Hello and welcome to Fun Fact Friday with me, Lila. And you
and David and Lila's dad. Each week we talk about one month,
surrounding a different topic. Each week, each week
will be an insurance for each episode. Yep.
And yeah, just send us send us some feedback mail
FunFactFriday.com packs, corrections, ideas for shows
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I know. But I know my lame joke.
You're banned. banned forever banned.
I block you. Alright, so where are we talking about this? We we
have before we get started. We had a we do this show live on
Thursday nights around 630 Eastern time we get started
right now, if you didn't already know. And we were we were
astounded muddy in the chat room. And dark radar was like,
Y'all sound really muddy. And I'm not getting any effects or
music or anything. And we're like checked the streamer.
And
we use the broadcast tool. Yeah,
we were using the webcam mic from his computer. Yeah, so
So I had to go in and change the setting and restarted the
recording and the stream and everything. But you know, it is
what it is guys. All right. So now that we are back on track,
welcome. Fun Fact Friday. What are we talking about this week?
Haunted houses. The attractions
the attraction on houses, not an actual haunted house. I think
we've done that before we've done Haunted Places haunted
places. Yeah. So the reason we're doing this is because
somebody I work with, and my day job has a haunted house that
they they run every spooky Halloween season. And we're
talking about maybe being involved with it this year. And
it sounds really fun. And we get to talk and and Lila has never
been to a haunted house other than the one at the county fair,
which is just like a trailer with some spooky stuff in it.
She hasn't been to like a proper one where they do it, you know,
turn or have the whole atmosphere and all that. And I'm
gonna I'm pretty excited to talk about this tonight because I
like them. Your mama hates them. Yeah. Yeah. Riveting
conversation. So haunted house. Oh, value for value. Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we received don't a donation this week via PayPal.
Our monthly donation from Dred Scott. For 1912. The Oreo
donation is the Oreo donation. We've been over this. Remember?
Hold on, let me find it. Okay. Back on June 1, Dred Scott gave
us a donation via Satoshis boosted us and said regarding
1912 I figured out where it came from and episode 21 of Fun Fact
Friday cookies was the episode in our house. I'm known as the
Cookie Monster. In episode 21 Lila mentions that Oreos were
invented in 1912. You mentioned that you love Oreos, and I'm
pretty sure Oreos, I use the nine year 1912 as the basis for
my monthly donation. Nice 1912 for a shot shall forever be
known as the Oreo donation. So are you thank you drub for your
monthly sustaining donation we certainly do appreciate it. It
keeps the lights on and we got a I can't remember if we mentioned
this one last week. I don't know is this six days ago in the
helipad boost tracker 223 sets from Baroness Love and Light
returning the SATs I earn for listening to you in Fountain
love silly speculation Saturday to so fountain.fm Go there and
is an app that you can get and listen to our show. And as you
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send them to your wallet. We also got a boost from Kyle a
bear of the intergalactic boombox. He is also in a movie.
He plays Gohan and the new Dragon Ball Super superhero
which comes out this Friday await today because it's Friday,
wink wink, wink wink. Wow. So so yeah. 5000 SATs from Kyle. Thank
you, Kyle. You can hear Kyle also on the Fun Fact Friday
podcast at the end of
almost every episode very good podcast. Have you heard of them?
No, you haven't heard of the Fun Fact Friday. I'm with Lila and
David because there's another Fun Fact Friday out there too.
Oh, I don't think they put out an episode in a couple of years
though. Anywho I love haunted houses. The first time I ever
went to a haunted house, before we get into the facts, of
course, we get a little, little personal. I used to I used to do
a haunted house, in the community that I lived in as a
kid. And we, we were always trying to come up with the most
innovative weird ways to scare people. And one of the things we
did is we had one of the guys tape his left leg back, like
bend it, you know, like, so it looked like his leg was missing.
