It's not a nightmare out of some Grade B horror movie, but a frighteningly fun way for farms, amusement parks and other local businesses to tap into the $1 billion Americans spend annually on Halloween haunts.
Halloween ranks only second to Christmas in home decorating sales according to the National Retail Federation, with people spending $5.8 billion on candy, costumes and decorations. SpookyWorld in Litchfield, the largest fright factory in the Northeast, expects 65,000 people this year. The 12-acre corn maze at Sherman Farm in East Conway had 15,000 visitors last year, and the family-friendly Keene Pumpkin Festival attracts 50,000 to 70,000 who come to see the more than 20,000 pumpkins.
The haunts range from Casper-style ghosts for families with young children to intense, scream inducing experiences with demons and other creatures of the night jumping out from the dark at visitors eager to pay for the fright. For business owners, they are a profitable way to extend and augment what are, in many cases, seasonal businesses.
Whether it's a farm being transformed into a haunted house or a Halloween pop-up store taking up temporary quarters in a mall or empty commercial building, Halloween helps businesses maintain cash flow. And thousands of visitors pay to attend one of the Granite State's nearly one dozen haunted attractions.
Spooky Business
Put simply, Halloween is big business. Each fall, 40 acres of normally quiet and picturesque Litchfield is transformed into SpookyWorld/Nightmare New England, a haunted park that expects to attract 65,000 people this year, each paying between $35 and $59 to be terrified. Co-owner Mike Accomando says the business invested $3 million to expand the park in 2008.
SpookyWorld hires about 350 people for the season, including makeup artists, wardrobe assistants, carpenters, electricians and security guards. Accomando says the park doles out close to $600,000 in salaries, and spends millions to assemble the production, including stakes and ropes for crowd control, wood for the sets, leased light towers and port-o-potties-all secured from NH businesses.
Some may question why people would pay to undergo horrific nightmares during their waking hours. But guests who have grown up on special effects pay for a ramped-up experience. For example, in one room at the park, people enter, hear screams and get an unmistakable whiff of burning flesh. It's a complete sensory overload, says Mike Krausert, the park's artistic director. You feel like you're in that scene. That takes you out of your reality and puts you into ours.
More than that, says Eric Lowther, owner of Haunted Overload at DeMeritt Hill Farm in Lee, people like being terrified. Patrons and actors enjoy the adrenaline rush of being totally terrified, but being terrified safely, he says. (While actors in most haunted experiences will pop out at patrons or even give short chase, they will never touch a customer.)
Lowther is a long-time fan of Halloween, decking out his house for the holiday as others do for Christmas. Over the years, his house became a Halloween destination for some, attracting 5,000 visitors, and he decided to turn his passion into a business. In 2007, Lowther teamed up with Coppal House Farm in Lee to launch his terrifying venture. Three years later, zoning laws forced him to relocate to DeMeritt Hill Farm. There, victims stumble through twisting wooded trails lined with hundreds of jack-o'-lanterns before encountering a series of elaborate set pieces, like the lopsided lean-to with creepily sharp angles, or the old mineshaft with a downward slope that creates the sensation of heading below the ground.
The haunted operation costs $40,000 to run. Lowther recruits 60 to 80 actors, all volunteers, who do their own makeup (with Lowther's approval) and provide the scares. Anyone can go buy stuff and put it in the woods, he says, explaining he uses custom-built set pieces. We are totally original. It's in the woods and it's absolutely terrifying. We like to be the scariest around.
Lowther charges up to $20 for admission, depending on whether people come at night or for the tamer daytime show. He's aiming for 10,000 attendees. Lowther reinvests about 50 percent of the profits after taxes to keep it exciting. Additionally, 30 percent goes to the farm and 10 percent is donated to the Cocheco Valley Humane Society in Dover. Year after year, Haunted Overload makes the top haunt lists of several national industry associations, including Hauntworld and Fangoria. This year it also made the Weather Channel's list of the Top 10 haunted attractions in New England.
Halloween is also a boon for businesses in usually tranquil Keene, which hosts the Pumpkin Festival each October. Now in its 21st year, the Keene Pumpkin Festival achieved acclaim in 2003, setting a world record for having 28,952 jack-o'-lanterns all in one place. It also means big business for downtown establishments. Ruth Sterling, whose firm, Sterling Design & Communications, is managing the event, says hotels doubles their rates and restaurants may make $40,000 that day, requiring them to hire extra staff.
The Keene Pumpkin Festival is also a boon for the 42 local nonprofits that set up crafts or food booths near the center of town. They expect to raise around $250,000 total.
Halloween on the Farm
After the leaf peepers and apple pickers have gone home, many farms extend the retail season by using Mother Nature as a backdrop for a Halloween experience including wagon rides and plenty of carved pumpkins.
John Pyteraf, the owner of Charmingfare Farm in Candia, has hosted haunted hayrides since 1991 that are geared to families. Pyteraf says his 300-acre farm and petting zoo offers events and family entertainment year round, so Pyteraf doesn't live and breathe for Halloween. Nonetheless, he acknowledges the months of October and December produce his highest revenues, with the fourth quarter channeling 63 percent of the farm's annual income. Halloween is part of that revenue.
