April 1, 2024 • 62 mins
Episode 80-Fear Expo 24 Preview Published 2 April 2024 Hosts: John Schelt, Keoni Hutton & Leslie Reed
Welcome back Doug Sheldon, Owner of Fear Expo, scheduled for April 12th-14th in Owensboro, Kentucky who offers valuable insight into the events lined up during the expo and the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
Resources mentioned during this episode:
Fear Expo: https://fearexpolive.com/
Ultimate Haunt Tour: https://ultimatehaunttour.com/
2024 Convention Schedule: https://www.hauntingu.com/p/events-1609424025/
Haunting U can be found at www.hauntingu.com.
Sanguine Creek Estates: www.scehaunt.com
Chamber of Haunters Website: https://chamberofhaunters.com/
Sound Effects:
Music: Dance of Death http://www.purple-planet.com/
Thunder: Recorded by Mark DiAngelo Uploaded: 07.29.11 http://soundbible.com/1913-Thunder-... License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Modifications: Inserted over Dance of Death Music
Evil Laughter: Recorded by Himan Uploaded: 03.13.13 License: Public Domain http://soundbible.com/2054-Evil-Lau...
We couldn't continue to bring you awesome content without the support of our sponsors, particularly our Premium sponsors, the Chamber of Haunters and Fear Expo. Learn more here:
Haunting U is a production of Rocky Mountain Home Haunters LLC published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. All rights reserved
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Music.
(00:17):
Coming to you live from the Chamber of Haunter Studios, this is Haunting You.
I'm Jon Shelton. I'm Keone Hutton. And I'm Leslie Reed.
Welcome back, everyone, to the Haunting You podcast, and happy April!
Holy crap, I cannot believe it is already April. Does anyone else feel like
this month, this year, is just freaking flying by?
Yes, I'm closing the quarter. It's ridiculous. I cannot handle it.
(00:39):
There's too much going on, and that's probably part of the problem.
Yeah. A little background for everyone. one like i'm moving
this summer you're perpetually moving
i'm perpetually moving and the ship is
leaving in like two and a
half weeks roughly and the ship's still broken so like trying to get ready for
(01:00):
the move while trying to get the ship ready to go i need so question for you
since you're moving and you are being given a different assignment yes see when
at what point is the ship ship no longer your problem.
If everything works out May 20th. That's enough time to drill holes.
(01:22):
Honestly, with that ship, I don't even think you need to drill.
You can just kind of like push.
Kick it a little. In the words of Jazz, who has done much makeup for us,
it is the world's most seaworthy cheese grater.
Like I said, no need to drill. Just kind of lean on it. It's got plenty of holes.
A good swift kick will do the trick. You know what a bulping hammer is?
(01:43):
Yes. Yeah, I just take a ball-peen hammer around and start banging on things,
and we'll find all the holes.
Anyway, we're not going to be doing that because she needs to leave in two and
a half weeks. Fair enough. And then I need to leave in two and a half months.
But that's it. We'll get there. We will get there. In the meantime,
April is a super exciting time inside of the haunt industry.
(02:04):
We've got HauntFest coming up just a few days from now. Next weekend,
April 6th and 7th, down in Athens, Georgia, Georgia, Hauntfest, April Ghouls.
Definitely go check it out if you are in the area.
And then brand new this year, at the end of the month, the East Coast Haunters
Convention is happening in Oaks, Pennsylvania, April 27th and 28th.
I don't know how this one's going to go. It's being put on by the same guys who do Transworld.
(02:27):
I think it's going to be interesting. I so wish I could be there.
Unfortunately, I'll be in the middle of the ocean, so I can't be there next
year though, because that's very close to where we'll be in Maryland.
Fingers are crossed. We'll see what happens.
So if you're in the area for either of those, definitely go and check them out.
But today, we are not talking about either of those conventions.
(02:49):
We already talked about Haunt Fest. That was our last episode.
Hopefully, you went and listened to it.
We are here to talk about our favorite convention. I'm even wearing the swag
for it today as we're recording.
Fear Expo happening in Owensboro, Kentucky at the Owensboro Convention Center, April 12th to the 14th.
Holy shit, I'm so excited. Drake.
(03:12):
I did not get to go to Fear Expo last year. Leslie went in our place this year. I was able to pull it off.
So I am going to be there all three days on the show floor.
If you are at Fear Expo, please come see me. Say hello. Pick up a sticker.
We have the big ones this year. I'm very, very excited. I got larger ones than we have had in the past.
Because you do you know how i decide like
(03:34):
what swag to bring i figure out
what i want and then buy that for for
everyone else like i needed a bigger sticker for my truck so yeah
we have bigger stickers this year very excited about that i'm also excited because
my friends from the candlelighters ghost house are also going to be coming to
fear expo i convinced them that they need to come to fear expo so that they
(03:57):
can meet some people and learn some things and And bring all that back to make
the ghost house awesome next year.
So it's going to be a freaking blast in Owensboro, Kentucky,
just two weeks from now. Holy.
And to talk about all of that, we have back with us today, Doug Sheldon.
Welcome to the Haunting You podcast.
Well, thank you very much. I definitely was looking forward to this meeting.
(04:21):
I'm glad we got to get it kicked off. Me too. We are so excited for Fear Expo.
So I've been seeing all the emails that are coming through to kind of talk about
the events and everything else that is happening.
This schedule is absolutely freaking packed.
Let's dig into it. Before Fear Expo even kicks off Thursday,
there is, of course, the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
(04:44):
We're two weeks out. Are there any tickets left?
So we were just talking about that this morning. We are at that tipping point
where we either make a decision to close it or to try and do one more bus.
Uh-huh. So we had a meeting this morning. We're going to leave it open just
to see how it goes over the weekend and make a decision on Monday.
But there is a chance that potentially we are sold out. Yeah, yeah.
(05:10):
So what I'm hearing is anyone who's listening to this podcast today needs to
get their name in the hat right now so that you guys see that there's interest.
Definitely, definitely. Because that's going to make a big decision for us because
if you jump up to an Airbus, I mean, you obviously don't want a bus going half
full. Sure, absolutely, absolutely.
(05:31):
Talk real quick about what people can expect on the Ultimate Haunt Tour in Indiana.
Where are they where are we adventuring this time around because you've had
some pretty solid lineups of haunts for the tour you know we're going to keep
that keep that that trend alive,
no no pun intended you know
(05:51):
the cool thing about this year is we grabbed a couple more sponsors who
wanted to get involved the ultimate haunt tour is really growing to
be a tour that people are looking forward to and
i think the reason behind it is not only do we go to great
haunts haunts we go to all the haunts we're just
going to pick a few that you know are top
name reckoning recognized we want to pick haunts that maybe you haven't heard
(06:15):
of you know haunts that are coming out that are brand new this year like the
first one on the tour of midsville nightmare factory that one's not even open
yet and we're gonna go visit them they're like what i said yeah we're We're going to be there.
So the next one is a bait door. And I hope I'm saying that right. Abattoir.
Thank you. Abattoir. You are the first one who told me that.
(06:37):
So now, and if you're wrong, you just messed me up for the next two weeks,
but a bet avatar. Abattoir. Yeah.
No, I have not. Just,
I have lots of random knowledge. She speaks in multiple languages.
Right. I just assume she's got it right.
(06:59):
I was going to say, I trust that. So I can almost guarantee you that 90% of the people,
if not 95% of the people who have heard this podcast or any other podcast or
anything going on with the Ultimate Haunt Tour have not been to that haunt yet.
That's what's exciting about it. There is so many hidden gems out there in our
(07:24):
country, and I really feel like it is one of them.
I think people are going to be extremely happy that we added this to the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
And once again, I was talking a little bit about sponsors. So before we talk
about the third haunt, VFX and Halloween Shirt Company came back again as sponsors
for the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
But we brought some friends with um cfx and
(07:48):
haunt pay both jumped on board as sponsors for
the ultimate on tour this time awesome lots of fun things going on but right
after we leave go ahead and say the name leslie again abattoir which means slaughterhouse
oh is that what it means so fancy for that public slaughterhouse for cattle
sheep etc mostly used in the early 19th century
(08:11):
there we go yeah she is like of
course leslie knows that so we're gonna
head up to shattered nightmare that's gonna be fun i have not been to that haunt
yet either have any of you guys no i've never been to indiana except like driving
through all my cross-country trips so these are all new to for me oh this is
(08:32):
gonna be fun for you then are you guys going on a haunt
tour i didn't even see whether you guys are on there i'm not getting
in until like 8 p.m thursday night so i'm not
even gonna make it okay okay so the
cool thing about this haunt tour is not only do we go to five really really
good haunts we actually this haunt tour is so big that we actually travel through
(08:53):
time zones i like that that's a cool that's a cool fact in the haunt tour that
That actually travels through the time.
And if we could have done it a couple of days earlier, maybe we could have done
it during a solar eclipse. Because all these haunts. Oh, that would have been cool.
All these haunts are. Here's another fun fact for Leslie.
(09:15):
All these haunts are located within the 100 percentile of the solar eclipse.
Oh, my God. Holy moly. That's pretty good.
So there's a cool little fun fact. I wish I could have got that out sooner. Yeah, seriously.
And then after that, we are going to Indiana, excuse me, Indianapolis,
and we're going to visit Necropolis Underground.
(09:37):
I have been to that haunt before.
It blows, I mean, blows you away. Yeah.
I have seen video. I have heard all kinds of stories coming out of Necropolis. It looks phenomenal.
Yeah, it is definitely a great, great haunt to go to.
I'm excited that it's on the Haunt Tour. And then, of course,
we are going to finish it up with the anchor of the tour.
(10:00):
The one that most people are super excited about going to see,
Nightmare on Edgewood. Kevin Pass.
His haunt is, I mean, people, I know people who travel during the regular season
to go to that haunt and wait a night.
They've won multiple awards. It's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun.
So we're finish up the tour there.
(10:22):
And then we head back to Owenborough to get kicked off for Friday and the beer expo.
Love it. So listeners, if any of you are interested in trying to squeeze into
one of the last seats on the ultimate haunt tour, you need to go to ultimate
haunt tour.com like right now, as you're listening to the podcast and get your name on the list.
Well, and I want to say one more thing for those of you who
(10:44):
are thinking you know what what's the
ultimate haunt tour all about we brought this
when we were first negotiating about
haunt con and talking to them and they
had the haunt tours we said that we
were willing to get involved and take over excuse me
the haunt tours but the key for us was
(11:06):
it had to be about the haunts we make sure that
that every penny that's brought in takes care goes
directly towards the travel the food
that you're going to eat and then the rest of it goes to the haunts we do
not make money off from these tours everything is given
back to the haunts because during this time of the year i mean those haunts
(11:26):
need that extra money to it's a tough time yeah yeah and so when you're supporting
the ultimate haunt tour you're not supporting fear expo you're not supporting
hong kong i mean what What you're supporting is these haunts on this tour.
And, you know, just to kind of put a staple on that, you got a pretty big support
coming up in November in Alabama.
(11:48):
Ultimate Haunt Tour will be visiting 10 haunts in three days. Holy moly!
So make sure you go to the ultimatehaunttour.com. We've already got the names
of the 10 haunts in there.
And I will be the, if you can get on bus one, which means you have to be the
first 50 people to buy tickets, I will be your coach.
So I actually will be on bus one for the first time. I've never been on one
(12:11):
of our tours. Yeah. Yeah. No.
What does a hunt tour cost? That one's $385. The one in Indiana is $235.
Beautiful. Go check it out, people. Because time is running out.
Definitely. We're already planning 2025 hunt tour.
I love it. I love it. That is Thursday night. And then Fear Expo itself.
(12:36):
Excuse me. That's Thursday. Not just the night. Most of Thursday.
But then Fear Expo itself actually kicks off Friday morning.
With one of my favorite parts of Fear Expo, the networking event.
And actually just before that, though, it kicks off with our networking breakfast.
So a new sponsor this year, a new attitude, FIBO is the sponsor for the VIP day.
(13:02):
So Friday is the FIBO Friday VIP day. Nice.
And we're going to start out with a breakfast. So if you can show up between
7 and 830, you can have breakfast on us.
If you have a VIP ticket and that's the first opportunity to meet people,
we will have the bar open with the Bloody Marys and, you know,
all the cool little breakfast drinks that you can get. What's the orange juice in? Mimosa.