But we would put them in a scarecrow outfit, right. And
we'd have one of the other crazy axe wielding crazy people in the
in the little show, swing the axe and quote unquote,
accidentally hit that guy in the leg and he would just start
screaming, rolling around on the ground. And that would scare
people, you know? Yeah. Another thing was there was always rules
that you can't touch the people going through, right? Yeah,
can't touch them. Well, this was there was always a long line. So
we would group people off in groups of eight. But we made
sure we had a bunch of people that worked with us. Everyone's
volunteer was just for fun. But um, we always had somebody who
worked with us, typically, teenage girls who are small. And
what we would do is a halfway through the haunted house. One
of the people would just run out and grab the girl and pick her
up and throw her through this hole in the wall, and she'd
start screaming and yelling. Oh my God. And that would put
everything that would put everybody else on edge.
We should do that. It's amazing.
So dark radar says in chat I rode past an abandoned brick
house and an otherwise nice neighborhood today. I thought it
would probably make a good haunted house. So yeah, we got
that around here in eastern North Carolina. People will buy
an old barn or something and turn it in make the whole area
and do something really spooky, spooky looking and creaky walls.
And we talked about that a minute. But so yeah, Lila and I
are gonna kind of take part in one this year. I think we're
gonna have some fun with it. So what facts do you or do you want
to do good news.
I have no good news.
You have no good news. Well, I've got good news so I can look
up some good news. And now, Fun Fact, Friday news with your lead
anchor, David. Okay, so the news for tonight. news. News for
tonight.
Your lead anchor.
I got to find the tab. I'm still finding my good news message in
a bottle was launched 33 years ago connects the family with a
late son. Billy Mitchell is a salvage diver. And while on the
water he keeps his eye out for interesting artifacts. Recently,
a green bottle caught his attention when he pulled it out
of the Yazoo River. Mitchell found that it contained the
message. Mitchell and his boss Brad Babb. man's name is Brad
Babb. Got the tattered piece of paper out of the bottle and
began reconstructing the message written in a child's scroll.
They figured out a few words 1989 doll da H L. Oxford
Mississippi, please. And thank you. Mitchell and Bab Yeah, it's
interesting. Mitchell and Babb made it their mission to find
the writer and got a lead when they posted the picture on
Facebook. Oh, it's it continues playing now. Cool. They posted a
picture on Facebook by connecting with Eric Dahl. They
learned that the message had been written by his son Brian
when he was a sixth grader at Oxford, Mississippi. Brian, a
cancer survivor, died in an accident. At his home when he
was 29. His sixth grade teacher Martha Burnett told USA Today,
Brian and his classmates dropped their bottle in the Tallahatchie
River. During a field trip. Brian's traveled 200 miles to
Vicksburg, which stunned Burnett. Whoever imagined this
would happen. She said, it brings back it brings him back
to life in a way. Eric, his wife, Melanie and son Chris went
to Vicksburg to meet Mitchell and Bab and she said it feels
like they're all big family now. Brian was victorious in his life
because of the relationships he established and the bonds with
him. other people, Eric told USA Today and he continues to
inspire connections. I love stories like that. That's the
message in a bottle. Just the idea of it has always been a
really cool idea to me. Yeah, just, you're throwing this thing
out there. You never know if it's going to do anything.
I keep messing with the levels.
Well, I'm sorry. And I'm trying to get make it sound good.
Okay. Well, I speak into my mic, and it sounds like this. Well,
hold on. So what
is yours? No.
Yeah. Why is my note?
Sorry. All right. Sorry. All right. Did you find a new story?
No, no, don't worry about it. That's fine. It's better, it's
better to not have one than to have one that you haven't read.
