Most here know I worked in the carnival industry for many years. In the mid 80's the company I worked for moved its home office to a Nolensville TN (very small little community outside Nashville).
Naturally we had an old haunted house and what was called a Dark Ride (one where you get in the car and go thru a dark place with things that scare you). Just to have some fun one year we setup the haunted house and dark ride (without cars) and added some things like the fog machines from one of our music rides. Several of the people dressed up in costumes. I added even more automated equipment using a coffin with a body that raised up, the bats flying as I mentioned, spiders (plastic on fishing line that could drop in your face and hair), ghosts and more.
We did not advertise this thing, we just invited the children (families) at the elementary school down the street. It was a one night event and I bet we had almost 10,000 people show up from word of mouth. It was free but did so well the owner thought about creating something permanent to use each year. I think my workers had more fun than the people and kids that came to see it.
Most years we were still on the road working on Halloween so this was a change of pace. On the road we would have a costume contest, I won it 2 years in a row as a "devil", did not take much of a costume.
