Skyview Haunted House 25th Anniversary – Austin Haunted House Halloween Tradition

Year 1

If you’d like to know how Halloweeners, Halloweenies, and Halloweenettes are made, read my blog ‘Halloween Person Potion’, but suffice to say, I’m one of them. I moved to my first home in Austin in 2000 with an immediate desire to build a Haunted House.

I knew this might evolve into something bigger, but not so much that it couldn't be balanced with all the artistic pursuits I do, so I started with these guidelines:

Haunted House Guidelines: 


1.Be Frugal: As an artist I did not have the thousands of dollars some people put into their decorations. So the first rule was re-use, which made sense to me as a frugal artist and environmentalist. I always try to use scrap material first and will fix, redo, and recreate in every way possible before considering throwing it away.

2.Use What You Have: From my time creating float parades I learned that it’s all just basic shapes. If you can make a shape, you can make anything, and many things with interesting shapes are just lying around the house or yard. Trash cans, plastic bags, yard ornaments, look at everything around you and conceptualize- see it as a diamond in the rough. What can be borrowed or converted?

3.Repeated Theme: Keep the same basic areas, and then add to them, and if it grows, add others. In keeping the same themes I could add to them annually rather than creating an expensive and time-consuming over-haul of structure and ideas every year.

4.No Slashers-Other-worldly, fictional creatures represent the spirit of the holiday for me, not fictional killers. No gore, guts or chainsaws, thank you!

With those guidelines in mind I created a sketch, and if you can dream it, you can sketch it, and if you can sketch it, you can build it!

So on a brisk October morn, I did just that. I bought reclaimed 2x4’s, some cheap panels, reuse paints, a small jigsaw, and I made Skyview history!

When I finished the outside looked amazing! It was smaller than it is now, 8x8ft, but it was marvelous! It didn’t glow, but the paints sure looked like they did, and it effectively conveyed the spirit of the holiday.

What do you put inside a Haunted House?

Remembering Guideline 2, ‘Use What You Have’, I pulled out the giant box of alien clothing, masks and accessories I just happened to have. I had illustrated an alien book series for kids and had all the props for book signings, so the ‘Alien Autopsy’ section was born!

Then a neighbor came over with lab bottles and what he called the 'scariest wedding present ever', a weird, glowing dehumidifier. 'My wife doesn't want this in the house', he said.
We threw some plastic bugs around it and it became the glowy alien dehumidifier area that eventually evolved into 'The Mad-Scientists Table' came to life just from that one prop, and eventually morphed into the 'Mad-Scientist Alley'.

I had leftover spiders from my Haunted Hallway in Boston, so that kept evolving every year to be the 'Spiders and Flies' section.

Anything left over went on a table that eventually became known as the 'Table of Leftover Horrors!.

To top it off, I had accumulated an extensive collection of classic horror toys from the years of working horror cons, which my wife added to on every birthday or Christmas, or friends would find something in an attic or flea-market. For the first ten yrs, the Haunted House ended at my office, and neighbors could come in and tour the collection before I enclosed the space to build a bedroom.

That first year was a screaming success! I'd be mowing the lawn in June and kids would come running up to tell me what they were going to be on Halloween. 'You're going to do it again next year, right!?'
Yeah, I was hooked.
It was a wonderful introduction to the neighborhood. A new tradition for the community as well as for my own family. It helped form communal connections, and every year, new kids got to experience something of the sublime which feels like something of magic. And it is.

So now I'm officially 'that guy who builds a Haunted House every October!'

It Won't Stop Growing!

It's a well-known Halloween fact that Haunted Houses grow. It is also well-known that wood eventually decays, and the flimsy panel-board front pieces had to be replaced by plywood after 6 yrs. I kept the same design and transferred over some of the detail pieces, which are still there today. By now it was extended down the drive. I extended the same central themes and added to them bit by bit, which saves a lot of time and money over coming up with a new design every year.

In 2011, I added the gargoyles, in 2015, I added two more sections in the front. In 2017, I painted much of it with fluorescent black-light paint for the first time. Until then, it just looked like it was glowing, but now as night approached, it came to life!

What changed inside? I’m glad you asked.

Inside, I continued my love for the classics with 'Tales of Poe' and the 'Classic Monsters Chamber', a tribute to that inspirational movie genre. I really focused on making classic stories, books
and movies the theme throughout.

