Scarehouse at Pittsburgh Mills Mall in Pennsylvania

0:08 Scarehouse is back at the Pittsburgh Mills Mall. That's coming up on today's show from the Honteda Trastion Network. I'm Philip, and this is our sixty one day Hantathon where we're counting down to Halloween by celebrating haunted houses daily via videos, podcasts, and VIP in person experiences. We haven't put out too many podcasts yet this season because we've been focusing on videos, and so of course to find our videos, you can go to the website Haunt atrash network dot com or on our newsletter. We send out links every week to the new videos that are added, but we are going to be pushing out podcasts as we make the final two week run to Halloween. So that being said, remember that the best way you can support us is by sharing our Hantathon with someone you think we'll enjoy it. Okay, here we are live at Scarehouse in the Pittsburgh Mills Mall. I am Scott Simmons. I am the co owner and creative director of the Scarehouse in Pittsburgh. Tell me about this year at the Scarehouse. This year is weird. They're always weird, but I feel like this year is particularly weird for us. Scarehouse has been around for over twenty years, and for the last several years we've been in a shopping mall because as people who know Pittsburgh and know zombies know that Pittsburgh zombies love shopping malls, and we're in this mall out at Pittsburgh Mills, and bit by bit, everyone has left except for us. Basically, it's a very strange experience, but it's weird and for us it kind of works. Yeah,

1:38 it is so strange. It almost feels like a you get like a free scare zone just walking through to get to you. Yeah. Oh yeah. It is a bit of a lawless wasteland, I'll admit to that. When we moved in a few years ago in the middle of a pandemic. By the way, don't open a new business during a pandemic. There's some free advice from Scott Simmons. When we first moved in, it was really interesting because there was still some of the old guard here at the mall who were a little bit spiky about what's this haunted house thing doing, Because guys, we're going to open up again any minute. There's going to be retail it's going to come back. And you like, there was act like we were getting weird attitude from the bathroom body work staff. They still had attitude tonight, they still had attitudes. And then bit by bit there's just been I don't know what stage of acceptance denial the as retail. Finally the left and some of the old guard left and they realized, oh, you guys actually bring in a lot of people, so thank you. And you know, we're sort of navigating some tricky things with the group that actually owns them all. But the staff here at the mall in the township, they love it and they appreciate that. Certainly, this multimillion dollar in the mall was not built with the idea of boy, I hope one day there's a haunted house in it. But everyone's sort of accepting it. And you know, it is from a marketing standpoint, it's pretty easy to be like, which one are you? Oh, we're the one in the mall, Oh right that one? Yeah? Yeah, Like you said, it gives you the

3:12 infrastructure as well. You know, we always talk about that. It's like there are it's so much investment for a haunt, not just for the haunt, but for the creature comforts, parking, bathrooms, signage directions. Yeah, I mean, and that was a big thing when we were you know, our previous location, which, to be fair, was one of the greatest buildings. It was this hundred year old at Elk's launch. It had so much atmosphere but none of the infrastructure that you're talking about. There was no heat, there was no air conditioning, there were stairs, there were weird one hundred year old building things to deal with, and certainly no parking. So that was sort of the the you know, we struggled with, well, as soon as we go into a mall, there's going to be a burden there because people are like, how cool can it be if it's in a mall? And frankly, we're still dealing without to some extent, but so much parking, full you know, full air conditioning, full heat year round. I'm gonna go ahead and say, outside the theme parks the best restroom facilities you're ever gonna find, because we have full, giant public restrooms that other people service for us. And you know, as I get older, like, oh that's nice. You know, sure it'd be cool to be in the scary old decrepit mental asylum full of asbestos. But it's also real nice to just be able to like make some coffee and a cura and walk around the food court and be like, hey, we're open.