And don't know the idea of, because if you get halfway
through it, you're like, This is not a great story. So yeah, we
were gonna talk about some haunted house facts. And they're
very interesting to me, because you can't, there's so many rules
with them. You can't touch the people coming through. You
can't. Like there, a lot of them have what it's kind of like a
safe word.
sort of thing, just in case something happens. Well,
yeah, there's that between the employees, but there's also they
want to be entertaining, and they want to scare you, but they
don't want to like give you nightmares the rest of your
life. Sure, you know, so they they're trained to notice when
somebody's getting a little too scared. And they start to kind
of pull back a little bit. And they have like words that
they'll say to each other that like, you know, the guy in the
red shirt, or like, you know, make sure you don't scare him
too much. He's kind of getting on edge. I've also heard that a
lot of them. Try and stay a little further back then they
used to because a lot of people will swing on you. Like if they
if you startle them too much they swing? Yeah, it's like why
are you going to a haunted house where people jump out and scare
you? If you know you're the type of person who's gonna swing on
somebody. So yeah, and there's a lot of them also have like an
informer monster if you're getting too scared. Like, just
stop until one of the people go back a little bit and be like,
Listen, I gotta get it out of here. No, like, escort you out.
There's like little tunnels where you can get out of there,
you know? Cool, right? Oh, it is almost seven. Okay, so I'm going
to have you talk about haunted houses for just a moment while I
turned my mic.
Okay. One of the first haunted houses dates back to ancient
Rome. In 81. It's now yeah, in 81. Plenty the younger wrote of
his home being haunted by an old man with this is a haunted house
facts. This is haunted. Haunted facts. Haunted House. Okay, you
know what, we're just gonna go to the cattle. What? What's
happening? Okay, so I went to this other website and it was
about haunted haunted stuff instead of haunted. goofy stuff.
Like fake haunted stuff.
Oh, you're okay. Haunted haunted like real? Haunted. Yeah.
Gotcha. Yeah. Talk about kid daddle. Yeah.
Okay. History of haunted houses. What are you just
a heads up? I already did the thing I needed to do so. Okay,
good.
If you if we owe anyone the tradition of a haunted houses as
an attraction ranging from some ghost to a haunted castle, then
we owe it to Disney who popularized this or when? Disney
news De Niro.
So Disney made the first one in house.
Yeah, I popularized it. Oh, he popularized it. Okay. The first
pond house built was built as an attraction for the general
public. For the very first haunted house was oh my gosh,
there's not a was there.
Is the article that bad?
No. Okay. It's my brain.
It's not bad. This is your brain. This is your brain on
Kindle. It has
was the very first haunted house built out as an attraction for
the general public was Orton and Spooner ghost house. It was
opened way back in 1915.
Oh, so it'd be like oh no, I don't have that. Hello, and
welcome to our haunted house Orton unschoolers ghost house.
He's got all the attractions.
It's 1915 Yo, vaudeville is dead. You know what killed it
the moving pictures. Anyway,
one of the most popular haunted attractions was a display called
the chamber of Hall. ordered by Maria Sadd which consisted of a
deck to collate it, decorated. Like decorate a boat with an
with L's instead of our
hmm, I don't know Dee Dee co lated
Sure, sure wax figurines of notable French figures such as
Marie Antoinette, King Louie the great King Louie the 16th
Robespierre and Morat moving to France, Max Murray, developed
this sort of horror theater designed to primary primarily
scare the audience.
That's kind of what they do. This guy in this article I was
reading, talking about, he says that their their aim is to scare
first and foremost, but if that doesn't work out, they fall back
on entertainment. They like to have kind of a plot as you go
through the whole thing. The one that they have in town here, one
of the ones I went to, when you first get there, they tell you
the history of the house, because our area has a lot of
ties to Civil War era stuff. So they tell you the history of the
house and how this and that happened there and how this and
that has been reported. They're scary stuff going on. And you
know, half of its made up for the plot. But yeah, they they,
as you go through you're like and this is where the the the
widow of the house invited her guests to poison them, you know,
stuff like that. They tell you this whole story as you go
through the house, you get to see it all you know. And then of
course, there's the people that just jump out of the wall and oh
you have anything? Good. Oh, oh, do you want me to keep going?
