Volume 2, No. 4. February 22, 2002
Special Haunt Show Issue
Scared kidless
As a primer for the
upcoming Transworld National Halloween Costume and Party Show at the Rosemont
Convention Center in suburban Chicago, Illinois, March 8-12, we want to relate
this story from Drew Hunter. He is currently Design Director at Sally Corp and
one of the leading veteran haunt designers in the country who originated the
Dr. Blood character and show back in the 1970s.
Around 1986 Hunter was producing a special Halloween show for the Wax Museum
of the Southwest in Grand Prairie, Texas (now The Palace of Wax). One night
a pregnant woman got so scared she went into labor. "We rushed her to a back-stage
storage area where we were certain she was about to deliver right then and there,"
Hunter said. An ambulance arrived in time to take her to a hospital before she
gave birth.
Standing by was
her husband. Hunter asked him why he brought his pregnant wife to a haunted
house. "He calmly told us that she was a bit overdue, and he thought maybe a
good scare might help," Hunter said. "It was nice to know that we came through
for him."
Hunter said neither he nor the museum heard from the couple again. "But if you
ever are in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and meet a 15-or-so-year-old girl named
'Waxina' or some such, she just may be the result of having the kid scared right
out of somebody at our show!"