(13:26):
Mimosa. Yeah, that's my go-to.
So make sure you show up between 7 and 8.30 to take part in the breakfast.
And then, like you said, we are going to do the networking speed dating vendor and haunt owner.
And this is happening early this time because a lot of people love the fact
(13:48):
that we did it but they hated that we did it after the show floor yeah they
really wanted to have an opportunity to meet everyone and then go to the show
floor and see their booth and and i think that's genius.
Because that's exactly what i was doing when i went can you guys hear me okay
because i just got a weird buzz i can hear you fine yeah me too that was what
i was doing when i went on Now you're buzzing.
(14:10):
Now you're buzzing. Oh, yeah. Now you're all weirdos.
I think you just can't prove to us that he heard it. Yeah, it's better. Yeah. Weird.
So you're buzzing with us like this, but we hear you fine. And then you flip
it and we hear you buzzing and you hear fine. Brilliant. That'll be helpful.
So that's what I was doing when I went to the speed networking event.
I made a ton of connections and then went on the show floor and was able to
(14:34):
talk with them in more detail of all the things they could offer.
That's correct. Correct. And so that was a suggestion from quite a few people.
So the speed networking or speed dating, as we like to call it,
because it feels like speed dating.
You sit down, all the hot owners this time get to sit.
Instead of walking around like they do on the show floor, vendors are moving
(14:57):
from table to table and they have 30 seconds to give their best elevator pitch
on why I should network with you. Exactly.
And then every three minutes, we pick one vendor. They're typically the one
who's the slowest and doesn't like to sit down very quickly to stand up in the
middle and give an elevator pitch to the entire group all at once. So it's a lot of fun.
(15:18):
We've got prizes this time. I've got a blow horn. We've got the big clock on the wall.
We've got a big timer. So we're ready for this one.
Alicia from Scared of My Shadow is going to be the host helping me get this taken care of.
And I might even throw the reins over to her and I might take part in this event
this time. But that is from 9 until...
(15:41):
I think yeah nine until noon thank
you yeah got the whole morning blocked out for it yeah it's definitely
a lot of fun um we're gonna have a lot of tables so we're
gonna need a lot of time to get through everyone yeah yeah after
so that takes us all the way up to lunchtime and it
sounds like you have something very special planned for lunch stan winston
(16:02):
is the sponsor of the new artist mixer
luncheon that we're going to be doing so we're doing
a kentucky bourbon burger bar whole little plates
and you get to go and you know grab your burger and
grab some other little munchies to go along with it
and walk around network with everyone grab a drink this one this time it might
(16:22):
go to a little bit more of an afternoon type bar with some afternoon drinks
and head over to where we have some artists doing their thing whether they're
sculptors or whether Whether they're painters,
you're going to be able to get an opportunity to see the work they do,
get to know them, grab a card, and hopefully hire them to do a project at your attraction.
(16:44):
Or if you're a vendor, an opportunity to maybe include them in some of the work you do as a vendor.
So the networking, just the morning networking is going to be invaluable. It's going to be so cool.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Les, do you want to take the afternoon?
Sure. What are we doing in the afternoon? Let me go look at the notes. Ha ha.
(17:07):
I got stuck on the show floor map.
There we go. That's where we're going next, too. Yep. So...
Friday night. Nope, not nighttime. That's not, you gotta go to two o'clock. Two o'clock.
Two o'clock to six o'clock. We're gonna go to the show floor.
Okay. But just for VIPs at this point. Yes, this is the Brutal Rust show floor.
(17:31):
The show sponsor for the show floor this year is Brutal Rust.
We are going to open a show floor for all the VIPs. They're gonna get plenty
of time to walk through from two to six this year.
So instead of three hours, we gave them four. And this is going to give them
an opportunity to meet all the vendors they talked to during the speed dating,
buy the items that they want to purchase,
(17:53):
and also head to Brew to Rust booth for a drink or two or three.
Who knows? It all depends on how you're feeling.
Hey, I don't know if you can tell, there is kind of an overarching continuation
of events here. I'm sensing a trend.
We have a bar at everywhere.
(18:18):
Someone even joked with me and says, Hey, if I go into the bathroom,
is the maitre d' going to be in the bathroom?
I said, wow, that's something to think about. Yeah. Beer Expo 25.
(18:56):
To the vendor about maybe special orders about whether you can do different
colors you know what are some of the things involved in your products and this
gives you that chance yeah yeah yeah,
So then, Leslie, in the afternoon.
So then we go to the dinner and a show.
(19:17):
Yes. Yes. And this will be the first time this year that we did this kind of
at Hong Kong where we had a seated dinner and then we had a comedy.
Well, John did something like that for Fear Expo. And we said,
you know what? Instead of comedy, let's go with a magician.
We brought a magician in all the way from Canada. He's a haunter in Canada.
(19:39):
And we were like, you know what? This is cool. He was talking about coming to Fear Expo anyways.
We went back and forth. Willie May is handling all of the entertainment this year.
He came up with the idea of using this young man as a magician for the show.
So you're going to have a great sit-down dinner. And on top of that,
you're going to get an opportunity to watch a magic show from a haunter.
(20:03):
That sounds like a blast. Who's catering dinner?
What can we expect who's catering it
or where's the food coming from oh we're gonna
be right there at the convention center they have their own catering ah i
didn't realize the convention center offered that too that's awesome yeah no
where if you want some you have to show up
on wednesday if you want some of the barbecue yeah the
(20:26):
vendor dinner wednesday we
take and we didn't even talk about that but all the vendors who show
up on wednesday they all get to the vendors appreciation dinner and
that's going to be at the moonlight barbecue and that's all
you can eat barbecue oh man that
sounds so good it's it's amazing it's one of my favorite things about going
(20:46):
to owensboro yeah seriously so once the magician is all over with then all hell
breaks Talk about the hell's a poppin' circus sideshow.
Yes. I have to be very honest. Until I...
(21:07):
Until I really read about this company, I had no idea who they were,
and I never realized how big they are. They travel all over the country.
They've been doing this for over 20 years.
And on top of that, they've actually set up at over 3,500 attractions to do
(21:28):
events during the weekend, during Halloween. Wayne.
So Hans actually can hire this company to come in and put on a show whether
it's a small show with one or two other freaks or a big show like what we're
going to have at Fair Expo. Our show is an hour and a half long.
Wow. But it's all like circus sideshow acts.
Yes. Yep. Oh, that sounds awesome. Hanging from hooks, shooting,
(21:53):
putting a sword down your belly, you know, all those freaky kind of make you go.
Oh, my gosh. I cannot wait to see it. And all of this is free with the VIP ticket.
If you have a VIP ticket, everything we talked about is all included.
We have an agenda for you from the morning you wake up or from the minute you
(22:16):
wake up to the time it's time to tuck you in.
So yeah, VIP tickets is a way to go.
Really, we took the price of the food and we even took a couple bucks off and
said, hey, we're going to pitch a little in for food.
And that's what we charge you. So none of the events, nothing else that's included is being charged.
You're really just paying for the food. Yeah.
(22:37):
And it sounds like you limited the number of VIP tickets who were going to be
available for the show. Accurate? We did. We did.
We had to make sure that we didn't oversell this for VIP.
So we had to put a limit on this year to make sure that we had room for everyone. We only have about...
About 60 more VIP tickets left and we're completely sold out.
(22:59):
So if you've not got your VIP ticket, you're going to want to do that very soon.
So what does the VIP ticket cost?
So the VIP ticket is $150.
That's it? Yep. And it covers everything. Holy moly. That's amazing.
Yeah, $150. And actually we had our VIP plus tickets, which even included your
(23:19):
hotel rooms and included the haunt tour.
So it was an all-inclusive ticket. ticket.
We sold out of those because the hotels are both sold out now.
So that's another thing. If you want to come to fear expo, don't look at the
hotels directly next to fear expo.
You're going to have to look at the other ones in Owensboro there.
I did check this morning and three of the hotels that are within five minutes
(23:43):
away, all still have a few rooms left.
So there are rooms. It's just, you're not going to be walking distance.
You're going to be a little More of a drive. Yeah, drive or Uber.
But there's free parking at the convention center.
Yes. And there's a lot of parking available.
Oh, yeah, plenty. Yep. So we just talked about everything that is available for the VIPs on Friday.
(24:06):
Not yet. We have one more thing.
We have Mr. Lugosi. Yes. The muses that's going to be after House of Poppin'.
So we got a band for you. And this band is amazing.
They are pumped. They are 100% in the genre for Halloween, for haunted attractions.
(24:28):
I mean, they basically were begging us to come to the show because they are
so excited about everyone that we have involved.
They love How's It Poppin'. So this band is going to bring it.
I mean, directly after How's It Poppin' gets over, we're going to bring you
over to the East Ballroom.
Room the band's going to be set up and you're going to be able to
(24:50):
rock with the band they're going to do an hour show to your
standing room i mean we're it's going to be a
lot of fun so make sure that um
you get plenty as well if you're on the haunt tour i guess you won't get plenty
of sleep you uh you take a lot of energy pills yeah i say just just for friday
you know welcome breakfast starts at 7 a.m and you guys have activities you
(25:15):
know completely all the way up to midnight on Friday night.
So yeah, definitely something, you know, plan ahead, make sure you catch up
on your sleep in advance and have some time the next week to catch up again.
And I think, you know, there's, I've had a lot of people and I've done a lot of these interviews.
And one of the questions everyone keeps asking me is, you know,
you guys are a trade show, but what really makes you guys different from some
(25:39):
of the other trade shows?
And I think the fact that we are agenda driven.
We want to give you something to do from the moment you get there to the time that you leave.
We want to make sure that it's an experience for you.
Fear Expo has always been about the experience. And every year we just kind
of update experience just a little bit more. Yeah, seriously.
(26:01):
I think it's beneficial too, because you go to a trade show,
you walk there's not a lot of, you know, dedicated opportunities to...
Talk to these hot owners, talk to these vendors outside of the trade show.
So you're pretty much just relying on a massive room with a million people wandering
around to try and get information, make your sales on both sides of the equation.
(26:24):
Whereas with what we have here, especially with the VIP, you have the ability
to really get to know the people that are there.
And then you can go through, do your purchases, do your orders,
make those connections, do your networking, But you're given an opportunity
and a situation where it's designed to do that first and then you do your purchasing.
(26:48):
Exactly. Yeah. You're making personal connections with these companies.
You're not just a buyer. You're making that connection.
Part of the family. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think there's going to be a little bit of difference.
We did have some people, well, your VIP was 65 last year and it's 150 this year.
Well last year was the first year that we
(27:10):
kind of knew what we wanted to do but we didn't want
to get all the way to where we needed to be yeah
i don't think as far as money wise i just meant as far as
the experience sure we had to get to a
certain point of what where the
show's going to grow to be and this show you know i
think if if you remember back three years ago when i first
started talking to you about fear expo i said that it's
(27:33):
going to be about the experience it's going going to be a vip show now
don't get me wrong saturday and we
still have a lot of stuff to do for the general admission and that's
what we didn't touch on friday yeah that's exactly where we
want to go next yep as the general mission so we can talk about that right now
if you want yeah and that's what i was going to say like the we've talked about
everything that the vips have available to them but there's more that will be
(27:58):
accessible for anyone who buys even just the the general admission ticket starting
at noon on Friday. So what's happening?
So starting at noon on Friday, not only will we have the VIP events going on,
and I don't want to say only the general admission people can go to the classes.
If you see a class you really want to go to and you want to jump out of the
(28:19):
VIP event to go take a class, you can, because there's some really good classes.
We have two rooms on Friday running at the same time.
Emily Bloom starts off at noon yes she's doing
makeup room management oh that's that's
that's a that's a necessary class because that's a lot of
that's a lot of pieces you know to to do especially if you're running more than
(28:41):
a handful of people in a haunt and emily bloom has ran quite a few different
makeup rooms so she knows what she's doing she knows what she's talking about
that is a great class so that's where where we started off at noon in room two,
Kelsey Living's good is going to be talking about how indie film acting and
(29:01):
haunt acting coincide, how you can go from being a haunt actor to the indie film industry.
This was something that I, you really focused on at first.
