Bloodview: Still Haunting after all those years!
Jack Morabito
It was chilly that evening in October 1980, and they had
just visited their 12th haunted house in five nights. John Bingham turned on the tape
recorder as Ken Marshall scanned the
newspaper looking for their next stop. “OK, guys,” John said, “what did you
like about it?” “Lame,” said Dave
Bingham, John’s son. “Dumb actors” chipped in Carl Poletta, Dave’s best friend, “but the strobe lights were
neat.” “Yeah,” Dave added, “and the girl with the glowing hands was pretty
good.”
Who goes to a haunted house with a couple of kids and
records their comments? Well, for one, people who are thinking about starting a
haunted house of their own and want to know what works and what does not. Since
kids are the worst critics, who better to ask? Ken and John were members of the
Broadview Heights Lions Club, and were looking for a new fund
raising activity. Founded in Chicago in 1917, Lions Clubs International was, and is, the world’s largest service
organization. What Lions Clubs do is give away money to worthy causes, and
since bank robbery is politically incorrect, the Broadview Heights chapter got
interested in a haunted house.
Such was the beginning of the Bloodview Haunted House, one of Ohio’s longest running and most
successful Haunted Attractions. Originally called The Giant Gore House of Bloodview Heights, the name was shortened
to make it less ‘funky,’ and more easily remembered. Located in Broadview
Heights, just outside of Cleveland, Bloodview will be celebrating its 20th
anniversary in 2000. “We thought we might be able to put something together
that would raise funds for the next five years or so, recalls Ken. “Little did
we know all that would be required, or how long it would last.”
In March 1981, the Lions Club approved the Haunted House
project, and by May they had found an abandoned house on a three-acre lot. “It
seemed perfect,” recalls Ken, “the house was two stories tall and a total
disaster.” The division of labor was easy. John agreed to handle the
advertising and Public Relations. Ken agreed to organize rebuilding the house
and run the project. “That was the end of our ‘free time’ for the next 15
years,” jokes John.
The Lions Club started by cleaning two dump truck loads of
junk out of the building. A dozen members then worked for three months to make
the place safe enough to entertain patrons. They rebuilt the floors and walls,
modified the floor plan to accommodate twelve sets, and added a 600 square foot
maze onto the side of the house for extra space. Since the house was two
stories high, it was necessary to install a second ‘exit’ stairway from the 2nd
floor. “No problem,” explains Ken, “we simply recruited a carpenter into the
Lions Club and made him build it for free. ‘Free’ is our favorite word.”
For the next eight years, October was always the month from
hell for the Bloodview neighbors. To their credit, they never seriously
complained, or shot anyone. The city officials also were not thrilled about a
Haunted House in their city, but since the property was zoned for commercial
amusement, there was little they could say. Being a non-profit organization was
a plus, and reluctantly the city agreed to allow the Lions to open the
attraction.
By June, the Lions had recruited the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School Drama Club to provide the
acting corps for the Haunted House. It was one thing to ask the Lions Club,
which is made up mainly of men and women in their 30’s or older, to run a
haunted house, but altogether another getting them to don costumes and masks
and perform nightly as actors. “Most of us were simply too old to scream at
patrons and jump over rails for four hours each night,” recalls John, “Realism
is great, but 911 calls every evening to revive an actor is going too far.”
The Lions bought airtime from a local radio station,
designed newspaper ads, found a concessionaire to sell hot dogs, and used a
Pepsi trailer for a ticket booth. The actor changing room was a 40’
semi-trailer purchased for $200, and a kerosene heater in the trailer provided
enough warmth to keep everyone alive. “As you can see, we provided nothing but
the best for our actors!” jokes Ken.
“If you sat down and made a list of everything that went
wrong in your first year in the Haunted House business,” Ken recalls, “trust
me, there would be nothing, and I mean
nothing, on your list that we didn’t
screw up!” With no previous haunting experience, the Lions did not know how to
scare people, much less how to teach the actors to do it. The regimen of the day
was rubber masks for all. Some of the newspaper ads contained incorrect times
and prices, on several night there was no hot food in the concession trailer,
no toilet paper in the rest room, and half the required number of volunteer
actors showed up.
Going into October the ‘fund-raiser’ was $35,000 in debt. At
the end of the month Bloodview had entertained 13,671 patrons and lost $1000.
The ticket price was $2.00, and the quality of the performance was the thespian
equivalent of the Bay of Pigs. “So what do you do after such a great success?”
asks John. “You immediately commit to doing it again the following year.”
Fortunately the Lions did not make the same mistakes twice, and learned from
some new mistakes as well.
