Awaken the Spirits 2021: Panels

Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena, CA

The spooks return this week with a series of updates centered on the macabre and the twisted, and today, we kick it off with Part 1 of our coverage of this past weekend’s Awaken the Spirits “pop-up” Halloween and horror convention, put on by the folks from Midsummer Scream.

This two-day event was a reduced version of the annual summertime celebration of things spooky, lacking the mini-haunts and entertainment of the full event, which was cancelled both last year and this year. But in its place was a more casual and almost relaxed homecoming and reunion of sorts—a place where the haunt community could come together in a larger format gathering for the first time in over a year and a half to take in at least a little bit of that Halloween spirit.

Our focus today is more news-oriented, covering some of the panels that took place across Saturday and Sunday. Held across two stages, the Awaken the Spirits panels were a close approximation of regular Midsummer Scream operation, featuring familiar major haunt players like Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights, Six Flags Magic Mountain’s Fright Fest, 13th Floor Entertainment Group, and Winchester Mystery House. It also provided a platform for local home haunts, nearly a dozen of which were featured over two preview sessions across both days, as well as a special retrospective for one of the big Southern California home haunt icons, Rotten Apple 907.

We didn’t make it to every panel—the 13 Ghosts panel was unfortunately cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances, and the Resident Evil: Village panel was a partial conflict. So were the Twirly Talky Show wit Barry and special guests Bob Gurr on Saturday and Mr. He on Sunday. But we took in a pretty solid amount, and we’ve got summaries of the ones we did attend below!

HHN Design & Collaboration: The Art Department Process

The first actual panel on Saturday kicked off with a helping of girl power, as Halloween Horror Nights presented a look at the complex design flow and deeply inter-connected processes of the various components of Universal Studios’ art department as it approaches its revered annual Halloween event. Moved to the Main Stage thanks to the absence of the 13 Ghosts participants, this panel needed the extra room, thanks to the legion of HHN fans who showed up early to listen to Brandi Creason and Jamie Bartkowicz speak to their roles and interactions in bringing beloved IP’s and original ideas from ideation to pen to construction.

The first of two Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood panels put ladies in the spotlight.

The duo used the first Universal Monsters maze as a case study into their work, delving into the work done with set design, painting, lighting, and costuming to bring the maze together. In addition, Creason and Bartkowicz also walked the audience from sketch to construction documents to actual physical sets to illustrate the heavy teamwork and collaboration needed to pull a maze like this together. Creason’s construction background helps in delineating her vision in a buildable manner, and Bartkowicz’s coordination and management across disciplines helps provide the organization to keep things moving forward.

This panel was a great opportunity to learn about the lesser known names whose responsibilities are vital to bringing Halloween Horror Nights to reality. Though Creative Director, John Murdy and Art Director, Chris Williams are the famous names, there is an army of talented and passionate people who work with them, and without ladies like Creason and Bartkowicz, HHN would certainly not be to the immersive caliber that it is!

Winchester Mystery House

Following Halloween Horror Nights on the Main Stage were the Midsummer Scream veterans from Winchester Mystery House. A team including General Manager Walter Magnuson, Director of Marketing & Sales Natalie Alvanez, and Director of Operations Michael Taffe walked through the supernatural history and legacy of paranormal investigation of the famed house, as well as its past Halloween events (including the Hallowe’en Candelight Tour we’ve reviewed before).

This led to a discussion of this year’s all-new October event, the Lost in the House Tour (literally inspired by a merchandise T-shirt, as Taffe humorously noted) that will bring guests with paranormal investigators trying to uncover the mysteries of the house. Of course, things naturally take a chaotic turn, which might leave guests scrambling to escape and getting lost in the supernatural horror in the process! Though the Winchester team is taking a more cerebral and psychological approach to this event, they did promise some hard scares with this new story, and curious guests will have to visit in person when the event begins next month on September 10th!

