When Is My Kid Ready For A Haunted House?

"Is my child ready for a haunted house?" A friend of mine asked this question on Facebook the other day, and since I am a horror AND haunted house aficianado with kids I took a stab at it. She told me I should take my advice and turn it into a blog post because she couldn't really find anything on Google and sometimes when we get old, we forget what it's like to look at scary stuff as a kid, when it's new and fresh and (often) ACTUALLY frightening. (Which is not to say adults don't get frightened too; I know plenty of them that won't set food in a haunted house!) It can be difficult to tell if your child is too young (in years or emotional maturity) to go to a haunted attraction. So here's my advice:

Number One: KNOW YOUR KID. What they can handle will vary widely based on their individual personalities and ability to separate fantasy from reality. I've got a 9 year old son who HATES horror and being scared. I have an almost 7 year old daughter who LOVES it. Neither has been to a 'true' haunted house yet. The younger one has asked to go but I am not sure she is ready, since some of them are pretty extreme. The older one was invited to a classmate's birthday party at one this year - I didn't even know that was a thing, I think it's AWESOME, but he's not going and NO ONE CAN MAKE HIM).

Number Two: CHOOSE YOUR HAUNTED HOUSE WISELY. Each haunted attraction will vary widely based on what kinds of scares they offer.

a) Check to see if they have an age limit. Most don't but almost all recommend your kids be at least teenagers.

b) See if you can find local friends who have been there and get their opinion on how scary it was.

c) Find out if the workers touch you or not. Some houses allow this, some don't.

Haunted houses use a variety of scenarios to scare. Total darkness. Strobe lights and other light effects. Scary sounds and music. Fog. Jump and 'startle' scares. Disturbing imagery. Some even have sections where you may have to crawl, be squeezed, feel like the walls are closing in, or go down slides or through tunnels. Can your kid handle stumbling through the pitch darkness, only to have someone with a chainsaw jump out at them and chase them?

We went through our local park district's 'haunted hallway' a couple years ago and it was actually REALLY well done. My husband and I ended up having to carry both kids while they buried their faces in our necks. Even charity or local haunted houses are staffed by people like me who take pride in scaring people and they're usually really well done. I worked a Jaycees haunted house when I was in high school and was in a very realistic torture scene, stationed next to an actual rotting pig's head (from a local butcher). We had a truck that looked like it was going to drive right into you, a bunch of scary clowns, a mad scientist's lab with actual edible organs, and more. This was 20 years ago. I can only imagine they've improved since then.

Number Three: TALK TO YOUR KID. Don't just drag them to a haunted house kicking and screaming or surprise them when you get there. Discuss what sorts of things they should expect from it, and ask them if they think they are ready for it. It's FUN to be fake-scared. It's NOT fun to be really terrified. Help set your kid up for success by making sure they know it's all pretend, that the people working there are having a ton of fun and working hard so that YOU will have fun too.

So you've considered the above and your kid says 'I'm ready Mom and Dad, I want to do this!' Is there a litmus test to see if they can handle it? Here's my personal succession of tests:

1) Read scary books together. 

From my daughter's first grade open house. All the other little girls had Barbies, princesses, American Girl, mermaids. Then there's my daughter's at the end of the line.

a) If they haven't even read Goosebumps, start there. My horror-hater can't even handle Goosebumps!

b) Grab your favorite anthology of scary campfire tales from when you were a kid. Read some of those together.

c) Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark. Any of them, as long as they have the ORIGINAL artwork. If your kid can look at the artwork without running screaming, you're off to a good start.

Best children's book EVER.

2) Watch some scary movies together. It can be hard to find horror movies that are ok for kids but if they can't handle even a moderately extreme scary movie, DONT TAKE THEM TO A HAUNTED HOUSE. Haunted houses typically have a good amount of gore; so if your value system doesn't want them seeing gore / disturbing material (people sliced up, bodies hanging, bodies burning on spits, torture scenes), stay out of haunted houses. I actually would like to write up a list of scary movies that are appropriate for kids, more or less, and rank them. For the sake of this post though I'll just throw out a few suggestions.

MILD: Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, Mr. Boogedy

MEDIUM: The Hole (Joe Dante). Ghostbusters. Gremlins (warning: talks about how Santa doesn't exist! I just tell my kids 'that's made up for the movie'. Because we separate fantasy from reality but goddamnit we believe in SANTA CLAUS.)

WILD: Poltergeist. The Frighteners. Insidious.

If your kids can make it through that whole list, they might be ready. (Haven't seen some of the films? Check out the Parental Advisory section for each film on IMDB or go to Common Sense Media. Both are excellent resources for determining if a film fits your family's value system.)

