How scary can a haunted house be in small-town Illinois, right? That’s what my son and I from the ‘big city’ thought as we waited to enter the Raven’s Curse Haunted House in Centralia, IL.
The only thing “small-town” (and totally endearing) about it was that the ticket-taker was the haunted house creator’s dad and the ticket-seller was his mom.
Let go of preconceptions. Be open-minded and expect to be amazed.
We enter experiences (or greet new people) through our own personal lens of bias, based on our culture and past-experiences. It’s a natural process, dating back to our hunter-gatherer, fight or flight roots.
Yet imagine the world of possibility when we leave behind preconceived expectations and experience what is right before us, in the present.
Forget your ideas about small-towns. This house was sophisticated and SCARY! There were top-of-the-line animatronics and amazing videos inside picture frames hanging on walls—it’s not a spoiler alert since it’s on their website —but YUCK when someone’s head exploded and I simultaneously got sprayed with water. (I hope it was water!)
People still make the difference.
The thing that really put the show over the top was the actors in each of the scenes. They followed you, jumped out at you, stared silently or gestured threateningly. The only rule of the house was that actors were not allowed to touch you, and you were not allowed to touch them.
Each actor had their prescribed character, often evoking movies—the machete wielding character from Friday the 13th, a creepy child seemingly wanting to play, a la The Shining. They ominously stayed with you, engaging and responding to your reactions in real-time.
The Haunted House’s creator had a vision. But he was reliant on the “front-line-staff” to make the experience exceptional.
Engage your team in your vision and let them go.
How do you empower the people who work with you the freedom to succeed? To allow them to trust their gut and do what they think is right to achieve your vision? It starts by being able to define your vision and your desired outcomes—what it looks like when you’ve achieved it.