CBS News
Halloween haunted houses are a scary business proposition, operators say
The faint of heart should think twice before setting foot in a haunted house for Halloween. The same could be said for those considering getting into business of running a haunted house.
“The barriers of entry are so much higher to get into the haunted house attraction business — rules, regulations and the expense to get in, even what people perceive as entertainment,” said Billy Messina, co-creator of Netherworld, an attraction that has been scaring people in Stone Mountain, Georgia, for nearly 30 years. “A bunch of teenagers that say ‘Boo!’ — that won’t fly anymore,” Messina told CBS MoneyWatch.
Netherworld Haunted House
Unlike the haunted house fundraisers run by civic organizations such as the United States Junior Chamber, also known as the Jaycees, Netherworld is among the dozen or so haunted houses that can be likened to full-scale Broadway productions. And, unlike the neighborhood house that is haunted by volunteers, these Halloween attractions are professional outfits staffed throughout the year, even though the window to turn a profit is far smaller, just a month or two around Halloween.
“Our revenue cycle is very short, the lion’s share of our revenue is in a 2- to 3-month window,” said Chris Stafford, CEO and founding partner of Thirteenth Floor Entertain Group. Based in Denver, Colorado, Thirteenth Floor operates 32 attractions including haunted houses and Halloween festivals across the country, selling hundreds of thousands of tickets each year.
“Most of our properties we hold year-round, so we have an annual operating plan to make sure the revenue we expect to see is going to come in,” said Stafford, who worked in the banking industry for 12 years before turning what had been a beloved hobby into a full-time career.
“It’s a tough business with a staff and a mortgage that is open all year long, and then you have 20 to 30 days to make sure you get to cover all of those basic expenses. It’s a challenge,” said Messina, who started out in the film industry as a makeup and special effects artist. Still, “it’s pretty amazing to be able to do this for a living,” he added.
Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group
Both share a passion for haunted houses that took hold in childhood.
“I worked at a local haunted house with a friend from high school. I just really loved everything about it, some of my best memories are from there,” said Stafford, recalling his experiences as a 15-year-old working at a family-run haunted house in Denver.
Growing up in New York City, Messina recalls seeing commercials on television for haunted houses on the Jersey Shore and yearning but unable to go.
Like many other businesses, Messina and Stafford list labor as a huge challenge.
With a full-time staff of about 15, Netherworld also hires about 500 seasonal workers as parking attendants, food and customer service employees and, of course, to scare folks. “For new employees, the hiring push starts sometime in August, and really kicks up in mid-September. We have college students all the way up to white-collar professionals that just want to be part of it,” said Messina.
Netherworld Haunted House
Netherworld’s base pay starts at $8.50 an hour. “People aren’t there for the money, working as a scare actor,” said Messina.
Thirteenth Floor has full-time staff in marketing and finance, and “then comes the season and we ramp up and literally hire thousands of people to work — probably the greatest challenge is staffing up a workforce that large in that short a time,” offered Stafford. “Most of our scare actors are not professional actors, but interested in learning,” he added of the positions which pay just above minimum wage.
A large percentage of the seasonal workforce returns each year, both men relayed.
Ticket sales keep Netherworld afloat, and outside factors including the weather and sports can have an impact beyond Messina’s control. “Rain is devastating to attendance, or if the [Atlanta] Braves are in the [National Baseball League] playoffs,” he offers as examples. “Concessions and the gift shop are not enough to keep the lights on. We don’t lose money on that stuff, but they are by no means a cash cow,” Messina noted.
Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group
Both men listed Netflix as the primary competition. “Just getting people off the couch — it’s hard,” Messina said, adding that Thirteenth Floor strives to give people a reason to come together socially. “Too much of our lives are lived digitally, behind the screen,” he said.
The Halloween season is in full swing. Between haunted houses, Spirit Halloween stores and horror movie locations, there are a number of ways to get into the spooky spirit.
The CBS News Data Team looked at five different Halloween-themed metrics to determine which state has the most Halloween spirit: Haunted house locations from Yelp, horror movie filming locations from IMDB, Spirit Halloween stores, haunted sites and Google search interest.
These are the top five states:
- New Hampshire: This New England state has Spirit Halloween stores per capita and the highest number of haunted houses per capita. The state also ranks near the top for haunted sites and Google search interest, but is near the bottom for horror movie locations. All this results in a 8.1 on our jack-o-lantern scale.