4:38 Great. Yeah, yeah, you're not like really feeling the chill on the porner body outside, you know, in the dark, you're like light myself on here. But it's a Speaking on that note, let's talk about the design philosophy you have for this me experiencing it. I just went through it, and I think, to me, you know it the context, it's about a twenty five minute linear walkthrough experience. I say linear loosely because I can tell there are multiple path branches. And to me, the biggest thing that I felt was I felt that sense. I felt in many places a sense of intimacy in the scene. And I also appreciated how many like I feel like you're playing with tropes. Like there's there's some there's some mattresses, there's some like pool little things there. You know, there's some bedsheets that you think are people and then none of them were people, you know, So there's just a lot of it's like there's animatronics, there's high tech stuff, but there's fun moments, and I felt many places eerily, I was like, we're in a like it felt definitely like we were not in a mall. You know. Yeah, well, and that is something we really strive to do. As soon as you enter the space, we have a big wall, we block it out. We have a themed Q area that we sort of keep you in for about fifteen minutes because we want you to forget that you're in a mall. We certainly want you to forget that you're in a former H and M. And yeah, we've over the last few years, we've really started playing with sound in a way so that you can have those quiet moments you can. We want the performers that have the ability

6:11 to actually say things, engage with you, do things. And yeah, I will do the first to admit that there are some absolute throughput nightmares in this attraction. But I also think that that's why people keep coming back, why we're having a very good season, because people are so smart and they don't necessarily you know, they pick up pretty quick like, oh, this is some haunt. It's designed to do thousands of people on an hour. And you know, in the history of Scarehouse, there have been years where we were trying to do the theme park kind of thing and be like, okay, what if we designed the path a little bit different, double up the actors, do all this stuff so we can be one of those sort of conga line style haunted houses, and realizing, well, the math actually works out justice well if you design it to work with a much smaller hourly throughput. And yeah, that does mean that we sort of scaled back on some of the big toys, the big animations and things, but then it allows us to have really good actors and have those little intimate moments. And yeah, as somebody who's been doing this for a while, I really like the idea of going back to these very old school kind of tricks but still presenting them in a new and interesting way. And still you know, they're dressed up real real, pretty like we have. We still have our same dedication to doing cinematic movie quality sets and themes. But then sometimes the actual scare and it is so silly and so ridiculous that you know, and I

7:41 think something else I always say too, is for those of us who have been doing it for a while, like, really, the Mattress thing that was we were doing that back in the seventies, Like, yeah, most of our audience is like sixteen years old, they've never seen this stuff, so why not. That's exactly what I was thinking when I was doing that. As a certainly reminded me. You know, just yesterday we were at a hunt where they had those like the remember those old floors with the ball bearings, and they moved slightly around right and you guys had a sliding floor a little, and I was just like, I thought it was refreshingly fun to have these like old school things, because we talked about this. We've been talking about this idea where like there's a ceiling right to how how much you can like scare somebody, right without getting extreme, and even when you're extreme, I mean, like you know that, like without actually physically hurting a person, there's a ceiling. And so I think there's something to be said for going in a different direction and just delighting people instead. Like I just had I just had an argument with a like a Facebook troll about how they're like, that's not even scary. I'm like, well, you know, the purpose wanded houses is to entertain, Yes, entertain, entertain, entertain, and that is a thing that and you know, I growing up in Pittsburgh and growing up the age I am that I grew up not only loving Georgia Merraw movies, but like I was growing up as those movies were being made in my town and around me, and his combination of humor and horror and a lot of those movies, like even you know a lot of the Ramera movies, they're not necessarily scary, you're not terrified, But like creep Show is sort of a guiding star for us of it's really funny and it's really entertaining, and I think we scare House in particular. We've almost

9:16 doubled down to a point of almost being rebellious about Yeah, you know what. We have dance parties, we do weird stuff. We have a giant Taylor Swift skeleton out front. And I know a lot of mostly men who are the old school Haunted House guys we're supposed to be on. Oh so that's not scary, Like, well no, but it's fun and like what a great time to also scare people when you're laughing and your guard is down. And then we still I always say, some of the characters that make people laugh the artist. They're such well trained actors. They also know how to scare you at the same time, and that's a real talent. Yeah, well, tell me a little bit about the future, you know, what do you I mean, we talked a little bit before recording this about how, you know, haunts are still really we haven't quite recovered from the pandemic. Everyone I've talked to has staffing issues and then locations because like you said, you know, locations change around, and then also you know, the the consumers. I feel like we're still getting to that point. So for you, you know, where are you going from here? What does it look like? You know? I don't know, honestly, you know, and I've been very open about I think we have an opportunity here to sort of I mean, for now, you know, it's October and I'm just thinking one hour at a time. But I do think that in talking to other hant operators, you know, the the nature, the nature of

