Starting back when we were kids, we found we always loved Halloween, it was in our blood. At that time in our area, we found that there weren’t any quality ‘haunted houses’ or Halloween attractions nearby for us to go to. Yes, in Buffalo, New York, the Haunted Catacombs were around, but there was nothing else to compare it to at the time. We’re not saying it was a bad attraction, in fact, it probably was the one reason we did get started into something of this nature.
By 1997, we started our ‘yard haunts’ as we called them. We had decorated the houses of our friends and neighbors for parties and such, and our personal haunt attracted people from all over the neighborhood. Growing in size each year, by 1999 we had gotten too large for our street with the lack of parking space, and word of our attraction had caught the local news channels. This was definitely an adventure we weren’t expecting.
The next couple of years, we spent our time by visiting other haunted attractions across the country and several conventions for haunted houses. For our local haunts, we had perfected a means of creating realistic tombstones for our own use and had brought pictures with us to the conventions to show friends we had made from the other houses. We knew we had something fantastic when other people had asked us to make tombstones for them and their haunted attractions; this was the beginning of Eerie Productions.
Doing this for a couple of years told us we had talent. A talent that the people of Buffalo wanted to see. Knowing well that we couldn’t go back to the house haunt, we decided in 2002 to go ahead and begin a professional haunt. It worked very well in other areas in many other states, and we knew that Buffalo was a place where the people always looked for something to do that would be fun and not very expensive.
We figured our best bet would be to start at the Erie County Fair, the second largest fair in the country, since this would bring our people to us without having to market ourselves. It would save us a lot of money and we could create a great show without having to spend more money than we wanted. This taught us a lot and we still learn by remaining faithful to our fans and the fair each and every year.
The first year we presented our haunted attraction to the people of Buffalo, we built it on the lot of a shopping plaza using tents to contain each of our three attractions. We chose a good location with good traffic and part of a local neighborhood. It was on George Urban Boulevard, near the corner of Dick Road, in what is now the Wegman’s plaza, in Depew, New York. We were confident we had something that no one else did have in the area. Our quality and preparations were unmatched by any pre-existing haunts that Buffalo had ever seen.
Then we were faced with problems that we never had anticipated. Buffalo’s unpredictable weather was a definite problem; cold and rainy, we only did half the numbers we had projected to do. Another factor in our lack of numbers was the other haunted attractions that had decided to open that same year. These were two important changes that we knew we would have to constantly deal with if we were to succeed as a premier haunted attraction in Buffalo.
Our new year did see some vast improvements, as we headed indoors using the Eastern Hills Mall as our new home base. We acquired one of the larger stores in the mall that had been empty for the year. Some improvements we made were adding, not one, but two new houses to our repeater and increasing the size of our pre-existing ones. Using the mall itself as a ‘splashboard’, we found our customer base grew in size as well as in age; people of all types were visiting our attraction, from the very young to the ‘not-so-very’ old.
In 2005, we had grown so large we had moved out from the mall and into an adjacent building near the mall. So close in fact, the mall still acknowledges us as part of their ongoing events. We were located in the Sym’s building, near Sheridan Drive in Clearance and Frightworld has expanded beyond our wildest dreams. With five ever-changing, unique houses, people experience something new every time they enter our domain. In fact, we promise to have one new house every year while we update each of the others for our guests enjoyment.
Since then we have remained ever growing in size, both physically and with our ever-expanding customer base. Our repeat business from previous years is something we always count upon. Frightworld has indeed become one of the newest landmarks in the greater Buffalo area, wherever we might be.
Now in 2007, Eerie Productions and Frightworld has gained immeasurable fame; enough for other places to join forces with us in other cities. You can now look for Frightworld and several of its unique and terrifying houses to be found in several areas of Rochester. They can be found, of course, at www.HauntedRochester.com.
What does the future hold for Eerie Productions and Frightworld? Why, what every crazy company wants, to take over the world! Expect to see new versions of Frightworld to pop out and scare you all across the land; why, we might even find our way into your backyard! Wouldn’t that be a scream!
A word to those who decided to take the time to read through all of our history: There will be another Frightworld appearing in the Western New York area in 2008. Just hold onto your hats, it’ll be there sooner than you think!