- Utah: With a score of 7.9 out of 10 on our jack-o-lantern scale, Utah is ranked highest for Halloween Google search interest and is in the top 10 for most Spirit Halloween stores per capita. The state ranks in the top for haunted houses and in the middle for haunted sites and horror movie locations.
- Kentucky: Top 5 rankings for haunted houses, haunted sites and Google search interest resulted in a 7.4 on our jack-o-lantern scale, putting Kentucky at rank No. 3.
- Pennsylvania: Top 10 rankings for Spirit Halloween stores per capita, Google search interest and horror movie filming locations bring Pennsylvania to a 7.4 out of 10 on our jack-o-lantern scale. The state is also in the top 20 for haunted houses and in the middle for haunted sites.
- Rhode Island: It’s the smallest state in the country, but Rhode Island has the largest number of horror movie locations per capita. That ranking, along with high rankings in haunted houses and haunted sites, brings Rhode Island’s jack-o-lantern score to a 7.1 out of 10.
See the rankings for each state in the table below, and keep reading for a breakdown of each of our spooky measures that go into our jack-o-lantern scale.
Haunted houses
According to a CBS News analysis of haunted house locations from Yelp, there are more than 1,000 haunted houses listed on Yelp across the country.
New Hampshire has the highest rate at more than seven haunted houses per 1 million people, which is about one haunted house for every 140,000 people.
Hawaii is No. 2, with about six haunted houses per 1 million people, followed by Rhode Island, Tennessee and Arkansas.
Yelp also helped us gather data about corn mazes around the country. See that full story here.
Horror movie locations
Maine tops the list of horror movie filming locations per 1 million people at 150 total horror movies, which is about 107 per 1 million people. That’s one horror movie filmed in Maine for every 9,000 people, according to a CBS analysis of data from IMDB.
The next highest, unsurprisingly, is California, with a whopping 3,850 horror movies filmed in the Golden State. This rounds to nearly 99 per 1 million people. Next is New Mexico, followed by Louisiana and Nevada.
Spirit Halloween stores
Spirit Halloween opened in 1983, and this year, opened nearly 1,500 seasonal stores in the U.S., with a total of 1,525 stores in North America.
The state with the most Spirit Halloween stores is California at nearly 200. But New Hampshire has the highest rate of stores: 12 stores total, with a rate of nearly nine per 1 million people. The next highest states are: Oklahoma, Colorado, Idaho and Arizona, with rates of nearly seven Spirit Halloween stores per 1 million people.
Spirit Halloween stores are notorious for taking over locations of other stores that have closed or gone out of business, typically setting up shop in malls or strip malls. Many locations on the Spirit Halloween website label the former location of the store.
Of the locations that had former stores listed, at least 82 were once Bed Bath and Beyond stores. The next highest former location was Rite Aid at 72, followed by Tuesday Morning at 64. Sears and .99 cent and dollar stores rounded out the top five.
Haunted sites
Wyoming tops the list of most haunted sites per capita. With 78 haunted places, that puts the state at about 13 per 100,000 people.
Next is Vermont and Kentucky, both with about eight haunted sites per 100,000 people. Rounding out the top five is South Dakota and North Dakota.
Interested in visiting one of these haunted places? The Haunted Places Index has a list of locations by state.
Google searches
Google trends data from Aug. 1 to Oct. 22, 2024 shows Utah has the highest search interest in “Halloween” as a general celebration.
That’s followed by West Virginia, Kentucky, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
For more on Google trends around Halloween, costumes and movies, see our full trends story here.
How we got these rankings
The CBS News Data Team obtained haunted house locations from Yelp, Spirit Halloween locations from the Spirit Halloween website, haunted sites from the Haunted Places Index, horror movie locations from IMDB, and Google trends data about Halloween search interest from Aug. 1 to Oct. 22, 2024.
For the location data (all the metrics except for the Google trends data), we grouped the locations to get a total count for each state. Then, using the most recent state population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau, we found the rate per one million people for each of these locations.
From there, our team ranked each state by the rate of each location per capita and ranked the google trends data, which is already normalized for population.
For each metric, the highest ranked state received a score of 50, and the lowest ranked state received a score of one. We averaged each state’s scores, divided them by 50, then multiplied by 10 to get a score out of 10 points. That score was used to find the “jack-o-lantern” score out of 10 points.
Note: Many of these metrics rely on crowdsourcing. The haunted house data, for example, only have locations reported on and by Yelp, so it may not include every haunted house that is not in Yelp’s data. The haunted sites data only has locations reported by the Haunted Places Index, which may not include every site considered “haunted” in the country.
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