Early on in the process of writing THE SKELETON HAUNTS A HOUSE, I decided it was
going to be set in and around a haunted house—meaning the Halloween season kind
with fake ghosts and gore, not actual spirits. So I did a fair amount of
research into how a haunted house is put together and run. Not only did I want
to get the background details and jargon right, I actually wanted to lay out my
fictional haunted house so I could bring it to life. (Not quite in a mad
scientist bringing the monster to life kind of way, but sort of like that.)
I worked in a haunted house myself back in high school, and my original plan was
to have my fictional house set up the same way, with random creepy sets and
costumed spooks throughout the house. It turns out that industry standards have
evolved a great deal since then. These days a haunted house is very much a
carefully designed experience.
The starting point is the venue. Is it an old house, a theater, a cornfield, a
amusement park, a hayride, or even an abandoned location like a hospital or
prison. You can haunt just about anything. The best haunted house venue I’ve
ever heard of is Burg Frankenstein, near Darmstadt in Germany. It’s rumored to
have been an inspiration for Mary Shelly’s book Frankenstein, and there’s been a
Halloween festival there since 1978.
Since my book was going to be set in Pennycross, a small Massachusetts college
town, I couldn’t legitimately plant a set of castle ruins in the middle of town,
or even on the outskirts. Instead I decide to sneak in an unused class building
onto the grounds of McQuaid University, where my protagonist Georgia Thackery
works. To give it some gravitas, I called it McQuaid Hall, but for
Halloween, it becomes McHades Hall.
Once the venue is set, I gave my haunted house a theme. You see, the really
modern haunted houses have themes that inform the details of the designs. I
could have gone with haunted toy store, creepy carnival, post-apocalyptic
nightmare, insane asylum, hospital of the damned, and on and on. Since I already
had an academic setting, I ran with that: McHades Hall would be college-themed.
(The fact that my daughter is starting to look at colleges had no influence in
my view of a campus as intensely frightening.)
Even with a creepy college as a starting point, I had plenty of latitude to put
together the actual scare areas and to staff them with a wide variety of scare
actors. (Scare areas and scare actors are industry terms, but they’re pretty
self-explanatory.) This is where I got a little fast-and-loose with the themes.
I mean, for history classes I had Countess Bathory, the Black Death, and Jack
the Ripper. Technically historical, but not what I studied in college. (Though
Harvard used to have a great class about the repercussions of the Black Death.)
For English, it was characters from The Exorcist, The Shining, and Psycho. Good
books to be sure, but probably better known for their movie versions. And I
never had one single chemistry prof turn into a werewolf. (Of course, I only had
daytime chem lab...)
Of course, scare actors don’t just stand around and look horrifying. They have
to be doing horrifying things. The zombie frat boys have to chase you, the
cannibalistic cafeteria workers have to threaten you, and if anybody is just
standing around, it’s a trick to lull you into a false sense of security until
they jump at you. While there’s a certain amount of ad-libbing for the scare
actors, in general they do have lines to say and blocking, as in any kind of
theater.
Of course, all that stuff is what the customers see. (I was hoping to find an
industry-specific name for people-who-come-through-haunted-houses, but customer
is all I could find. Couldn’t they at least be scare customers?) Since I wanted
some behind-the-scenes plotting, I had to figure out what it looks like behind
the scenes. That’s when I found out that most haunts have a host of hidden paths
and passages to get around the house. They line the rooms with a fabric called
scrim, so they can hide behind and look out, but you can’t see them. Now that is
mystery-writing gold!
For the final touch of authenticity, I used some of the wisdom accumulated by
hundreds of scare actors.
Watch out for hitters! Apparently some people lash out when they’re frightened.
If you hear somebody’s name, tell the other scare actors so they can use it.
It’s scary for anybody in a zombie suit to chase you, but even worse when they
make it personal.
Never do a gag with a noose. People have died that way. That is not an urban
legend. Scare actors have accidentally strangled themselves.
Nobody can resist a chainsaw. Apparently the bravest of customers is prone to
losing it when somebody comes after them with a chainsaw. And if you think the
chainsaw is an amazingly realistic prop, think again. It’s probably a real
chainsaw. They take the chain off, but I still wouldn’t grab hold of one.
Once I had all my pieces in place, I could start plotting the actual sections of
THE SKELETON
HAUNTS A HOUSE that take place in McHades Hall. And it occurred to me that
the process is a lot like designing a haunted house.
- Venue = Setting. I started out with the town of Pennycross.
- Theme = Genre. It’s a murder mystery in which Georgia Thackery, an
adjunct English professor and single mother, solves crimes with the help of her
best friend Sid. Did I mention that Sid is an ambulatory skeleton?
- Scare actors = Characters. In addition to Georgia and Sid, we have
Georgia’s daughter Madison, her sister Deborah, her parents, her friends Brownie
and Charles, and plenty of others.
- Action = Plot. As with most mysteries, we start with the finding the
body and then progress through investigation until Georgia and Sid find the
killer. And along the way, there’s some romance and secrets and what I hope are
surprise twists.
- Behind-the-Scenes = Red Herrings. I have to walk that tight-walk
between not being about to figure out the murderer right away while having it
all make sense in the end.
- Authenticity = Authenticity. Of course, I wanted to make sure the
haunted house stuff was realistic, but I also have to make sure the university
runs like a real university. The same for the carnival that comes to town, and
the police procedures.
I hope that once it all comes together, THE SKELETON
HAUNTS A HOUSE has some of the same excitement and thrills as a haunted
house. That’s the plan, anyway.
Maybe I should have put in a chainsaw.
Under the name Toni L.P. Kelner, Leigh Perry has published eleven novels
and twenty-somthing short stories, and has co-edited five urban fantasy
anthologies with New York Times best seller Charlaine Harris. She adopted
a pen name because for a new series, and because paranormal novels were a
departure for her. So if you like Toni L.P. Kelner's books, you might like the
Family Skeleton series, too. If you don't like Kelner's books, forget she
said anything-she's never even heard of that Kelner woman.
Though Leigh was born in Pensacola, FL and raised in Charlotte, NC, she has been
living north of Boston, MA for 26 years or so. She shares the house with her
husband, two daughters, two guinea pigs, and a ludicrous selection of books.
While the population of people and guinea pigs remains constant, the number of
books is on an ever-rising curve.
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Sid the Skeleton bones up on clues to solve a Haunted House homicide in
this mystery from the author of The Skeleton Takes a Bow…
What holiday could bring more warmth to a skeleton’s chest cavity than
Halloween? And when you’re a living skeleton who’s not supposed to be seen
outside the house, it’s a welcome chance to get some fresh air and rub bony
elbows with people. That’s why Sid doesn’t mind wearing a full- body dog suit
and going as Scooby-Doo along with Georgia Thackery’s Velma to the Halloween
Howl.
Sid can’t wait to go through the Haunted House—but he gets rattled for real when
a genuine dead body is discovered. Trapped inside as the police quickly seal off
the crime scene, Sid makes no bones about dropping the dog suit and posing as an
actual skeleton. This murder is a skull- scratcher, but as long as Sid is on the
inside, he might as well case the joint to figure out who used the cover of
darkness to commit the perfect crime…
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