LA Haunted Hayride & Delusion

Mid-afternoon on Saturday featured a 13th Floor Entertainment Group double header, with this year’s SoCal heavy hitters, Delusion and the L.A. Haunted Hayride both featured. 13FEG CEO Chris Stafford, new Director of Immersive Entertainment Jon Braver, Creative Director Jon Cooke, and moderator Ted Daugherty of Ultimate Haunt and Plague Productions fame headed this hour-long look into two of the more anticipated events this fall!

Delusion, of course, is presenting a brand new production come next month entitled Reaper’s Remorse, telling the tale of Esther Phillips and her collection of artifacts that carry ghostly and soul-clinging natures. Much of the event details include information we’ve already covered in the event announcement and our interview with Jon Braver last month. But Braver also shared some concept art for some of the absolutely terrifying and creepy characters and creatures that we might meet, or which inspired some of the visuals that will be present in the scariest Delusion yet. If the art provides any indication, Reaper’s Remorse will indeed provide a thrilling and intense psychological battle with horror!

Jon Braver elaborates on what to expect for this season of Delusion.

The second half functioned as the de facto formal announcement and confirmation that the L.A. Haunted Hayride would be returning in 2021! After functioning as a “drive-up experience” at Bonelli Regional Park in San Dimas last year, the Hayride returns home to Griffith Park—albeit in a slightly different and more spacious location.

This year, guests will return to the town of Midnight Falls, where the year is once again 1985, and the folks are celebrating their 13th annual Halloween festival. The Midnight Falls characters will return to the midway area, joined by newly proclaimed mayor, Monte Revolta! The hayride itself will also feature a series of new sets, including a scene inspired by Jon Cooke’s son that might best be described as a trash panda Chuck-E-Cheese animatronic musical performance.

Ted Daugherty walks through what the L.A. Haunted Hayride is bringing for 2021.

There will be three mazes for the event, including the return of the popular Trick or Treat with jump scares programmed into some of the residences door bell rings, a revamped, completely rebuilt, and re-imagined Midnight Mortuary that follows the Marlin family more deeply into their twisted and depraved practices, and a brand-new maze, Dead End Diner. This maze will bring guests to a most decrepit rest stop and will feature actual dead ends where monsters can trap guests! Will visitors be able to escape, or will they become the meals of Midnight Fall’s darkest dwellers?

Elsewhere around the grounds, the L.A. Haunted Hayride will see a more immersive atmosphere, with even merchandise and food stands dressed up in sets to make Midnight Falls more enveloping. More information will be forthcoming, including official dates and ticketing, but suffice to say that fans of the Hayride certainly left buzzing and excited!

Halloween Horror Nights

As is typical, the most popular panel of the weekend was Halloween Horror Nights Creative Director John Murdy’s Halloween Horror Nights talk, which played to an absolutely packed house at the Main Stage. In past years, Murdy has conducted deep dives into a past or upcoming maze and help stir up excitement by providing exclusive announcements of new attractions for the season. This time around, he did both.

John Murdy recounts his love for the classic Universal monsters.

The main feature occupying the bulk of the talk was an exploration of the Universal Monsters: Bride of Frankenstein Lives maze that will be located on the Upper Lot by Mels’ Diner. John Murdy has often mentioned how he grew up a huge fan of the classic Universal monsters (and he recounted his childhood—including re-sharing his old Halloween costume pictures inspired by the Wolfman and the Mummy), but for the longest time, he resisted doing a maze at Halloween Horror Nights devoted to the characters out of an admitted fear that guests would not love and appreciate them as much as he would—a reaction that would have been devastating. Fortunately, the 2018 Universal Monsters maze was one of the top hits of the season, giving Murdy the confidence to continue the following year with Frankenstein vs the Wolfman.

As an imagined sequel to the 1935 classic, The Bride of Frankenstein, this year’s maze will pick up after the movie’s climactic ending, as Frankenstein’s monster has set fire to the castle and plunged both himself and the bride into charred ruin. Guests will follow the Bride’s point of view as she survives the destruction and embarks on a mission to save the monster, the only creature who showed her kindness (in all of the five minutes she spent on screen in the original movie). However, the Bride won’t be alone. Pursuing her will be Dracula’s brides, a trio of vicious vampires who hunt the two creations of Dr. Frankenstein. It isn’t long before she turns the tables, though, capturing them and delving into experiments on the creatures of the night and their immortal blood to try to unlock the secret to bringing the monster back to life.