On one hot Saturday afternoon in October, 1983 the Lions
were working on the house when a guy drove up and said that he was there to
help. He whipped out a business card that read Zargon, Master of Terror. “We offered him a beer,” recalls Ken,
“and life was never the same afterwards.”
Rex Hamilton was
representing a semi-professional group of Haunted House actors called the Knights of Fright who literally lived
for Halloween. The Knights previous ‘sponsor’ haunt had lost his lease and gone
out of business. Bad for him, but good for Bloodview. A contract was quickly
signed with the Knights to provide acting talent for the show. The high school
students were, and still are, encouraged to participate, but henceforth a
semi-pro group has always been the core of the acting staff.
The partnership between the Lions and the Knights was a
strange one, but it lasted for 16 years. Most of the Lions thought the Knights
were weird and/or sick. The Knights thought the Lions were a bunch of ‘old
farts’ who did not respect them. There was more than a little truth on both
sides. Why did the groups stick together for so long? Ken explains, “The
Knights strength was acting, not organizing things. The Lions were excellent
organizers, but neither willing nor effective actors. It was a perfect blend of
compatible skills, albeit trying on the nerves at times.”
Besides bringing a lot of large bodies, the Knights totally
changed the Lion’s attitude toward haunting in general. Rubber masks were out,
and realistic horror makeup was in. The Knights made a concerted effort to
understand the psychology of scaring people, and the quality of the show was
vastly improved. One of the Knights summed up their philosophy like this: “Why
do I do this? Because I can do things to people in October that I’d get
arrested for the rest of the year.” Good actors always seem to have an
attitude, but that is one of the things that make them good Haunted House
actors.
The rest of the 1980’s were terrific years of growth and
prosperity for Bloodview, with only one major crisis. In 1985 the Knights split
into two groups. Fortunately the majority of the talented people stayed with
Bloodview, and they renamed themselves The
Legion of Terror. The love-hate relationship between the Lions and the
Legion remained intact.
Sometime during the mid-1980s, the Lions began doing exit
polls. We asked the patrons what they liked about the house, and where they saw
our advertising material. This information was extremely valuable. It told us
which sets needed to be replaced, and what type of advertising was worth the
money. Not wasting money on poor performing advertising does wonders for the
bottom line.
The quality of the performance was now so good that in 1986
the Lions began keeping track of the number of people who claimed they had wet
their pants. That worked for a few years, but now the scare factor of the show
is measured buy the number of patrons that pass-out. The actor responsible for
the fainting even earns a ‘bounty.’ Lion John gleefully reported, “The high
point was 1994, when Bloodview recorded five pass-outs, which is why there is
always a paramedic on duty.”
By 1988, the old house was literally falling down and it was
time to either move or get out of the boo business.
In 1989, the Lions acquired a parcel of land and built a
6000 square foot building. When the Lions say “we” built a building, we mean we physically
built it. We dug the footings, poured the foundations, raised the roof,
nailed on the shingles, did the electrical wiring and plumbing, designed and
constructed the sets, build a parking lot and ticket booth, and performed a
thousand other jobs.
Work began on June 26, and it was the worst weekend many of
the Lions and Legion members ever experienced. Like the western settlers of
old, the land was cleared by hand with chainsaws and brush hogs. The land had
previously been used to graze cows (very odoriferous), and the mud was knee
deep in many places. More than one person stumbled and fell, burying their face
in the mud. At quitting time on Saturday, one of the Lions stripped off his
clothes and drove home naked to keep the mud off his seats and the stench out
of his car.
The rest of the summer was a race to the October finish
line. Thanks to the combined efforts of the Lions and Legion, the new location
was more or less ready one hour before the scheduled opening time. The Lions’
treasury was also virtually depleted and the Club was $50,000 in debt. It was
definitely time to reverse the cash flow.
The Legion members often said they could work in a bare
room, and they proved it 1989. To say the sets and props were minimal would be
kind, but the patrons did not seem to mind. Attendance and revenue records were
set that October that stood for many years.
However, without a doubt the highlight of the 1989 season
was something the patrons never saw. On Friday, October 13, 1989 the Bloodview
Haunted House hosted a wedding. Legion members Dan and Elaine Krumlauf
were blissfully married in the graveyard set with the entire Legion as the
wedding party. Twelve years later they are still together, probably due in no
small part to the unusual nature of their nuptials, and they still regularly
act at Bloodview.
The early 1990’s were fabulous, and in 1994 Bloodview set
its all-time attendance records. Best single night attendance was 3,588. Total attendance for the season was 37,717,
and those 5 pass-outs (good for spreading the word about the house, but bad for
keeping the line moving). The cash register was obviously jingling.