3) How well do your kids handle people's yard haunts ON Halloween? Will they walk through a scary yard where people might pop out at them, or do they make you go get the candy? If they won't set foot on the crazy neighbor's lawn, or they wet their pants when the dude down the street in the hockey mask comes after them, they're probably not ready. If they will stride up, play along, giggle right after they scream, take their candy, and skip away, you're probably good to go.

My costume for our yard haunt last year.

There's no exact way to tell FOR SURE if your kid can handle a haunted house this season, but if you follow this advice and your kid passes the litmus tests, I think you can safely give it a go and probably guarantee a good time.

One final piece of advice: if you are anywhere NEAR Mount Carroll, IL - we are three hours away and we still make this trip whenever we can - and I recommend that you do this OUTSIDE the Halloween season because they are open year-round and you will get a much better tour: TAKE THEM TO RAVENS GRIN INN. It's a haunted house that isn't at all a traditional haunted house: it's weird and wonderful, the owners are amazing people, they will tailor the tour to your kids' fear level, and it's my second favorite place on earth. 

Both my kids (even the scaredy-cat) have been there multiple times (my daughter was 3 the first time we visited) and they love it. You couldn't possibly find a better way to introduce your kids to the fun of being scared than you could here. 

The 3-year-old ringing the front doorbell... because none of the adults would.

(Here's a link to an old review I wrote of them the first time I ever went, if you want some spoilers!)

Best of luck, happy haunting, and have fun!

Emotions In Business

downtown Mount Carroll

 Last weekend we spent some time in Mount Carroll doing a bit more research on our bar plan. We saw a few more properties in the area; we revisited the property that set us on this path in the first place; we reviewed the books for the business that we are hoping to take over. I'll talk about all of this a bit more in the coming days, but the upshot was:

*we really like the original building that set us on this path, and we could feasibly move in and take over even if we couldn't raise the money to make all the changes we want initially
*the books for the business are pretty bad, and that's concerning, especially as we would have to work hard to endear ourselves to the locals while we also tried to bring tourists in
*we have no capital to speak of, and raising the money we need is going to be difficult
*we really kind of love this place and want to do this. Or at the very least, *I* do. I'm not sure if my husband loves it like I do or not, but he's definitely on board with wanting to start this place.

So it's sort of come down to 'shit or get off the pot' time. I knew I wanted to do this before, but after this weekend, I REALLY want to do this. And that's scary. I've tried not to get too emotionally invested in the process because when you're trying to buy a place, that's the first thing they tell you - 'don't get emotionally invested; there are lots of properties, and lots of reasons deals fall through, and you can just keep looking'. I know that's true. But as human beings, it's really hard to move along with a dream and NOT get emotionally invested.

I really liked these booths (from a different property).

Now that we have determined we really do WANT *this* place, the emotions are rising. My to-do list has grown even more after this weekend, and it all suddenly seems so DIRE. Especially the part where I need to hustle and raise money. The amount of money we need isn't as huge as it would be if we were looking to buy a bar in a large city, but it's still a lot of money, especially when we have none to speak of. I have some plans in place for trying to raise capital; to raise at least enough of a down payment where we can convince someone to give us a mortgage for the place, if not a little extra to do some of the decorating and carry us for a few months of losses. All of my ideas take time though, and I'm suddenly feeling that squeeze of 'you don't have TIME!'

please don't fall through the floor, please don't fall through...

It's an uncertain thing. The building is for sale, the current business isn't doing very well (for a number of reasons), and the area isn't in high demand. It's likely that they aren't going to get any offers for the place in the couple of months it will probably take us to get funding together. Then again, it's also very possible that they will get offers, and that will be the end of this particular dream. For now.

It's going to take a lot of work to get everything we need together. I think hoping for a month is extremely unlikely; two months will be difficult. Three is probably more what we'll need to get all of our ducks in a row. A short amount of time and yet also a long amount when I let myself worry about someone else buying the place while we bust our asses trying to get it first.

my husband found this picture and these glasses in a closet.
Clearly THIS building hasn't been inhabited since the 80's.

I have so much work to do. So much effort to put into getting the money together, getting the business started... and so much still when it comes to running my family. So many loose ends to tie up, so many obligations to back away from, so many changes. This is a huge transition; we will be changing virtually every aspect of our lives. It's a change I desperately want for us, but it's ginormous. Almost everything about our lives as we know them right now will change. Our careers, our focus, our schedules, our proximity to family and friends, our finances, even our marriage. For better or worse, we will suddenly be together almost 24/7. The stuff we have; we'll be in the bar so much that we won't need most of it. (One could argue that I don't 'need' most of it now, but as a recovering semi-hoarder, we're just going to leave that one alone!) We are looking at huge shifts in our lives.