A deep dive of one of the mazes this year and a continuation of HHN focus on women in haunts.

Through the maze, the Bride of Frankenstein takes a journey that sees her become more empowered and ruthless, evolving her position to eventually take on the role of the doctor herself. It fulfills the goal of creating a female-centric monster story that celebrates the gender that is rarely featured in monster movie villainy.

In addition to this, Murdy revealed that the end of the Bride of Frankenstein Lives maze will open out into the Silver Scream Queenz (of course with the Z) scare zone. Here, guests will run into a female iteration of the Mummy via Anck Su Namun, the She-Wolf, and Dracula’s daughter. This continues the feminist angle, and it’s definitely a great and unique take on a classic IP!

Murdy sharing news about this year’s HHN.

Lastly, Murdy also broke the news that, after a one-season hiatus, the Terror Tram would be returning to Horror Nights! No theme or additional information was provided, but John did note that this move was being made in response to fan request, since many people seemed to miss the Terror Tram during its 2019 hiatus.

Home Haunt Previews

Both Saturday and Sunday also featured a pair of panels on several featured Southern California home haunts that have gained fanfare over the past few years. Saturday’s line-up included The Pirates Cave, Beware the Dark Realm, the Farm Haunt, the Grey Phantom, and Prism Haunt. Meanwhile, Sunday brought forth Reichland Asylum, the Dreich Society, Realm of Shadow, Corona Haunt, and (because they couldn’t figure out a more fitting category to place it), last year’s surprise hit, the Tunnel of Terror!

A look at the Saturday home haunt panel, moderated by Rick West.

The forum allowed each haunt to introduce themselves to any audience members not familiar with them, talk about their history, motivations, and inspirations, discuss the challenges of dealing with COVID last year (and this year), and announce their 2021 runs. Interested prospective haunters could also glean the insight of the haunters on stage, who ran a wide age range and thematic gamuts, and learn about their challenges and their ingenuity.

Among the formal announcements for this season:

The Pirates Cave announced The Curse of Calico Jack, running the last three weekends of October.
Beware the Dark Realm confirmed their return this year, celebrating the Sivley family’s 50th overall year of haunting.
The Farm Haunt will also return this year and finally feature a walk-through attraction for the first time since moving to Castaic, after two years of (very incredible) yard displays.
The Grey Phantom will also return, also in maze form after last year’s amazing yard display debut.
Prism Haunt will be combining the technology integration used in last year’s yard show with their traditional walkthrough for this year’s event and will run every Friday and Saturday (and presumably Halloween night Sunday) this October.
Reichland Asylum will be back as a maze this year, and construction has already begun.
The Dreich Society will be bringing a Grind House theme to this year’s event, operating the final weekend of October.
Realm of Shadow will bring a sequel to their Temple of the Fallen God at a new location, an elementary school parking lot in Bellflower (it helps to be married to the school principal).
Corona Haunt will be bigger than ever (with seven full facades) in its maze this October.
Tunnel of Terror will actually be located in Long Beach this year.

Rotten Apple 907: 30 Years of Home Haunt Excellence

Sunday kicked off with a retrospective on arguably the most famous home haunt around. Rotten Apple 907 celebrates 30 years as a haunted house this year (last year would have been their 30th anniversary, but they did a yard display—a ridiculously over the top and incredible one—in a pivot due to COVID). For three decades, Diane and Preston Meyer and their family and close friends have created incredible scares in Burbank, with a different theme every year that takes over their front yard!

Left to right, Melissa Thompson, Galen Augustus, Martin Potter, Preston Meyer, and Diane Meyer share stories of behind the scenes at Rotten Apple 907.