Haunt con down in florida but so i'm
glad to see bringing some of that into fear expo as well yeah it's
it's exciting that kelsey's going to be there and it's definitely a class
(29:22):
you're going to want to take if you're an actor and interested in doing any
type of indie film acting and then morgan spencer at 115 is going to do haunt
makeup 101 uh talking about the basics you know what are They're the things
that every haunt makeup artist should know.
Everything from making veins to putting on the correct layers.
(29:44):
I'm not a makeup artist at all, but that's definitely something you're going to want to check out.
On Friday in room two is Joshua Overturn.
He's from CFX 115. Silicone masks.
Silicone 101. Talking about masks. Excellent.
So that's going to be really cool to see Joshua in there.
(30:07):
Teaching from cfx and then go back
to room one at 2 30 you have
richard kumo richard has been to
every fear expo plus honk-honk teaching
classes he is always killing it one of the best one of the best classes i go
to and he's going to talk about fast painting techniques how to make that wood
(30:31):
grain look i'm using tools and tricks for any type of facade painting so So this is more of a,
it's not so much the paint for the body.
You know, we're not talking about makeup here. We're talking about set design. Set design. Thank you.
Yeah. And if he can do it. And again, the, the.
(30:52):
We always want to put so much detail into our haunts, but that also can take
so much time that none of us have.
So having that ability to learn, how do you do this quickly? What are the tools?
What are the tricks? You know, how can you use something in a manner that it's
not exactly intended for, but
be really, really successful in getting the facade that you want to see?
Exactly. And then room two, Jason Thomas, he is a brand new instructor to us,
(31:22):
but he's been teaching for a long time.
And he is also from the indie horror side.
He's coming in to talk about taking your haunt to the next level.
Everything from how you should be advertising your haunt,
how you should be promoting your haunt, different scares that
you could be using the the looking at
(31:42):
your haunt he says looking at your haunt from a thousand feet
in the air and not just being down
into the the basics but looking at
it and saying and seeing what other people see yeah so
that's going to be a great class very excited he's
teaching that class and then at 345 we got
the master michael green michael is
(32:03):
the master of body painting michael green i mean here beyond the show floor
all days for teaching in his booth and given him are given all kinds of lessons
on body painting but here's a chance you get for mastering the airbrush for makeup and fx.
And then Brian Wilkins is going to do some scare actor training in room two at 345.
(32:27):
He said, make sure that you do your stretches before his class.
And you get involved in pretty cool scare acting.
So if you are not involved in the VIP, you still have a reason to be there Friday.
These classes are great.
I know for a fact, I, as an owner, would probably send my GM to half these classes.
(32:50):
And I go to the other half because there are some really good classes here.
And we talked about this earlier, but like one price, all the classes are included.
There's no additional cost for any of these classes, except for,
you know, the few make and takes where you actually get to bring something home
and you have to pay for the materials.
We didn't do make and takes this time. No make and takes this time.
No make and takes. We wanted it to be all free classes.
(33:10):
It was too confusing with the make and takes, so we just took them off.
Fair, fair. So you pay one price and you can attend any of the classes,
get all of these skills, build up your own skill set. So yeah.
And so that shows you there's a lot more to do. Now, also, if you have a general
admission ticket, you are invited to go to House of Poppin and the concert afterwards.
(33:32):
It's just a $25 additional ticket price to go to House of Poppin. That's not bad.
Which is, I mean, they sell tickets for $60. Yeah.
So. Seriously.
So Friday night, excuse me, Friday, the entirety of Friday, Friday,
absolutely packed with opportunities for you to get out there and network,
get out there, get some new skills.
(33:53):
And for the VIPs, checking out the show floor early, getting those orders in
that first day before the show floor gets absolutely crazy on Saturday.
Before we jump into Saturday, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors and then.
Music.
(34:25):
Let's talk Saturday. Wow. Saturday, be ready because the Hauntmaster classes
start at 8 a.m. Again, we're running two rooms again.
I'm just going to name them really quick, if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely.
I'm not going to talk a lot, but make sure you go to peerexpolive.com.
(34:46):
Go to seminars and check out all the classes. We have Mitch Milton,
David Quinn, Crest Winchester, Slider Jesus, Richard Kumo, Jason Thomas,
Jordue Shale is coming in to teach a class,
Catherine Craig, Justin Hill, Leonard Pickle, Katie Brito, David Frayer.
(35:11):
I can never say his last name right. Frayer?
Frayer, yeah. Hold on. Give me a second.
I gotta get to the right page and i'll let you know.
The classes are so
good on saturday you need to check them out but
then on top of it we have our makeup stage going on all day
(35:33):
long on the show floor it's brought to you by mile high fx we have wicked fx
on there at 10 o'clock insane production cnc insane productions doing fire and
ice body body painting at one at 11 o'clock false creepy corner doing night of neon zombies at 2 PM,
a bloody good fashion show brought to you by monsters alive,
(35:57):
FSA design and Brandy beast at four o'clock.
And then five o'clock is the makeup recovery demo.
Just, just for Saturday. And those are just classes.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a ton more happening Saturday as well.
Kicking off in the morning once again for
the vip ticket holders you want breakfast coffee and
(36:19):
pastries or will be in the vip lounge and not to mention most
of you who got your hotel rooms they have free breakfast on
saturday um so double check your hotel room and see but i know the two host
hotels both have free breakfast and then we have coffee and pastries open till
11 o'clock in the vip lounge for all of our vips including our vendors and then
(36:40):
once we clean up the mess from from the pastries and sweep up all the crumbs.
We're going to go ahead and serve you an Italian pasta lunch. If you're a VIP.
So the VIPs get to go in there and have a lunch on us. And that includes all of our vendors.
We always feed our vendors. Really appreciated.
(37:01):
Much appreciated.
And you get plenty of opportunity to walk the show floor.
There's going to be a lot of great costumes and masks. and the vendors that
are at the show fuller this year.
Every year, I just feel so excited about the fact that we have so many great
(37:21):
people in this industry that support each other.
And to see the vendors that we have that support Fear Expo, it just really makes
me really happy to be part of this.
So I'm not going to go through them all because it would take a while.
Like you said, there's 120. 120 but brutal rust
is going to be their purgatory props vfx creates
(37:44):
916 production brandy b
cfx you know chaotic creations
dark creations atx is
coming out of they haven't done that show in a little while now they're
coming back fancy pants patches fear
productions fright bros jellybug ghostly productions
global special effects haunting you
(38:07):
is going to be in in the house yeah we are a haunt
lawyer foam company george duchelle is going to have a booth midnight studios
malice productions lifeless creations monsters alive mortal remains project
backfire i am jumping about six people and just quickly saying a name scarecrow creation sapphire,
(38:32):
Scrappy Costumes, Scurry Face.
Slaughterhouse FX, and Steward Designs, and so many more. But that just gives you an idea.
I mean, it is a cool show floor this year. It really is.
I'm so excited. I see so many of my favorite companies here,
and many of the Haunting You podcast sponsors are on here as well.
We have great partnership with Purgatory Props and with Cython.
(38:55):
VFX is, of course, one of my favorite companies. I have several of their,
so many of their props now. I love them. Oh my God. I love them.
CFX Tabitha and Josh are just such great people to talk to.
No, so knowledgeable about the masks and they're, they had, do they do demos
on the show floor showing how all their products can work?
And it is so freaking cool. Yeah.
(39:19):
It's going to be fun. It's going to be so much fun. I mean, how do you even
get to like everybody who is out there on the show floor?
There's so many awesome vendors to, uh,
to stop by i don't know i'm gonna be busy
that's why we say that basically
from the time you show up at fair expo to the time you
(39:39):
leave we've got something planned for you yeah you
should not be hungry you should not be thirsty and you
should not be bored there's just
something for you to do the whole time whether you're a vip or
general mission either way there's a lot of
action going going on good thing the show floor is open from
10 to 5 because we're going to need every minute of that to to
(40:01):
get through it all and then once we can get the
show floor closed up we're going to head upstairs and we're going to give away our
fear expo vendor awards everyone's welcome to come up and see which vendors
won awards again this year it's been a lot of fun doing these vendor awards
and the honkron one we just had vfx is a two-time winner so we have to see If
(40:22):
they end up pulling out a three-peat,
a cat trick, as you might call it.
And then once the awards is over with, head back to your hotel,
get your scariest circus costume on.
I'm really, really excited about the theme that Blooms FX came up with for this one, the circus idea.
(40:45):
There are just so many ways you can go. You can do the freak show.
You can do the stitch clowns. i mean there's a
lot of ideas here for a circus and i
you you talked a bit about like
the costume contest for haunt con anything similar
happening here at fear expo yes circus they have
(41:07):
a costume contest with lots and lots of
prizes um i believe they're all on the website i don't
know all the prizes i do know there's some really good ones though and once
again excuse me blooms fx is still looking for some donations if anyone wants
to donate anything towards the costume ball for the prizes but yes they're going
(41:27):
to be giving away some cool prizes for the best costume.
Pulling a bit pulling it up right now and it's
absolutely free to go to the costume ball as well
yep open open it's free we want
you there yep it says every
ticketed attendee is eligible to enter the costume contest to win a
third second or first place prize whether wear your best costume for
(41:48):
the chance to win so not oh my gosh holy
i'm looking at the list of who is contributing to
the prize blue meth x hong kong's doing vip passes
the holiday inn owensboro riverfront you
get a free room and breakfast dental distortions through a hundred
dollar gift card in there neely's whiskey tour
love that project backfire has
(42:08):
got a gift basket bloody mary fx 25 gift card
dark creations a 25 gift card killer stencils pocket patches cff vx cfx vfx
scream skate spoot teak holy moly it's no scrubs it's a good it's a good deal
it's a great deal absolutely Absolutely freaking love it.
(42:31):
And that ends at midnight. So two nights in a row, we got you out to midnight.
Going to midnight every night.
There's time to sleep later. Sleep when you get back. I don't think the long tour is three nights.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I mean, stuff is kicking off bright and early Sunday
morning again, aren't they?
We've got classes starting at eight o'clock. Eight o'clock classes again.
(42:54):
And believe it or not, people will be there at eight o'clock to go to those. There always are.
Oh, yeah. And for good reason as well. Like we've got, let me pull this up a
little bit bigger so I can read it better.
Justin Hill doing distressed costumes to die for in room one.
Jim Candelaria doing animatronics. How do they work?
Your basic animatronics class, 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. So great reason to get out of bed.
(43:19):
Yeah. And we've got even more classes after that.
What are some of the other ones? I see Leonard Pickles teaching a class,
Haunt Design Do's and Don'ts. I have taken that class the previous years and learned so much.
It is a phenomenal class for doing room design and haunt design.
And if you've seen it once, go see it again because you're going to pick up
something new. Absolutely. Absolutely.
(43:42):
Rob O'Brien, you stink. How to care for your costumes. Oh, that's an important one.
Underrated, but important. Oh, but this, this is the one that I really want
to go to. David Quinn is teaching a stilt walking class.
I got into stilt walking a year, a couple.
Heck, has it been two years now? It just started, but I want to hear from the
(44:03):
expert because I'm just, you know, trying to teach myself and let's just say it's painful.
You're just starting out to hurt yourself. It's painful teaching yourself. yourself michael
rouse samuel bloon kane walkins nathan alred all
teaching classes on sunday from between eight
and one or two and while
(44:25):
you're sitting in your classes or you're on
the show floor back at the excuse me i had to switch my screen here real quick
fear expo is giving away weigh $3,000 in haunt cash for you to go ahead and
use anywhere in the show floor that you want to.
(44:48):
That's absolutely insane. How is that going to work?
Every half an hour, starting at 1030, Fear Expo will draw a name from all of
the, if you have a pass or excuse me, a general mission or a VIP, you are entered.
And that That includes all of our vendors and all of our speakers.
(45:09):
So don't have to do anything extra to enter just by showing up.
I am automatically entered.
All you have to do though, is be there at on Sunday.
If you leave before Sunday and we call your name, no one wins that prize.
No one. You're not going to give it to someone else. We don't withdraw.
We don't withdraw. You gotta be there.
(45:31):
So this is, this is to mo, I mean, we give people, We actually call people and
this happened at Hong Kong.
We had someone that we drew at 11 o'clock and they were 45 minutes away because
they had just left and they turned around and came back.
