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Veteran ScareHouse actors Tori Benacquista and Steve LaRussa have portrayed zombies, steampunk warriors, creepy Victorians, and ... a meteorologist?
Check out the latest episode of The ScareHouse podcast! Steve and Tori join hosts Rob Johnston and Laura Kelly to talk about working inside Pittsburgh's ultimate haunted house, interacting with thousands of local fright fans, and the variety of iconic characters they've portrayed in the haunt and in our videos and commercials. Plus, the secrets of being a good zombie, memorable reactions from customers ... and a hint at the plans for our NEW haunted attraction this October.
Click here to subscibe to our FREE audio podcast via iTunes or visit ScareHousePodcast.com. New episodes available from now until November. THANK YOU for the positive feedback.
Why is Grant Wilson leaving Ghost Hunters? TAPS' team member Amy Bruni talked about his surprising announcement In a recent episode of The ScareHouse Podcast:
Amy Bruni: It's really hard because ‑‑ and Grant even said it ‑‑ he said, "People are talking like I'm dead!"
ScareHouse podcast co-host Rob Johnston: Well, if you watch the show, those teases, I thought someone had died. I was seeing Steve crying and I was going "What is happening?"
Amy: It's crazy! He's not dead. He's still very much alive and very happy. He's home with his family, and they're working on a new company that they started recently. They wanted to focus more time on that. I think people just, they can't realize there's no drama. There's absolutely no drama. He's just done.
Anybody who's been at a job for a long time, you may have another opportunity to come along or you get to the point where you don't need it, you're just done and you move on to other things. That's all that happened.
ScareHouse Creative Director Scott Simmons: As you said, he has a family. He's raising kids... and as you said earlier, your team is often spending nearly 300 days a year on the road. That's a commitment.
Amy: Yeah, it's a lot. After eight years, it was just enough for him. He was just done. It was a very hard decision for him to make because we're kind of like his second family. As much as he hated being away from his family, at the same time, he's out with us on the road and we're kind of his family, too.
Luckily, we're all pretty near him, so we still get to hang out and everything. It's just not as often.
Click here to subscibe to our FREE audio podcast via iTunes or visit ScareHousePodcast.com. New episodes available from now until November.
The ScareHouse Creative Director Scott Simmons has announced that Delirium 3-D has been retired for the 2012 season.
"It was one of our favorite attractions and the longest running haunt in ScareHouse history," he said. "But the time is right for us to create something new for 2012. We're sad to say good bye to our spicy waffles (for now) but we think that our fans will be excited by our plans for an entirely new attraction - which we plan to announce very soon."
We'd like to thank all of our fans, the cast and crew, and the spectacular "Delirium Divas" for throwing the best party ever. OUR BRAINS WILL NEVER BE THE SAME!
During a recent episode of The ScareHouse podcast, our friends from Haunted Pittsburgh revealed one of the most terrifying stories of the paranormal we've ever heard...
ScareHouse podcast co-host Laura Kelly: All right guys, I'm ready. I want to hear the story.
Haunted Pittsburgh: We talked with a woman who lived, who grew up on Shiloh Street in Mount Washington. We've spoken with the woman. All the time she grew up there, she felt that there was a very not‑so‑nice presence in her bedroom at night. Not exactly evil, she said, just not nice.
She felt that the thing, whatever it was... she didn't know if it was male or female, was looking at her at nighttime. She also discovered as a little girl that she would lose things that meant a lot to her, so her parents gave her a ring that was her grandmother's ring on her 13th birthday.
One time she had her friend up there and told her friend... She made the mistake of saying, "This is my prized possession." The ring. As soon as she said that, she realized "I should not have said that." She went to bed that night and she clutched her hand as tight as she could. She woke up the next morning. Her hand was still clenched and the ring was gone. They tore the house apart looking for the ring.
