them just blow me away. How strong they are given what they

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grew up in. Obviously, the
DARE program is very important, but also

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giving some of these kids a family
away from their family and a safe place

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and providing the good adult influence and
I'd like to think maybe role model for

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some of them. That's very important. How long have you guys been here.

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This will be our sixth season and
twenty twenty three, operating the Haunt.

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Prior to Doom, there was another
haunted attraction located in this building that

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also operated for the DARE program,
called Doctor Slaughter's House of Terror for about

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eighteen years before we started. Yeah, how has your perspective changed? Has

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it changed in that it seems like
it's a little bit more now about the

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team than it is maybe about the
DARE program or I don't know, what

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do you think? I would definitely
say it's a combination to the two.

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I think. Prior to my exposure
to some of these teenagers here at the

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Haunt, I lived in a bubble, the middle class bubble. And when

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I hear kids talk about their parents'
parole officer, I'm like, WHOA,

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your parent has a parole officer.
So it it's been a game changer and

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a bit of an eye opener,
and I've had a paradigm shift. The

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DARE program is just as an important
I lost two dear friends to drugs growing

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up. It's just as important.
But there are kids that have worked here

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five six years now that they're like
family to me. There's a couple kids

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here I would adopt if they needed
adoption. Literally, I'm not joking.

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So yeah, it's about our haunt
family. I know that sounds cliche,

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but it is true. It's just
as much about that now as it is

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the DARE program and also our love
of haunting. So, yeah, you

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are not a full time haunter,
so you definitely do this, you know,

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on the side to make it function
like that. Tell us a little

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bit about your background before you came
into this commercial location. Okay, Yeah,

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so my real job I do commercial
real estate and it's a very demanding

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occupation. But I actually started doing
home haunts as a kid in Florida and

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did that for many years. The
last year we did a home haunt in

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Florida, we had over eleven hundred
people come through the haunt in two hours

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and we got shut down by the
police no permits, and then moved to

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Idaho. How to child. When
my son started getting older, we started

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throwing these crazy Halloween parties where we
would do little walk through haunts, and

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it just kept getting bigger and bigger. The last year that we did the

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home haunt in Idaho, it was
about three thousand square feet and that's about

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the same time Doctor Slaughter's House of
Terror closed up, and there was an

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article in the paper about how the
state was no longer going to fund the

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DARE program and without the Haunted House, the DARE program would go away.

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There was no funding, and so
I contacted the DARE officer at the Sheriff's

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office and said, Hey, here's
my background, here's some videos of my

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home haunt. I'm interested in picking
up the ball and running with it if

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you are. And yeah, that
went really well. That first meeting went

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really well, and it's it's been
a good relationship ever since. Yeah,

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what kind of kid were you in
high school? I was a punk rocker.

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Actually, I did see that.
A's a band set in there is

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that you were? That's mine?
Yeah, I when I was young,

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I was in a punk rock man. We put out five or six CDs,

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were on Spotify and all that,
and I was an outcast. I

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was the weird kid with the crazy
hair. And I can really to a

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lot of the kids here. We
have a lot of misfits here at the

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Haunt now, and I give them
pep talks because I know if you're fifteen

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years old and you're a quote unquote
weird kid, or you're a gay kid,

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it's tough. Society is hard enough
when you're quote unquote normal, And

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so there are kids here that are
quote unquote weird, and I've taken them

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under my wing and I've said,
hey, I've been there. I used

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to get bullied by jocks when I
was your age, and it does get

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better. And they're actually scared of
you because those guys are they try so

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hard to fit in. They're terrified
of not conforming, and so when they

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see you being your own true self, they consider that a threat. They

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don't even realize it, but they
consider that a threat. And that's why

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they bully you, because why else
would you care if someone's quote unquote weird

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and not a conformist? Who cares
right unless you feel threatened by that.

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I like to think I've given some
of these kids a little bit of help

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with self esteem and help them understand
it does get a lot better, especially

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after you finish high school and you
can just navigate your own course in life.

