Scream House
Two Halloweens ago, Rick and Kat Hiatt of Clermont, Fla., transformed their carport into a mausoleum of mayhem. Nearly 500 trick-or-treaters saw suspended corpses lit by strobe lights and a costumed werewolf that appeared to feast on body parts. In another part of the yard, 400 glow-in-the-dark spiders dangled from webs of iridescent string. And a homemade tarantula that spanned 6 feet, constructed from nylon and rabbit fur, spooked porch dwellers.
"It was horrendous," says Kat, 32. So horrendous that she and her husband have since turned pro, orchestrating the local YMCA's annual haunted house as part of their fledgling event-planning business. But other amateur frightmongers still toil in the front (and back) yards of America. These civic-minded souls don't charge admission. "We're just in it for the kids to have fun," says Gary Hoepner, 54, of Wichita, Kan., who hangs a Bates Motel sign by his garage and dresses as Beetlejuice to greet--and growl at--his guests.
But they do charge a lot on their credit cards. Each year, Halloween vendors trot out new lines of increasingly scary stuff, and true fright fanatics wouldn't be caught dead with last year's zombies.
Demand for extreme Halloween props has been so strong in 2003 that some companies sold out earlier than expected. At deathstudios.com, customers had to order a handcrafted mask by September 18 to guarantee delivery by Halloween. The Web site shows off the horrific heads, suitable for costumes or haunted house decor (just slip on a mannequin or stuff with rags). A gaping, gory pate ($50 to $100) needn't sulk in the closet the rest of the year. "We have a whole lot of people who leave a severed head in a refrigerator for a coworker," notes Jeff Keim, who handcrafts the masks. Big spenders might covet a corpse. At nightmarefactory.com, a bloodied "autopsy body" sells for $895. On a budget? A "bag o' bloody parts" is only $140.
Heads up. Purists prefer costumed actors in their Halloween houses. "The best scare is a guy in a character suit who jumps out," says Kat Hiatt of Florida. But more and more animatronic ghouls are popping up--literally. Keep in mind that you can't always predict when the plugged-in living dead will do their thing. A 2-foot-tall zombie that moans and yanks off its head, sold at Spencer Gifts stores for $100, "does it every time we slam the register too hard," says an employee at a Fresno, Calif., store.
The bigger the robot, the bigger the crowds. Last Halloween, about 1,000 St. Louisans visited Dan Faupel's home to ogle an $8,900 growling ogre that blew smoke out of its nose. "We've seen animated pieces go into residences," says Mark Arvanigian, president of frightcatalog.com in Worcester, Mass. A handful of homeowners have purchased his electronic animatronics this year--including a $695 motorized zombie that rises from behind a tombstone and an $8,900 "attack alligator" that can move forward 5 feet and open its jaws. Because of the value of the products, "some customers use closed-circuit TVs to watch their products," he says. But that precaution might not be necessary for the $18,950 sleeping giant (available by special order from nightmarefactory.com). When passers-by approach, it awakens from a seated pose, screams, farts, jumps up, and towers over them at 11-foot-6. With that kind of sentinel on your property on Halloween night, trick-or-treaters may end up giving you candy.
This story appears in the October 20, 2003 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.