I mean, I would. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Where will the giveaway be happening? On the show floor? On the show floor,
(45:54):
but we will be announcing it in all the rooms as well.
So if you're in classes, you'll still be able to hear it. But plan on staying
through Sunday because we are going to give away $500 every half an hour that
you can use on the show floor.
And it includes all of our speakers. All of our employees are actually allowed to be part of this.
It's a big reward for everyone who is part of Fear Expo.
(46:18):
I love it. Absolutely love it. and I have already got some plans in the back
of my mind for what I would use that for. I am so lucky.
I am very sorry, Deano, but the bar does not take the money. Dang it.
Back to the drawing board. Get out of my head, Doug. How do you know?
(46:41):
We also have the scavenger hunt going on Friday through Sunday too.
Yes, talk. I saw that on the website. side tell what is
happening with the scavenger hunt i'm i'm not familiar with this so this
is brought to you by one of our and
for some reason the link's not working here so it's
actually brought to us by one of our vendors and now
(47:04):
you're gonna the link's not working and i can't
figure out why if it works for me no same
thing is it working it's not working for you right now too i need
to go to a different screen and
see if it worked real quick but anyways so they're going to to have a scavenger hunt
on the show floor you're going to be able to go to one of the vendors it will be
in your welcome package and it's also an email that's going out and they've
(47:26):
got all kinds of prizes lined up that they've gotten from different vendors
on the show floor and you're be able to do an actual scavenger hunt on your
phone to find certain hidden gems that are there,
on the show floor maybe in one of the classes and then the people who find the
items end up winning winning different prizes.
(47:47):
And I don't have all that information, but you will have it in your vendors
pack or in your attendees package.
And hopefully shortly after we finish recording this, the website will get fixed
magically and we'll be able to access it there. There's a text going out right now.
(48:08):
So just an absolutely action-packed weekend from Thursday all the way till the
show floor closes on Sunday, 2 o'clock, you have no excuse to not have something
to do because there is just so much going on over the course of these four days.
So let's talk logistics real quick. We already talked. General admission tickets are $25.
You have the VIP tickets, only about 60 tickets left if you want to try to jump
(48:33):
in on the VIP. Robert Leonard,
We talked a little bit about hotels. It sounds like the hotels closest to the
convention center are already sold out, but there are plenty of opportunities
still in the city of Owensboro.
So you can check out one of the other hotels nearby.
How do you get to Fear Expo? What are the easiest ways? ways?
So the way that we set fear expo up is that it's, it's a basically six hour
(49:00):
drive from anywhere in, you know, the whole central part of the country.
So like even Michigan, you're six hours away, Florida, you're six hours away,
Pennsylvania, you're six hours away.
So a lot of people drive to fear expo on the borough of Kentucky,
just outside of Louisville, south of Indianapolis, just to the west of St. Louis.
(49:23):
I mean, it's in the, it's in the heart of the heartlands.
So driving is always a possibility. Obviously Google, you know,
fear expo, the, if you're going to fly into fear expo, I do know there's some
delays this year because of the solar eclipse.
There have been interesting things going on with that, but flying into Louisville
(49:44):
or flying Flying into Evansville is is a good thought.
You can check and see if there's planes going into Owensboro,
but I know a lot of times this late in the game, it's going to be a couple could be a big delay.
Yeah, I had a hard time finding flights direct to Owensboro. So Louisville for me.
Yeah, going to Louisville. The other thing you can do is fly into St. Louis.
And I know St. Louis has a direct flight to Owensboro to that's another way to do it.
(50:07):
Go to our website. If you go to fear expo.com. We figured all this out and you
go to travel hotels, everything's on there.
It's there's no guessing. There's no, you know, we've even got Airbnb on there.
We've got everything. Yeah. Check it out.
Fear expo live.com has just a ton of information, even like information about
(50:28):
Owensboro itself, things to do best places to eat or drink local events that
they've got going on outside of fear expo.
Just a ton of information can be found right there on the website. Exactly.
I pressed buttons and it won't close. There we go. Les, what did we miss?
I mean, probably a lot just because there's so much going on.
(50:50):
But with that said, I think we hit all the big pieces. Are there any,
is the show floor booked?
Are there any places available for vendors if they still want to try to get in?
You know, I would still send me something because you never know if something might change.
But we've been sold out for about a month now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
No, that's a good sign for all the attendees, at least.
(51:13):
And vendors if you're interested uh there's always fear expo 25 keep it in mind plan ahead,
plan ahead exactly okay doug yes what is the one thing more than anything else
that you want our listeners to remember about fear expo before we let you go
the one thing i want you to remember about it yeah they remember nothing else
(51:34):
when they stop listening to this podcast what do you you want that to be?
I think the most important thing for people to take away from Fear Expo this
year is the growth of our industry and how you're going to see new vendors there.
You're going to see some great vendors that have been around for a long time.
The education, the people who are giving so much back to help train and help
(51:58):
support each other in this industry.
I don't think you see that as much at some other places, but at Fear Expo,
you can really see that people really give back.
And we're going to continue to grow Fear Expo because of the fact that we have
so many great vendors and speakers and attendees.
So at the end of the day, I want you, if I can leave you with one word for Fear
(52:22):
Expo, it's going to be is experience.
I want you to really enjoy Enjoy the experience that you're going to have.
Absolutely. And I am so looking forward to the experience.
So, Doug, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk about Fear Expo.
Fear Expo is happening at the Owensboro Convention Center in Owensboro,
Kentucky, April 12th to the 14th, 11th, if you're going to make it in for the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
(52:46):
I hope to see you all there. Booth 707 is where the Haunting You podcast will be stationed.
Right next to the Big Scary Show. Right next to the Big Scary Show. There you go.
Oh, we can find you a better place. I'm so sorry.
I got to tell a quick story. I'm hoping Drew Badger is the one who will be coming
(53:07):
because I accidentally slighted him when I was at Midsummer Scream last summer.
He gave me a lead. I had to go talk to Spencer Terry, president of the Hunter
Attraction Association, and forgot to come back and do an interview with him.
So I'm hoping to rectify that during Fear Expo this year.
Ha ha ha!
(53:28):
Yeah, I think, I think it is true, but I don't know. It might be, I don't know.
I actually think it is true, but we'll find out for sure. Really soon. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. It'll be a good surprise when I get there.
So Doug, thank you so much for
taking the time out and I can't wait to see you at fear expo. All right.
I appreciate you having me on here. And Leslie, thank you for being the smartest person in the room.
(53:53):
Someone's got to be because it's not going to be me. She usually is.
Glad I could help. And John, it was great talking with you as well.
Thanks, Doug. Holy shit, I am so excited to go to Fear Expo. Drink.
I was waiting for that. Has it, like, has me saying I'm excited lost all meaning yet?
(54:16):
50-50. It's still a reason to drink. It's still a reason to drink.
So there is joy involved. There is definitely joy involved.
So I mentioned Hunting You podcast will be at booth 707. I will be there.
Please come see me so that I'm not lonely.
I thrive on getting to meet everybody.
If I'm not at the booth, look for the sign. There's a good chance I am somewhere
(54:37):
on the show floor interviewing some of the amazing vendors showing off their
products and hopefully bringing all of that to you.
If you cannot make it to Fear Expo,
definitely go check out all of our socials, facebook.com slash haunting you, just the letter U,
at Haunting You for YouTube, at hunting university for instagram that is where
we'll be posting all of the media that is coming out of the show so if you can't
(55:01):
make it to the show definitely go follow all of our socials so that you can
see it there are you bringing an extra bag for swag and such i'm so.
I'm so annoyed like i have to be detecting no no no it's okay i have to fly
normally i would drive to a convention so that i can bring back space so i have
(55:22):
plenty of space to bring stuff but like,
i'm trying to figure out right now how i can get all of the like audio equipment
i need in order to do the live broadcast from the show floor at fear expo because
that is going to happen I haven't figured out how yet, but it's going to happen.
But I have to bring all of that, which means I am very limited on what I can
(55:43):
bring back and I'm not okay with it.
So maybe some of them can ship it to you as well.
There is certainly that. If
I do larger purchases, most vendors are willing to ship. They will ship.
But here's the thing. I'm moving. So where do I ship it to?
If it shows up between
(56:05):
or actually you know we'll be swinging through Colorado so maybe I just ship
it to you guys and then I can pick it up there on the way oh I'm not a responsible
person I know you're not I wasn't I was not looking at you when I said you guys
I was definitely looking at Leslie I mean you technically you are looking at me,
yeah he who doesn't have his camera on.
(56:26):
I have discussed this my son likes to tackle the arrangement I know.
I want to watch that. I don't see it as a problem. I don't either.
I mean, in the middle of a podcast with a guest on, it's just like,
so Doug, it's a haunting podcast.
I don't think anybody's going to notice. People would love it.
It fits perfectly within the genre.
(56:46):
And besides, if that were to happen, then I could take the video from this,
just cut to just that and put that on our social media.
People would eat that up. They would love it.
Speaking of going viral, but it is.
I sent you the picture yesterday while I'm typing an email. I'm being choked.
(57:09):
It is what it is. Joy's a parent. I do feel bad that you're not going to have...
You're going to have to fight to have room for the audio equipment and the stuff
you buy and the stuff you steal.
So it's just... No theft. There is no theft.
Although... You're giving away so much free stuff. What do I need to steal?
(57:31):
I will say, Simply Pure is right next to where our booth is.
Go in and say hi to them and see if you can't snag me some great samples of CBD stuff.
By snag, you mean... Federal agent. CBD, no THC involved.
Yeah, it doesn't make a difference for me. Really? Yeah.
(57:52):
Hey, wouldn't it be better if you, instead of purchasing it directly, you could,
acquire it without going to stab you okay well i know you want to get me kicked
out of the coast guard i've got six years left we can make six we need the six
years we can make that let's talk about this.
(58:13):
Let's talk real quick about kind of where we're going for the rest of the year so we're
coming up to the end of convention season not actually
the end of convention season because there are conventions running all the way into july if
you want to know more about those uh go check out our website look at the events
page we have everyone that we are aware of listed there but our part of the
convention season is coming to a close and so we're now really looking ahead
(58:34):
to to october and what's going to be happening so in our so upcoming on the
hunting you podcast next,
our next episode will of course be the live broadcast from fear expo we'll have that out,
We'll do it Sunday of Fear Expo. I'm looking at you guys because I hadn't actually
talked to you about this yet.
Sunday is what I was thinking. I'm open to Saturday, but I think Saturday will
(58:56):
be busy. Yeah. Let me know what your schedules look like and we'll make it work.
So we're doing that. May, we have a special guest on from the Candlelighters
who is talking about what they're going to be doing this year.
And we're going to do some brainstorming with them. And then June,
hopefully, if everything works out nicely,
(59:17):
maybe we'll be able to all get ourselves together in a room and do a live from
Leslie's living room type of podcast for June.
That one will definitely not be out June 1st, but during June,
we will put that out as we plan for what the Sanguine Creek Estates will look like for 2024.
(59:40):
So, lots of exciting things coming up in the next few months.
Go check out the socials, subscribe to the podcast, and leave us a rating on
whatever app you use, because that helps other people find the podcast as well.
It does. It gives it a little boost. So, if you want other people to find it, absolutely.
Yes. And we'd love to hear from you and what you think of the podcast and what
(01:00:02):
we're doing. And give us ideas on what type of content you would like to hear.
We want all of that feedback to make this as useful as possible for our listeners.
If you also enjoy the pure sport of thievery, put that on review. Let us know.
You don't even have to steal the podcast. It's free anyway.
I mean, just, you know, maybe theft enthusiasts.
(01:00:24):
You mean pirates? Pirate. If you're a pirate, we're perfect for you.
Okay, you have to understand, that encourages me way more than this way of thinking.
If anything, you just made it cooler.
Yeah, I knew it as soon as it left my mouth.
Piracy. I like it. All right. I think we wrap it up. Let's leave it at piracy.
(01:00:48):
We can't go any better than that. So we'll just drop it at piracy. Let's take us out.
All righty. And thank you for all that. It was great to speak to Doug and hear
all about what's coming up with Fear Expo in April.
And thank you all for listening. And thank you to our sponsors.
And we're going to call it a day. So for everyone, happy haunting.
