A Motley Crew

Danger County Mine was a 1993 commercial haunted house that was a fun but exhausting experience yielding a lot of lessons.

The most important lesson was that tons of naïve enthusiasm does not necessarily make a financially successful haunted house.

In the end we broke even, recouping the majority of the money spent to pull off the project but a factor in that was our family and friends donated their time working the haunt for nothing more that our gratitude.

Here’s some photos of staff all decked out in their best "Danger County Mine" costumes.

Polaroid: Scale Model

Circa 1993: A miniature version of our walk-thru haunt called "Danger County Mine."

The miniature was built to help with the design and construction of the haunt.

Wall of Survivors

This is something I had totally forgotten about.

Shift the Wayback Machine to 1993 when my soon-to-be wife and I created a commercial haunted house called “Danger County Mine”, an abandoned gold mine adventure where the guests traveled through dilapidated shafts in search of lost miners only to encounter an array of haunted house scares.

The whole experience was fun and we managed to pretty much break even and have enough money left over to treat our friend and family volunteers to dinner and drinks.

A free meal for three days and nights of hard work, what a deal.

Anyway.

At the conclusion of the haunt we gave our guests a chance to immortalize their journey by signing our “Wall Of Survivors.”

The “Wall” was large sheets of paper attached to the wall next to the exit and it was something that our guests really seemed to enjoy.

Scribbled on the sheets were signatures as well as a variety of messages and shout outs.

This idea would be fun for anyone to incorporate into their haunt or yard display, simply give your guests a chance to express themselves.

The cost is almost nothing (paper and some markers) and the result is a fun way for them to punctuate their experience and serves as a fun memento for you.

My wife and I looked over the rolls of paper and the signatures that were scribed almost 18 years ago with a mix of humor and sadness as many of those that cared enough to sign our wall have since passed.

Bittersweet to say the least.