“Were we Ohio’s, or perhaps even the nation’s, best haunted house
in terms of entertaining and scaring people at that time?” asks Ken. “We like
to think so.” No one can prove it one way or another, but several dozen people
drove more than 100 miles every year to see the show, so we were obviously
doing something right. At least one
haunted house used Bloodview as a model when they started their own operation.
Some of the Bloodview actors even became ‘stars.’ To the
everlasting chagrin of the Legion, the most famous was Booger, aka John Bingham.
Impossible to accurately describe, he resembled a mentally impaired, West
Virginia hillbilly. With an admission ticket in one nostril and a Milk Dud in
the other, Booger relentlessly pursued patrons, while they waited to enter the
house, with a broom in one hand and a can of talcum powder in the other. Now
retired for five years, patrons still ask if Booger is working the house.
Bloodview has always allowed the better actors to work
outside the building. A 6,000 sq. ft. building is not that large, but when an
actor has five acres to play in, it works really well. From the time the
patrons arrive until they depart, they are part of the show. More than a few
people thought they had escaped to their car, only to discover an actor hiding
in their back seat to provide that one last scare. “People simply do not forget
the uninvited guest who wants to go home with them,” says John.
The litany of characters and memories is endless, but here
are a few of the all-time favorites. Vince
Westfall and Judy Mikolaski fighting
over the contents of a trash can, the Evans
family rolling on the ground arguing over the leg bone of the steer while
nipping at the customer’s ankles, Jay
“Ozzie” Brendel, the Human Bowling Ball, bouncing off walls, Dan Krumlauf
stealing the mustard container from concession trailer and is using it as a
prop, Rex Hamilton as Butch the Butcher, with his can of Silly String, Tawny Miller as the Bag Lady, Roger Miller as the Gas Can Man, Katie Spellacy as the Baby Eater, any
number of actors hiding in the port-a-john waiting for someone to open the
door, and other acts that were so disgusting they cannot be mentioned here.
The all-time best customer comment was “I want my money
back. The house is too scary!”
The Bloodview keys to a successful haunted house are
creative and enthusiastic actors. Regularly revising and updating the sets from
year to year keeps the patrons from getting bored, and installing electronics
and other fancy toys is a nice touch. “But if you don’t have superior acting
talent,” explains Ken, “you’re swimming upstream with the salmon.”
The Bloodview crew also rigidly enforces the safety aspect
of their show. The sets are built with non-combustible materials, and the props
are sprayed with a flame-retardant solution. Smoke detectors and fire
extinguishers are located in every set, and additional fire extinguishers are
placed at strategic locations throughout the building. Walkie-talkies are used
to keep everyone advised of what is happening. There is a panic button in every
set so that the actors can summon help if necessary, and both police and
paramedics are on site every night. All of these preventive measures cost a few
extra dollars, but the Lions are convinced that it is worth it.
A covered waiting area keeps the patrons dry on those rainy
October nights. This has more than paid for itself by getting additional people
to come out on the nasty nights.
Paid attendance over the 19 years of operation is 454,743.
These numbers certainly do not rival some of the larger commercial operations,
but Bloodview is, and will always remain, a non-profit, all-volunteer
operation. “One night we had four people with Ph.D. degrees directing the
parking of cars,” recalls John, “show me one commercial operation with than
kind of talent parking cars!”
The goal has always been to raise money for charitable
causes. The total to date for all non-profit and charitable activities is a
little over $1.1 million. Not bad for a bunch of amateurs!
In 1997, the Legion of Terror departed Bloodview for what,
they hoped, were greener pastures. During the past three years the Lions
struggled to maintain the quality of the show. Unfortunately, the new acting
troop, The Nightmare Society, was
significantly younger, smaller and decidedly less experienced. Notwithstanding
their best efforts, the effectiveness of the scares decreased, as did the
attendance.
For 2000, the Legion has decided to return to Bloodview, and
the Lions certainly welcome their decision. Perhaps the past cannot be
recaptured, but the Broadview Heights Lions Club and Legion of Terror are going
to give it one hell of a try.
Jack Morabito has been
a member of the Broadview Heights Lions Club since 1984 and has regularly
volunteered his time constructing and helping at Bloodview. In his real life,
Jack runs a financial services consulting business. Jack can be contacted by
email at lionjam@aol.com.
Fast Facts:
Location: Broadview Heights, OH (about 15
miles south of Cleveland)
Price: $8.00,
but many discount coupons and group rates are available.
Contact:
Jeff Madigan, Haunted House
Chairman. Email: madkam@aol.com.
Size: 6000
square foot building, five acres of land.
Rooms: 16 to 20
Throughput: 1000 people per hour
Actors: varies
from 50 to 75
Type: Indoor
and outdoor scares (roving actors). Single facility.
Years: 20th
anniversary in 2000.
