Greetings- Welcome to the history of Halloween and our family
Well it all began with my Grandmother Sarabeth Blanck. She and one of her friends
wrote a play about witches,and for some reason this had an odd effect on my father. He dressed as a witch for Halloween ever since I can remember. My Mother sewed his costume it was a very old looking dingy costume with a small cape and a nasty old hat. He would sit on the porch with an old witch half mask, and a nasty wig made from siesel rope dyed red. He kept his costume in an old paper bag in the attic this added to the creepiness, and he would talk about the scary witch in the attic. When I was three or four anytime I heard the rattle of this bag I would run for cover. Actually he thrilled in putting on the costume and scaring me. I cannot really remember if my Brother Matt hasd any similar scares.
To be honest at an early age I enjoyed hearing the screams of children trick or treating when he would cackle at them. My Mother once told me he went over to my Grandpa's neighborhood and was gong to help him scare the kids. My Grandpa jumped out of his skin when my Dad scared him. He had such a huge following that when he appeared anywhere a line would form to get candy from the witch. After about twelve years at the house on Virgie Joe we moved. The new owners were asked "Where's the witch?" by the many neighborhood kids who had made it a tradition of coming to our house. Well at the new neighborhood my Dad started it back up and started another tradition of scaring the kids and passing out candy. During all this time my brother Matt and I would go trick or treating. But I longed to scare people not get candy. Of course this was the beginning of getting your candy scanned at the local hospital and even the city trying to change the nights of trick or treating so that weirdoes couldnt get you with needles and blades in your candy. Well I suppose when we hit our teens we had to stop going because we were too old.
After a few years of going to haunted houses and just basically needing to fill the void of scaring people Matt and I took some old lumber and cardboard and built a small cemetery fence and two cardboard coffins. I think we also had a couple of cardboard tombstones. My brother had a devil/demon mask and I wore an army jacket, torn jeans, and a werewolf mask. As the years progressed it got bigger and eventually filled the whole yard.I built a hangman's stand, a mausoleum, a couple of crypts and cemetery stones. Most of this was paid for by my job and sometimes we would scavenge for materials. At one point we even had a concrete vault in the yard with 3 concrete lids we had to lift off. We really didn't have a theme or a particular time selected, I tried to work in a storyline that was pretty cheesy but at that age seemed really cool. To be honest I think most pro haunted house stories are just ridiculous anyway. The theme was focused around my Dad's witch character; basically the witch captured people and turned them into half-creature, half-humans, one day witch died and her creatures with her but on Halloween night her spirit was rekindled and she conjured her creatures back from death and they once again terrorized the children. The name of our the yard haunt was "The Yard of Death". I just really couldn't think of a decent name but I didnt want to pass myself off like most professional haunts, "We have 40 million acres and so forth and their haunt is really only 1000 square feet". I didn't want to boast or brag, it was just something fun to do. I would have to say those who get into this to make a buck are not true haunters. Well we did the display in front of my parents' house for many years until 1998. It was time for me to move out and I was really burned out from creating the yard haunt. In my first apartment there were no trick or treators and it was a huge let down. I really needed some Halloween fix so back to going to haunted houses again. It really wasn't a fix as much as a frustration because there are so many lame haunted houses out there. I mean after you drive an hour and pay twenty dollars you really arent getting anything in return. At one point I convinced the restarant I was working at to let me do a small haunted house in the back upper portion of the restarant. I had no budget and being the resourceful person I was,turned to carboard and hot glue. I built complete sets from the unlimited amounts of carboard I got at the restarant. Some of the items I built were a full sized pipe organ, fireplace with a cobblestone look, and crypt vaults. Black foundation plastic was also used quite a bit. This was the first haunted house I ever built and not a bad one. It was called "The Halls of Terror". Yeah I know, silly name.
Well during this time I met my wife Carla who had a small appetite for Halloween or mostly for vampires. Of course she had no clue how big my appetite was. We married and her parents let me start up a yard haunt at their home. The first one used another somewhat unlimited source- old fencing sections. I built wooden cemetery fencing and a barn, and lots of wooden cemetery crosses. Another item I added to my display was cut trees. I would drive around looking for people who had trimmed or cut down large trees and I would stand them up in the yard and then the leaves would brown and crinkle making the yard look extra creepy. Eventually the display became a walk through haunt. The crowds grew as the haunt grew and one year a news station came out to do a report there! The real drain on me was I had to throw out the structures every year and rebuild the next year. Eventually Carla and I bought a new house in Sachse, I had plans of an elaborate arch that would span the driveway and large structures. My brother helped me construct the first few structures and props. We collected tons of lumber from people at church, we had quite a bit of useful lumber to build mausoleums and crypts. A cemetery fence made of ripped down slats and held in place by small columns every few feet gave us a nice cemetery look. Now with this new haunt we had to have a real name,nothing silly or cheesy. "Blanck Mortuary" was born Halloween 2000, we had family for actors and we would run the kids through black plastic hallways through the mortuary and out through the rotted barn. We became the most famous yard haunt in North Texas and had links on the web wth a semi professional site with how to's on coffin building and a horse drawn funeral carriage how to. The coffin how to gets up to 6000 hits every year during the months of September and October. I also owned a 1978 cadillac hearse and was a member of the local hearse club. The president of the club and his wife became intersted in my yard haunt and wanting to help out, built props and so forth. Blanck Mortuary grew until it filled the entire yard with 1600 square feet of space and structures up to 30 feet tall. Eventually the haunt became too big and my haunt partner was wanting to go pro. I myself had number two child on the way and decided it was time to get out of the business for now. He bought me out and took all the props to Alvarado to kick off his pro haunt career. After a rough first season he was contacted by a large long history prohaunt and moved to Red Oak to occupy a large vacant barn. So many items from my yard haunt still exist and are still scaring people, so when you hear about the prohaunt that started as a yard haunt in Sachse know that the Blanck family is where it all began.
