Frightening fun

Having owned and produced the Rocky Point Haunted House for nearly two decades, Cydney Neil has learned a few things about the Halloween consumer.

First, she says, Utahns adore haunted houses.

Rocky Point has about 55,000 visitors every fall, making it one of the most popular, if not the most popular haunted house, in the United States (Rocky Point — and other Utah haunts — have an advantage by being in the state with the youngest population. It seems haunted houses are a young person's thrill. The vast majority of those who visit Rocky Point are between 16 and 25 years of age.)

Another fact about Utahns, Neil has learned: They do not want to visit a haunted house after Oct. 31. Come Nov. 1, they are done with Halloween and on to Thanksgiving. In past years, she experimented with staying open a few days after Halloween and had virtually no visitors.

However, Neil also has noticed that this unwillingness to be scared past October only applies to haunted houses. She has seen quite the opposite trend when it comes to movies.

It used to be the studios would put out a couple of scary movies around Halloween every year. Neil would watch them all and think about them and, the next year, she would incorporate the best of the lot into a theme for Rocky Point.

Now she watches scary movies all year long. There are scary movies in the summer and scary movies in January. Neil likes suspense and intrigue, not slasher movies. She finds so many of her type of scary movies, in recent years, that nothing stands out as a dominant theme for her to use at Rocky Point. "It all gets lost in the mix."

At the same time scary movies are going year round, she believes the love of the Halloween holiday is growing. The need to escape has never been more important, she says. "We live in some pretty challenging times."

We desperately need be whimsical and get out of the house. "People can dress up like Superman." Or a pirate or a princess. "At Halloween, people of every generation can live in a fantasy."

The family holidays, such as Thanksgiving, and the gift-giving holidays and the religious holidays can be emotionally satisfying but also emotionally laden. Halloween demands less, she observes, which may be another reason people love it.

This year, Neil tried something new. She had been opening Rocky Point on Labor Day. This year she opened on Aug. 25. She probably won't do that again.