Category: Video

2006 videos found!

I did my first haunted house video in 2005 – a TV commercial for Sleepy Hollow Sports Park‘s “Fear 2005” Halloween event. In 2006, I began what would become a 31-part series covering the Sleepy Hollow Sports Park haunted houses. These videos were available in a video podcast (for the iPod with Video, if anyone is only enough to remember that). The videos had to be made tiny (320×240) for easy download.

Later videos in the series (starting in 2007) were also uploaded to 2006, but as far as I remember, the first eight episodes were only available through that video podcast.

Or so I thought.

Last night I discovered I made a DVD of them. It contained 7 episodes of the video podcast (in full size DVD quality) as well as the TV commercials from that year. I seem to remember it also had a hidden easter egg for a secret video. I do not recall how to get to it, but I will be trying to figure it out.

DVD main menu from 2006

Even if I cannot find the original video files, I should at least be able to pull video from this disc and make this available on YouTube.

More to come…

UPDATE: I found the easter egg. Or at least, I thought I dad. I have recollections of adding easter eggs in other DVDs I made, but when I tried that here, I got a dead end.

But some random trial-and-error led me to this screen. I have only managed to get to it once, but knowing my sense of humor, this screen saying there is no easter egg is probably where the easter egg is.

UPDATE UPDATE: Found it! I don’t know how, but I found it.

Oh man, DVD easter eggs. Those were fun. I’d forgotten all about them… Now to see what all is on this hidden menu…

This will be fun…

Videos are back!

The Videos page now has several new interview videos from 2017 (Zombie Hollow, Haunted Woods and Trail of Terror). I will be working on interviews from Barnum Circus of Freaks and Linn’s Haunted House next. I have many more I want to get to and get interviews with, but we have some family obligations (Living History Farms and Night Eyes) that limit my haunt time.

In addition to these new videos, I have posted some pre-DMHH videos, which were the predecessors to Des Moines Haunted Houses:

  1. You can see a 2007 interview with Nathaniel James about his HauntedFX Urbandale home haunt. Nathaniel later went on to be general manager at Sleepy Hollow and helped transform that scream park in to what we know it as today. It appears I may have done a second one in 2008, but I haven’t found it yet.
  2. I have also posted my 2009 interview with Scary Acres in Omaha. That haunt dwarfed anything we have around here, operating 35 nights each season.
  3. I am also searching for my 2006-2008 “Screamcast” video series (31 episodes) that covered the Sleepy Hollow Sports Park event as it was moving from up front, to the brand new Renaissance festival park that opened in 2006 (useless trivia: I did the initial layout and design of that park, then those got handed off to architects). Some of these videos have only been seen by folks who subscribed to the early iPod video podcast (in glorious 320×240 resolution, if I recall). I *think* I have found the original full-sized exports of them.

…and if I can find time, I’d like to organize all the various haunted house TV commercials I did over the years and get them uploaded to the new DMHH channel.

Time permitting.

Stay tuned…

Zombie Hollow video interview

10/20/2023 Update: I will be re-uploading this video soon. The last time I made one of these videos, I was using my 2012 model MacBook. This one was done on a different machine, and I realize now I did not have the proper font installed for my titles. The overlay text I normally use also does not work for vertical videos (it shows up off the screen and cannot be moved). I need to figure out how to make that work. Or, just stop shooting vertical video 😉

Here is a video interview with Lew Jordan of Zombie Hollow in Winterset, Iowa. It was recorded on Saturday, October 14th, 2023. I’d like to send big thank you to Lew and his crew for their hospitality.

Side Note: I believe this is the first video interview I have done since 2017, so I am a bit rusty. It is also the first time I have recorded and edited vertical video. Apologies to those of you who like to view video the way it was meant to be seen… 😉

Follow my new-ish YouTube channel for other videos, which will eventually include all my old interview videos as I find them and get them uploaded.

https://www.youtube.com/dmhauntedhouses