Midnight seances, glow-in-the-dark ghosts, and a gorilla that always breaks loose—our journey into haunted-house history starts where theater met sideshow and never looked back. We trace the first British walkthroughs of the 1930s, the packed spook shows that turned movie palaces into after-hours carnivals, and the scrappy showmen who transformed empty storefronts into seasonal scream factories. From the U.K. to postwar Japan, if you love theme parks, horror design, or the mechanics of...
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Midnight seances, glow-in-the-dark ghosts, and a gorilla that always breaks loose—our journey into haunted-house history starts where theater met sideshow and never looked back. We trace the first British walkthroughs of the 1930s, the packed spook shows that turned movie palaces into after-hours carnivals, and the scrappy showmen who transformed empty storefronts into seasonal scream factories. From the U.K. to postwar Japan, if you love theme parks, horror design, or the mechanics of...
Knott's Scary Farm - Before Halloween Horror Nights, Before Oogie-Boogie Bash, Knott's Got Boysenscary!
The Lowdown on the Plus-up - A Theme Park Podcast
1 hour 46 minutes
1 week ago
Knott's Scary Farm - Before Halloween Horror Nights, Before Oogie-Boogie Bash, Knott's Got Boysenscary!
Halloween didn’t just arrive at theme parks; it was engineered, rehearsed, and unleashed from a fog-soaked street in Buena Park. We dive into the wild origin story of Knott’s Scary Farm, tracing the DNA from mid-century horror hosts to the first freestanding mazes, the invention of roaming monsters, and the culture of sliders sparking their way through Calico. It’s a saga packed with scrappy ingenuity, late-night TV legend, and a berry (boysen) farm that accidentally became the Godfather of h...
The Lowdown on the Plus-up - A Theme Park Podcast
Midnight seances, glow-in-the-dark ghosts, and a gorilla that always breaks loose—our journey into haunted-house history starts where theater met sideshow and never looked back. We trace the first British walkthroughs of the 1930s, the packed spook shows that turned movie palaces into after-hours carnivals, and the scrappy showmen who transformed empty storefronts into seasonal scream factories. From the U.K. to postwar Japan, if you love theme parks, horror design, or the mechanics of...
