Halloween
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Larry Kirchner Halloween Productions
Larry Kirchner has built his career on scaring people. The owner of the highly-rated haunted house The Darkness in St Louis, Missouri, he produces multi-motion animations and computer generated special effects via his companies Haunted Attractions and Blacklight Attractions. Kirchner’s credits include Spiderman The Ultimate Ride and The Incredible Hulk Experience in 3D at Niagara Falls, Ghostwood Estates interactive dark ride and Garfield’s Nightmare in 3D at Kennywood, plus hundreds of other haunted houses, mini golf courses, mirror mazes and more. Here he shares his unique perspective on how the Halloween industry has evolved in the USA over the last two decades.
Why is the United States able to sustain such a large haunted attractions industry? Halloween has gotten to the point where everyone young and old has grown to love the holiday and the season. It’s a fun holiday that’s free of obligations, and people are enthusiastically searching to find new ways to celebrate each year. The US industry has grown from $1 billion to $10 billion in the last decade alone.
What other haunted attraction scenes are you aware of around the world, and how do they compare to the US? The haunted house industry is huge overseas, although there is no Halloween retail industry
outside North America that supplies haunted attractions with materials to upgrade and evolve. Haunted houses have become a US export.
How do the theme park offerings differ to stand-alone haunted houses/mazes, etc? Most theme park haunts are temporary set ups, and very few are well done. There are really only a handful of theme parks haunting on a large scale, starting with Universal. To most theme parks, Halloween is a way to close out the season. The private haunt owner personally invests much more into a haunt. It is beyond financial; to them it’s their life.
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Larry Kirchner and (below) a character from his Darkness haunted house in Missouri
OCTOBER 2013
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