A few years ago, Charmingfare Farm expanded its offerings from a haunted hayride to a Harvest of Horror tour lasting up to three hours. During the day it is spooky, but not frightening. Barn lights are on, kids trick or treat and puppets provide entertainment.
Then the barn goes dark at night. For under $30, patrons ride a wagon until they come to a secluded, ghost-infested barn. They then hop on a 25-minute tractor train to the backside of a corn maze where blank-faced scarecrows dangle on large poles. Along the way, about 40 actors provide moments that make people jump. Day or night, Pyteraf aims to spook, not frighten. We don't want costumes where blood is gushing out. We're not gory. It's scary because we're catching them off guard. Our demo[graphic] here is families with children.
Pyteraf
relies less on Hollywood-style props and more on Mother Nature. I always feel
I have the million-dollar set. We have this huge property. [The maze] is really
creepy because it's beside a swamp so we have natural fog that blows. We have
wolves too, he says. The farm starts preparing for Halloween in August, and
many of the barns and buildings used for Halloween are transformed again in
December for the winter wonderland celebration. The paid actors include
doctors, attorneys and others who enjoy Halloween, and some also work on the
winter
wonderland set.
Other farms cash in on corn, inviting people to get lost in the stalks. About a dozen farms statewide build corn mazes that range in size from a half acre to more than 12 acres. Many farmers cut their own mazes, while others hire professionals to design them.
Sherman Farm in East Conway created its first corn maze five years ago when it was looking for something to generate cash going into the winter when produce sales slow. The farm hired The Maize in Utah to design and cut its corn maze, which this year is in the shape of winning Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas holding the Stanley Cup.
The maze is big business. The farm added a nighttime maze experience-complete with spooks that jump from the stalks and a haunted bus-two years ago. It also offers flashlight nights. Admission prices range from $9 per person for groups to $12 at night. More than 15,000 visited the maze last year, which also had 21 corporate sponsors. It gives us enough to stay pretty comfortable in the winter, says Michelle Dutton, a third-generation farmer at Sherman Farm with her mother and brother.
Dutton says the farm hired a professional because the family does not have the manpower to cut the maze in June, when all efforts go into harvesting fruit and vegetables and sales. The Maize Company charges clients $1,500 and 6 percent of ticket sales for designing the maze, with a separate fee for cutting based on the difficulty and travel time, according to Kamille Combs, marketing and public relations director for The Maize Company.
Fearsome Challenges
Forget vampires and werewolves. The most frightening thing these Halloween businesses face is Mother Nature herself. A rainy fall a few years ago sent attendance plummeting at The Sherman Farm corn maze. Lowther of Haunted Overload, who prepares his set year round, says weather plays a key factor in the profitability of his venture. If the event gets rained out, I could lose my shirt in a heartbeat, he says.
Weather isn't as big a threat for Tim Dunn, who owns Fright Kingdom, an indoor fright park in Nashua. Still, profits are hard-won, says Dunn, a Halloween junkie with a collection of more than 1,000 professional masks. It took him seven years to recoup the investment he made in Fright Kingdom.
To increase his profits, Dunn partnered with Blue Star Productions in 2010, a national event promoter in Minnesota. For a third of his ticket sales, the company provided the advertising. Since then, Dunn saw attendance triple and revenue double.
While the Keene Pumpkin Festival has attracted tens of thousands of attendees annually, it's still a challenge to make it profitable. Sterling took it over this year after Center Stage Cheshire County said 2010 would be its last year running the event after spearheading it for several years. That left many wondering if the festival would happen in 2011.
The main concern was the public safety budget. The event will cost $265,000 to put on this year, says Sterling, and a large chunk of that-$106,000-is for public safety services including police and fire, some hired from other towns. The city is donating $25,000 in in-kind services this year.
The event grew from 20,000 people to 70,000 (almost three times Keene's population), and as it has grown so have the public safety needs. There is no attendance fee-though this year they are asking for a $1 donation from each guest-so an increase in visitors does not automatically translate into increased income.
It takes months of planning to pull off the one-day festival (Sterling had preparation meetings in February.) Planning is equally rigorous for the haunted attractions that are open for only a few weekends.
Temporary but Profitable
Specialized Halloween outlets carrying a range of silly to creepy costumes, as well as make-up and dcor, set up temporary digs as early as the week of Labor Day and remain open until Oct. 31.
Often called pop-up stores, the International Council of Shopping Centers reports these seasonal vendors were one of the hottest retail trends of 2010. That's good news for mall managers who can temporarily lease space that defunct big-box retailers like Circuit City and Borders leave vacant.
Spirit, a Halloween-themed retail chain, opens pop-up stores nationwide for a few months each fall, including in The Granite State. This year, it has four stores, two in Nashua, one in Portsmouth and one in Manchester.
Kyle Kelly, co-owner of Halloween Superstore, a retailer with Halloween and Christmas stores in upstate New York, says the company will unveil its first pop-up shop in NH at the Pheasant Lane Mall in Nashua. He says Halloween hit a peak in consumerism in 2007, but sales continue to remain strong. A lot of people aren't spending the money to go on vacation, he says. Instead of that weeklong trip to the beach, they'll stay local and get in the spirit of Halloween by throwing a party or decorating their homes.
If those trends continue this year, it will indeed be a Happy Halloween for seasonal businesses.
Associate Editor Erika Cohen contributed to this story.
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