THE HAUNTED PRISON EXPERIENCE of Mansfield, Ohio...plus a close look at some personal haunting....

It's August...with October a scant two months away, it's time for my Top Three Can't Miss Haunts for Halloween 2013, starting with the Mansfield Haunted Prison Experience in Mansfield, Ohio...

Their website is www.hauntedx.com


Famed stunt coordinator and film producer Myron St. John is the creative genius behind Haunted X Enterprises LLC, the masterminds here.e prison each Halloween season.

If walking the halls of the haunted experience is not enough for you, the reformatory offers paranormal trips of several different kinds.

Spending the night in a dark 250,000 square foot prison with a flashlight takes you on a quest to find the spirits that reportedly roam the prison. This trip is for those over 21 only, and does include pizza and refreshments.

A two hour evening ghost walk guided tour for ages 12 and older takes you into the darkened corridors of the reformatory.... you'll hear the stories of what people have experienced, of  the murders and death that have lead many to believe the prison is genuinely haunted.

There are tours available for those who would prefer to see the inside of the historic reformatory without the spirits - these include the facility's history and the Shawshank Trail. Visit their site www.mrps.org for times and dates.

Next time around, we're off to Louisville, Kentucky to visit the #2 Can't Miss Haunt for 2013...the famed Baxter Avenue Morgue....

 

My dearest Lisa rests comfortably against the prison walls...

 

...as I pose against the staircase...

A now for something a bit special - a look at some of our own Home Haunting setups in our current residence...

2005 

We moved in at the top of that October - nothing major, but we made our presence known and, hey...ya' gotta start somewhere, right????

2006

With a  little help from a friend, things get more sophisticated...not perfect, mind you, but we do up the ante a bit more and, I an honestly say,  our Jack O'Lanterns have never looked better....

Our interior design was not always the greatest, but 2006 was a forbearing of better things to come....

We've always tried to give  our front door a bit of personality over the years  - sometimes it worked, sometime not, but we always gave it a decent shot......

 

                         My dearest Lisa, posing amongst the ghoulies...

2007

Taking this a little further, we get more hands on and craft oriented...and while a bit on the primitive side, we did all of you see here on our own, no books, no forums, no cheat sheets...not bad, and we carved an ARMY of Jack O'Lanterns at the end of it all - looked terrific in the evenings...

The interior got a little denser and a lot more black light reactive...while we were still using a lot of cheesier store bought stuff, we're definitely getting a competence for all this...

                              Our infamous kitchen entrance....

This dude wandered into our lives last, and here he's just hanging around....

We even started doing our bathrooms this year!!! All credit goes to my Lisa...

                    ....and our cats decide to get in on the carving bit....

                       ...do you really think I am going to eat that????

           ...my son Mike sporting only the finest in haunted attraction t-shirts...

                  Decorating my son Mike's room...he had a thing for pirates...

2008

Inspired by our increasing success with props, and fired up this year by our own imaginations, THE DARK KNIGHT and having the remnants of Hurricane Ike blow through and knock the power out for a week, we created a haunted cemetery theme and get even more sophisticated with our interior trappings...and for the record? Those ghosts were done by Lisa....

        We got REALLY ambitious with black light colorings this time around....

 

..and here is where our interior stylings started to take shape...

                                          Hallway blacklight work

       Again, our notorious front door set up...we were pretty  fond of this one...

2009

Probably one of our best years.

We'd been wanting to incorporate the Big Three of the Universal Monsters in a display and, bets be damned, did so. These were constructed of wood rods, pool noodles and old clothes from Goodwill.

The stone columns behind the monsters are cardoard boxes taped together and then wrapped in dungeon wall scene setter wallpaper.  

We took this guy as an omen...he settled in just before we started up - we knew  it was going to be a grand year after that!!!

Some of our neighbors decided to give us a run for our money this time...it actually complimented ours really well  - they looked terrific at night together!

                             We even did up our kitchen this year!

Lisa and Mike doing up his room for the season - he did not take it down for a long time afterwards, just for the record.....

2010

Not our best year - we took a shot at a Mummy's Tomb type of scene and it just didn;t pan out all that well. Put it down to laziness, A LOT of traveling and just a bit of burn out - granted, our interior hit new heights in regards to layering, but our mummy looked like he had growth hormone issues... 

Not a complete washout, but we'd do it differently now.

                      The front door came off very nicely this year...

For some odd reason, nobody liked to use our bathroom, no matter how badly they need to!!!!

2011 

One of our best.

We discovered this little podcast called HAUNTCAST - and the possibilities were endless..this year it was Sleepy Hollow and this it was a labor of love, the horse was MURDER to get together!!!

Still, looking back on it, this had a wonderful organic feel and really captured a special moment.

 A look a the Horseman as Lisa does some deep knee bends in the parking lot....

       Lisa's colorful dynamic zombie kitchen - no dared to raid OUR fridge!!!!

2012

One year later and HAUNTCAST ressurects itself and now I'm on the show! 

This opens a few doors for us and inspires us to push the envelope even further....this year, it's The Vampire's Crypt....

   AND WE FINALLY GET TO DO A CEMETERY SCENE IN THE FRONT YARD!!!!

Hurricane Sandy blows through the day before Halloween and sends leaves everywhere...and I hate to say it, but that sure gave it all a nice touch!

Stay Scary, indeed!

Stone courtesy of Woodloom Productions

                                   Our best interior job to date...

        Razzle never knows what to make of all this, even after all these years....

So, what's in store for 2013...?

Heh.

Wait and see!