THIS unused hotel was... like The Shining or something.
Someone could EASILY turn this place into Raven's Grin 2!

It's... frightening. Don't get me wrong, I'm ridiculously excited. I want this, I want it VERY badly. But it IS scary. And I don't want to drag my feet and hold myself back. Most of me is ready to dive in headfirst. But it IS more than a little scary at times.
And the scariest part, for me anyway, is the fear that I will throw myself in headfirst and make tons of progress towards this... and someone will buy the bar before we get to it. Or they won't sell to us. Or something. Something to pull the rug out from under me and make it all go away.

Our daughter frolicking in what could become her backyard.

But one can't allow fear to dictate one's path, and as they say, nothing ventured nothing gained. Someone might get to it before we have a chance to do everything we need to do, it's true; but if I don't start doing those things, we'll certainly NEVER get to it ourselves anyway.


This is definitely not for the faint of heart though, I'll give you that.

Stage Fright

When I started dreaming about my grand vision of Spookytown years ago, I knew a day would eventually come when I would have to 'put up or shut up', as it were. I just always figured that day was down the road a ways. I don't recall if I mentioned it here before or not, but I sort of assumed this wouldn't be something that would come together for a while. When I first started dreaming about it, I was single, living in Chicago, working full time, paying off loads of college debt, and also dreaming about starting a family. It was there that I met my husband, and we started a family just a TAD quicker than we'd planned, and suddenly we were in the throes of new parenthood, both working full time. Then we found ourselves buying a house and moving to the south suburbs, STILL working full time, paying off debts and bills. Through it all I kept dreaming and planning, but couldn't quite get it all to gel together in a way that seemed like it would actually WORK for us for a few more years. There's always an excuse you can throw in your way, like a roadblock from hell: we have too many bills and not enough capital. We will never be able to sell this house in this market, so we're stuck here. Finding the right location seems totally impractical, AND we'd have to worry about schooling for the kids too. And on, and on, and on.

Finding a location that appeals to us both, pretty much by accident, and then speaking aloud to each other that we were both, as it happens, totally on board with this idea, hey, let's do this thing, seems like serendipity. Or, at the very least, the perfect opportunity. We can MAKE it be the right time because I truly believe none of our roadblocks are insurmountable.

And yet, while we shared it with close friends and family, and while I DID start a public blog on the matter, I hadn't pursued any kind of aggressive marketing stance. I didn't announce it to all of my facebook friends at large, for instance. I didn't email every single contact I have and tell them about it. An internet-wide marketing campaign was (and still IS) part of my master plan, but I wasn't quite ready to launch that yet.

Then I entered a contest yesterday to win a grant, and I figured that was my "put up or shut up" time. Since part of the judging process relies on public vote, I'd better put out all the stops and let everyone know. So I did. Yesterday. I DID facebook it to everyone on my list. I DID email all my contacts and ask them to vote (which you can do, once daily, by clicking the link above, by the way). It's OUT THERE.

I spent the rest of the afternoon alternating between "wildly excited" and "ready to poop my pants".

It occurred to me that I was feeling so weird largely out of stage fright. It's more than a little intimidating to not only tell the world that you HAVE a huge dream, but also that you are actively working to make it happen. We talk about the bar like it's a THING we have, and yet... we have nothing concrete. We have nothing but dreams, lots of books to read, and a half-formed business plan. There are so many steps between here and the bar that feeling a bit of stage fright over announcing our plans seems only natural. What if things fall through? What if the particular bar we have our eyes on gets sold to someone else, or has too much wrong with it for us to tackle right now, or is too expensive? What if, what if, what if?

So I felt all the 'what ifs' yesterday. I allowed myself to experience the feelings, to think about each one, to revel in the thrill of the amazonian task we are facing. Then I told all those what-ifs to fuck right off. Because I DO believe we can do this, and not a single ONE of them is a deal-breaker. Yup, even if we don't get the particular bar we have our eyes on. Because this dream existed long before I ever knew about that location. Because it's a whole huge world out there with lots of places that would be perfect for Spookytown. And because, more than anything, I believe in myself and my family, and I KNOW we can do it.

Welcome, those of you that are just joining the blog. I'm excited to have you along on our journey. If nothing else, it should be a really entertaining trip down the path of entrepreneurship!