Wellstownship Haunted House 2016

And joining me today on Weekend Focus, I have two special guests in here talking about the Wells Town Ship, how's Sean Norman and Doug Stryker, how are you guys today? Good, great, thanks for having us. Sean, how many years this makes, maybe our 50-year-in-a-row or so that you've been here year after year and it seems like time just goes by faster and faster, since I could just yesterday, we were talking about the haunted house last year and here we are this year. Yeah, I think we're going to our 15th year now, something like that.

Let people know where you guys are located, it's easy to find Market Street in Brilliant, Ohio, but kind of let people know where you guys are located before we start. We're right at the north end of Brilliant, you take any of the exits there in Brilliant off Route 7 and you can find us pretty easy, we've got the signs up, but it's visible right from Route 7. I'd also say it's well marked, you guys got the signs pointing the way through town and so it's really easy to find. Right.

And okay Sean, give us the dates and times of Wells Town Ship haunted house 2016, hard to believe. Right, we're keeping it simple, opening night is September 23rd and then every weekend through the end of October, doors open at 7, the box office opens at 6, pretty easy to remember. And admission price is a little bit of adjustment this year, but you tell me something, you know, explain it to us. Well, we had the zombie challenge, it was pretty popular last year and what we wanted to do was try and incorporate that into the ticket price as a combo deal last year.

We did not incorporate it, it wasn't, you could not buy it at the ticket booth, it was separate, you can go over and experience it on the side. So what we've done is we've done a combination where you can do general admission is only $15, the zombie challenge is $10, so that would be a $25 hit. What we've done is we've combined the two of them for an $18 combo price, so rather than pay $10 for the zombie challenge, you can do the combo ticket and only pay $3 for it. And how many things attractions in the house we're going to talk about, Doug, you, I understand you came up with the zombie challenge, right?

That's kind of your baby, right? Yeah, last year, actually it was me and Erin Zingo actually collaborated on that and got her put together and it turned out pretty decent. Explain to us what can people expect, maybe without giving it all away, but the zombie challenge, what's that? Well, what you do is you enter in and we give you a flag football belt.

And your goal is to make it through the maze, full zombies without losing your flags. Okay, that's full of stuff. That's full of stuff. That's what it'd be tough to do, isn't it?

Right, and the maze is full fall and it's very dark and there's a lot of strobe lights and a lot of chaos. Very disorienting too. You guys have to be good with that one. And you guys told me too, Sean, you're going to have a lights on tour as well, right?

Yeah, the lights on tour is, we have a lot of fun with the scare nights. They're awesome, but one of the things that we've grown to love amazingly is our lights on tour. And this was always set up for people like you that are afraid to come to the haunted house. Yeah, I know, I've got to be there.

I've got to get there. But we wanted to have something where we could do something for little kids in the area that want to go to the haunted house, but they really shouldn't. So we do a, it's been $3 forever. It's $3 a person and on September, I'm sorry, October 2nd from two to six is our lights on tour.

So elementary age kids can come through with their parents or adults can come through and get a behind the scenes tour. They meet the actors, they're dressed normal. There's no scare, all the lights are changed, no scare music, no costumes, no makeup, no nothing to come in, they meet the actors. But this year we've really gone over the top.

We're going to have the trustees have allowed us to shut down the street in front of the haunted house for several hours on that day. And we're going to have 14 courtesy of Anthony, the name of his company, it seems right now. We have 14 different well-balanced labels. And it's going to be the equivalent of a town carnival.

It'd be really fun to watch. Yeah, definitely. And I have to go back to you here, Doug, because when we talk about the corn maze too, a character when Sean was talking about people meeting characters, you're a scary clown, right? What's the name of your character?

Sparky the clown. See, I won't mess up Sparky the clown like I mess up your name. Other people have messed up your name too, by the way. But there was that open door, I'll leave it alone.

So they'll see you run, Sean, I know you dress up. What do you dress up as? I may or may not dress up. I do it.

