haunted carnival blog

It's getting ready to happen. In two weeks, we will have the 2018 version of our fundraiser for the Smithville Boys Swim Team. The boys worked very hard today, putting up five tents that will be filled with fog, strobe lights, evil characters, and lots of scares.  Please stop by on 10/27/2018 to give to our swim team and let them give you some major scares.  These boys have worked hard all season, and are going to represent Smithville High School extremely well at State in November.  In only two years, the team is now going to send two individual swimmers and two relay to the State Championships. Come by and give them some kudos.

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Just dropping you a quick line, dear reader.  We are planning our 2016 haunt to benefit Ronald McDonald House.  I'll post an event map today. We've added a Facebook page to help get the word out. I'll be sending out a call for volunteers soon.  Get ready to be scary!

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We are looking for a few folks who would like to make a tax deductible donation to enable us to buy a large circus tent for our evil fund raising purposes. We have a modest sized tent that served us well, donated by Noll Psych Group. But we would like to have most of our horrific efforts, as opposed to limited number of them, protected from the elements.  A new tent would allow us to keep the haunted areas up a bit longer with less risk to the terrible haunt inhabitants. If you are interested, donating is easy. Just follow this link.

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This year's Carnevil Fundraiser, held on October 30, 2014 in Smithville, Missouri was a huge success. We were able to raise a tidy sum to benefit Ronald McDonald House. We had a number of talented volunteers this year. We had several adults, including the lovely ladies stationed at the donation table, several adult scare-actors, a number of teenage and middle school clown's in hiding, a group of three young men who very successfully haunted one of our bridges, and younger volunteers who helped patrons find their way into the forest. There were several exhibits that were commented upon favorably. The large carnival tent was a big hit. It was fog filled and strobe lit, and included the unfortunate "Sparky the Clown", who received a peculiar version of Carnival shock therapy, as well as a clown who had apparently escaped from the set of the "Texas Clownsaw Massacre".  The train bridge was also popular, in particular when it was rather spontaneously populated by a very tall and frightening Grim Reaper. "The Beast in the Box" made a frightening appearance; for some reason we just can't seem to keep the lid of the box chained.

We made a number of technological strides this year. We made liberal use of Pico-Boo devices from our friends at Fright Ideas (www.frightideas.com) who are located in Barrie, Ontario, Canada and with whom we hope to work again next year (hopefully at a somewhat reduced rate given our charitable but terrible intentions.)  These allowed use of infrared detectors to trigger scares, and allowed programming of rather complex animatronic scenes such as "Sparky" and "The Beast".  We also used more intense LED strobe lighting and better foggers, with the latter being Chauvet 1000 watt hurricane fog machines (these worked very well, perhaps even too well in some spots where we had to reduce output in order to have the scenes visible.)  We will also try to hit up Chauvet for a bit of charitable support next year.

By far the hit of the event was the terrible monkey with the cymbals. As the story goes, he apparently escaped after growing exceedingly large and casting off his role as an organ grinder's monkey. He was apparently taking refuge in our haunt, and subsequently disappeared to parts unknown.  I would not be surprised if he does not make an appearance next year.

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