Scarehouse at Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Pennsylvania

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Scarehouse is back at the Pittsburgh Mills
Mall. That's coming up on today's show

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from the Honteda Trastion Network. I'm
Philip, and this is our sixty one

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day Hantathon where we're counting down to
Halloween by celebrating haunted houses daily via videos,

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podcasts, and VIP in person experiences. We haven't put out too many

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podcasts yet this season because we've been
focusing on videos, and so of course

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to find our videos, you can
go to the website Haunt atrash network dot

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com or on our newsletter. We
send out links every week to the new

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videos that are added, but we
are going to be pushing out podcasts as

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we make the final two week run
to Halloween. So that being said,

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remember that the best way you can
support us is by sharing our Hantathon with

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someone you think we'll enjoy it.
Okay, here we are live at Scarehouse

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in the Pittsburgh Mills Mall. I
am Scott Simmons. I am the co

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owner and creative director of the Scarehouse
in Pittsburgh. Tell me about this year

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at the Scarehouse. This year is
weird. They're always weird, but I

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feel like this year is particularly weird
for us. Scarehouse has been around for

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over twenty years, and for the
last several years we've been in a shopping

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mall because as people who know Pittsburgh
and know zombies know that Pittsburgh zombies love

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shopping malls, and we're in this
mall out at Pittsburgh Mills, and bit

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by bit, everyone has left except
for us. Basically, it's a very

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strange experience, but it's weird and
for us it kind of works. Yeah,

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it is so strange. It almost
feels like a you get like a

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free scare zone just walking through to
get to you. Yeah. Oh yeah.

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It is a bit of a lawless
wasteland, I'll admit to that.

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When we moved in a few years
ago in the middle of a pandemic.

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By the way, don't open a
new business during a pandemic. There's some

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free advice from Scott Simmons. When
we first moved in, it was really

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interesting because there was still some of
the old guard here at the mall who

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were a little bit spiky about what's
this haunted house thing doing, Because guys,

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we're going to open up again any
minute. There's going to be retail

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it's going to come back. And
you like, there was act like we

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were getting weird attitude from the bathroom
body work staff. They still had attitude

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tonight, they still had attitudes.
And then bit by bit there's just been

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I don't know what stage of acceptance
denial the as retail. Finally the left

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and some of the old guard left
and they realized, oh, you guys

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actually bring in a lot of people, so thank you. And you know,

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we're sort of navigating some tricky things
with the group that actually owns them

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all. But the staff here at
the mall in the township, they love

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it and they appreciate that. Certainly, this multimillion dollar in the mall was

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not built with the idea of boy, I hope one day there's a haunted

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house in it. But everyone's sort
of accepting it. And you know,

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it is from a marketing standpoint,
it's pretty easy to be like, which

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one are you? Oh, we're
the one in the mall, Oh right

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that one? Yeah? Yeah,
Like you said, it gives you the

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infrastructure as well. You know,
we always talk about that. It's like

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there are it's so much investment for
a haunt, not just for the haunt,

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but for the creature comforts, parking, bathrooms, signage directions. Yeah,

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I mean, and that was a
big thing when we were you know,

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our previous location, which, to
be fair, was one of the

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greatest buildings. It was this hundred
year old at Elk's launch. It had

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so much atmosphere but none of the
infrastructure that you're talking about. There was

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no heat, there was no air
conditioning, there were stairs, there were

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weird one hundred year old building things
to deal with, and certainly no parking.

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So that was sort of the the
you know, we struggled with,

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well, as soon as we go
into a mall, there's going to be

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a burden there because people are like, how cool can it be if it's

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in a mall? And frankly,
we're still dealing without to some extent,

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but so much parking, full you
know, full air conditioning, full heat

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year round. I'm gonna go ahead
and say, outside the theme parks the

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best restroom facilities you're ever gonna find, because we have full, giant public

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restrooms that other people service for us. And you know, as I get

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older, like, oh that's nice. You know, sure it'd be cool

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to be in the scary old decrepit
mental asylum full of asbestos. But it's

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also real nice to just be able
to like make some coffee and a cura

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and walk around the food court and
be like, hey, we're open.