(01:01:10):
Bye, everyone. We are incredibly thankful to all the sponsors who make this
show possible, particularly our premium sponsors, the Chamber of Haunters and Fear Expo.
You can learn more at chamberofhaunters.com and fearexpolive.com.
Check out the Haunting You podcast.
Music.
(01:02:00):
Is a production of the Rocky Mountain Home Haunters, LLC. All audio clips and
sound effects are used under a Creative Commons attribution or public domain
license from Purple Planet Music at purple-planet.com or the Sound Bible at soundbible.com.
Please see the show notes for more information on all the clips used in this episode.
Music.
(00:17):
Coming to you live from the Chamber of Haunter Studios, this is Haunting You.
I'm Jon Shelton. I'm Keone Hutton. And I'm Leslie Reed.
Welcome back, everyone, to the Haunting You podcast, and happy April!
Holy crap, I cannot believe it is already April. Does anyone else feel like
this month, this year, is just freaking flying by?
Yes, I'm closing the quarter. It's ridiculous. I cannot handle it.
(00:39):
There's too much going on, and that's probably part of the problem.
Yeah. A little background for everyone. one like i'm moving
this summer you're perpetually moving
i'm perpetually moving and the ship is
leaving in like two and a
half weeks roughly and the ship's still broken so like trying to get ready for
(01:00):
the move while trying to get the ship ready to go i need so question for you
since you're moving and you are being given a different assignment yes see when
at what point is the ship ship no longer your problem.
If everything works out May 20th. That's enough time to drill holes.
(01:22):
Honestly, with that ship, I don't even think you need to drill.
You can just kind of like push.
Kick it a little. In the words of Jazz, who has done much makeup for us,
it is the world's most seaworthy cheese grater.
Like I said, no need to drill. Just kind of lean on it. It's got plenty of holes.
A good swift kick will do the trick. You know what a bulping hammer is?
(01:43):
Yes. Yeah, I just take a ball-peen hammer around and start banging on things,
and we'll find all the holes.
Anyway, we're not going to be doing that because she needs to leave in two and
a half weeks. Fair enough. And then I need to leave in two and a half months.
But that's it. We'll get there. We will get there. In the meantime,
April is a super exciting time inside of the haunt industry.
(02:04):
We've got HauntFest coming up just a few days from now. Next weekend,
April 6th and 7th, down in Athens, Georgia, Georgia, Hauntfest, April Ghouls.
Definitely go check it out if you are in the area.
And then brand new this year, at the end of the month, the East Coast Haunters
Convention is happening in Oaks, Pennsylvania, April 27th and 28th.
I don't know how this one's going to go. It's being put on by the same guys who do Transworld.
(02:27):
I think it's going to be interesting. I so wish I could be there.
Unfortunately, I'll be in the middle of the ocean, so I can't be there next
year though, because that's very close to where we'll be in Maryland.
Fingers are crossed. We'll see what happens.
So if you're in the area for either of those, definitely go and check them out.
But today, we are not talking about either of those conventions.
(02:49):
We already talked about Haunt Fest. That was our last episode.
Hopefully, you went and listened to it.
We are here to talk about our favorite convention. I'm even wearing the swag
for it today as we're recording.
Fear Expo happening in Owensboro, Kentucky at the Owensboro Convention Center, April 12th to the 14th.
Holy shit, I'm so excited. Drake.
(03:12):
I did not get to go to Fear Expo last year. Leslie went in our place this year. I was able to pull it off.
So I am going to be there all three days on the show floor.
If you are at Fear Expo, please come see me. Say hello. Pick up a sticker.
We have the big ones this year. I'm very, very excited. I got larger ones than we have had in the past.
Because you do you know how i decide like
(03:34):
what swag to bring i figure out
what i want and then buy that for for
everyone else like i needed a bigger sticker for my truck so yeah
we have bigger stickers this year very excited about that i'm also excited because
my friends from the candlelighters ghost house are also going to be coming to
fear expo i convinced them that they need to come to fear expo so that they
(03:57):
can meet some people and learn some things and And bring all that back to make
the ghost house awesome next year.
So it's going to be a freaking blast in Owensboro, Kentucky,
just two weeks from now. Holy.
And to talk about all of that, we have back with us today, Doug Sheldon.
Welcome to the Haunting You podcast.
Well, thank you very much. I definitely was looking forward to this meeting.
(04:21):
I'm glad we got to get it kicked off. Me too. We are so excited for Fear Expo.
So I've been seeing all the emails that are coming through to kind of talk about
the events and everything else that is happening.
This schedule is absolutely freaking packed.
Let's dig into it. Before Fear Expo even kicks off Thursday,
there is, of course, the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
(04:44):
We're two weeks out. Are there any tickets left?
So we were just talking about that this morning. We are at that tipping point
where we either make a decision to close it or to try and do one more bus.
Uh-huh. So we had a meeting this morning. We're going to leave it open just
to see how it goes over the weekend and make a decision on Monday.
But there is a chance that potentially we are sold out. Yeah, yeah.
(05:10):
So what I'm hearing is anyone who's listening to this podcast today needs to
get their name in the hat right now so that you guys see that there's interest.
Definitely, definitely. Because that's going to make a big decision for us because
if you jump up to an Airbus, I mean, you obviously don't want a bus going half
full. Sure, absolutely, absolutely.
(05:31):
Talk real quick about what people can expect on the Ultimate Haunt Tour in Indiana.
Where are they where are we adventuring this time around because you've had
some pretty solid lineups of haunts for the tour you know we're going to keep
that keep that that trend alive,
no no pun intended you know
(05:51):
the cool thing about this year is we grabbed a couple more sponsors who
wanted to get involved the ultimate haunt tour is really growing to
be a tour that people are looking forward to and
i think the reason behind it is not only do we go to great
haunts haunts we go to all the haunts we're just
going to pick a few that you know are top
name reckoning recognized we want to pick haunts that maybe you haven't heard
(06:15):
of you know haunts that are coming out that are brand new this year like the
first one on the tour of midsville nightmare factory that one's not even open
yet and we're gonna go visit them they're like what i said yeah we're We're going to be there.
So the next one is a bait door. And I hope I'm saying that right. Abattoir.
Thank you. Abattoir. You are the first one who told me that.
(06:37):
So now, and if you're wrong, you just messed me up for the next two weeks,
but a bet avatar. Abattoir. Yeah.
No, I have not. Just,
I have lots of random knowledge. She speaks in multiple languages.
Right. I just assume she's got it right.
(06:59):
I was going to say, I trust that. So I can almost guarantee you that 90% of the people,
if not 95% of the people who have heard this podcast or any other podcast or
anything going on with the Ultimate Haunt Tour have not been to that haunt yet.
That's what's exciting about it. There is so many hidden gems out there in our
(07:24):
country, and I really feel like it is one of them.
I think people are going to be extremely happy that we added this to the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
And once again, I was talking a little bit about sponsors. So before we talk
about the third haunt, VFX and Halloween Shirt Company came back again as sponsors
for the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
But we brought some friends with um cfx and
(07:48):
haunt pay both jumped on board as sponsors for
the ultimate on tour this time awesome lots of fun things going on but right
after we leave go ahead and say the name leslie again abattoir which means slaughterhouse
oh is that what it means so fancy for that public slaughterhouse for cattle
sheep etc mostly used in the early 19th century
(08:11):
there we go yeah she is like of
course leslie knows that so we're gonna
head up to shattered nightmare that's gonna be fun i have not been to that haunt
yet either have any of you guys no i've never been to indiana except like driving
through all my cross-country trips so these are all new to for me oh this is
(08:32):
gonna be fun for you then are you guys going on a haunt
tour i didn't even see whether you guys are on there i'm not getting
in until like 8 p.m thursday night so i'm not
even gonna make it okay okay so the
cool thing about this haunt tour is not only do we go to five really really
good haunts we actually this haunt tour is so big that we actually travel through
(08:53):
time zones i like that that's a cool that's a cool fact in the haunt tour that
That actually travels through the time.
And if we could have done it a couple of days earlier, maybe we could have done
it during a solar eclipse. Because all these haunts. Oh, that would have been cool.
All these haunts are. Here's another fun fact for Leslie.
(09:15):
All these haunts are located within the 100 percentile of the solar eclipse.
Oh, my God. Holy moly. That's pretty good.
So there's a cool little fun fact. I wish I could have got that out sooner. Yeah, seriously.
And then after that, we are going to Indiana, excuse me, Indianapolis,
and we're going to visit Necropolis Underground.
(09:37):
I have been to that haunt before.
It blows, I mean, blows you away. Yeah.
I have seen video. I have heard all kinds of stories coming out of Necropolis. It looks phenomenal.
Yeah, it is definitely a great, great haunt to go to.
I'm excited that it's on the Haunt Tour. And then, of course,
we are going to finish it up with the anchor of the tour.
(10:00):
The one that most people are super excited about going to see,
Nightmare on Edgewood. Kevin Pass.
His haunt is, I mean, people, I know people who travel during the regular season
to go to that haunt and wait a night.
They've won multiple awards. It's going to be, it's going to be a lot of fun.
So we're finish up the tour there.
(10:22):
And then we head back to Owenborough to get kicked off for Friday and the beer expo.
Love it. So listeners, if any of you are interested in trying to squeeze into
one of the last seats on the ultimate haunt tour, you need to go to ultimate
haunt tour.com like right now, as you're listening to the podcast and get your name on the list.
Well, and I want to say one more thing for those of you who
(10:44):
are thinking you know what what's the
ultimate haunt tour all about we brought this
when we were first negotiating about
haunt con and talking to them and they
had the haunt tours we said that we
were willing to get involved and take over excuse me
the haunt tours but the key for us was
(11:06):
it had to be about the haunts we make sure that
that every penny that's brought in takes care goes
directly towards the travel the food
that you're going to eat and then the rest of it goes to the haunts we do
not make money off from these tours everything is given
back to the haunts because during this time of the year i mean those haunts
(11:26):
need that extra money to it's a tough time yeah yeah and so when you're supporting
the ultimate haunt tour you're not supporting fear expo you're not supporting
hong kong i mean what What you're supporting is these haunts on this tour.
And, you know, just to kind of put a staple on that, you got a pretty big support
coming up in November in Alabama.
(11:48):
Ultimate Haunt Tour will be visiting 10 haunts in three days. Holy moly!
So make sure you go to the ultimatehaunttour.com. We've already got the names
of the 10 haunts in there.
And I will be the, if you can get on bus one, which means you have to be the
first 50 people to buy tickets, I will be your coach.
So I actually will be on bus one for the first time. I've never been on one
(12:11):
of our tours. Yeah. Yeah. No.
What does a hunt tour cost? That one's $385. The one in Indiana is $235.
Beautiful. Go check it out, people. Because time is running out.
Definitely. We're already planning 2025 hunt tour.
I love it. I love it. That is Thursday night. And then Fear Expo itself.
(12:36):
Excuse me. That's Thursday. Not just the night. Most of Thursday.
But then Fear Expo itself actually kicks off Friday morning.
With one of my favorite parts of Fear Expo, the networking event.
And actually just before that, though, it kicks off with our networking breakfast.
So a new sponsor this year, a new attitude, FIBO is the sponsor for the VIP day.
(13:02):
So Friday is the FIBO Friday VIP day. Nice.
And we're going to start out with a breakfast. So if you can show up between
7 and 830, you can have breakfast on us.
If you have a VIP ticket and that's the first opportunity to meet people,
we will have the bar open with the Bloody Marys and, you know,
all the cool little breakfast drinks that you can get. What's the orange juice in? Mimosa.
(13:26):
Mimosa. Yeah, that's my go-to.
So make sure you show up between 7 and 8.30 to take part in the breakfast.
And then, like you said, we are going to do the networking speed dating vendor and haunt owner.
And this is happening early this time because a lot of people love the fact
(13:48):
that we did it but they hated that we did it after the show floor yeah they
really wanted to have an opportunity to meet everyone and then go to the show
floor and see their booth and and i think that's genius.
Because that's exactly what i was doing when i went can you guys hear me okay
because i just got a weird buzz i can hear you fine yeah me too that was what
i was doing when i went on Now you're buzzing.
(14:10):
Now you're buzzing. Oh, yeah. Now you're all weirdos.