I do it in number of years. I'm scary enough looking. That's why we're on the radio and not TV. Well, I always say it's not a face for radio.

Moving and Grooving Productions was a couple of the inflatables. But I do a couple of different characters, and I have a lot of fun with that. I used to do a character that doesn't talk. How do you do that one?

That's like a mine, isn't it? Well, it was a TV character, but Michael Myers. Okay. And that was fun.

But I got older, and the gut started coming out a little bit more, so I thought there's maybe some younger guys that can handle that character a little better than I can. But the character I do now has a speaking part, and sometimes he doesn't hold back. It's a lot of fun to do that character. It's more of an interaction than it is a scare, but it's funny how people would be afraid of that guy.

Right. And again, we're talking about Wels Township on it. How's Sean and Doug with me today on the show. And tell me again, we were trying to go over this at around 20 rooms give or take, but they're so much more than that.

I mean, that's just the room. So there's a lot more, I guess, other attractions and things going on in between in amongst those rooms. So if you actually totaled everything, the number would just, we couldn't figure it out, I guess. Yeah, and a lot of those are really popular attractions inside the house to claustrophobia tunnel.

We've added us, I don't even know if we want to call it a swamp room because it's like 2.0. It's been what everybody else does, and then we put our twist on it. You know, the 30-foot slide is always fun. You know, you ask what's your favorite part?

I love that slide. You know, you're coming from the second floor to get back down to the first floor is a slide. So you know, those sort of things aren't really affected into actual room, but there's some of our more popular areas of the house. A lot of fun there.

Some of the themed rooms in the house guys. Can you give us a glimpse into a couple of what people can expect? No. No.

Just have to come down here and see it from the floor. No, we've got that. Every year we change it tremendously, which is not very smart on our part, but people can come. What you saw last year, you're not going to see this year.

That's a challenge to keep changing it up every year because eventually, you guys are obviously very talented. You have a large team that works with you. I mean, just to come up with the different ideas, you guys usually start in January of every year working on the house because this obviously doesn't happen overnight. People put in all kinds of hours.

Generally around March we'll all get together and have a meeting with the adults and then we'll have a meeting with the kids and then we kind of just a giant idea of batch. We'll take those ideas and mix them up and split them apart and add up to this room and put that room and just comes out all kinds of crazy. That's a great way to describe them. Maybe I'm just looking at what else is.

All kinds of crazy. I like that. I think we just developed something new here. We need a character named Dooge.

The good answer. I think so. Doug, you'd be good for that. Yeah.

Yeah. Fitch you just well there, right? And again, we're talking with Sean and Doug today on the show, Tells Shipon and House. And speaking of Doug, you touched on about talking about people helping.

Guys mentioned you have younger people that help and I know Sean in the past years we've talked about this. People volunteer their time from schools, youth in the community. That gives them something to do. It's a great time and they obviously learn responsibility and things.

I mean, you've done, Sean, they don't have enough to do it. We always hear they don't have enough to do it. Well, you guys keep them busy and it's a great environment for them. Right.

Right. It's a learning experience for a lot of them. I mean, there's construction going on just yesterday. We got Anthony, who's a chop saw for the first time.

One of the circular saws and supervised of course. Well, I mean, you wouldn't find me that. I mean, I could have you missing fingers. And he took to it very well and he was excited to learn.

And that's skills that down the road one day, you know, he may have to build something. And hey, you know, I learned to use that saw to. How, like, I can do that. Absolutely.

And so as it gives in Sean, I know you guys are always trying to work with youth and give them, and we even talked about last year when they volunteered and things. I mean, when they move on, they can put that on resumes and things and use that for, you know, down the road. It just, as Doug said, it just builds their skills and runs their knowledge. It's teamwork.

Awesome. It's the only word. I mean, it's so much. It's so fun to do that.

And that's one of the major reasons we come back every year because we get to experience that too. And believe me, we learned as well. One of the coolest things that we've done that I've always wanted to do, we've always wanted to do. Last year, we gave out $2,900 in scholarships to our volunteers that were seniors that we graduated.

And that was something that we've been trying to work towards for a long time, and we're in a position to be able to do that. And they're well deserving of it. I mean, it's the energy level that those guys bring. Now, we don't have, you know, I don't want to make it sound like we have a bunch of ten year olds on our own.

This is high school age kids that are just bringing it. And they're good kids. They're not just not a juvenile diversion for at risk youth. There's plenty of those programs, not knocking them.

But this is rewarding those kids that mind their grades and mind their manners. And maintain themselves in school out of school. And they do use it for job experience, college applications. My phone doesn't ring off the hook, but it rings off in as far as for references for the kids.

It's a lot of fun. And while we're talking with you guys, give us how can people learn more? I know social media, you guys are on Facebook. If anybody has any questions, we're the best place for them to go to find out more information about the Wellstown Chiponget House.

You can link, find everything from Wellstown Chiponget House. All the dates, all the information, you can go to our character pages and check in on those guys. Everything you need, you can buy tickets online, everything from Wellstown Chiponget House.com. Get you to our Twitter, to our Facebook, to all of our other social media outlets.

And the Wellstown Chiponget House over the years, and we've talked about this on the show, too, refresh our memory. You guys have been various recognitions, things that you've been voting for, people that's combined, visit special guests. So you guys really are on the map, putting really no high on the map. We were just recognized as the number one haunted attraction on the East Coast.

Really? I'm not kidding. Congratulations. That was pretty cool.

Makes you all warm and fuzzy. So who got the call? You? How did you find out?

I did. The gentleman was part of that review team has been all over his group, has been all over the East Coast, and they've visited some places like Wish Garden, the Sea of the Central Studios, and there's some fantastic high dollar haunted attractions out there that he felt that we were better than those and by leaps and bounds better. So not knocking those other guys. I've been to a lot of them and they're fantastic, but we do things a complete and total different way.

It's not a self-dadded walk through. It's a guided tour. You are going to spend a considerable amount of time inside the house. It's not a quick visit through there, is it?

Right. Each room is a small, very, very creative play. You're going to walk into a room and stop, which is unheard of in haunted attractions nowadays. You're going to stop and watch a scene develop and we want to be as creative as possible without we do our scares.

You were a part of the show. Yeah. Some rooms don't work unless there's a tour in there. And now do you understand why I have to visit?

I do. Part of the show. You just gave it away. You're part of the show.

Now you understand why Paul is yet to be there. I know that Sean's lurking about somewhere in there. That's how he's doing too. Right.

We've been trying to get you to come to, I don't know, we've been open 15 years and trying to get you to come down for 20. Well, you guys brought me a shirt and I want to say thank you. I appreciate that by the way. Thank you.

Well, you're not quite done out of the hot chair yet. So we've got a few minutes. But I wanted to make sure I mentioned that. Your website, everything looks great.

Who's behind doing that? Any shout out you want to get started? Thorin, web design. Jimmy, talking to him.

It's been fantastic with our website year after year after year. I saw the work that he did and saw him out. It's been amazing. He mainly handles our Thorin, web design, our Facebook, our Twitter, our, just everything.

It's been, takes a load off of us to know that's being handled. And Sean, I got to say, you know what, we talked a lot about what's going on in the house. There's a lot going on outside the house. So when people are in line, because I know there's lines, you guys do your best though to keep the groups moving, but you also do your best to keep them entertained toward while they're waiting.

Yeah, we got live bands every night. The interaction with the characters outside, there's what? Five, six characters that are constantly roaming the outdoor area chasing people and taking pictures. You know, just got to keep them entertained because that's one of the worst things that I've ever seen was to go to some of these other haunted houses, not the not-to-marry-thing, but to stand in a queue line.

And to be standing there. It gets naught in us after a while and it's boring, you know, and you got to have an interaction or something to do. And we try to do that. If you know that gives people like me that are standing in line, if I would go to, one time I can't remember it was years ago I went to a haunted house and never made it inside, because a long I stood there and stared at it and I'm like, yeah, I'm thinking of this.