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Great. Yeah, yeah, you're
not like really feeling the chill on the

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porner body outside, you know,
in the dark, you're like light myself

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on here. But it's a Speaking
on that note, let's talk about the

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design philosophy you have for this me
experiencing it. I just went through it,

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and I think, to me,
you know it the context, it's

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about a twenty five minute linear walkthrough
experience. I say linear loosely because I

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can tell there are multiple path branches. And to me, the biggest thing

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that I felt was I felt that
sense. I felt in many places a

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sense of intimacy in the scene.
And I also appreciated how many like I

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feel like you're playing with tropes.
Like there's there's some there's some mattresses,

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there's some like pool little things there. You know, there's some bedsheets that

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you think are people and then none
of them were people, you know,

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So there's just a lot of it's
like there's animatronics, there's high tech stuff,

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but there's fun moments, and I
felt many places eerily, I was

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like, we're in a like it
felt definitely like we were not in a

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mall. You know. Yeah,
well, and that is something we really

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strive to do. As soon as
you enter the space, we have a

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big wall, we block it out. We have a themed Q area that

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we sort of keep you in for
about fifteen minutes because we want you to

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forget that you're in a mall.
We certainly want you to forget that you're

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in a former H and M.
And yeah, we've over the last few

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years, we've really started playing with
sound in a way so that you can

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have those quiet moments you can.
We want the performers that have the ability

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to actually say things, engage with
you, do things. And yeah,

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I will do the first to admit
that there are some absolute throughput nightmares in

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this attraction. But I also think
that that's why people keep coming back,

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why we're having a very good season, because people are so smart and they

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don't necessarily you know, they pick
up pretty quick like, oh, this

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is some haunt. It's designed to
do thousands of people on an hour.

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And you know, in the history
of Scarehouse, there have been years where

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we were trying to do the theme
park kind of thing and be like,

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okay, what if we designed the
path a little bit different, double up

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the actors, do all this stuff
so we can be one of those sort

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of conga line style haunted houses,
and realizing, well, the math actually

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works out justice well if you design
it to work with a much smaller hourly

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throughput. And yeah, that does
mean that we sort of scaled back on

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some of the big toys, the
big animations and things, but then it

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allows us to have really good actors
and have those little intimate moments. And

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yeah, as somebody who's been doing
this for a while, I really like

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the idea of going back to these
very old school kind of tricks but still

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presenting them in a new and interesting
way. And still you know, they're

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dressed up real real, pretty like
we have. We still have our same

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dedication to doing cinematic movie quality sets
and themes. But then sometimes the actual

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scare and it is so silly and
so ridiculous that you know, and I

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think something else I always say too, is for those of us who have

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been doing it for a while,
like, really, the Mattress thing that

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was we were doing that back in
the seventies, Like, yeah, most

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of our audience is like sixteen years
old, they've never seen this stuff,

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so why not. That's exactly what
I was thinking when I was doing that.

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As a certainly reminded me. You
know, just yesterday we were at

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a hunt where they had those like
the remember those old floors with the ball

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bearings, and they moved slightly around
right and you guys had a sliding floor

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a little, and I was just
like, I thought it was refreshingly fun

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to have these like old school things, because we talked about this. We've

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been talking about this idea where like
there's a ceiling right to how how much

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you can like scare somebody, right
without getting extreme, and even when you're

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extreme, I mean, like you
know that, like without actually physically hurting

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a person, there's a ceiling.
And so I think there's something to be

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said for going in a different direction
and just delighting people instead. Like I

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just had I just had an argument
with a like a Facebook troll about how

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they're like, that's not even scary. I'm like, well, you know,

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the purpose wanded houses is to entertain, Yes, entertain, entertain,

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entertain, and that is a thing
that and you know, I growing up

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in Pittsburgh and growing up the age
I am that I grew up not only

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loving Georgia Merraw movies, but like
I was growing up as those movies were

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being made in my town and around
me, and his combination of humor and

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horror and a lot of those movies, like even you know a lot of

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the Ramera movies, they're not necessarily
scary, you're not terrified, But like

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creep Show is sort of a guiding
star for us of it's really funny and

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it's really entertaining, and I think
we scare House in particular. We've almost

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doubled down to a point of almost
being rebellious about Yeah, you know what.

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We have dance parties, we do
weird stuff. We have a giant

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Taylor Swift skeleton out front. And
I know a lot of mostly men who

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are the old school Haunted House guys
we're supposed to be on. Oh so

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that's not scary, Like, well
no, but it's fun and like what

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a great time to also scare people
when you're laughing and your guard is down.