All the while she grew up, stuff like that would happen. She's 18 and she couldn't wait to get out of there. She moved away. Three years ago, she had to come back home because the water line broke in here house. She had to come back and stay with her mother in that same bedroom for the first time in 11 years. She went to bed that night and she thought, "I don't like being here. I still feel it."
She felt that even though she had a cell phone. She had a ring. She felt something's going to be taken the next day. She went to bed and she woke up. Everything was still there. She was very relieved about that. About a week later she's showing her friend pictures of her dog on her cell phone. She discovers that there are six new pictures on her phone...
They were pictures of her sleeping in that bed.
Laura: Oh my gosh.
Haunted Pittsburgh: The angle was right where she always pictured this thing watched her from the foot of the bed.
Check out The ScareHouse podcast on iTunes to hear more stories from Pittsburgh's haunted history.
Leonard Pickel has amassed a lifetime of Haunted Attraction Design and operational experience, with October seasonal events to year round haunted attractions, museums and dark rides. He has designed over 100 successfully creative events since his first attraction in 1976 and has provided consultation for hundreds more. In 1994, Leonard co-founded Haunted Attraction Magazine, the premier publication for the dark amusement industry, striving to provide information vital to the success of the industry, with in-depth articles on the country’s major attractions.
In the latest episode of The ScareHouse podcast, Leonard joins us to talk about his 35+ years of experience in the haunted attraction business and offers a preview of the 2012 HAuNTcon: The Haunted Attraction National Tradeshow and Convention that's coming to Pittsburgh this May! Visit www.hauntcon.com to find out more about the tours of Pittsburgh haunts and Halloween events, makeup demos, how-to workshops, business seminars, tradeshow floor, and social gatherings. HAuNTcon takes place May 3rd through the 7th, 2012 at the Monroeville Convention Center.
Help us reach more fans when you leave positive feedback on iTunes! And THANK YOU for your continued support of The ScareHouse podcast.
Click here to subscibe to our FREE audio podcast via iTunes or visit ScareHousePodcast.com. New episodes available from now until November.
Pittsburgh, Pa: One of the most haunted cities in America and the perfect location for the continued exploration, discussion, and investigation of ghosts, psychic energy, extraterrestrial life, cryptozoology, and all manner of paranormal activity.
The ScareHouse Podcast recently featured an extended conversation with the historians from Haunted Pittsburgh, who offered a glimpse into our city's long history of paranormal activity:
Haunted Pittsburgh: "There's just so much vitality here. But also what people don't understand is, or they don't really think about this stuff at all. This was the greatest Union City in the history of America. The AF of L was founded right near where Mellon Square is. The CIO was founded right across the bridge in Northshore. The Steel Workers Union was founded in the Grant Building. The Iron Workers was founded a block away. There's just all this vitality. You had all this labor strife. The railway strike of 1877, 26 people died...It just is a fantastic history.
"We had some of the wealthiest people in the world. Henry Clay Frick, in today's dollars, would be worth $47 billion. That's Warren Buffett money right there. Andrew Carnegie made Frick look poor. Andrew Carnegie would be worth $301 billion. There's nobody with that kind of money. Only one person in history had that kind of money. It was John Rockefeller. It's great history, and if you look for the ghost stories through the history, you'll find them. It's just another way of looking at Pittsburgh through this dark lens of the great ghost stories...
"The more you research, the more fascinating it becomes. And just learning, again, what a major player Pittsburgh was at the time. It's pretty amazing.
"What interested me the most was the Henry Clay Frick story. He said his life was saved by the ghost of his deceased daughter ... who had died tragically the year before. He says it was her ghost that thwarted the attempted assasination on his life, and he was convinced she came to save him so that he could crush the union. Very strange.
"It's the most important ghost story in history, if it's true, because it set the union movement back, historians agree, by many years. At least two decades. You talk about a significant ghost story. It happened right down on Fifth Avenue here, not too far from where the Warner Center is."
Click here to subscibe to our FREE audio podcast via iTunes or visit ScareHousePodcast.com. New episodes available from now until November.
