In 1991 the Wompedy Club started a tradition which continued, steadily growing each year for a decade: Halloween. No, we didn't invent Halloween, obviously. What we did do, was enliven the day for thousands of kids each year, with our unique brand of Extreme Halloween.

Wompedy Club member made jack-o-lanterns.

You see, growing up the Wompedy Club loved Halloween. We loved getting dressed up, we loved free candy, but most of all we loved having the crap scared out of us. We all have memories of the guy who sat on his porch pretending to be a scare-crow holding a bowl of candy with a sign that said "take a piece from our scare crow" and only when you were about to get your piece would he come to life and scare the living mercy out of us. Or the man in his gorilla suit who would come running around from the side of his house and make us wet ourselves. These are fond memories. The memories that stick with you for a lifetime. The kind of memories that make Halloween a magical time.

Once we got old enough, we started trying to make sure that kids who came trick-or-treating in our neck of the woods would have the kind of scare that would scar them for life.

The first year we arranged a gun with blanks in it, I would answer the door holding a bag of candy, but just as the kids were saying trick-or-treat my friend would come running up and yell "gimme all your candy!" then he would shoot me, grab the bag and run off. I would fall to the ground and start screaming. The trick-or-treaters would be screaming. It was loads of fun.

The next few years it got more involved. We had a fog machine, speakers playing sound effects, and strobe lights. We would shroud the front porch first with black trash bags, later with pool cover, and eventually with pristine 6mil black plastic. We would make kids go thru various trials to obtain candy. We would pretend the candy was poisoned (that was a hit with the parents) or that it was not fit to be eaten for some other reason (ie. pulling it out of "used" kitty litter trays, etc.)

By 1997 we had built enough of a reputation in Oak Cliff (the section of Dallas, TX where Daniel's mom lives), that car loads of kids would make the trek from the nearby less affluent neighborhoods, and flock to Kessler Park. We were also able to convince enough Wompedy Club members to come out and join in the festivities scaring kids, rather than going to traditional Halloween parties, that we were able to do REALLY good Halloween shenanigans. It also helped that by now at least some members of the Club had incomes and could spend money making our event more over the top than ever before.

By 1998 not only did we have more money and people than ever before, but Andrew Dean (a head honcho of the Wompedy Club) suggested we have a theme. This was a brilliant idea, and would become the norm for the next 4 years. Also for the first time we had enough members helping out that we could give one the soul task of documenting the event.

In 1998 the theme was "Alien Landing."

Stockpiling flats.

We created a long hallway made of large 4'x8' and 8'x8' flats which we created using mostly translucent and black plastics. The idea was basically to turn traditional 'scary' thinking upside down. Rather than impair people's vision by having it be dark, we would impair their vision with it being so bright they could barely see, and to top it off we would fill everything with fog.

Spooky shadows as kids pass on the opposite side of the translucent wall.

Our hallway of mostly translucent plastic was filled with fog and many 2,000wt bulbs making it impossible to see anything.

Alien autopsy being conducted, candy being passed from body to kids.

At the end of the hallway was an alien on an operation table with two forensic pathologists, lit with black lights, dissecting it's body, which was covered in glowing alien blood. What were they pulling out of the alien's chest? Why candy of course! This candy was then passed with tongs thru portholes in the clear plastic wall protecting the kids from the alien and vice versa.

Autopsy was displayed on a TV live so short kids could be scared too.

Under the table was a video image of a camera above the table so even short kids could see what was going on on the table.

Of course the turn out for this event was massive. And since only a small stream of kids could fit down the hallway at a time the line that amassed was a force to be reckoned with.

Trick-or-treater tests positive as an alien, and is "stabilized" by officials.

To keep people waiting entertained, the yard was filled with government agents in white suites prowling around looking and "testing" people to make sure they weren't aliens. We had scores of testing devices, ranging from ones that sprayed people with more fog, or ones that lit up when they placed their hand on it, called the Hand Scanner.

Child scanning hand to see if she's an alien.

