Creepy Nights on Calamo: National Haunters Convention 2012

This year marked our 6th year in a row attending the National Haunters Convention in Pennsylvania.

The pre-show haunt tour Friday night to Shocktoberfest was amazing - and not just because of the open bar and good food

. 3 attractions; the Unknown, the Prison of the Dead, and their Haunted Hayride - all opened up just for us and fully staffed with an amazing crew of actors in haunts so detailed I wished we had gotten a lights-on tour as well.

The Unknown did some really cool 3D video effects synchronized to pneumatic and other special effects in the haunt. The Prison was a trek through a custom built facility; starting from the main entrance, through the registration areas, into the cell blocks, then finally escaping through the sewer system (a maze of 4 foot diameter corrugated steel pipes you had to crawl through in complete darkness!).

Back at the convention itself attendance was up from last year, but there weren't very many quality vendors. We arrived with a page-long shopping list for our haunt, but only managed to find a handful of items worth buying. We also usually hold off on most of our shopping until Sunday afternoon when many vendors traditionally marked things down to their lowest prices before everyone leaves. No such bargains this year though; almost no one was running discounts.

The course schedule was sparse this year; sadly none we were interested in attending.

We did get two cans of "Great Stuff" (one per attendee) for registering - we'll make good use of those:

There was one vendor there with masks we really liked - "Lot 27"; unique, very creepy, well done, and reasonably priced. We bought one of their masks on the spot as we were walking by on Saturday - then came back on Sunday and picked up another one:

Catherine (aka "Scaredy Cat") did finally take the plunge and picked up some creepy contact lenses; a purple-ish reptile/cat eye looking set that I'm sure will freak out our victims this year! With I could locate the vendor's name - she was very helpful and friendly- and had been at NHC before. When I find their name I'll post it in the comments...

Finally, since (for the first time ever) we've decided to "gore things up" this year, we picked up some blood! A gallon of special effects blood (dries "wet" looking) and a bottle of edible (?) blood that our actors can let drip out of their mouths: