Sunday, October 29, 2006

Article about our haunt in Las Cruces Sun-News

The Las Cruces Sun-News featured our home haunt today. The article was written by a journalism student who knows Tracy (our "Madame Sarita" this year) who is also going to be helping out at Carnival of Souls this year.

I haven't been doing much blogging much lately, because we're in Halloween crunch mode, but hopefully we'll have some great photos to share after the holiday. If I don't get to the blog before then, have a Happy Halloween, everyone!

3 comments:

Daniel Lopez said...

Hey CC,

How did Halloween go?

Hope all is well....?

CC said...

Hey, Daniel!

Halloween went really well. The attractions you helped build continue to be enjoyed by all.

We moved the Blackwood Mausoleum back to be flush with the back of the house, and used the sideyard as the "Blackwood Cemetery" (read: line queue). With lots of creepy lighting and new effects in there, it was a big hit, just like last year. You'll be happy to know that the Mausoleum is a lot easier to put up without the "Frankenshelves" attached - heh. We added proper shelving brackets this year, and made the niches out of masonite and foam, and it worked really well.

The puppet show got a revamp this year as well, with Madame Sarita having to summon the Dark Powers of the Earth in a last-ditch attempt to contain Marius Blackwood.

Finally, we added "Dr. Richman's Creepy Crawly Emporium" this year. I invited Dr. Richman, the curator of the NMSU Arthropod Museum, to bring some of his creepiest and crawliest bugs to show our visitors, and it was a big hit.

We also got a permit to block off the street this year, which, while not the most exciting addition to the festivities, made the entire show more manageable.

Some interesting comments came our way this year. One guy wanted to know if we were "those people who used to work for Disney or Imageworks or something," and we heard from several people that coming out to the Carnival of Souls is now a "family tradition". Yikes. One lady told me she thought our home haunt raised the property values for everyone in the subdivision, and apparently there were many kids who decided to come to our event instead of going trick-or-treating.

So all is going strong at the Carnival of Souls. Your craftsmanship continues to make people happy, and remains some of the strongest visual impressions from the entire event. We hope to see you next year, so you can enjoy all the smiles yourself!

Daniel Lopez said...

Sounds great! I am so sorry we missed it. I am also glad that you were able to create a better shelving system than I had put in their last year. I think the addition of a creepy crawlies was awesome.

Again I am sorry I missed it. I am also glad I had a chance to work with the "Disney" people on these projects. LOL!

Talk to you soon....

-daniel