Most of the time the Hand Scanner would just flash to signify that the hand had been scanned, but on occasion (when we came to a planted trick-or-treater in line) an alarm would sound and half a dozen white suites would swarm the "infected" one, pick them up, and run them into a glowing room built out of the same translucent plastic flats (though all were 8'x8') where they would be laid on a table and "stabilized" by beating them to death, while they screamed.

Trick-or-treater look on as a fellow candy-seeker is "stabilized" to death.

Needless to say, the kids in line were terrified, as they were going to have to put their hand on the scanner next and who knew if they would end up being effected?

Roof view of the set being built.

During this event we used 6 fog machines, and went through 1 roll of 100'x20' translucent plastic, and one roll of black plastic. All the while speaker placed in several locations, and 2 enormous bass-scoops, provided horrific dish-shaking-rumble for blocks. This was all highly effective, and set the stage for the next year.
 

Sign, with home owners Dottie Dunnam and Charlie Tupper.

In 1999 we took our theme idea further still with our "Zombie Hillbilly Death Swamp."

We collected crap from dumpsters for months in advance.

For months leading up to the big day, we collected things that could be used to create our massive swamp set. Dumpster diving took place weekly as we gathered chain link fence, car parts, BBQ grills, wash basins, parts of furniture, and so on. We also purchased large amounts of screen and lumber, which we used to construct walls and facades.

Roof view of the 1999 Hillbilly Death Swamp.

The idea was that kids would enter a screen door, and then wander down a hallway (the floor covered with carpet foam to create a squishy texture, and with misting hose running in the ceiling to make it "swampish") passing a large swamp area (separated from them with screened flats) in which zombie hillbillies would be crushing up parts of captured children with tools and meat grinders on a large "Bloodening Table."

The "Bloodening Table" and the "Candy Machine."

Once the meat was properly cured, it would be poured into a "Blood-Candy" machine which would spit out candy on the other side, that could then be handed to trick-or-treaters.

Inside of the top of the "Dog Box."

Again the line was very long and to keep people waiting occupied, in addition to have huge numbers of zombies roaming around being scary, we had a "Dog Box" which contained 2 loud-speakers on the bottom, and a motor with a spindle arm and tennis balls on the top, all housed in a wooden crate. With the flick of a couple of switches the motor would kick on, and the speakers start snarling and barking. The result, of course, was a hideously loud barking, growling box that was being violently beaten from the inside with tennis balls. It would go from being a boring static crate, to an incredibly loud and terrifying crate every so often.

Some bloody zombies after a long hard night of bloodening.

Since the previous years planted trick-or-treater being abducted had been such a success, we decided to build on it with our hillbillies. The plant would be in line, ostensibly waiting like all the other kids, but then, all of a sudden, a lunatic zombie hillbilly would grab her, and carry her screaming away and into the backstage area where no kids could see. Then everyone would hear the sound of "The Bloodinator" (a lot like a chainsaw, but really just an small ex-weed-eater engine) and kids in the hallway would see blood splattering onto a window that faced the "Bloodening Table." After the Bloodinator had been turned off, a zombie working the Blooding Table could go around into the Bloodinator room and return with some more meat.

Dave Wiggins sets off a scuba-tank bomb, inside a BBQ grill.

The whole time loud gunshot sounds could be heard (with an updated version of the common "dry ice bomb" we were using compressed air to blow up 20oz bottles) and of course hidden speakers throughout the yard providing loud swamp sounds, and rumbling bass from our essential bass-scoops.

Area child's drawing illustrates how effectively we traumatized kids.

This year proved to be a raging success, we know this because kids who attended wrote about it first hand the next day in school. We obtained a drawing by a young child, accompanied by a story about the night before, written and drawn by some very scared children. If you look closely in the drawing, you can make out the dogs, hillbillies with pitch forks, the foam floor of the hallway, the bug lights, details of certain Wompedy Members costumes (like a corn-cob pipe). It's all there, right down to the correct number of fake human body parts on the bloodening table. Very impressive.

