We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Thomas Crain a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Thomas, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

Probably the Lazarus Toys haunted house.

When my partners and I went independent in 2016, one of the first haunts we designed was Lazarus Toys. We were so passionate about it that when we rebranded from Meagan’s Monstrosities for something a little more official sounding, we chose Lazarus Creative Co. just for the brand synergy. The house was plotted out and ready to go in 2017, but various factors (most of them financial) kept pushing it off. In 2021, we reached out to the Wentz brothers and offered to do some contract work for their upcoming Festival of Fears event. That partnership went so well that they offered to fully partner with us for the 2022 event and fully finance a haunt of our own design. Obviously we chose Lazarus Toys.

After almost six years of plotting, planning, and dreaming, actually walking through the abandoned toy store’s façade was a surreal experience. After having the ill-fated toymaker Emile Lazarus living in my head for so long, actually portraying him in the flesh meant more than I can put into words. And when the show ended on Halloween night, after the last group went through, I sat in my character’s workshop, listened to the soundscape I had worked so hard on, and broke down crying.

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?

My name is Thomas Crain. I’m a husband, a father, and a storyteller. I call myself a storyteller because that’s what I do; I tell stories. I’m not an author because my ability to write is pedestrian at best. I can, however, spin a yarn a mile long and have a fairly strong handle on narrative structure and plot development. I create characters you care about and give them a voice that sounds natural and not forced. One of my main laws of life is that the purpose of a story is to be a story. It can be more than that, but it can never be less.

I like to tell people that I’ve been telling stories since I first started talking. Currently, my main avenue of telling tales comes in three distinct forms; writing, narrative podcasts, and haunted house attractions. I’ve been writing since I was six or seven. My grandmother still has some of my earliest one page stories in her possession. I’ve always loved old radio shows and full cast audio dramas, so the transition to narrative podcasts grew naturally from that. And I’ve been designing haunted houses since 2005… although my first one didn’t actually get constructed until 2014.

I typically provide story outlines, scripts, and “soundscapes” for my narrative podcast and haunted house ventures. I’ve been told that the dialogue in my scripts flows naturally, not forced, something I credit to the fact that I always read the things out loud to myself before I let anyone else have the chance to read them. When it comes to soundscape design, I try to fit the ambient noise and the music to whatever mood or action that is supposed to play out in a given scene.

I’m incredibly proud of how the Scarab Archives podcast has grown to have fans all over the world, but perhaps more proud of my team at Lazarus Creative Co. We made the decision to go independent together almost ten years ago, muddled through literal years of strife and non-starters, and are now finally in a position where we’re getting the chance to show everyone just how good we are at what we do.

Scaring people. We’re really good at scaring people.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2020, when it became clear that the Scarab Archives was going to be a bigger undertaking than the boss and I had envisioned, we reconnected with an old creative partner and brought her on board as a cast member and co-writer. Despite some growing pains, we found a good groove and got the series running to the point where I had an outline of plot development for the first season’s duration. Around the season’s halfway point, this creative partner just up and decided that she didn’t want to be a part of the project anymore. This was not the first time she had done something like this, so while it wasn’t totally unexpected it was still a gut punch. Like I said, we had a plot in place and her character was a vital part of said plot. Within forty-eight hours, I had created an entirely new character for my boss Meagan to portray, redrafted and performed the next planned episode myself, and rewritten the plot for the first season. We didn’t miss our release window, and the series has only gotten stronger from that point on.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

My life’s dream is to be able to make a living and support my family with my storytelling. For the last six years I’ve worked as a correctional officer. It’s a crushing, awful work environment… but it keeps a roof over my head, food in my kid’s mouths, and insurance to keep my family healthy. If I ever reach the point where I can do all of that while doing the thing that brings me joy, the thing that I consider myself best at:? That’s a life mission accomplished.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://lazaruscreativeco.com/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lazarushaunt/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/scarabarchives?lang=en
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@lazaruscreativeco.6222
• Other: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thescarabarchives https://www.wbfestivaloffears.com/

Image Credits
Thomas Crain and Meagan Camp