# Close Calls you have survived in your Haunt or Haunted House



## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

Ok, I searched and couldn't find anything like this exactly. 

What is the dumbest or stupidest thing you have done in your haunt that could have got you killed, or hurt, etc. Like did you climb on top of your house in the driving rain in order to hang up a skelly and almost fall to your demise? Did you hook up a solenoid with pressure on the system and have it fire and nearly take your hand off? Share your close call story. 

I will start. The first year I set up a haunt for a local non profit, we set up a scaffold braced maze of spiderwebs people had to walk through. I layed on top of the scaffold which was only 8 feet tall and reached down out of the darkness at the people below. But.... I was at the end of the maze and the scene that used the lower part of my scaffold as a table was a mad scientist lab. On the table, wood board, between the metal rails sat a 2 foot jacobs ladder, inches from the metal frame I was laying on/ against right above. No idea how I didn't get electricuted with just a little bump of the scaffold. 

Ok, how about you? What stupid action did you do once that you luckily survived?


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## EerieEstate (Jul 11, 2009)

Surprised to see this hasn't garnered more posts as of yet b/c I'm sure all of us within the home haunt realm have had plenty of close calls. Power tools, toxic fumes from spray paints/adhesives/latex, fooling with electricity, pneumatics, ladders, roof slopes, questionable tree branches... the list is endless with things that crop up as a haunt is built/set-up. I'd have to say my biggest 'dumb' moment was when rewiring a prop and deciding to 'test' the prop before I had permanently connected and covered the new connections. Needless to say.. A and B did not go well together. 
Haunt tip of the week: Be safe everyone... and happy haunting! lol!


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

For me I really didn't have any experience with carpentry or power tools. I played music and I'm not mechanicly inclined at all. So I had some moments like sucking saw dust down my throat really sucked. My wife laughed lol. I stepped back on a 2x4 with a nail on it and got a ski on my foot. Luckily wasn't a big nail. And I had bright pink hands for 3 days due to spray painting spider web to look like cotton candy


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## CoolDJTV (Jun 28, 2011)

I have electrocuted my self at least 20 times 8)


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

lol. That's actually not funny but just the straight statement with no explanation was funny.


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## CoolDJTV (Jun 28, 2011)

EverydayisHalloween311 said:


> lol. That's actually not funny but just the straight statement with no explanation was funny.


ha so true, but it was minor each time, so no problem


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

Well at least I am not the only dumb moment guy in the group. haha, Keep sharing. Some of these make me laugh. 

And if spraying your hand bright pink is a dumb moment, then i am in trouble. I can't count the number of times, my hand had been red, black, white, blue, green, gray etc. the next day at work


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

Another one that makes me laugh as i look back on it isn't exactly an incident involving myself but with a mom of a trick or treater. The first year i had a real small garage walk through. Just simple black plastic walls and i made an outside hallway on the side of my garage going to the side door as the entrance. However the "facade" that i built on the front of my garage door was the front of a haunted house. We had a table right outside where the kids could get candy after they walked out. Well this mom walked up and had her phone pointed towards the haunt like she was taking a picture and her kid just ran right in (seeing exactly where to go) well she didn't apparently and walked right into my garage door thinking that the "painted haunted house door" was an actual door LOL!! .. She played it off cool but me and my father in law was cracking up.
*Lesson learned on my part. If you don't want people walking into your garage door don't dress it up to look like the front of an old house with the entrance on the SIDE! hahaha.. This year however it's going to be my entire backyard plus my shed and that very garage.


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

haha,that is funny and I have one similar. When helping with a Make A Wish haunted house we painted a 40 foot hallway with 1 foot squares, black and white for a checkered effect. since I am fairly good at painting, I painted the end of the hall to go into a point in the center so it looked like the hallway was a hundred feet or more. This covered the door on the end of the hallway which was an exit door to the lobby in case of issues. We put a strobe in the hall and scared the patrons toward the end that was painted. We had a girl run full bore away from me, as I was apparently the scariest thing she had ever seen. (maybe I forgot to put my mask on, haha) She hit the door at the end with enough force to knock it off it's hinges, and bloodied her nose at the same time. I wish I had it on tape.


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## EverydayisHalloween311 (Oct 14, 2011)

Bahahaha very nice spider!


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## Smexiigirlygrl (Aug 5, 2010)

I don't have as many critical or electrical problems as you guys do or anything terribly bad but they're still fun to tell. 

One year I dressed up as the Grudge and I am afraid of her so I thought it'd be the perfect costume. I decided to hang a mirror right next to my scaring point and then totally forget about it. I also was playing the music to the movie.I am crouching in my corner and this song plays that I didn't hear before (even after listening to the whole sound track) so I looked over to see the CD player looked straight in the mirror and scared myself. I screamed and jumped (or attempted) over my fence and landed on some solid tombstones. That was a nice bruise of a skull on my back for a few weeks.

Oh and every year I fall off ladders. I don't know how but I do.

It happens.


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## BioHazardCustoms (Aug 5, 2009)

The first year I ran my own haunt, I had to "escort" a drunk guy out. He was slamming into things, swinging at everyone in the place (actors and customers alike). Anyway, I walk him out through an emergency door, and escort him to the side of the street. I let him go and he turned around with a knife in his hand and attempted to slice me with it. It is the only time I have ever taken a swing at a customer, but I eventually got the knife out of his hand, and told his buddies that if he wanted it back, he could come back the next day and get it if he was sober. 

5 years later, I still have the knife. It serves me as a reminder that people are capable of vicious action with very little provocation, especially when intoxicated.

**EDIT** 
1,031 posts! Today's gonna be a good day.


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## GrimmEverafter (Feb 2, 2011)

Good thing you got out of that okay, Bio! We had drunks at the haunt I work at, but I was fortunate enough that both times I had someone to help deal with them.

Dumbest things I ever did? I made a mask for my first year at an outdoor haunt event. It had the illusion of my head being completely wrapped in gauze, including over my eyes, but since I am blind as a bat without glasses it might as well have been a blindfold. While trying to chase someone (my job was to scare people away from the end of the hayride), it got knocked askew, so I could only see (barely) through one eye. While trying to find my way back to my spot, I walked into a tree, hard enough that my sister (my partner at the haunt) thought I broke my nose. How I didn't get hurt, or walk into the tiki torches lighting the path, is beyond me.

The moral? Don't make a mask like that unless you wear contacts, or have good vision. Your pride and your face will thank you.


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

bahaha, I did the same thing Grimm only when I was a kid. I needed glasses badly, but wrapped my head in one of those stretchy bandages and even covered one eye with a green disc to make it look more zombie like. I couldn't see a darn thing trick or treating that year. haha still don't know how I made it around the block and back home in one piece.


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## Haunt Maker (Sep 2, 2012)

Well, this didn't happen to me, and it very nearly caused a law suit. I was helping with a haunt built in the basement hallways of a dorm complex at the university. One of the actors was dressed as Michael Myers. You know, blue jumpsuit, blank mask, butcher knife... Did I mention that this genius decided to use an actual butcher knife? Without tape, or any other covering for the blade? So along comes a drunkk college girl who is determined that she is NOT scared by anything. She KNOWS everything in this haunt is fake, as she keeps pointing out rather loudly to her friends. "Oh look! There's Michael, waving around a fake knife!" And to prove the point to her friends, she reaches up and grabs the knife, thinking to yank it away from "Michael". Needless to say, she got a very nasty surprise and a trip to the ER. The most amazing thing aout the whole thing was that we we were not shut down! Michael taped his knife from then on, but our "haunted halls" ran for another two nights!


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