Volume 2, No. 16. August 23, 2002
Recruiting
space
When Cliff Martin
looked for potential fertile ground to recruit actors for his annual Hacker
House haunted house in Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, he turned to kindred
spirits in weirdness. He turned to science fiction conventions.
“The sci-fi conventions have always appealed to the goth market because
they play a lot of role-playing games at these things,” said Martin, president
of Myth Adventures which producers Hacker House. For his first stab at sci-fi
con recruiting, he put a table and banner in the hall of Shevacon at Roanoke,
Virginia, in February. A month later he did the same at Stelarcon in Greensboro,
North Carolina, and sent a couple of his actors to hand out brochures and meet
one on-one with attendees of Con-Carolina in Charlotte later in the year.
The effort paid off in several applications and three actors on board for this
upcoming season. He also explored the possibility of getting some cheap entertainment
for the midway he’s adding to Hacker House this year. “We made some
contact with Star Wars and Star Trek guys, and I’m trying to get those
guys to show up in costume,” Martin said. “I ran into a couple of
Ghostbusters and I hope to get them to come up in costume.”
Working the sci-fi conventions served a dual purpose, again because of the likemindedness
of the alien fanatics and horror adherents. Martin was able to get his haunt’s
name “in front of people,” he said, handing out off-season flyers
and promoting his web site which provides the background legend of his themed
haunt. “After every convention the hits on the site jumped dramatically,”
he said.
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