I think you just can't prove to us that he heard it. Yeah, it's better. Yeah. Weird.
So you're buzzing with us like this, but we hear you fine. And then you flip
it and we hear you buzzing and you hear fine. Brilliant. That'll be helpful.
So that's what I was doing when I went to the speed networking event.
I made a ton of connections and then went on the show floor and was able to
(14:34):
talk with them in more detail of all the things they could offer.
That's correct. Correct. And so that was a suggestion from quite a few people.
So the speed networking or speed dating, as we like to call it,
because it feels like speed dating.
You sit down, all the hot owners this time get to sit.
Instead of walking around like they do on the show floor, vendors are moving
(14:57):
from table to table and they have 30 seconds to give their best elevator pitch
on why I should network with you. Exactly.
And then every three minutes, we pick one vendor. They're typically the one
who's the slowest and doesn't like to sit down very quickly to stand up in the
middle and give an elevator pitch to the entire group all at once. So it's a lot of fun.
(15:18):
We've got prizes this time. I've got a blow horn. We've got the big clock on the wall.
We've got a big timer. So we're ready for this one.
Alicia from Scared of My Shadow is going to be the host helping me get this taken care of.
And I might even throw the reins over to her and I might take part in this event
this time. But that is from 9 until...
(15:41):
I think yeah nine until noon thank
you yeah got the whole morning blocked out for it yeah it's definitely
a lot of fun um we're gonna have a lot of tables so we're
gonna need a lot of time to get through everyone yeah yeah after
so that takes us all the way up to lunchtime and it
sounds like you have something very special planned for lunch stan winston
(16:02):
is the sponsor of the new artist mixer
luncheon that we're going to be doing so we're doing
a kentucky bourbon burger bar whole little plates
and you get to go and you know grab your burger and
grab some other little munchies to go along with it
and walk around network with everyone grab a drink this one this time it might
(16:22):
go to a little bit more of an afternoon type bar with some afternoon drinks
and head over to where we have some artists doing their thing whether they're
sculptors or whether Whether they're painters,
you're going to be able to get an opportunity to see the work they do,
get to know them, grab a card, and hopefully hire them to do a project at your attraction.
(16:44):
Or if you're a vendor, an opportunity to maybe include them in some of the work you do as a vendor.
So the networking, just the morning networking is going to be invaluable. It's going to be so cool.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Les, do you want to take the afternoon?
Sure. What are we doing in the afternoon? Let me go look at the notes. Ha ha.
(17:07):
I got stuck on the show floor map.
There we go. That's where we're going next, too. Yep. So...
Friday night. Nope, not nighttime. That's not, you gotta go to two o'clock. Two o'clock.
Two o'clock to six o'clock. We're gonna go to the show floor.
Okay. But just for VIPs at this point. Yes, this is the Brutal Rust show floor.
(17:31):
The show sponsor for the show floor this year is Brutal Rust.
We are going to open a show floor for all the VIPs. They're gonna get plenty
of time to walk through from two to six this year.
So instead of three hours, we gave them four. And this is going to give them
an opportunity to meet all the vendors they talked to during the speed dating,
buy the items that they want to purchase,
(17:53):
and also head to Brew to Rust booth for a drink or two or three.
Who knows? It all depends on how you're feeling.
Hey, I don't know if you can tell, there is kind of an overarching continuation
of events here. I'm sensing a trend.
We have a bar at everywhere.
(18:18):
Someone even joked with me and says, Hey, if I go into the bathroom,
is the maitre d' going to be in the bathroom?
I said, wow, that's something to think about. Yeah. Beer Expo 25.
(18:56):
To the vendor about maybe special orders about whether you can do different
colors you know what are some of the things involved in your products and this
gives you that chance yeah yeah yeah,
So then, Leslie, in the afternoon.
So then we go to the dinner and a show.
(19:17):
Yes. Yes. And this will be the first time this year that we did this kind of
at Hong Kong where we had a seated dinner and then we had a comedy.
Well, John did something like that for Fear Expo. And we said,
you know what? Instead of comedy, let's go with a magician.
We brought a magician in all the way from Canada. He's a haunter in Canada.
(19:39):
And we were like, you know what? This is cool. He was talking about coming to Fear Expo anyways.
We went back and forth. Willie May is handling all of the entertainment this year.
He came up with the idea of using this young man as a magician for the show.
So you're going to have a great sit-down dinner. And on top of that,
you're going to get an opportunity to watch a magic show from a haunter.
(20:03):
That sounds like a blast. Who's catering dinner?
What can we expect who's catering it
or where's the food coming from oh we're gonna
be right there at the convention center they have their own catering ah i
didn't realize the convention center offered that too that's awesome yeah no
where if you want some you have to show up
on wednesday if you want some of the barbecue yeah the
(20:26):
vendor dinner wednesday we
take and we didn't even talk about that but all the vendors who show
up on wednesday they all get to the vendors appreciation dinner and
that's going to be at the moonlight barbecue and that's all
you can eat barbecue oh man that
sounds so good it's it's amazing it's one of my favorite things about going
(20:46):
to owensboro yeah seriously so once the magician is all over with then all hell
breaks Talk about the hell's a poppin' circus sideshow.
Yes. I have to be very honest. Until I...
(21:07):
Until I really read about this company, I had no idea who they were,
and I never realized how big they are. They travel all over the country.
They've been doing this for over 20 years.
And on top of that, they've actually set up at over 3,500 attractions to do
(21:28):
events during the weekend, during Halloween. Wayne.
So Hans actually can hire this company to come in and put on a show whether
it's a small show with one or two other freaks or a big show like what we're
going to have at Fair Expo. Our show is an hour and a half long.
Wow. But it's all like circus sideshow acts.
Yes. Yep. Oh, that sounds awesome. Hanging from hooks, shooting,
(21:53):
putting a sword down your belly, you know, all those freaky kind of make you go.
Oh, my gosh. I cannot wait to see it. And all of this is free with the VIP ticket.
If you have a VIP ticket, everything we talked about is all included.
We have an agenda for you from the morning you wake up or from the minute you
(22:16):
wake up to the time it's time to tuck you in.
So yeah, VIP tickets is a way to go.
Really, we took the price of the food and we even took a couple bucks off and
said, hey, we're going to pitch a little in for food.
And that's what we charge you. So none of the events, nothing else that's included is being charged.
You're really just paying for the food. Yeah.
(22:37):
And it sounds like you limited the number of VIP tickets who were going to be
available for the show. Accurate? We did. We did.
We had to make sure that we didn't oversell this for VIP.
So we had to put a limit on this year to make sure that we had room for everyone. We only have about...
About 60 more VIP tickets left and we're completely sold out.
(22:59):
So if you've not got your VIP ticket, you're going to want to do that very soon.
So what does the VIP ticket cost?
So the VIP ticket is $150.
That's it? Yep. And it covers everything. Holy moly. That's amazing.
Yeah, $150. And actually we had our VIP plus tickets, which even included your
(23:19):
hotel rooms and included the haunt tour.
So it was an all-inclusive ticket. ticket.
We sold out of those because the hotels are both sold out now.
So that's another thing. If you want to come to fear expo, don't look at the
hotels directly next to fear expo.
You're going to have to look at the other ones in Owensboro there.
I did check this morning and three of the hotels that are within five minutes
(23:43):
away, all still have a few rooms left.
So there are rooms. It's just, you're not going to be walking distance.
You're going to be a little More of a drive. Yeah, drive or Uber.
But there's free parking at the convention center.
Yes. And there's a lot of parking available.
Oh, yeah, plenty. Yep. So we just talked about everything that is available for the VIPs on Friday.
(24:06):
Not yet. We have one more thing.
We have Mr. Lugosi. Yes. The muses that's going to be after House of Poppin'.
So we got a band for you. And this band is amazing.
They are pumped. They are 100% in the genre for Halloween, for haunted attractions.
(24:28):
I mean, they basically were begging us to come to the show because they are
so excited about everyone that we have involved.
They love How's It Poppin'. So this band is going to bring it.
I mean, directly after How's It Poppin' gets over, we're going to bring you
over to the East Ballroom.
Room the band's going to be set up and you're going to be able to
(24:50):
rock with the band they're going to do an hour show to your
standing room i mean we're it's going to be a
lot of fun so make sure that um
you get plenty as well if you're on the haunt tour i guess you won't get plenty
of sleep you uh you take a lot of energy pills yeah i say just just for friday
you know welcome breakfast starts at 7 a.m and you guys have activities you
(25:15):
know completely all the way up to midnight on Friday night.
So yeah, definitely something, you know, plan ahead, make sure you catch up
on your sleep in advance and have some time the next week to catch up again.
And I think, you know, there's, I've had a lot of people and I've done a lot of these interviews.
And one of the questions everyone keeps asking me is, you know,
you guys are a trade show, but what really makes you guys different from some
(25:39):
of the other trade shows?
And I think the fact that we are agenda driven.
We want to give you something to do from the moment you get there to the time that you leave.
We want to make sure that it's an experience for you.
Fear Expo has always been about the experience. And every year we just kind
of update experience just a little bit more. Yeah, seriously.
(26:01):
I think it's beneficial too, because you go to a trade show,
you walk there's not a lot of, you know, dedicated opportunities to...
Talk to these hot owners, talk to these vendors outside of the trade show.
So you're pretty much just relying on a massive room with a million people wandering
around to try and get information, make your sales on both sides of the equation.
(26:24):
Whereas with what we have here, especially with the VIP, you have the ability
to really get to know the people that are there.
And then you can go through, do your purchases, do your orders,
make those connections, do your networking, But you're given an opportunity
and a situation where it's designed to do that first and then you do your purchasing.
(26:48):
Exactly. Yeah. You're making personal connections with these companies.
You're not just a buyer. You're making that connection.
Part of the family. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
And I think there's going to be a little bit of difference.
We did have some people, well, your VIP was 65 last year and it's 150 this year.
Well last year was the first year that we
(27:10):
kind of knew what we wanted to do but we didn't want
to get all the way to where we needed to be yeah
i don't think as far as money wise i just meant as far as
the experience sure we had to get to a
certain point of what where the
show's going to grow to be and this show you know i
think if if you remember back three years ago when i first
started talking to you about fear expo i said that it's
(27:33):
going to be about the experience it's going going to be a vip show now
don't get me wrong saturday and we
still have a lot of stuff to do for the general admission and that's
what we didn't touch on friday yeah that's exactly where we
want to go next yep as the general mission so we can talk about that right now
if you want yeah and that's what i was going to say like the we've talked about
everything that the vips have available to them but there's more that will be
(27:58):
accessible for anyone who buys even just the the general admission ticket starting
at noon on Friday. So what's happening?
So starting at noon on Friday, not only will we have the VIP events going on,
and I don't want to say only the general admission people can go to the classes.
If you see a class you really want to go to and you want to jump out of the
(28:19):
VIP event to go take a class, you can, because there's some really good classes.
We have two rooms on Friday running at the same time.
Emily Bloom starts off at noon yes she's doing
makeup room management oh that's that's
that's a that's a necessary class because that's a lot of
that's a lot of pieces you know to to do especially if you're running more than
(28:41):
a handful of people in a haunt and emily bloom has ran quite a few different
makeup rooms so she knows what she's doing she knows what she's talking about
that is a great class so that's where where we started off at noon in room two,
Kelsey Living's good is going to be talking about how indie film acting and
(29:01):
haunt acting coincide, how you can go from being a haunt actor to the indie film industry.
This was something that I, you really focused on at first.
Haunt con down in florida but so i'm
glad to see bringing some of that into fear expo as well yeah it's
it's exciting that kelsey's going to be there and it's definitely a class
(29:22):
you're going to want to take if you're an actor and interested in doing any
type of indie film acting and then morgan spencer at 115 is going to do haunt
makeup 101 uh talking about the basics you know what are They're the things
that every haunt makeup artist should know.
Everything from making veins to putting on the correct layers.
(29:44):
I'm not a makeup artist at all, but that's definitely something you're going to want to check out.
On Friday in room two is Joshua Overturn.
He's from CFX 115. Silicone masks.
Silicone 101. Talking about masks. Excellent.
So that's going to be really cool to see Joshua in there.