You want to keep you on or you want to? I guess you're kind of
do it like the history of IT.
Yeah, good. In the USA home to the Halloween tradition. This
first came up into being when parents decided to add a spooky
touch to their houses to keep their children's from going out
to keep their children from going out in the times when the
Great Depression hit. There are needless to say two types of
haunted houses to that attract visitors. One is where reported
paranormal sites have been taken. Oh my gosh, have taken
place. Maybe even like even that creepy house in your
neighborhood that people keep hearing footsteps on famous ones
would be thus The Conjuring house in the United States the
Haunted Mansion in the Edinburgh Castle in Scotland, in the
Chateau de Brea sac in France.
The Haunted Mansion of the Edinburgh Castle in Scotland.
That sounds really I want to go see this castles in Scotland,
and I bet they're all haunted.
The infamous Stanley Hotel in the USA that inspired Stephen
King's much celebrated novel The shining, and the bet banger for
an India being home to real spirits. These spooky spots
gained an obvious fan following with curious souls looking for
an adventure.
Yeah, there's so many places that have leaned into the
haunted house thing over the years, but, but the I like the
Okay, so we went to Carolyn's the not Carolyn's Kings Dominion
during the scary season because they go all out. They've got the
huge pumpkin heads. They've got a big animated skull projected
on the Eiffel tower that they have
their eye there. Yeah.
Yeah, like five years ago. It's been too long. You
remember the fake Eiffel Tower?
Maybe we'll go to Cara wins in October. Or as they call it.
Scarecrow with arrows.
I want to go to the Stanley Hotel. I feel like it would be
cool.
Your mother would never allow us to go to the Stanley Hotel. That
movie? She hates that movie. Just because it's you haven't
seen it yet? Yeah, it's good. It is creepy. All right. It is
really a creepy movie. The book is better of course with what
you were talking about how the places kind of embrace their
scariness and the heartedness. Yeah, kind of like the Ohio
penitentiary. Right? They have a haunted house type thing there.
Yeah, we talked about that, what? 100 episodes ago. It's
been a while. I think blueberry sent us some pictures that place
he goes he travels a lot and takes pictures everywhere he
goes.
But that said to be the most haunted place in the USA. Right?
Very, very scary.
The other type is a setup haunted house, which is an
attraction at an amusement park or an arcade that you that you
come across designed with fake scenery elements to induce fear,
but very obviously lacking any real ghost presence, not for the
faint hearted. Haunted Houses are a load of fun for anyone
looking for a cheery scare, maybe to follow up into another.
A number of things like a haunted house like It's on the
Escapade.
Like, what, that's what you're talking about right now with the
decor inside and all that kind of stuff. That's where they like
they talk about, if the basic scariness of the environment
isn't getting people, like, you know, their whatever, that's
when they resort more to the jumpscares. Like, I guess these
people aren't getting creeped out at all, let's just jump out
and yell at them. That's kind of the, the article that I found is
they're like interviewing a guy who runs one of the places. And
he says one of the other things that they have to kind of keep
keep in mind is trends. So like, in the 80s, you had your slasher
movies with, like, you know, Jason, and Freddy, and, you
know, Chucky, and all those scary, so kind of went with that
sort of big scary guy, sort of thing. And now you get a lot
more zombies and an invisible ghosts type stuff, because of
like, Phasma phobia. And the all the zombie stuff that's out
there.
Yeah. So Rudy glim.
What? Ruby Gloom Ruby. Oh, one of the best theme songs out
there.
I agree. I was a great show. So what are you why are you
bringing it up? Because it's cool. And they have a haunted
house.
I was like, they live in a haunted house on the show.