This year also prompted the most negative responses from parents. It was "too gory." Perhaps. But it didn't stop them from coming next year.

Welcome to Shady Echo's.

In 2000 our production quality reached a new level as we took on the theme "Shady Echoes: Maximum Security Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane" or "Insane Mental Institution" for short.

Roof view of the structure.

The year we only used our tried and true black plastic flats to block off visibility for our backstage areas. All of the walls were 1" thick heavy duty 4'x8' fiberboard, and the interior walls were all made of HomeSite, both of which were generously donated to the project by Documentary Arts/5501 Columbia Arts Center after they remodeled one of their gallery spaces.

We measured everything in advance and had a plan.

Precise measurements of the house and side walks and yard were taken, and then we mapped out a layout for our hallway and series of rooms.

The front facade of Shady Echo's.

This year you would enter the hallway thru a front facade that looked like a brick building (large sheets of painted plywood with brick sized pieces of cut shingle nailed in brick formation to them) and then walk down the hall passing "patients" who were in small rooms kept apart from the hallway by thick metal mesh windows.

Insane prisoners begged kids to let them out.

One room featured a man banging chains against the wall as eerie random slides projected onto it, another featured a toilet covered in feces and a patient sitting on the floor (also covered in feces) smearing words on the wall, another room simply featured furious insane patients demanding that the kids in the hallway walking by let them out.

The Electroshock therapy table was the highlight of 2000.

The pay off room was a large enclosed "Electro-Shock Therapy Room" featuring a machine and an examining table (build with one of the pieces of fiberboard, and foam and vinyl). A female patient was laying on table dazed until, periodically, the "Doctors" in the room would flick a switch on the machine, and all the lights would shift to strobes while the patients mouth lit up (by way of a fiber-optic emitter beaming into her mouth thru small tubes). Loud electricity sounds would play during these brief periods from speakers mounted inside the examining table.

A nurse sits behind glass and gives kids pills (candy).

From here the trick-or-treaters would walk to the end of the hallway where they would face a doctor sitting behind a class wall, in an office, holding trays of pill-cups filled with "Medicine" (aka: tic-tacs, hot-tamales, smarties, jelly beans, etc) and would offer a pill cup to each kid, along with a reassuring word, such as "may cause seizures" or "take your medicine."

Trick-or-treaters were given pill cups of candy.

Surprisingly the parents went along with this, and often would instruct their petrified child "you heard the doctor! take your medicine."

Patients occasionally escaped, and would need to be chased and beaten.

Out in the yard, where the line grew to it's longest length yet, we kept people occupied by occasionally having patients escape where they had to be beaten into submission by various bat-wielding doctors.

The first 1,300 kids got Shady Echo's hospital arm bands.

And no one was allowed into Shady Echoes unless they were wearing their Shady Echoes hospital arm band, lovingly provided by an area hospital.

2000 was the most over-the-top of all the years, and took some of the most planning and by far the most construction. After this, we decided enough was enough, that there was no way we could top it without spending too much money and time, and that 2000 would officially mark the end of an era. Halloween was to be no more...

... Then came 2001. After a year somehow the idea of doing yet another over the top mondo halloween started seeming like a good idea again. Nothing too too big, but just a little something.

So was born "The Walk-In Movie Theatre" theme. For 2001 Andrew Dean and Daniel Dunnam took all the video that existed of the previous years (1998-2000) and edited it together into a 45 min video.

Wompedy Club member Brad Young got us the hook up on a rented a 9'x13' screen and rear-projector and set up about 100 chairs in the front yard. Instead of passing out candy, we had a popcorn popper and 1,200 bags. We ran out of bags and started filling kids trick-or-treat bags, shirts, hats, masks, or whatever else they had while they all were able to watch our collection of edited montages and behind the scenes footage.

The Wompedy Club was there in force, decked out in previous year's costumes. It was a ball.

You can see a few pieces from this video in the Wompedy Productions section.