So if you keep my attention, you know, you're not diverted, I'll make time to make time to make a great, great diversion for stairs too. And get your guard down, because we're kind of getting this way relaxed, kind of, hey, this is pretty cool, then you guys get a panel. We've been fortunate too, the bands, every band plays, they play pro bono and we really appreciate that. It really adds to our atmosphere, but we've got, you know, the burn barrels are going, we've got a, I think it's in large now to about a 60 foot, large screen on the side of building this plane.

Videos up there, the gift shop is open, we're actually having our shirts done on site this year, they can press them and make them, you pick what you want, pick the color that you want, and bang, they make it. There's all the challenges out there, the concession stand, I said the other bunch of times, the concession stand is, we're adding to that, we're doing meatball parogies this year. You scare, which is, you watch, there's four different video, four screens that you watch, you watch the tour go through the house live and there's four corresponding corner drops. So you see a tour go through the house live, you drop a corner, you activate the scare inside the house, you get to see it and hear it.

We got the zombie cam, one of the zombie challenges, a 6,000 square foot maze, and one of the zombies is actually wearing a camera. And we get to watch it from his point of view as he's swaying and hiding and sneaking around and chasing down people, it's a lot of fun. So the outside atmosphere is awesome, we got a 30 foot fireball that is activated through an app in our phones. Really?

You guys have thought of everything, who comes up with this stuff, I mean you. It's Doug, Paul, I hate to start naming names Mark, Erica, the slaggers, I hate to start naming names because I'm going to leave somebody out there so many people. We've got a staff of about 200 people, all volunteer, about 140 of them are teams, and they are the most creative, dedicated people I have ever met in my life. And I've met a lot of people, and that in and of itself is what makes this place so successful because of the dedication that the people have, and only that's the creativity.

The things that these guys come up with is just unreal and amazing, and it's a matter of what can we do next, what can we do to push the envelope. Yeah, that's great, we built that blocking bridge, how can we make it even better? We got stairs that raise and lower to make the Adams family look like it's a B-movie. What's that mean?

What's his character name? His character name is Sparky. What was his character name? Oh, I left it alone.

I can't try to look me into that. That's right. So a lot of the people, everybody has a life house, so it's like trying to balance everything and look what you guys make happen because people, you know, volunteer, whether they're in school, they're working other jobs, they have lives outside of that, and then all the hours everyone puts in to make this happen. Yeah, the last few weeks is a 24-hour day process, there's somebody there 24 hours a day.

Wow, so September helped me out here, September 26th to kick off, 23rd kick off and how long does it go? Every Friday and Saturday thereafter through the end of October. Okay, and what time should people arrive? The box office opens at six, doors open at seven.

You know, one of the things, if there's one complaint that we hear over and over, it's the wait time. However, if you go to an amusement park, Kennywood, for example, was playing with the Jame was plug. But if you go there for, let's say there's a thousand people waiting in line for the Phantom, you're going to wait a couple of hours to get into that. We're pumping them through, 10 people in a tour on Busy Nice.

We'll be throwing them in there every minute, every minute and a half. We've got to make sure that the tours get the whole show, the ones so safely. But there's plenty to do there to keep you occupied and have fun. But as far as getting there, you get there early and you're out early.

If you get there, the longer you wait to get there, the larger that crowd gets and the longer the wait's going to be. So we've had people show up at 11 o'clock, right as we're closing the ticket booth. And there's still, you know, a thousand people in the yard trying to get into there. There's going to be a little bit of a wait.

That's why we try to keep that party atmosphere. Yeah, we have people come up to the ticket booth. They'll be the first one there and they'll ask for their one to be in group number 30. Because they want to stay in the one-hand.

Absolutely. So you've got to try your best. Everybody gets to go through. You guys are pretty much there until the last person gets through, right?

