Friday, September 25, 2009

Knott's Scary Farm

Knott's "Scary" Farm held their first "Halloween Haunt" of the season last night and if I'm doing my math correctly, this marks the 37th year of this event. Below are some Haunt buttons that were given to Knott's employees to wear back in the '80's. The first one is undated, but it is from 1985.

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These next buttons are also undated, but at least they began to put the event number on them. This one is from the 14th Annual Haunt that was held in 1986.
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This one is from 1987. The graphics look like they were just borrowed from the previous year's design.
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This last button is from 1988.


The last Haunt that I worked was in 1988. I quit Knott's just before the Haunt nights began in 1989. My first Halloween Haunt was actually in 1982, but they didn't start producing Haunt buttons for the employees until 3 years later, so I only have the four.
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Next, we have two photos of the Headless Horseman that would wander the Stagecoach route during the Haunts. This first photo was taken from almost the same spot as this photo seen over at Gorillas Don't Blog.


I never really knew for sure how they did this, because it was always pretty dark when you'd see this character, but if you look closely at the two photos, I think the nose of the person can be seen in the "V" of the shirt and there is an eyeball on either side of that, which would mean the person is just wearing a "bloody stump" prosthetic on top of their head and probably "fake shoulders" to lengthen the appearance of the torso. Clever. I used to think that the person's head was down inside the shirt looking out through the clothing somehow.


Last up for today, we have a photo of Elvira walking down some stairs on the stage of the Goodtime Theater, formerly the John Wayne Theater, and now the Charles M Schulz Theater (and somewhere in there it was known as the Toyota Goodtime Theater) located in what was then known as the Roaring 20's area of the park, formerly the Gypsy Camp, and now the Boardwalk area. WHEW!


This photo was taken at the beginning of the show right after that disc with Elvira's face painted on it lit up and revealed her sihouette standing behind it....just like something out of a '70s variety show! I can only remember two of the songs that she sang in this particular show, "My Boyfriend's Drac," and "Chapel Of Love" ("We're going to the chapel and we're going to get buried"). Her show changed year after year and was always excellent. I wish she still performed at the Haunts....if she did, I would probably go just for that!

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