(30:07):
Teaching from cfx and then go back
to room one at 2 30 you have
richard kumo richard has been to
every fear expo plus honk-honk teaching
classes he is always killing it one of the best one of the best classes i go
to and he's going to talk about fast painting techniques how to make that wood
(30:31):
grain look i'm using tools and tricks for any type of facade painting so So this is more of a,
it's not so much the paint for the body.
You know, we're not talking about makeup here. We're talking about set design. Set design. Thank you.
Yeah. And if he can do it. And again, the, the.
(30:52):
We always want to put so much detail into our haunts, but that also can take
so much time that none of us have.
So having that ability to learn, how do you do this quickly? What are the tools?
What are the tricks? You know, how can you use something in a manner that it's
not exactly intended for, but
be really, really successful in getting the facade that you want to see?
Exactly. And then room two, Jason Thomas, he is a brand new instructor to us,
(31:22):
but he's been teaching for a long time.
And he is also from the indie horror side.
He's coming in to talk about taking your haunt to the next level.
Everything from how you should be advertising your haunt,
how you should be promoting your haunt, different scares that
you could be using the the looking at
(31:42):
your haunt he says looking at your haunt from a thousand feet
in the air and not just being down
into the the basics but looking at
it and saying and seeing what other people see yeah so
that's going to be a great class very excited he's
teaching that class and then at 345 we got
the master michael green michael is
(32:03):
the master of body painting michael green i mean here beyond the show floor
all days for teaching in his booth and given him are given all kinds of lessons
on body painting but here's a chance you get for mastering the airbrush for makeup and fx.
And then Brian Wilkins is going to do some scare actor training in room two at 345.
(32:27):
He said, make sure that you do your stretches before his class.
And you get involved in pretty cool scare acting.
So if you are not involved in the VIP, you still have a reason to be there Friday.
These classes are great.
I know for a fact, I, as an owner, would probably send my GM to half these classes.
(32:50):
And I go to the other half because there are some really good classes here.
And we talked about this earlier, but like one price, all the classes are included.
There's no additional cost for any of these classes, except for,
you know, the few make and takes where you actually get to bring something home
and you have to pay for the materials.
We didn't do make and takes this time. No make and takes this time.
No make and takes. We wanted it to be all free classes.
(33:10):
It was too confusing with the make and takes, so we just took them off.
Fair, fair. So you pay one price and you can attend any of the classes,
get all of these skills, build up your own skill set. So yeah.
And so that shows you there's a lot more to do. Now, also, if you have a general
admission ticket, you are invited to go to House of Poppin and the concert afterwards.
(33:32):
It's just a $25 additional ticket price to go to House of Poppin. That's not bad.
Which is, I mean, they sell tickets for $60. Yeah.
So. Seriously.
So Friday night, excuse me, Friday, the entirety of Friday, Friday,
absolutely packed with opportunities for you to get out there and network,
get out there, get some new skills.
(33:53):
And for the VIPs, checking out the show floor early, getting those orders in
that first day before the show floor gets absolutely crazy on Saturday.
Before we jump into Saturday, let's take a moment to hear from our sponsors and then.
Music.
(34:25):
Let's talk Saturday. Wow. Saturday, be ready because the Hauntmaster classes
start at 8 a.m. Again, we're running two rooms again.
I'm just going to name them really quick, if that's okay. Yeah, absolutely.
I'm not going to talk a lot, but make sure you go to peerexpolive.com.
(34:46):
Go to seminars and check out all the classes. We have Mitch Milton,
David Quinn, Crest Winchester, Slider Jesus, Richard Kumo, Jason Thomas,
Jordue Shale is coming in to teach a class,
Catherine Craig, Justin Hill, Leonard Pickle, Katie Brito, David Frayer.
(35:11):
I can never say his last name right. Frayer?
Frayer, yeah. Hold on. Give me a second.
I gotta get to the right page and i'll let you know.
The classes are so
good on saturday you need to check them out but
then on top of it we have our makeup stage going on all day
(35:33):
long on the show floor it's brought to you by mile high fx we have wicked fx
on there at 10 o'clock insane production cnc insane productions doing fire and
ice body body painting at one at 11 o'clock false creepy corner doing night of neon zombies at 2 PM,
a bloody good fashion show brought to you by monsters alive,
(35:57):
FSA design and Brandy beast at four o'clock.
And then five o'clock is the makeup recovery demo.
Just, just for Saturday. And those are just classes.
Yeah. Yeah. And there's a ton more happening Saturday as well.
Kicking off in the morning once again for
the vip ticket holders you want breakfast coffee and
(36:19):
pastries or will be in the vip lounge and not to mention most
of you who got your hotel rooms they have free breakfast on
saturday um so double check your hotel room and see but i know the two host
hotels both have free breakfast and then we have coffee and pastries open till
11 o'clock in the vip lounge for all of our vips including our vendors and then
(36:40):
once we clean up the mess from from the pastries and sweep up all the crumbs.
We're going to go ahead and serve you an Italian pasta lunch. If you're a VIP.
So the VIPs get to go in there and have a lunch on us. And that includes all of our vendors.
We always feed our vendors. Really appreciated.
(37:01):
Much appreciated.
And you get plenty of opportunity to walk the show floor.
There's going to be a lot of great costumes and masks. and the vendors that
are at the show fuller this year.
Every year, I just feel so excited about the fact that we have so many great
(37:21):
people in this industry that support each other.
And to see the vendors that we have that support Fear Expo, it just really makes
me really happy to be part of this.
So I'm not going to go through them all because it would take a while.
Like you said, there's 120. 120 but brutal rust
is going to be their purgatory props vfx creates
(37:44):
916 production brandy b
cfx you know chaotic creations
dark creations atx is
coming out of they haven't done that show in a little while now they're
coming back fancy pants patches fear
productions fright bros jellybug ghostly productions
global special effects haunting you
(38:07):
is going to be in in the house yeah we are a haunt
lawyer foam company george duchelle is going to have a booth midnight studios
malice productions lifeless creations monsters alive mortal remains project
backfire i am jumping about six people and just quickly saying a name scarecrow creation sapphire,
(38:32):
Scrappy Costumes, Scurry Face.
Slaughterhouse FX, and Steward Designs, and so many more. But that just gives you an idea.
I mean, it is a cool show floor this year. It really is.
I'm so excited. I see so many of my favorite companies here,
and many of the Haunting You podcast sponsors are on here as well.
We have great partnership with Purgatory Props and with Cython.
(38:55):
VFX is, of course, one of my favorite companies. I have several of their,
so many of their props now. I love them. Oh my God. I love them.
CFX Tabitha and Josh are just such great people to talk to.
No, so knowledgeable about the masks and they're, they had, do they do demos
on the show floor showing how all their products can work?
And it is so freaking cool. Yeah.
(39:19):
It's going to be fun. It's going to be so much fun. I mean, how do you even
get to like everybody who is out there on the show floor?
There's so many awesome vendors to, uh,
to stop by i don't know i'm gonna be busy
that's why we say that basically
from the time you show up at fair expo to the time you
(39:39):
leave we've got something planned for you yeah you
should not be hungry you should not be thirsty and you
should not be bored there's just
something for you to do the whole time whether you're a vip or
general mission either way there's a lot of
action going going on good thing the show floor is open from
10 to 5 because we're going to need every minute of that to to
(40:01):
get through it all and then once we can get the
show floor closed up we're going to head upstairs and we're going to give away our
fear expo vendor awards everyone's welcome to come up and see which vendors
won awards again this year it's been a lot of fun doing these vendor awards
and the honkron one we just had vfx is a two-time winner so we have to see If
(40:22):
they end up pulling out a three-peat,
a cat trick, as you might call it.
And then once the awards is over with, head back to your hotel,
get your scariest circus costume on.
I'm really, really excited about the theme that Blooms FX came up with for this one, the circus idea.
(40:45):
There are just so many ways you can go. You can do the freak show.
You can do the stitch clowns. i mean there's a
lot of ideas here for a circus and i
you you talked a bit about like
the costume contest for haunt con anything similar
happening here at fear expo yes circus they have
(41:07):
a costume contest with lots and lots of
prizes um i believe they're all on the website i don't
know all the prizes i do know there's some really good ones though and once
again excuse me blooms fx is still looking for some donations if anyone wants
to donate anything towards the costume ball for the prizes but yes they're going
(41:27):
to be giving away some cool prizes for the best costume.
Pulling a bit pulling it up right now and it's
absolutely free to go to the costume ball as well
yep open open it's free we want
you there yep it says every
ticketed attendee is eligible to enter the costume contest to win a
third second or first place prize whether wear your best costume for
(41:48):
the chance to win so not oh my gosh holy
i'm looking at the list of who is contributing to
the prize blue meth x hong kong's doing vip passes
the holiday inn owensboro riverfront you
get a free room and breakfast dental distortions through a hundred
dollar gift card in there neely's whiskey tour
love that project backfire has
(42:08):
got a gift basket bloody mary fx 25 gift card
dark creations a 25 gift card killer stencils pocket patches cff vx cfx vfx
scream skate spoot teak holy moly it's no scrubs it's a good it's a good deal
it's a great deal absolutely Absolutely freaking love it.
(42:31):
And that ends at midnight. So two nights in a row, we got you out to midnight.
Going to midnight every night.
There's time to sleep later. Sleep when you get back. I don't think the long tour is three nights.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. But I mean, stuff is kicking off bright and early Sunday
morning again, aren't they?
We've got classes starting at eight o'clock. Eight o'clock classes again.
(42:54):
And believe it or not, people will be there at eight o'clock to go to those. There always are.
Oh, yeah. And for good reason as well. Like we've got, let me pull this up a
little bit bigger so I can read it better.
Justin Hill doing distressed costumes to die for in room one.
Jim Candelaria doing animatronics. How do they work?
Your basic animatronics class, 8 a.m. on Sunday morning. So great reason to get out of bed.
(43:19):
Yeah. And we've got even more classes after that.
What are some of the other ones? I see Leonard Pickles teaching a class,
Haunt Design Do's and Don'ts. I have taken that class the previous years and learned so much.
It is a phenomenal class for doing room design and haunt design.
And if you've seen it once, go see it again because you're going to pick up
something new. Absolutely. Absolutely.
(43:42):
Rob O'Brien, you stink. How to care for your costumes. Oh, that's an important one.
Underrated, but important. Oh, but this, this is the one that I really want
to go to. David Quinn is teaching a stilt walking class.
I got into stilt walking a year, a couple.
Heck, has it been two years now? It just started, but I want to hear from the
(44:03):
expert because I'm just, you know, trying to teach myself and let's just say it's painful.
You're just starting out to hurt yourself. It's painful teaching yourself. yourself michael
rouse samuel bloon kane walkins nathan alred all
teaching classes on sunday from between eight
and one or two and while
(44:25):
you're sitting in your classes or you're on
the show floor back at the excuse me i had to switch my screen here real quick
fear expo is giving away weigh $3,000 in haunt cash for you to go ahead and
use anywhere in the show floor that you want to.
(44:48):
That's absolutely insane. How is that going to work?
Every half an hour, starting at 1030, Fear Expo will draw a name from all of
the, if you have a pass or excuse me, a general mission or a VIP, you are entered.
And that That includes all of our vendors and all of our speakers.
(45:09):
So don't have to do anything extra to enter just by showing up.
I am automatically entered.
All you have to do though, is be there at on Sunday.
If you leave before Sunday and we call your name, no one wins that prize.
No one. You're not going to give it to someone else. We don't withdraw.
We don't withdraw. You gotta be there.
(45:31):
So this is, this is to mo, I mean, we give people, We actually call people and
this happened at Hong Kong.
We had someone that we drew at 11 o'clock and they were 45 minutes away because
they had just left and they turned around and came back.
I mean, I would. Yeah, right. Yeah.
Where will the giveaway be happening? On the show floor? On the show floor,
(45:54):
but we will be announcing it in all the rooms as well.
So if you're in classes, you'll still be able to hear it. But plan on staying
through Sunday because we are going to give away $500 every half an hour that
you can use on the show floor.
And it includes all of our speakers. All of our employees are actually allowed to be part of this.
It's a big reward for everyone who is part of Fear Expo.
(46:18):
I love it. Absolutely love it. and I have already got some plans in the back
of my mind for what I would use that for. I am so lucky.
I am very sorry, Deano, but the bar does not take the money. Dang it.