I also enclosed my office so where there was a door, was now 'The Tunnel of Ill-Repair', flat panels that give a very effective sense of depth. I like the humor and carnival zaniness of it.

As with Haunted Houses, families grow too, and somewhere in that time, mine grew by one, a daughter, an October baby, and one genetically predisposed to be a lover of Halloween. Her Haunted House bday party became part of the yearly tradition. In her twenties and in college, the holiday still bonds us, and she wants to know about every new detail, when she finally calls me back.

Challenges

Traditions can sometimes help ground us during times of trial and uncertainty. Covid and the shut-down hit Austin on the 20th yr. of the Haunted House. I considered postponing it but when I asked the neighbors, the response was overwhelmingly in favor of putting it up. In fact, many thought that kids and adults alike needed the tradition, for distraction, for a bit of fun and normalcy in an otherwise difficult year.

I took it as a mission to make it better than ever, and to have something for everyone, those brave enough to visit, the 'drive-by's', and those that couldn't come out at all.

We took every precaution. I took the roof off and opened the panels for air-flow, I doubled the size, extending it across the front of the house with 'Halloween Town' in the front, and behind that, 'The Mad Scientists Alley', a long way from the single weird dehumidifier that started the mad scientist display 20 yrs earlier.

On the other side of the sidewalk I created a replica of Lon Chaney's Opera House in The Phantom of the Opera and this was born The Phantom Theater, where we played movies, with chairs spread apart. No one was allowed without a mask (we supplied them as well).

For the Halloweeners who couldn't come out, I had a generous neighbor volunteer to set up an interactive virtual-tour of my horror toy collection, which visitors hadn't seen since I closed off my office entrance a decade earlier.

It was a wonderful success, but wouldn't have been without all the help from the neighbors. The donations of weird objects, the saturday afternoons of woods and screws, the friendships I've made. Skyview truly is the best kept secret in Austin and I'm lucky to be a part of the communiy. Some of those neighbors even started their own traditions, Halloween displays, Haunted Houses, and an awesome Halloween Pet Parade.

I've been asked why I do this, that there is no monetary value in it, so what do I gain?

In my blog 'Halloween People Person' I talk about an experience that I think everyone should have at a young age, one that balances fear and pleasure, a mystical sense of the unknown, frightening but thrilling. It's defined as feeling the 'sublime' a deep and profound other-worldly mystery that connects to a primal part of your being. It's the awe you may experience in a church for the first time, or in nature, or in a Haunted House. And it can be life-changing, especially to the young. And I get to be a part of that, sharing my experience of youth.

I see this as something steeped in tradition, that wonderful thing that binds us and grounds us and that we don't have enough of in our lilves.

I will sometimes see fear, but then it turns to resilience and purpose as fear is over-come, and finally enjoyed. Or not. But they're going to try again next year!

I see also a Rite of Passage, a transition that may foster a sense of self-development. I think ritualistic adolescent rites of passage have been denied our modern youth and it does them a disservice if not an injury.

Kahlil Gibran said 'The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest things without."

This is a small thing, but there is meaning here, and worth, and in that I've found a treasure.

If I could create an art instillation that instills in people a sense of tradition, of wonder, a feeling of magic that they'll remember for the rest of their lives, a gift of memory that may open new ways of thinking, why wouldn't I? As an artist and a human being, how could I not? And so I do, every October.

There is never a question of whether or not someone this season will feel these connections, experiences and deeper impacts. It is an absolute certainty. I hear it when they tell me, I see it in the faces, and not only of individuals, but of generations. I've had countless people stop and tell me how much joy it brings them, some very earnestly, like they needed me to know. And I'm glad that in this rare and unique way, I can give this least of things, and I've been blessed with the ability to do it for 25 years and counting.

A couple of years ago, Austin Magazine did an article about the Haunt, so there was an unusually long line. As I walked past I saw a woman crying. I asked if she was okay. Embarrassed, she said 'I'm sorry for crying, I can't help it. I've been coming here since I was six, and today I'm bringing my daughter for the first time. I don't know how to say it, but this is special for us! ' I could see how happy she was to be about to share a part of her own tradition with her daughter. Of course I teared up like a baby, so we were both a mess! I hugged her and told her I knew exactly how she felt, that it was special for me too, and it meant just as much to me that she came and continues to. When asked why I do it, that story is the truest answer I can give.

The Least of Things