In this panel, the Meyers shared their haunt’s humble origins in the early years as an indoor haunted house that began as just the small attraction guests went through to get to the Halloween party. But over the years—stirred in part by daughter Melissa Thompson’s passion for Halloween and all things spooky—the haunted houses became more and more elaborate and eventually started taking on a unique theme each season.

Westcoaster has only been covering Rotten Apple 907 since 2016, so there was a lot of great history that we never knew about, including the recurring Easter egg of Melissa’s childhood troll doll being included in every year’s maze, the meticulous and often inane details that the family has obsessed about, the intricately creative costumes that Melissa has fashioned over the years (incuding an upside down man in the upside down dining room for the Wilsley Manor), and their copious use of child labor to help with the build.

Through it all, the evolution and advancing sophistication of Rotten Apple could be seen, starting with primitive animatronics and eventually evolving to more complex moving parts and creatures, elevators on airbags, and more and more ornate and intricate theming, lighting, and theatrics. The Meyers capped off the talk by officially announcing this year’s theme, Evil in the London Fog, which will feature a return of a bloodier aesthetic (Rotten Apple has rarely incorporated blood and gore into their mazes over the past decade-plus) and a cavalcade of infamous murderers and tragedies in British literature and history!

Six Flags Magic Mountain

The feature event of Sunday was the Six Flags Magic Mountain Fright Fest panel, which provided plenty of news and information on this year’s event! Creative Director Mark Wing, Costume Director Michelle Lynn, Make-Up Designer Renee Branch, and Publicist Alex French brought along a few ghoulish friends as they spilled the beans about Fright Fest 2021!

Just want to take a moment and give a shout-out to the American Sign Language translators passionate and evocative throughout the convention all weekend. Even when they did not have any actual hearing-impaired audience members in front of them, they gave it their all.

The first announcements were relatively uneventful. After confirming that Fright Fest would run a record 24 nights from September 11 - October 31st, “Team Magic” confirmed that the six mazes from 2019—Red's Revenge, Condemned: Forever Damned, Vault 666: Unlocked, Aftermath 2: Chaos Rising, Sewer of Souls, and Willoughby's Resurrected—would all return this year. Surprisingly, there was no new maze announcement (especially with some expectation that the very veteran Willoughby’s Resurrected might be revamped or replaced), but there was an implication that there may be more announcements to come.

The Deadzone is a new scare zone this year at Fright Fest.

On the new additions front, Six Flags Magic Mountain's Fright Fest will have a new scare zone, The Deadzone, at The Underground. It will feature a cyberpunk zombie theme and vibrant costume and lighting and mini-maze environments. The team described this new scare zone as “high tech meets low life,” and while the idea of cyberpunk zombies is novel and interesting, the visuals of this scare zone and semi-mini-maze space (seemingly similar to Witches Lair) should encompass a striking and evocative environment. In addition, the Fright Fest crew also let slip that another new scare zone was in the works, although they did not announce what it actually was.

Innocence Willoughby leads a cast of beloved Fright Fest monsters on stage.

In entertainment, two new shows were also announced: Grave Games, a twisted circus and acrobat act (opening September 24), and Dark Minds, a mentality act replacing the hypnotist show. Unleashed, the monster unveil at the start of Fright Fest, will return to it's original location by SCREAM! Voodoo Nights will also return over by Full Throttle Plaza, with some updates to the theme hinted.

Major roller coasters will also be run in the dark, including Twisted Colossus, X2, Batman, and Viper. And more announcements are yet to come!

Turning Nightmares Into Reality with the Masterminds of Dark Harbor

In perhaps the most wistful panel of the weekend, David Wally of Mycotoo and Charity Hill and Steve Sheldon of Epic Entertainment Group discussed the history and evolution of iconic and beloved characters at Dark Harbor in a panel moderated by none other than the Ringmaster herself, Peggy McGee. It was odd hearing McGee speaking in her natural voice rather than the raspy but flamboyant Ringmaster’s (though she did conduct her own introduction in character in a hilarious off-stage rendition, and an interaction with an absolutely adorable Captain emoji showed that even when the event isn’t happening, Dark Harbor still provides some of the most entertainment moments of Midsummer Scream), but she did an excellent job navigating the discussion points of the panel.