To be honest at an early age I enjoyed hearing the screams of children trick or treating when he would cackle at them. My Mother once told me he went over to my Grandpa's neighborhood and was gong to help him scare the kids. My Grandpa jumped out of his skin when my Dad scared him. He had such a huge following that when he appeared anywhere a line would form to get candy from the witch. After about twelve years at the house on Virgie Joe we moved. The new owners were asked "Where's the witch?" by the many neighborhood kids who had made it a tradition of coming to our house. Well at the new neighborhood my Dad started it back up and started another tradition of scaring the kids and passing out candy. During all this time my brother Matt and I would go trick or treating. But I longed to scare people not get candy. Of course this was the beginning of getting your candy scanned at the local hospital and even the city trying to change the nights of trick or treating so that weirdoes couldnt get you with needles and blades in your candy. Well I suppose when we hit our teens we had to stop going because we were too old.
After a few years of going to haunted houses and just basically needing to fill the void of scaring people Matt and I took some old lumber and cardboard and built a small cemetery fence and two cardboard coffins. I think we also had a couple of cardboard tombstones. My brother had a devil/demon mask and I wore an army jacket, torn jeans, and a werewolf mask. As the years progressed it got bigger and eventually filled the whole yard.I built a hangman's stand, a mausoleum, a couple of crypts and cemetery stones. Most of this was paid for by my job and sometimes we would scavenge for materials. At one point we even had a concrete vault in the yard with 3 concrete lids we had to lift off. We really didn't have a theme or a particular time selected, I tried to work in a storyline that was pretty cheesy but at that age seemed really cool. To be honest I think most pro haunted house stories are just ridiculous anyway. The theme was focused around my Dad's witch character; basically the witch captured people and turned them into half-creature, half-humans, one day witch died and her creatures with her but on Halloween night her spirit was rekindled and she conjured her creatures back from death and they once again terrorized the children. The name of our the yard haunt was "The Yard of Death". I just really couldn't think of a decent name but I didnt want to pass myself off like most professional haunts, "We have 40 million acres and so forth and their haunt is really only 1000 square feet". I didn't want to boast or brag, it was just something fun to do. I would have to say those who get into this to make a buck are not true haunters. Well we did the display in front of my parents' house for many years until 1998. It was time for me to move out and I was really burned out from creating the yard haunt. In my first apartment there were no trick or treators and it was a huge let down. I really needed some Halloween fix so back to going to haunted houses again. It really wasn't a fix as much as a frustration because there are so many lame haunted houses out there. I mean after you drive an hour and pay twenty dollars you really arent getting anything in return. At one point I convinced the restarant I was working at to let me do a small haunted house in the back upper portion of the restarant. I had no budget and being the resourceful person I was,turned to carboard and hot glue. I built complete sets from the unlimited amounts of carboard I got at the restarant. Some of the items I built were a full sized pipe organ, fireplace with a cobblestone look, and crypt vaults. Black foundation plastic was also used quite a bit. This was the first haunted house I ever built and not a bad one. It was called "The Halls of Terror". Yeah I know, silly name.
Well during this time I met my wife Carla who had a small appetite for Halloween or mostly for vampires. Of course she had no clue how big my appetite was. We married and her parents let me start up a yard haunt at their home. The first one used another somewhat unlimited source- old fencing sections. I built wooden cemetery fencing and a barn, and lots of wooden cemetery crosses. Another item I added to my display was cut trees. I would drive around looking for people who had trimmed or cut down large trees and I would stand them up in the yard and then the leaves would brown and crinkle making the yard look extra creepy. Eventually the display became a walk through haunt. The crowds grew as the haunt grew and one year a news station came out to do a report there! The real drain on me was I had to throw out the structures every year and rebuild the next year. Eventually Carla and I bought a new house in Sachse, I had plans of an elaborate arch that would span the driveway and large structures. My brother helped me construct the first few structures and props. We collected tons of lumber from people at church, we had quite a bit of useful lumber to build mausoleums and crypts. A cemetery fence made of ripped down slats and held in place by small columns every few feet gave us a nice cemetery look. Now with this new haunt we had to have a real name,nothing silly or cheesy. "Blanck Mortuary" was born Halloween 2000, we had family for actors and we would run the kids through black plastic hallways through the mortuary and out through the rotted barn. We became the most famous yard haunt in North Texas and had links on the web wth a semi professional site with how to's on coffin building and a horse drawn funeral carriage how to. The coffin how to gets up to 6000 hits every year during the months of September and October. I also owned a 1978 cadillac hearse and was a member of the local hearse club. The president of the club and his wife became intersted in my yard haunt and wanting to help out, built props and so forth. Blanck Mortuary grew until it filled the entire yard with 1600 square feet of space and structures up to 30 feet tall. Eventually the haunt became too big and my haunt partner was wanting to go pro. I myself had number two child on the way and decided it was time to get out of the business for now. He bought me out and took all the props to Alvarado to kick off his pro haunt career. After a rough first season he was contacted by a large long history prohaunt and moved to Red Oak to occupy a large vacant barn. So many items from my yard haunt still exist and are still scaring people, so when you hear about the prohaunt that started as a yard haunt in Sachse know that the Blanck family is where it all began.
