Why was Club Haunt created in the first place?

I was caught by the Halloween bug at a very early age. I would set up the living room every Halloween and try to scare anyone that came trick-or-treating. In fact, I was more interested in decorating the house than actually going out to get some treats. But when I got out to do some trick-or-treatin' I would always admire the work that other people put into their neighborhood haunts and that inspired me.

I guess my first real haunted house was created in 1980 (has it been that long?) with my friends. We set up an area at our local church and charged admission (.25 cents). The spook house was really small but it's success (we made over $10) led us to create the Fright Factory which ran almost annually from 1984 -1995. In the Fright Factory we made an art of using black plastic as barriers (I don't recommend this) but as the years progressed, our haunt got more sophisticated. The Fright Factory certainly had it's high and low points. The low point was making the decision to open our haunted house just 4 days after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in Northern California. It was a flop.

Club Haunt v1.0

After Fright Factory, I wanted to do something in the Halloween spirit and having a web presence was becoming big deal in the late 90's. I pretty much taught myself web design and in May of 1998, I launched ClubHaunt.com. I wanted to put together a web site that you can use as a launch pad to find really cool Halloween and Horror sites on the web. But I also wanted to add my own horror and Halloween information.

Club Haunt had tons to offer - from current news, box office numbers, movie reviews and lots of horror/halloween links. Club Haunt was getting pretty big site - and becoming WAY too much work for one guy.

Club Haunt v2.0

I realized that the site was losing it's focus and in September of 2002, I completely revamped with a focus on Halloween with with a more family feel.

Over the coming years, I was able to collect some pretty interesting stories from all over the web. Some came from my old Haunted House partner in crime, Jeff Baham of Doombuggies.com

The next logical step was to add some social media elements - a facebook page and twitter account (makes current news easy) have helped keep Club Haunt current.

Club Haunt v3.0

In early 2014, I've steamlined the site quite a bit. Trimming the fat so to speak to make it easier for me to maintain. Updating the logo and adding new features such as the gallery I feel will help keep you folks coming back.

The future of Club Haunt will be an emphasis on Halloween the holiday, classic horror and the home haunter, something I have been doing since childhood. The How-To page will consist of more tutorials for other home haunters (hopefully you) to help new haunt masters get an edge for their neighborhood yard haunts.

If you have any questions, advice, tutorials or even find a dead link, go to the contact page and let me know. I'd love to add your stuff to the club.

Happy Haunting

David Collier (aka - Haunted House Dave)

Meet the Web Master