Peggy McGee at the start of the Dark Harbor panel, before bantering with The Captain-moji.

Wally, Hill, and Sheldon (not attorneys at law) spent a thorough amount of time pairing the history of Dark Harbor with the development of its monsters and characters, focusing on both the proliferation of their icon characters like Scary Mary, Samuel the Savage, Half Hatchet Henry, the Captain, Graceful Gail, the Ringmaster, Chef, and the Iron Master, and side characters who developed their own personalities and following simply through the scareactor’s own creativity.

A constant theme of the talk was the steadfast support and advocacy that Talent Captain David Wally consistently maintained on behalf of his actors—a care and consideration that has earned him the adoration and loyalty of countless Dark Harbor monsters over the years. This was particularly evident when a contigent of the cast yelled out, “WAAAALLLYYYY!!!” in unison after he took his seat. Wally also shared an emotional moment of appreciation for Dark Harbor’s opportunity to allow him to work with McGee, who he’s known since college. The decades of real life friendship were only further reinforced through their experiences at Dark Harbor.

The entire panel discussing the development of Dark Harbor.

Although the team could not comment on the future of Dark Harbor in light of the financial struggles and physical deterioration at the Queen Mary, they did note that they were continuing to develop ideas in the hopes that Dark Harbor can continue perhaps next year. No one can be sure what that brings, though, marking a bittersweet tone to the talk.

Ventura County Fear Grounds

Closing out the weekend was a panel for a newcomer haunt, the Ventura County Fear Grounds. This new haunt is kind of like the Del Mar Scream Zone in that it will feature three haunted attractions at a fairgrounds location, but the haunts will feature a more old school approach built on relentless intensity and intimate frights. The event is being headed up by The Producers Group, and founder and co-CEO Edward Marks—who was Creative Director of Universal Studios’ Halloween event before John Murdy—and Design Director Lauren Olivarez were on hand to discuss the new event.

The Dead End: Surfer’s Point will be the general midway area that is included with general admission. Meanwhile, there will be three separate haunted attractions, each with its own separate ticket, with early bird pricing starting at $13.99 per haunt. An all-inclusive package with “fast pass” entrance to all three attractions is also available for $40.

The first haunt, The Cage, is a maze that isn’t really a maze, because it will be transparent. Presumably, chainlink will create a labyrinth of a layout without the visual hiding places that make pop-out scares easier. Instead, the creatures that lurk within will be in plain site, and guests will be challenged to make it fro the entrance to the exit. Marks called it a very brazen concept, laying out all the cards on the table and relying on primal execution to deliver the scares.

Joining The Cage is a Terror Trail that will wind among the barn area of the fairgrounds, taking guests into and beside the complex. Again, the ambiance here will be intimate, with groups isolated from others and left to fend for themselves among the monsters on the trail.

Finally, the Fright Train didn’t really have any details announced at all, as the presenters were holding this one close to their chest. However, one might speculate that it is sort of like a choo choo version of a haunted hayride.

A map of Ventura County Fear Grounds and promised attractions.

Ventura County Fear Grounds certainly sounds intriguing, and as with all first-time haunts, there will be curiosity and anticipation to see how this haunt delivers a unique experience, and what kind of quality it is bringing. Tickets were not on sale yet, but more information was promised from the web site. The event will run Thursdays through Sundays in October.

The quote of the weekend: “HAUNTS DON’T TOUCH!!” from Edward Marks, in response to an audience member question about if VC Fear Grounds would be old school, would the scareactors be allowed to touch guests. Put that on a T-Shirt!

That caps off our Awaken the Spirits panels review. We’ll return with a look at the exhibition halls and the people and characters of Awaken the Spirits. It was a fun weekend with a little bit of haunt normalcy restored, and though the Delta variant of COVID still puts this haunt season at some amount of risk, hopefully, with collective responsible actions, we can curb the spread, keep each other as healthy and safe as possible, and keep Halloween season alive for us all!