West Coast Haunters Convention

I am a little crazy when it comes to Halloween. It takes a week to decorate the house and we have a halloween buffet every year. So, when my husband, told me the West Coast Haunters were having a convention at the Double Tree Hilton in Portland, I was amped to put it mildly. The convention included a friday night bus tour of Scream haunted house. Which had sold out by the time I got to the website, but I emailed them, and they could not have been nicer about helping me secure tickets for the friday night tour, which included 3 full size tour buses. The tour was supposed to be lights off haunted tour and then lights on. The Scream tour was really the warehouse, due to the change of location. It was a learning experience, so I was okay with it, but there were other haunters not impressed with the fact that it was just looking at their storage facility when the description was two full haunted house tours.
We went to Vancouver, Washington for the next haunted house and they put on a dinner catered by Q’doba. Then they let us go through the haunted house lights off and then lights on. This was a really good haunted house, it took awhile to get through it. Since these conventions are usually focused on professional haunted house owners, serious home haunters and FX makeup people, it is really informative. It is hard to be afraid going through the houses anymore, since I am now a halloween junkie looking for the next best scare but I can appreciate when it is done well.
We are looking to open a haunted house in the next couple of years and made some great connections with owners willing to share tips and have us come and check their stuff out. So the networking aspect of this convention is priceless.
This convention is still coming together, so looking past the growing pains, as they put it to us at the ticket booth, I think they have done a great job. The school for the Deaf, has done a great job, as well, with the entire thing. If you go to the website you can read the history of haunt and the School for the Deaf, it is a really cool. We did win $ 100 raffle draw for a year of the Haunt Cast, so that was a great way to end the weekend. The vendors there were all pretty nice for the most part.
They told us they are going to try to be in the same spot next year, so if you have any interest in haunting, then mark the calendar for 2013. Check out the website for more details.