We recently connected with John Laflamboy and have shared our conversation below.

Hi John, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

The first time I pitched my idea for an interactive/actor based haunted attraction was in high school at Lockport Township High. I thought the haunted houses I went to as a kid were designed more like a dark museum where the customers were always on the other side of a “Safe Wall” or barrier from the scenes that usually were a collage of generic horror scenes. I wanted to bring people into the world they were confronting, knock down the “Safety walls” and challenge our audience to find their way through the house and confront the actors face to face. Don’t just watch the show, be in the show. Alas, my High School passed on the idea and it wasn’t until I pitched the idea to my college dean, Dr. Sara J. Blackstone at Southern Illinois University of Carbondale’s Theatre Department, that I was able to get started. Dr. Blackstone gave me $900 of her own money and told me to “show her” what I meant. So, I organized 26 theatre students, rented a small empty shoe store in the local mall, and turned that $900 into $6,000 in 2 weeks. I used all the money to take the team to an out of state theatre conference and we used that opportunity to get professional jobs in Summer Theatre. I knew I had something, I knew that my instinct that theatre people could create their own marketplace in the haunted house sector was something I could build on. I wrote my Senior Paper, graduated and set out to create a theatre company that specializes in haunted houses.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

With my theatre degree in one hand, and my senior paper on “Why theatre people should create their own marketplace in the haunted house world” in the other hand, I started work on my first haunted house project, Statesville Haunted Prison. My goal was to create an immersive interactive theatrical experience that was unlike any attraction I had seen. My design theory did away with the black hallways and half walls that kept the customers out of the horrific scenes and kept them in their “safe space”. I wanted to create a world in which the audience was inside the scene, interacting with the characters, and physically finding their way through the show. I kicked down the half walls, and invited the customer into the scenes. The goal was to redefine the audience experience from being a passive viewer of the horror, to becoming an active participant in the horror. “Dont watch a horror movie, be in the horror movie”. But of course, you cannot expect the audience to have a visceral connection to your show, if there isn’t a story attached to the images. Back then, there were very few cohesive story lines attached to haunted houses. We not only built a story arch for the show, but we also created several Icon Characters that had their own backstory and current arcs. For an audience to care about the story of the world you built, they must have an emotional attachment to the characters that live in that story. These elements of world building, immersing the audience, creating unique and fully realized characters, and being an actor bases show, where the foundation blocks for our “Zombie Army Productions” brand of shows.

Over the course of the last 25 years, we have been creating nationally ranked haunted houses, award winning films, and memorable large events.
I have designed and produced eight different haunted house in the Chicagoland area over the years, but all of those shows where just the path we took to get to our dream show, HellsGate Haunted House. In 2015, we went out in the woods and build this incredibly ambitious design. We took the principles that we started our company with, and pushed them to the furthest edges. On the outside, HellsGate is a multi level haunted mansion hidden in the woods, but on the inside, it is the culmination of two decades worth of experience and experiments. HellsGate only opened in 2016, but has swiftly become a Top 10 show in the Nation, and the most critically acclaimed show in Illinois. And we are just getting started.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

I have always believed that the cast and crew were the most important part of my business. By investing in the people behind the walls, I have created a culture that the team wants to return to every Fall. Some of these kids have been part of our shows for over 20 years. That continuity breeds quality and consistency. Thus, my audience knows they can depend on a great show, every time they purchase a ticket, leaving very little reason to try a different show this Fall.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In 2014, I created a Comedy Horror haunted house that would be set upon a barge at Chicago’s Navy Pier for the month of October. We were all incredibly excited to try something new, by leading with comedy first. I was so sure that we had a winning idea, that I invested my entire life savings on the show. The haunted house opened to great reviews and a robust audience demand. I was over the moon with its success. We had all attempted something new, and the audience loved it. But…fate had different plans for us and our new show. On Halloween day, 2014, a freak 100 year storm came across Lake Michigan, producing 23′ waves, and sank our haunted house. I stood there with the coast guard, fire department, and police, while watching my life saving sink to the bottom of the lake. I must admit, I found it very difficult to get out of bed that week. But in the end, I got up, kept moving forward, and eventually found my way to my dream show six months later. Two years after “Zombie Containment” sank to the bottom of the lake, I opened HellsGate Haunted House, my dream show. No matter what, just keep moving forward.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://HellsGate.com
• Instagram: @FearHellsGate
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HellsGateHauntedHouse
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@HellsGateHauntedHouse

Image Credits

Tiela Halpin Haunted House
Chris Popio Headshot