A tour of the inner workings of the Fun-Ghoul Costume Company in Rutherford could easily be mistaken for a walk through Dante’s Hell. Large wooden freight elevators slowly descend in the dark, and dank lower levels hold bloody bodies, coffins and instruments of torture – some of which are expected to make their way to Secaucus in October when the town’s ice rink turns into a haunted mansion for a month.
At 42 years old, Craig Witmyer looks a little like Don Johnson from Miami Vice. He got his start running My Generation, a hip clothing store in Rutherford, before turning to costumes. Many people in conservative Rutherford took his store to be a costume shop even before he set up his more haunting endeavor years later.
“We had leather and lace clothing displayed in our front window,” Witmyer recalled last week. “In a town like Rutherford, people didn’t quite believe anyone would actually wear clothing like that, so they assumed my store was a costume shop and treated it that way.”
Business boomed around Halloween.
Few people realized that as a clothier since 1980, Witmyer had designed many of the outfits worn by the top rock and roll talent of the time, such as Aerosmith, Prince, Iron Maiden, Twisted Sister and Bon Jovi. Eddie Van Halen wore a T-shirt designed by the Witmyer. Prince wore his jacket in the film “Purple Rain.” Witmyer was also responsible for the wardrobe for some popular local bands like White Lion and Night Ranger.
When the grunge music movement gutted glamour videos, Witmyer decided to turn his attention to costumes, establishing the Fun-Ghoul store on Park Avenue in Rutherford in 1987. He said the shop took off partly because it didn’t have any local competition.
Part of Witmyer’s more recent success in expanding the business into performance has been his taking on Rich Hanf as a partner.
Hanf, 47, has been called “The King of Halloween.” Along with serving as a regular contributor to numerous magazines of the horror genre, Hanf is owner and operator of Hanf’s House of Horror in Hamburg, New Jersey. Hanf – who started out building Halloween displays on people’s lawns – has become a major figure in the horror trade. He lectures people on special effects in film. His work has been features in photographs and television from The New York Times and The National Enquirer to most of the major television networks.
Old-fashioned haunting
Witmyer and Hanf are slated to construct what they call an old-fashioned style haunted house in Secaucus for the month of October. The pair is paying Secaucus to rent the ice rink, and local civic groups will be allowed to set up vending booths at the event. The project is expected to cost the company about $100,000, and they will make money by charging admission. While times will vary on the people taking the tour, the average trip through the haunted house is expected to take about a half hour.
Hanf said they are constructing the house at another location in New Jersey where all the kinks will be worked out through various dry runs. Then it will be taken apart, brought to Secaucus and assembled again.
A tour of Fun-Ghoul’s basement and subbasement uncovers hundreds if not thousands of effects, from a full-size electric chair to a hand full of coffins. Witmyer points to two; one is a pauper’s coffin, the other more upscale – all clues to kind of show people can expect when they set up operations in October.
“I got a deal on 20 coffins,” Witmyer said. “I’ve been selling them to other people in the trade.”
Some of the items are novelties – designed as props for horror events – but some like the blood pump are real, and the each part of that underground chamber of horrors from which the men draw materials for their horror performances.
“Not everything we have is stored here,” Witmyer said. “A lot of what we have is in a warehouse.”
Bringing back an old tradition
The two characters met about five years ago when Witmyer called Hanf for help on a project.
They had passed each other numerous times on the horror circuit, and had even met at the prestigious National Horror Trade Show in Chicago, one of the key places where new items in the industry get displayed.
Hanf said he had a reputation of being difficult to work with, and Witmyer called him as a last resort.
“We got along great,” Hanf said.
Since then, their relationship had grown into something of a horror legend
“Rich brought his knowledge of horror and I brought a sense of Hollywood and the combination we scare people,” Witmyer said.
“Cliff walks people up to the front and I chase them out of the back,” Hanf agreed.
The Secaucus Haunted House is something new for them, the next step in their progression of horror projects they hope to find a more permanent location for later. It is one of those projects both men had in the back of their minds for years, but never had a location in which to try it out.
Although they did not yet have the exact map of the structure when interviewed earlier this month, they knew the project would take up about 6,000 square feet and would require 300 four-by-eight-foot panels.
“What we’re building is a dark, winding labyrinth,” Hanf said. “This will be a super, special house of horror, but of the old fashioned kind – a combination of traditional in-your-face horror techniques with some modern technological enhancements.”
Both men talk about Scream in the Dark, one of the classic houses of horror that haunted New Jersey residents in the 1960s and 1970s. Both men also talk about the great 1982 haunted house fire in Great Adventure that ended the era of haunted houses, sending a different chill of fear down the spines of potential developers. Both men claim they will provide all the fire protections Great Adventure did not to make certain this will be a safe adventure, with all the horrors pre-planned. Hanf said they are trying to duplicate the old-fashioned sense of honor that horror houses used to create 25 years ago, and even purchase the rights to the name Scream in the Dark for some future use.
“In order to do that, all the scares in this house will be choreographed in a way that people have never seen before,” Hanf said. While the displays will have lighting and sound effects of Hollywood quality, actors and animatronics will provide “in-your-face scares.” The project will employ 30 to 35 actors who either already work for the two men or will be brought in from various local community theater companies.
Hanf said nothing will be left up to random, and noted that the devices employed will not merely scare the first person in line, but will be designed to pick people out at various parts of the line.
“So if the fifth and seventh person get scared, that’s the way we designed it,” he said.
“We don’t want the first people in every group to get scared and the rest to have a disappointing time,” Witmyer said. Hanf said that Fun-Ghoul differs from other projects in several ways. Most people who even attempt haunted houses are in other businesses. Some have a farm-like show for 11 months of the year, then during the Halloween season try to attract people by setting up a haunted house.
“We’re in this business all year round,” he said.
Witmyer said the two men have been working on the project for about three years together, although the idea has been in the back of his head for about five years.
Are we ready?
In some ways, the month in Secaucus is an experiment, one that will test the theory that the public is ready for this kind of haunted house again. If the project proves as successful as the two men think, they will then look for a more permanent venue, perhaps one in New York City where they can take advantage of the constant stream of tourists. As it is, Witmyer predicts people from 25 miles around will come to Secaucus.
Although the haunted house will have a variety of carnival-like attractions, from quality to junk food and assorted games, the central attraction will be the walk-through.
The haunted house will operate Thursday through Sunday for all the weekends in October, with a special, less-scary show for younger kids during the day on Saturday and Sunday.
The nightly, full-effect horror show, costs $15 per person for anyone over eight years old.
In an odd twist, the calmer weekend day show will cost $6 per child under 8 and $2 for each accompanying adult. Witmyer said several radio stations have approached him and one may set up a live hookup from the Secaucus site.