Once upon a time, you could have a haunted house up and running in a day's time. Fill a bowl with grapes and call them eyeballs, add room-temperature spaghetti – those are guts – string up a few ghostly figures, crank the fog machines, lower the lights and plan a few jump scares.
Halloween celebrations are becoming more common, especially in Europe – yet international markets don't hold a candle to the US, where the holiday is sold as whole-family fun, says, a professor of finance at the University of Richmond's Robins School of Business. One of the US's biggest consumer holidays is supported by a massive haunted house industry, and entertainers are spending more and more each year.
Even a charity attraction, like Scare for a Cure in central Texas, spends roughly $20,000 to create their volunteer-run haunted house, says president Susan Prat. Its biggest expenses are feeding their volunteers and the cost of insurance for the whole operation. They send about 2,000 visitors through every year, and raise roughly $50,000 for cancer research and other local charities.
Yet it may not be as grim as all that. Marley Toben, a one-time haunted house actor and long-time lover of all things spooky, says she's willing to travel and pay for the best experiences. Toben estimates the farthest she's driven for a haunted house is about an hour and a half. How much would she pay?"Seventy-five dollars for a good one. If they charge more, my mind says they're worth more.