The Daily Telegram, Adrian Michigan
By ROGER A. FERGUSON
By ROGER A. FERGUSON
Haunted Barn will tickle senses of thrill-seekers
ADRIAN—People who were spooked but last year’s Haunted Barn should get a real fright this year.
“We’re really trying to be as state-of the-art and as animatic as we can,” said Adrian Community Services programmer Dan Rodgerson. “Just having people jump out of a coffin doesn’t scare people anymore.”
“We’re really trying to be as state-of the-art and as animatic as we can,” said Adrian Community Services programmer Dan Rodgerson. “Just having people jump out of a coffin doesn’t scare people anymore.”
Instead, the city workers and dozens of volunteers have designed the Haunted Barn to literally tickle the senses of thrill-seekers and make them participants in many of the barn’s 20 scenes. Though Rodgerson is unwilling to spoil many of the barn’s surprises, he said the barn’s electric chair scene may be shocking to some.
“We’re going to ask those people coming though to actually do the deed,” he said.
Static displays will still be a part of the barn’s terrifying trail of torment, but for the most part Rodgerson said the scenes were designed to be as three dimensional as possible, with scares jumping at people from all angles.
Three or four of the individual scenes will also have their own sound effects and opposed to last year when a single sound effect was pumped throughout the entire building.
Rodgerson said those in charge of putting on the bam have also learned a thing or two about theatrics since last year’s Haunted Barn.
“Our scenes are being acted out,” he said. “It’s entertainment.”’
The Haunted Barn, located at Heritage Park, takes upwards of $5,000, worth of items to put on, but Rodgerson said the actual cost is must lower because many of the items are simply borrowed from other city departments. Many of the things that are actually bought for the barn are then reused by other departments. For example, community services will purchase plants for the Haunted Barn, but those plants will then be reused by the city’s park and trees department and some of the mechanics used for the scenes are simply on loan.
Besides the few people it takes to run the Haunted Barn from the Community Services Department, dozens of volunteers are used to make it a success.
“This year we can say there has been thousands of hours volunteer hours used,” Rodgerson said.
A majority of those volunteers have come from Wal-Mart (about 30 volunteers), which is a major sponsor of the Haunted Barn, and the Adrian Training School.
Speaking of the two dozen kids who volunteer from the training school, Rodgerson said, “They turned out to be a great resource for us. They certainly had a knack for it and they are enthusiastic about it.
About a dozen other people have volunteered their time on an individual basis.
Rodgerson said the key to the whole project is the volunteers, which was a United Way requirement as part of a $2,000 grant the city received to start the Haunted Barn last year.
The barn is also funded though volunteer hours provided by Wal-Mart employees volunteer at the Haunted Barn, the discount store pays that person’s wages towards the project, which accounted for about $2,000 last year. Wal-Mart has also agreed to match the total gate receipt, which last year brought the total proceeds up from $1,000 t $3,000.
The city hopes to boost its profits this year by increasing the time its open by one hour. Last year the barn was open four nights from 7:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. he problem was, many people showed up at 10 p.m. looking for the barn. This year, the barn will again be open or four nights9this Friday and Saturday night and again on October 24 and 25), but will stay open until 11p.m.
Our goal is to put 1,000 people through this year,” he said. That would be an increase of 600 people over last year’s total.
