Today we’d like to introduce you to Leonard Pickel.
Hi Leonard, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I was destined to be a haunted house designer. Even as a child I would draw up plans for my future home with secret passageways and hidden rooms. In High School I took a drafting class, where we designed a house and constructed a perspective of the building. Mind you, this was way before computers would knock out a 3D view in seconds, we were drawing with pencils and a T-square. I choose a spooky Victorian mansion for the style, but didn’t like the original angle I chose, so I scraped the drawing and started over even after being warned that I had to finish it or fail the class. I finished it in time
Not surprisingly I went to college to study architecture, and while there decided to turn our dorm into a haunted experience. I had only been to two haunted houses before doing one myself, but with a $300 budget, we opened the haunt for 2 nights and grossed $2,000. Or at least that’s the story. 4,000 people would be impressive for a two night attraction even today, I have my doubts if that is true, but I’ve been telling that story for a while.
I really enjoyed scaring people and found I had a knack for it. Once I graduated I started my architectural apprenticeship in the Dallas area. After doing several more dorm haunts in college, I had decided haunting would be fun to do for profit someday but didn’t feel I had all the answers yet. At the time The largest haunted house in Dallas was a fundraiser for the March of Dimes, and in 1982 I volunteered to help them build the MOD Haunted House. The next year I was asked to design the attraction, which I did for the next 3 seasons, along with designs for the Plano and Ft’ Worth chapters of the March of Dimes.
I finally felt I had the experience I needed to open my own haunted house, and boy was I wrong. After running all of my credit cards to their max to build the thing, my first haunt was a critical success, but a financial disaster. I was $20k in debt after the first season. Not realizing that a haunted house is a business, not a get rich quick scheme, and like any business it takes 3 to 5 years to be profitable.
During this time I was still designing haunted houses for other people and charities, and my very practical father suggested that designing attractions was much less risky than owning one, and that I should start a company designing haunts for other people and stop owning them. In 1987 I started Hauntrepreneurs®, and while I would probably made more money owning haunted house in the 40 years since, I would not be where I am today.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Everything there is to do wrong, I have done wrong, at least twice, because I knew it wasn’t wrong the first time, so I had to try it again before realizing it was a bad idea. One of the things I sell as a haunt consultant is what not to do, cause I tried it and failed already.
I have had a business partner run out on me and take the profits and two haunted houses with him. Won the lawsuit against him, but never saw a dime of money from him. I had a landlord kick me out of a building that my haunt was in, only to hire my haunt’s manage to open up the haunt the following season, which failed and was scraped out of the building into dumpsters afterward. I was facilitating the lease of a haunted house from one client to another and that haunt was ripped out of the building and pushed into the ocean.
At one point I thought a year round haunt was the answer, and for 5 year I operated a summer seasonal haunted house in Myrtle Beach. I learned a whole lot about the differences between an October seasonal weekend only haunt and one open daily for months, and how important advertising was. If no one knows about your business, then that is who is coming, no one.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Hauntrepreneurs specializes in helping people get started in the haunted house business, with emphasis on good, effective, functional design. I really enjoy facade design, especially in the Victorian mansion style. I came up with a lot of haunt concepts that the industry embraces now, like scare forward, high capacity design, timed ticketing and multi-element events. And I have some industry firsts, like selling kit haunted houses.
Hauntrepreneurs is the only haunt design company that works like an architectural firm. Providing detailed construction drawings to the client, who can build the attraction them selves or put it out for bid to local contractors. We then arrive on site to make sure everything is set up correctly and help detail the sets and train your actors. It is the cheapest way to get into the haunt business.
What I am best at is coming up with original room/scare designs. From my architectural back ground, form ever follows function, and the function of a haunt is to scare the crap out of people. I do this by coming up with the scare first and then designing the room around the scare. I have boiled haunt design down into, “How do I shorten my sightline, and how do I hide the monsters.” Building the scares into the architecture of the plan makes the scares more effective and the haunt more frightening.
I think the thing I am most proud of the “Triangular Grid System” for haunted house lay out. Rather than using typical square graft paper to design a haunt “maze” plan, I developed a wall system and layout using a equilateral triangular grid, like isometric graft paper to design haunts. My system is stronger than a square layout, is braced with lighter materials, the wall panels are half the thickness and store in half the space if you need to take it down. The panels are the cheaper and faster to build, with little scrap. The system is free standing so you don’t have to attach/damage the building you set it up in. The design offers more lineal pathway per square foot, allowing for a longer experience in the same space and the plane is more disorientating as you walk through trying to find your way out.
Any big plans?
The future of the haunted house industry is very strong. Each year more and more haunted houses pop up across the US and I am surprised by the interest in my services around the world. The demand is there and I don’t see it slowing down. People love to be scared.
I do have a new panel design that I am trying to figure out how to market. It would make it possible to ship a ready to set up haunt to someone’s house. where they can set it up in their garage, and ship it back to me afterward.
I keep coming up with great room designs I want to try out on the public, so even after 50 years of scaring people, I am not done yet.
Pricing:
- Free first phone call to discuss your haunting dreams
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.hauntrepreneurs.com
