Haunted houses and Halloween a $7 billion holiday

Halloween has grown from a dress up night for candy-craving kiddies into a commercial event to rival Easter, the 4th of July, and Christmas. The haunted house experience is evolving, too.

It used to be that the local haunted house was usually set up at an elementary school or community center, with some low-budget effects and cheesy frights, such as spaghetti for guts and grapes for eyeballs. It’s a little different today.

At the Georgetown Morgue, on East Marginal Way in Seattle, Scott Kolling treats visitors to a haunted house featuring professional actors and makeup artists. The darkened tour starts with a cadaver on a table and winds its way through the century-old morgue.

Kolling grew up watching his father create haunted houses for a civic organization. The young landscaper by trade eventually took over the job and found himself devoting more and more time to the project.

“And my wife said ‘Scott, you’re spending too much time away from your regular job. Either make it a real job or get back on the lawnmower,'” said Kolling. So he did make it a real job. He’s been creating haunted houses for 19 years, six years at the morgue.

All the sounds of terror pumped into the morgue are synchronized and played on a series of iPods. He likes zombies, he’s featured them for years. And yes, there is blood, but not buckets of it.

“I’m not really a big gore fan but we have to have blood – it’s Halloween,” said Kolling. He favors masks and prosthetics and said the best scares are the simple ones, the startles. Even manly men find themselves frightened in Kolling’s morgue. He’s seen it on video monitors.

“They’re Rico Suave in line until they get in there with their girlfriend, and he’s using her as a shield,” laughed Kolling. The haunted house is open at 5000 East Marginal Way in Seattle Thursday through Saturday and every day Halloween week until Nov. 2. Tickets are $18.

Americans will spend almost $7 billion on Halloween this fall, according to the National Retail Federation. The average person will put down about $75. There’s candy, costumes, decorations, parties, corn mazes, pumpkin farms and haunted attractions, with tickets ranging from $12 to $50.

For the fifteenth year Bastyr University in Kenmore is creating terrifying trails in the woods of Saint Edwards State Park.

“And what we have throughout the woods is a series of scenes,” said general manager Jonathan Day. “And then in between the scenes it’s a lot of darkness, but you never know what’s going to be in that darkness and fog.”

This year’s theme is “Happily Never After,” featuring fractured scenes of Pinocchio, Hansel and Gretel, and the Wizard of Oz.

“We’ve always had a scarecrow scene out there, but this year we’re boosting it up […] so you’ll see some torn apart and demolished Wizard of Oz characters,” warned Day.

It’s $20 and opens Friday with activities for children, too. The non-profit operation pays for Bastyr University student studies around the U.S. and abroad.