Back to the drawing board. Get out of my head, Doug. How do you know?
(46:41):
We also have the scavenger hunt going on Friday through Sunday too.
Yes, talk. I saw that on the website. side tell what is
happening with the scavenger hunt i'm i'm not familiar with this so this
is brought to you by one of our and
for some reason the link's not working here so it's
actually brought to us by one of our vendors and now
(47:04):
you're gonna the link's not working and i can't
figure out why if it works for me no same
thing is it working it's not working for you right now too i need
to go to a different screen and
see if it worked real quick but anyways so they're going to to have a scavenger hunt
on the show floor you're going to be able to go to one of the vendors it will be
in your welcome package and it's also an email that's going out and they've
(47:26):
got all kinds of prizes lined up that they've gotten from different vendors
on the show floor and you're be able to do an actual scavenger hunt on your
phone to find certain hidden gems that are there,
on the show floor maybe in one of the classes and then the people who find the
items end up winning winning different prizes.
(47:47):
And I don't have all that information, but you will have it in your vendors
pack or in your attendees package.
And hopefully shortly after we finish recording this, the website will get fixed
magically and we'll be able to access it there. There's a text going out right now.
(48:08):
So just an absolutely action-packed weekend from Thursday all the way till the
show floor closes on Sunday, 2 o'clock, you have no excuse to not have something
to do because there is just so much going on over the course of these four days.
So let's talk logistics real quick. We already talked. General admission tickets are $25.
You have the VIP tickets, only about 60 tickets left if you want to try to jump
(48:33):
in on the VIP. Robert Leonard,
We talked a little bit about hotels. It sounds like the hotels closest to the
convention center are already sold out, but there are plenty of opportunities
still in the city of Owensboro.
So you can check out one of the other hotels nearby.
How do you get to Fear Expo? What are the easiest ways? ways?
So the way that we set fear expo up is that it's, it's a basically six hour
(49:00):
drive from anywhere in, you know, the whole central part of the country.
So like even Michigan, you're six hours away, Florida, you're six hours away,
Pennsylvania, you're six hours away.
So a lot of people drive to fear expo on the borough of Kentucky,
just outside of Louisville, south of Indianapolis, just to the west of St. Louis.
(49:23):
I mean, it's in the, it's in the heart of the heartlands.
So driving is always a possibility. Obviously Google, you know,
fear expo, the, if you're going to fly into fear expo, I do know there's some
delays this year because of the solar eclipse.
There have been interesting things going on with that, but flying into Louisville
(49:44):
or flying Flying into Evansville is is a good thought.
You can check and see if there's planes going into Owensboro,
but I know a lot of times this late in the game, it's going to be a couple could be a big delay.
Yeah, I had a hard time finding flights direct to Owensboro. So Louisville for me.
Yeah, going to Louisville. The other thing you can do is fly into St. Louis.
And I know St. Louis has a direct flight to Owensboro to that's another way to do it.
(50:07):
Go to our website. If you go to fear expo.com. We figured all this out and you
go to travel hotels, everything's on there.
It's there's no guessing. There's no, you know, we've even got Airbnb on there.
We've got everything. Yeah. Check it out.
Fear expo live.com has just a ton of information, even like information about
(50:28):
Owensboro itself, things to do best places to eat or drink local events that
they've got going on outside of fear expo.
Just a ton of information can be found right there on the website. Exactly.
I pressed buttons and it won't close. There we go. Les, what did we miss?
I mean, probably a lot just because there's so much going on.
(50:50):
But with that said, I think we hit all the big pieces. Are there any,
is the show floor booked?
Are there any places available for vendors if they still want to try to get in?
You know, I would still send me something because you never know if something might change.
But we've been sold out for about a month now. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
No, that's a good sign for all the attendees, at least.
(51:13):
And vendors if you're interested uh there's always fear expo 25 keep it in mind plan ahead,
plan ahead exactly okay doug yes what is the one thing more than anything else
that you want our listeners to remember about fear expo before we let you go
the one thing i want you to remember about it yeah they remember nothing else
(51:34):
when they stop listening to this podcast what do you you want that to be?
I think the most important thing for people to take away from Fear Expo this
year is the growth of our industry and how you're going to see new vendors there.
You're going to see some great vendors that have been around for a long time.
The education, the people who are giving so much back to help train and help
(51:58):
support each other in this industry.
I don't think you see that as much at some other places, but at Fear Expo,
you can really see that people really give back.
And we're going to continue to grow Fear Expo because of the fact that we have
so many great vendors and speakers and attendees.
So at the end of the day, I want you, if I can leave you with one word for Fear
(52:22):
Expo, it's going to be is experience.
I want you to really enjoy Enjoy the experience that you're going to have.
Absolutely. And I am so looking forward to the experience.
So, Doug, thank you so much for taking the time out to talk about Fear Expo.
Fear Expo is happening at the Owensboro Convention Center in Owensboro,
Kentucky, April 12th to the 14th, 11th, if you're going to make it in for the Ultimate Haunt Tour.
(52:46):
I hope to see you all there. Booth 707 is where the Haunting You podcast will be stationed.
Right next to the Big Scary Show. Right next to the Big Scary Show. There you go.
Oh, we can find you a better place. I'm so sorry.
I got to tell a quick story. I'm hoping Drew Badger is the one who will be coming
(53:07):
because I accidentally slighted him when I was at Midsummer Scream last summer.
He gave me a lead. I had to go talk to Spencer Terry, president of the Hunter
Attraction Association, and forgot to come back and do an interview with him.
So I'm hoping to rectify that during Fear Expo this year.
Ha ha ha!
(53:28):
Yeah, I think, I think it is true, but I don't know. It might be, I don't know.
I actually think it is true, but we'll find out for sure. Really soon. Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. It'll be a good surprise when I get there.
So Doug, thank you so much for
taking the time out and I can't wait to see you at fear expo. All right.
I appreciate you having me on here. And Leslie, thank you for being the smartest person in the room.
(53:53):
Someone's got to be because it's not going to be me. She usually is.
Glad I could help. And John, it was great talking with you as well.
Thanks, Doug. Holy shit, I am so excited to go to Fear Expo. Drink.
I was waiting for that. Has it, like, has me saying I'm excited lost all meaning yet?
(54:16):
50-50. It's still a reason to drink. It's still a reason to drink.
So there is joy involved. There is definitely joy involved.
So I mentioned Hunting You podcast will be at booth 707. I will be there.
Please come see me so that I'm not lonely.
I thrive on getting to meet everybody.
If I'm not at the booth, look for the sign. There's a good chance I am somewhere
(54:37):
on the show floor interviewing some of the amazing vendors showing off their
products and hopefully bringing all of that to you.
If you cannot make it to Fear Expo,
definitely go check out all of our socials, facebook.com slash haunting you, just the letter U,
at Haunting You for YouTube, at hunting university for instagram that is where
we'll be posting all of the media that is coming out of the show so if you can't
(55:01):
make it to the show definitely go follow all of our socials so that you can
see it there are you bringing an extra bag for swag and such i'm so.
I'm so annoyed like i have to be detecting no no no it's okay i have to fly
normally i would drive to a convention so that i can bring back space so i have
(55:22):
plenty of space to bring stuff but like,
i'm trying to figure out right now how i can get all of the like audio equipment
i need in order to do the live broadcast from the show floor at fear expo because
that is going to happen I haven't figured out how yet, but it's going to happen.
But I have to bring all of that, which means I am very limited on what I can
(55:43):
bring back and I'm not okay with it.
So maybe some of them can ship it to you as well.
There is certainly that. If
I do larger purchases, most vendors are willing to ship. They will ship.
But here's the thing. I'm moving. So where do I ship it to?
If it shows up between
(56:05):
or actually you know we'll be swinging through Colorado so maybe I just ship
it to you guys and then I can pick it up there on the way oh I'm not a responsible
person I know you're not I wasn't I was not looking at you when I said you guys
I was definitely looking at Leslie I mean you technically you are looking at me,
yeah he who doesn't have his camera on.
(56:26):
I have discussed this my son likes to tackle the arrangement I know.
I want to watch that. I don't see it as a problem. I don't either.
I mean, in the middle of a podcast with a guest on, it's just like,
so Doug, it's a haunting podcast.
I don't think anybody's going to notice. People would love it.
It fits perfectly within the genre.
(56:46):
And besides, if that were to happen, then I could take the video from this,
just cut to just that and put that on our social media.
People would eat that up. They would love it.
Speaking of going viral, but it is.
I sent you the picture yesterday while I'm typing an email. I'm being choked.
(57:09):
It is what it is. Joy's a parent. I do feel bad that you're not going to have...
You're going to have to fight to have room for the audio equipment and the stuff
you buy and the stuff you steal.
So it's just... No theft. There is no theft.
Although... You're giving away so much free stuff. What do I need to steal?
(57:31):
I will say, Simply Pure is right next to where our booth is.
Go in and say hi to them and see if you can't snag me some great samples of CBD stuff.
By snag, you mean... Federal agent. CBD, no THC involved.
Yeah, it doesn't make a difference for me. Really? Yeah.
(57:52):
Hey, wouldn't it be better if you, instead of purchasing it directly, you could,
acquire it without going to stab you okay well i know you want to get me kicked
out of the coast guard i've got six years left we can make six we need the six
years we can make that let's talk about this.
(58:13):
Let's talk real quick about kind of where we're going for the rest of the year so we're
coming up to the end of convention season not actually
the end of convention season because there are conventions running all the way into july if
you want to know more about those uh go check out our website look at the events
page we have everyone that we are aware of listed there but our part of the
convention season is coming to a close and so we're now really looking ahead
(58:34):
to to october and what's going to be happening so in our so upcoming on the
hunting you podcast next,
our next episode will of course be the live broadcast from fear expo we'll have that out,
We'll do it Sunday of Fear Expo. I'm looking at you guys because I hadn't actually
talked to you about this yet.
Sunday is what I was thinking. I'm open to Saturday, but I think Saturday will
(58:56):
be busy. Yeah. Let me know what your schedules look like and we'll make it work.
So we're doing that. May, we have a special guest on from the Candlelighters
who is talking about what they're going to be doing this year.
And we're going to do some brainstorming with them. And then June,
hopefully, if everything works out nicely,
(59:17):
maybe we'll be able to all get ourselves together in a room and do a live from
Leslie's living room type of podcast for June.
That one will definitely not be out June 1st, but during June,
we will put that out as we plan for what the Sanguine Creek Estates will look like for 2024.
(59:40):
So, lots of exciting things coming up in the next few months.
Go check out the socials, subscribe to the podcast, and leave us a rating on
whatever app you use, because that helps other people find the podcast as well.
It does. It gives it a little boost. So, if you want other people to find it, absolutely.
Yes. And we'd love to hear from you and what you think of the podcast and what
(01:00:02):
we're doing. And give us ideas on what type of content you would like to hear.
We want all of that feedback to make this as useful as possible for our listeners.
If you also enjoy the pure sport of thievery, put that on review. Let us know.
You don't even have to steal the podcast. It's free anyway.
I mean, just, you know, maybe theft enthusiasts.
(01:00:24):
You mean pirates? Pirate. If you're a pirate, we're perfect for you.
Okay, you have to understand, that encourages me way more than this way of thinking.
If anything, you just made it cooler.
Yeah, I knew it as soon as it left my mouth.
Piracy. I like it. All right. I think we wrap it up. Let's leave it at piracy.
(01:00:48):
We can't go any better than that. So we'll just drop it at piracy. Let's take us out.
All righty. And thank you for all that. It was great to speak to Doug and hear
all about what's coming up with Fear Expo in April.
And thank you all for listening. And thank you to our sponsors.
And we're going to call it a day. So for everyone, happy haunting.
(01:01:10):
Bye, everyone. We are incredibly thankful to all the sponsors who make this
show possible, particularly our premium sponsors, the Chamber of Haunters and Fear Expo.
You can learn more at chamberofhaunters.com and fearexpolive.com.
Check out the Haunting You podcast.
Music.
(01:02:00):
Is a production of the Rocky Mountain Home Haunters, LLC. All audio clips and
sound effects are used under a Creative Commons attribution or public domain
license from Purple Planet Music at purple-planet.com or the Sound Bible at soundbible.com.
Please see the show notes for more information on all the clips used in this episode.
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