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Is that what you would say to
year fifteen year old? Tell hell,

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yeah, I wish I had a
grown up weirdo that could use as

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a role model back then, but
I did not. But yeah, no,

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we have some great kids here that
are going through a really rough time.

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Especially with social media nowadays, it's
really hard being a teenager, especially

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if you don't fit the traditional mold
of what's expected of teenagers. We have

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a lot of trans kids that work
here. We have a lot of gay

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kids that work here. We have
a lot of kids that are just punk

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rock or whatever, and we make
sure they understand this is a safe This

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is a safe space. You can
be whoever you want to be here as

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long as you're not stepping on anyone
else's toes and so in a small town

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in rural East Idaho, I like
to think that's a big deal. I

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like to think that's going to be
a game changer for some of these kids

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growing up. Yeah, this is
a very, very very religious community to

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fifty two percent LDS Warmon community,
and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm

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just saying there's additional pressure from the
church side of things as well. A

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lot of these kids grow up as
members of the LDS church and it becomes

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even harder, I think, to
break away and be your own true self

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if you've got that kind of pressure, you know, has it ever been

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difficult for the Haunt with that type
of pressure or its counterbalanced by the Dare

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program. I would say for the
most part. No, we did have

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one guy. Well, the first
season we were open, one guy gave

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us one star review because our animatronic
mannequins had exposed breasts. I couldn't believe

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it. That would probably be the
only instance I've ever seen it where that's

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been an issue. He just said, it's completely inappropriate for children. Do

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not take your kids here, and
that's fine. We're not if you're offended

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by that kind of stuff. We
don't want to be your haunt. Anyway.

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Most of the people here, if
not all of them, understand,

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Hey, we're just here to raise
money for charity, and we do push

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the envelope a little bit because we're
a haunted house, and I think we

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should. We don't want to be
tame, we want to be exciting.

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Was there a moment where you were
like, oh, Halloween, did it

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click for you? Do you have
a moment like that? Yeah, I've

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always been a quote unquote monster kid. I used to There was a great

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thrift store that specialized new magazines where
I grew up, and they had old

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issues of famous monsters of film Land
for like quarter and so I would just

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gobble those things up. But I
think the AHA moment for me is I

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grew up in Florida and I went
to Halloween horror nights the first year,

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first three four years they started doing
it, and I was just I was

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blown away. And at the exact
same time, there was a year round

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haunted house in Orlando, Florida called
Terror on Church Street downtown Orlando onn't Church

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Street, and I had never been
to a haunt like that before. I'd

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been to the JC style haunts and
Terror on Church Street was a phenomenal haunted

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attraction and I just went through there
and I was blown away. And my

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girlfriend at the time was like,
man, you're so passionate about this,

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You're so excited about this. This
is what you should do for a living.

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And I wrote it off as like
not practical, and I put it

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on the back burner, and I'm
still not doing it for a living.

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But when the opportunity came to to
this haunt six years ago, I did

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jump on it as a hobby,
not as a career. But it's always

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been a passion of mine. I
mean literally, at the age of eight

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years old, we were building haunted
houses in our garage as kids, my

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brother and I and so I've just
always been a monster kid. I don't

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know why. I just love it. But if you look at society at

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large right now, look at how
popular Harry Potter is and all of the

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fantasy and horror stranger things, and
there's the new one a Yellow Jackets.

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People are really into fantasy. And
I think it's because our lives have become

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so banal and compartmentalized and predictable,
and so if we can offer a little

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bit of fantasy and entertainment in rural
eastern Idaho, I think we could change

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people's lives for the better. I
don't want to overstate it, but if

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we're giving people an escape from reality
and we're making them happy for an hour

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or more, to me, that's
enough of a goal. I'm not doing

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this for the money. I'm hoping
we're having a positive impact on a number

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of kids' lives in the community.
I think we are, And if our

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customers have a great time and they
get to escape reality, more power to

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them. So I think that's the
best goal I can think of. Today's

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episode was produced and edited by me
Philip Hernandez with post production by David Swape

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and original music composed by Chris Thomas. We're counting down to Halloween with daily

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