How a ‘creative’ trend led a popular Utah haunted house to mix Halloween and Christmas
Oct 23, 2024, 9:00 PM
Caretaker Karl, a mascot of Fear Factory, poses for a photo in a Santa suit in the haunted house's Christmas Town section. The Salt Lake business will debut the feature over the next two weekends. (Fear Factory)
(Fear Factory)
SALT LAKE CITY — You don’t have to be Jack Skellington to enjoy Christmas during Halloween this year, at least at one of Utah’s more popular haunted house attractions.
Fear Factory, 666 W. 800 South in Salt Lake City, is known for its haunted history, but its owners are planning to dunk the building’s nightmarish scene into a cup of holiday cheer for its final two weekends. Yes, customers coming for a pre-Halloween scare on Friday or Saturday even will have the option to experience its new Christmas Town section, too.
“It’s something (people) can do before they go into the haunted house or as they come and go,” said Rob Dunfield, co-owner and chief operating officer of Fear Factory. “I think it will be a hit. I think people will like it.”
It’s the first time the haunted attraction has combined Halloween and Christmas since it began scaring people out of the old Portland Cement Works building in 2011. A similar setup will be available Nov. 1-2, as many people shift their attention from Halloween to Christmas.
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The idea didn’t come from the expansion of the Christmas season or from works like “The Nightmare Before Christmas” but instead through a peculiar trend that Dunfield observed from his business’ faithful patrons.
Fear Factory has long set up interactive stations for patrons to take photos or selfies with characters or in front of the grungy, haunting scenario. It was aimed to give people the perfect Halloween social media post, but he saw more and more customers using their photos in other ways.
“We saw some people were taking their pictures … and using them in their Christmas cards,” he told KSL.com on Tuesday. “We thought that was kind of interesting and very creative of some of our horror fans, so we thought we’d take it a step further this year.”
The Fear Factory team began piecing together ways to create an experience that stitches the normally contrasting holidays together. They created a winter wonderland inside the old factory filled with nearly a dozen Christmas trees, tin foil, candy canes, snowmen, special effects and fake snow. The whole scene will be capped with a large chair and Santa Claus.
Of course, it’s still a haunted house, so there will be some spooky elements, including characters roaming around, like Krampus and the factory’s “caretaker,” Karl Mossman, interacting with people.
Read the full story from KSL.com here.
