Episodes

At this time of year, most non-haunt folks are mourning the end of Summer or thinking about going back to school. Haunters, however, are ramping up for the busiest and most exciting time of the year...HAUNT SEASON! In this episode, Scott discusses...

Jac Rock has been a scare actor in the UK haunt industry since 2006. Since then she has gone onto training fellow actors, designing attractions and doing voice over work for Thorpe Park Fright Nights. Mikey interviews Jac about how she got into the...

This week on Haunt Weekly we're talking about how you, yes you, can give a talk that will help improve the haunt industry. With HAuNTcon extending the deadline for speakers, now is a great time to think about what topic you may want to speak on and...

Marketing your Haunted House for Today's Haunt Customer It's getting harder to get people to hear about your haunted house. You've got an awesome haunted attraction but your attendance isn't growing. There are so many channels like social, radio,...

ScareTrack Episode 145 - AromaPrime / Florentina Interview Mikey interviews Forentina, the Managing Director of Aroma Prime, market leaders in scent design for attractions around the world. They discuss how the company started and how it now offers...

This week on Haunt Weekly it's all about Computer Assisted Design (or Computer Aided Drafting if you're the older crowd). While many think of CAD as a highly-technical skill only achievable by those that have studied it for years, that's only really...

Join Scott at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach CA. This episode was recorded August 2-5, 2019 and includes information about the trade show, interviews with vendors and even a shout out from the wonderful people who attended Scott's class on...

This week on Haunt Weekly, we're doing the news and what a news episode it is! We have an update on our 2019 season and a possible danger to it happening. We also have the latest on the rather stupid petition to try and move Halloween (or at least...

In this podcast episode, we ask Scott Swenson all the different ways that you can use your attraction’s back story and why it’s important today more than ever. If you are a Haunted Attraction that has never used a back story with your theme and...

This week on Haunt Weekly, we're discussing year-round haunting and we're doing it by sitting down with Shelby Rodwell. Shelby runs both The Haunted Mayfield Manor and Pirates! Legends of the Gulf Coast in Galveston. The first is a year-round haunted...

Pretty much every haunted house has a merch booth or a gift shop. There's almost no reason not to. It's a fairly straightforward way to make extra money from your haunt and, in many cases, do some great self-promotion. However, as an industry, our...

*BRAND NEW BOOK FOR HAUNTERS* - 'Follow the Story' - Written by Scott Swenson Mikey interviews Scott about his brand new book, his time with Busch Gardens, his Immersive Theatre work plus much much more! Buy the book here:...

Scott Swenson joins us on the podcast to discuss the impact Story has in marketing your attraction. Scott has a new book out: Follow the Story: The Foundation of Every Great Attraction Follow the Story’s synopsis reads, “An attraction is most...

Banshee Manor Haunted Attraction is in Fayetteville, Arkansas is located inside a family fun park called Lokomotion. Buying Ghosts is a audio drama series in the form of a podcast available everywhere you find podcasts. Jonna Summers is the one...

*This is from the Archive of A Scott in the Dark. This episode is on the care and feeding of haunt actors.

Mikey interviews Lee and Sarah from Faceless Ventures, the team behind the UK's most extreme haunt 'Cracked'. The FV team also deliver fantastic Immersive Theatre, Scare Attractions and more. We discuss all the Faceless Ventures shows throughout 2019....

When Midwest Haunters Convention left Ohio to head to Chicago, the Ohio Haunters Association found themselves without a conference in their backyard. So, they had a crazy idea, why not create one. Thus the Ohio Halloween & Haunters Convention was...

Audio completes your haunt environment and makes it real.

A huge thank you to all who were interviewed on this episode: Scare Manager, Scream Camp, Scare Me, Faceless Ventures, Rspace Productions, Dead Reel Films, Twisted Experiences, Parks,Scares & Glitter, Instantly Inverted, Scream effects co, Mad About...

This week on Haunt Weekly, we're doing the news and, despite it being in the doldrums of summer we have a surprisingly large amount of news to go through. We have updates about new haunts, new escape rooms, a haunt getting a beer license and a triple...

It's halfway to Halloween and the best way to celebrate is with some scare at Scare Kingdom Scream Park! On this episode, Mikey is joined by guest hosts Ryan Nixon (The Inevitable Theme Park Podcast) and Jenna Bulmer (Theme park geek) to give their...

Last week, we talked about what we wished we'd known when we started haunting, this week, we're looking at it as customers and talking about things that big haunts forget to do. However, we're not really focusing on things IN the haunt itself....

In this episode, Scott discusses the elements involved in starting a Haunted Attraction for the first time. He discusses everything from budgets to location to staffing to preparing for the unexpected.

Main Topic: Adapting your attraction to a new target market’s culture Step 1: You should have the demographic and psychographic analysis of this new target market done. Additionally, your team must have decided the new market is worth testing. Step...