Right. You have a ticket booth close at 11. But we remain open until the actual house remains open and as long as the challenge remains open until everybody gets through. And again, in the building, you guys are located in.

We've talked about that too. It has a life of its own, right? So we still here. There's still one overnight paranormal tours.

You can throw a website. You can contact Divine Time and they host a, you spend the night there. And they do, you know, EVP sessions and all that stuff. The house has a bonafide and true haunted history, which is all available on the website as far as how that went down and what actually happened there.

The history is pretty in depth and pretty cool. But yeah, they do that throughout the year. So North End of Brilliant, the brilliant Ohio Wells Township haunted house right off route 7. Sean, again, give us the price of a mission and where people can go to find out more information.

General mission is 15 bucks. The zombie challenge is 10 bucks. We do the combo for both at 18. It's a great deal.

Best value. I think that's what they say at the fancy stores. But yeah, open now every weekend starting September 23rd, Fridays and Saturdays throughout the end of October. That's a good time.

You've got to come down. You have to come down. Bites on, tours on a second. You can come down for that.

We're not going to charge it. Really? We're going to VIP you. We're going to tell them that.

VIP is coming through. Yeah. No scare. All of a sudden the lights will go off and you guys will hold everybody else out.

You're going to be, you're going to be, you're going to be, you're going to be, you're going to be one of the ones that ends up happening in concessions, Dan. I'm not going to hot chocolate popcorn. That's me. Somebody else goes through.

Right. You know, some are shaking. They're shaking his knees. That would be good.

You went in the funny thing is I love paranormal. I love watching the ghost hunter shows. I want to go on the ghost hunt. But there's something about, I guess like the well stench upon house.

Something that's already set up and prepared. That's that I know something's going to happen. There's just something about that that unearns me. Yeah.

I don't know what it is. I love the paranormal. I believe in ghosts. I believe in all that.

That doesn't scare me so to speak. My desire is to take you through and let you see all the work that goes into it. It's amazing behind the scenes to realize, wait a minute. We have a room.

We're doing alternate endings. So as you go through. That's pretty neat. Yeah.

You'll one tour goes to this ending. One tour goes to that ending. And we'll do it this way. Neither one of those endings are stationary.

Wow. Without your permission or consent, you're getting moved and moved around. One room is an actual simulator straight out of NASA. We do the video is done in-house.

It's put onto a computer. The room is programmed by a computer. I can't say that word. It's a terror attack box.

It's programmed by a computer to react to the video. It moves up and down sideways. We're working on getting upside down. Oh, wow.

Kudos to Paul Jeffries on that. I got his plug in. Same with plug from Paul Jeff. Let me ask you this, Sean and Doug, and I ask you every year and I forget.

If anyone's listening, what age do you recommend to you? I know if a parent comes through, obviously, they can't. They can determine if they're child. But what age is recommended?

How young is too young to talk? It's rated R. Not because it's a horror movie. And all the things that go along with that horror movie are present there.

So we don't recommend anybody under 12. If they want to go through, we'll let them take a shot at it. It's a 37-year-old's-er okay. Are you saying you're 37?

I don't know about that. So I fit the age requirement. But really not your age. We're good to go.

We're going through there. And again, so well, Staunche upon at house. One more time, your website. Great question.

Well, Staunche upon at house.com. Everything you need is right there. Well, I can also Doug. It's been a wonderful meeting you today.

Sean, I say the same, but I've known you for years and this just gets more interesting. I love coming over. It's just like we're sitting around a bonfire at a conversation. Well, I appreciate it.

It sure is. And again, check you guys out in Brown, Ohio all through October kicking off here the 23rd of September. Correct, right. And I got it right for once.

And Doug, I won't. Doug Stryker, I will not. That's your name. Like I tried to start over the recording and other media outlets.

So what do you mean is it alive? But guys, I appreciate it. It's the end of People's Hot Buy. Well, Staunche upon at House.

It's just you don't, but see what you guys are all about. Thanks for being here. Thank you.