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And then we still I always say, some of the characters that make

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people laugh the artist. They're such
well trained actors. They also know how

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to scare you at the same time, and that's a real talent. Yeah,

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well, tell me a little bit
about the future, you know,

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what do you I mean, we
talked a little bit before recording this about

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how, you know, haunts are
still really we haven't quite recovered from the

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pandemic. Everyone I've talked to has
staffing issues and then locations because like you

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said, you know, locations change
around, and then also you know,

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the the consumers. I feel like
we're still getting to that point. So

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for you, you know, where
are you going from here? What does

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it look like? You know?
I don't know, honestly, you know,

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and I've been very open about I
think we have an opportunity here to

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sort of I mean, for now, you know, it's October and I'm

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just thinking one hour at a time. But I do think that in talking

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to other hant operators, you know, the the nature, the nature of

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being scared and Halloween that's never going
away. You see the amount of money,

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the amount of interest in it.
But I do think that the idea

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of oh there's a haunted house.
It's super long, it's super intense,

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it's super hardcore, it'll make you
cry, It'll make it like. I

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think those days are fading fast,
and I think that people are looking for

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a total package or total kind of
experience, but they're also looking for something

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that they have an emotional connection to, that they have that sort of reflects

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who they are and their values,
and that has been a thing that Scarehouse

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is really leaned into. And I
have always made it clear and it's not

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just a marketing thing that Scarehouse is
the end result of a local team of

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actors, artists, and we've been
very, very very blessed that we have

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not had the kind of staffing issues
that a lot of other attractions have because

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this is such an important place for
so many of the people who work here,

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and that's why they're coming for their
seventh year, eighth year. And

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as you might not have been able
to tell going through with the dark and

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scary in the Screams, our cast
is actually much older than I think a

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lot of the cast you see in
haunted attractions. You know, our actors

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have always been eighteen or older.
And you know now, I think we

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did the math the other day and
the median age of a Scarehouse actor is

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twenty eight. So you know,
these are people who are adults and choosing

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to work here because not just because
it's fun, but they understand like the

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importance of forming this community of misfits
and having people from so many backgrounds come

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together and create this weird thing.
But also, you know, especially with

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COVID, we have found like some
of these like get together and form a

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community doesn't really happen anymore. Like
in the professional world, you don't really

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have networking events anymore. You don't
really have I've been talking to friends,

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like, remember when we were in
the twenties, we go out to a

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bar and like meet people. Do
they do that anymore? Or go to

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malls or go to malls? No, So, like some of the stuff

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we do in our marketing and our
weird ass social media reflects this is who

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we are. We're just doing this
because we think it's funny. You know,

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there's it's not just you know,
us being in the Pride parade,

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us having such close ties to a
lot of alternative communities in Pittsburgh. That's

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not like something that makes any sense
on a spreadsheet, but it's very much

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like this is who we are,
and I think that's going to be a

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thing you're going to start seeing too. Is no disrespect to some of the

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other companies out there, But if
you're just seen as like, oh,

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this is that big corporate thing where
they spend a lot of money and it's

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a hunt out, like that doesn't
mean anything. But if it's like,

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oh, these are my people,
these are the people I talk to year

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round on social media, and they
I know a guy who works there who

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does a thing like being heavily invested
in your community beyond just sponsoring a couple

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of things and showing up at a
couple events, but being like actively giving

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back to your weird ass community and
then they're working in like forming it all

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together is really important to us,
and I think that's what's allowed us to

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really thrive this year in particular.
Today's episode was produced and edited by me

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Philipernandez, with post production by David
Swape and original music composed by Chris Thomas.

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We're counting down to Halloween with daily
podcasts, videos, and events in

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our sixty one day Hauntathon. Follow
along at the link in our show notes.

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Our Hantathon is made possible through generous
support from Gantum Light and Controls.

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Gantum illuminates attractions worldwide with the world's
smallest intelligent spotlights. See what you're missing

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with a free demo. Sign up
at d'antum dot com slash demo. That's

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Gantum dot com slash demo. Our
Hantathon team includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis

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Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns
and omni Adventures, and our content partners

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for this year include Attractions Magazine,
Creepy Kingdom, Freaks of Ajjen Hon,

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Topic Radio, Kevin Heinbach News TV, Omniadventures, Scare Track, Sharp Productions,

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That Halloween Podcast, The Horror of
Being, Emily The Scare Factor,

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and This Weekend with Nick Pelliochini.
The best way you can support us this

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Halloween season is by sharing our hauntedon
with someone you think we'll enjoy it,

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and to follow along to our Hantathon. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at

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Hanta Attraction Network dot com. We'll
catch you back here tomorrow and every day

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until Halloween until next time. Faith
Gary. This is a Haunted Attraction Network production