10:46 being scared and Halloween that's never going away. You see the amount of money, the amount of interest in it. But I do think that the idea of oh there's a haunted house. It's super long, it's super intense, it's super hardcore, it'll make you cry, It'll make it like. I think those days are fading fast, and I think that people are looking for a total package or total kind of experience, but they're also looking for something that they have an emotional connection to, that they have that sort of reflects who they are and their values, and that has been a thing that Scarehouse is really leaned into. And I have always made it clear and it's not just a marketing thing that Scarehouse is the end result of a local team of actors, artists, and we've been very, very very blessed that we have not had the kind of staffing issues that a lot of other attractions have because this is such an important place for so many of the people who work here, and that's why they're coming for their seventh year, eighth year. And as you might not have been able to tell going through with the dark and scary in the Screams, our cast is actually much older than I think a lot of the cast you see in haunted attractions. You know, our actors have always been eighteen or older. And you know now, I think we did the math the other day and the median age of a Scarehouse actor is twenty eight. So you know, these are people who are adults and choosing to work here because not just because it's fun, but they understand like the importance of forming this community of misfits and having people from so many backgrounds come

12:20 together and create this weird thing. But also, you know, especially with COVID, we have found like some of these like get together and form a community doesn't really happen anymore. Like in the professional world, you don't really have networking events anymore. You don't really have I've been talking to friends, like, remember when we were in the twenties, we go out to a bar and like meet people. Do they do that anymore? Or go to malls or go to malls? No, So, like some of the stuff we do in our marketing and our weird ass social media reflects this is who we are. We're just doing this because we think it's funny. You know, there's it's not just you know, us being in the Pride parade, us having such close ties to a lot of alternative communities in Pittsburgh. That's not like something that makes any sense on a spreadsheet, but it's very much like this is who we are, and I think that's going to be a thing you're going to start seeing too. Is no disrespect to some of the other companies out there, But if you're just seen as like, oh, this is that big corporate thing where they spend a lot of money and it's a hunt out, like that doesn't mean anything. But if it's like, oh, these are my people, these are the people I talk to year round on social media, and they I know a guy who works there who does a thing like being heavily invested in your community beyond just sponsoring a couple of things and showing up at a couple events, but being like actively giving back to your weird ass community and then they're working in like forming it all together is really important to us, and I think that's what's allowed us to really thrive this year in particular. Today's episode was produced and edited by me

13:54 Philipernandez, with post production by David Swape and original music composed by Chris Thomas. We're counting down to Halloween with daily podcasts, videos, and events in our sixty one day Hauntathon. Follow along at the link in our show notes. Our Hantathon is made possible through generous support from Gantum Light and Controls. Gantum illuminates attractions worldwide with the world's smallest intelligent spotlights. See what you're missing with a free demo. Sign up at d'antum dot com slash demo. That's Gantum dot com slash demo. Our Hantathon team includes Daryl Plunky, Emily Luis Rua, Megan Spells, Gavin Burns and omni Adventures, and our content partners for this year include Attractions Magazine, Creepy Kingdom, Freaks of Ajjen Hon, Topic Radio, Kevin Heinbach News TV, Omniadventures, Scare Track, Sharp Productions, That Halloween Podcast, The Horror of Being, Emily The Scare Factor, and This Weekend with Nick Pelliochini. The best way you can support us this Halloween season is by sharing our hauntedon with someone you think we'll enjoy it, and to follow along to our Hantathon. Sign up for our weekly newsletter at Hanta Attraction Network dot com. We'll catch you back here tomorrow and every day until Halloween until next time. Faith Gary. This is a Haunted Attraction Network production