That's funny. So yeah, they, they they do have an they're
getting kind of more and more rules. A to protect the
employees, like I was talking about, they have to worry now
because if somebody you know, when somebody punches you, and
then they also have to worry about now scaring somebody until
they have a, you know, episode of some kind and have to call
the ambulance. I want to say when we were at Kings Dominion,
they had somebody who had had to have an ambulance called because
something scared when they started having chest pains. I'm
not, you know, and maybe that person didn't know. But I'm
like, if I have a condition, I'm not going to put myself in a
situation where I might get scared to enough to you know,
okay, so this site
is not great. Okay. So a site
says 23 Scary facts about haunted houses you should know
about. When I click on it, it's very obviously a clickbait
title. But usually, you don't get that on facts sites, you
just get them on like YouTube videos. So you click on it. And
it's just a whole bunch of paragraphs. There's no numbers.
And the number of little sections isn't 12312344
sections, about four or five paragraphs if
we need to do a whole episode on clickbait and how it works on
you psychologically. Next week. Next week.
You're doing next week?
That sounds fantastic. I am in I am in for the clickbait.
How the algorithms feed into it and stuff like that.
news sites are gonna hate this one trick about clickbait facts.
You won't believe the items on our facts list.
These 20 celebrities have some really unsolved controversy.
Number five will scare you.
You won't believe number seven, leave number seven. Number six
will make you rip all of your hair out and you put
like dosha cat on them. Though, what is it called?
Or they'll just have a male or they'll have a picture of like,
my um Bialik the actress from from blossom and Big Bang Theory
and have a picture of her right. And then like, you can't see
this like you won't believe and she's not even in the article.
Yeah. So there's a there's a site used. You just go to I
can't remember if it was on Reddit, don't go to Reddit. It's
a horrible site called saved you a click. And they actually go to
the clickbait sites to try and find whatever the clickbait part
was like So it'd be like talking about Miami HELOC is like this
is just a list of celebrities and what they're doing now.
saved you 97 clicks but here's all the different like the
slideshows you have to go through. Like Miami ALEC is
nowhere in the list. Save you 97 clicks like you're doing you're
doing some good work there. Yeah, Buzzfeed, Buzzfeed is bad
too.
The quizzes aren't bad but kinda are. Their quizzes
are that you know, they're alright. When you're bored when
you've got an ad blocker, it's okay. Yeah.
Let's see. Do you get the stupid fight? The stupid site not
fight.
I'm like, what fight are you talking about? Is there a fight
happening? Are you posting a personal link for the show
notes? Yeah, cuz I
read like, five paragraphs off of it. Right.
So yeah, there's we don't have a lot going on tonight on the
show. Yeah, we have been I have been working on network and
server stuff here at the house. I've got an old or an old I've
got a little one of the little mini PCs that you get low $150
Mini PC that you normally just book a TV up to and, and watch
YouTube on or Netflix, kind of like a Roku has Windows on it.
But I have turned that into a server for the house. And I'm
learning how to put good get it all working right. I'm going to
put Windows Server on it play with that a little bit
evaluation of it. And I've just been working on that. I put a
new episode of media spot out last week. So I've just been
I've been I've been real busy. So hadn't didn't have a lot of
prep time this week. What's that one? Oh, I've got that one.
Yeah, that one actually looked pretty good. So how many haunted
houses? Do you think there are haunted house attractions? Do
you think there are in America started at the top, you'd know,
we estimate there are 12,000 1200 1200 Haunted
attractions charging admission fees. So what
I know that 1200 and 100 or 1200 are the same thing, right? It
just still annoys me.
So all All work and no play makes me this adult boy. That's
shining reference. Oh, you're you I think a little bit more.
Will you be able to watch that soon. So yeah, there's there's
always charity haunted houses to. Especially around here, the
one that I worked at when I was a kid was on the military base.
And it was to raise raise money for the Youth Center, I believe.
And the Youth Center was really cool, because they always had a
bunch of video games. And you could go and just play them like
there was no, you know, you just went and signed up and played it
at the bottom. So yeah, 3000 charity attractions are open for
one day on Halloween. We've got a local guy that does He lives
down the road and he goes all out for Halloween. Yeah,
he talked about him a lot. Yeah, we talked about it a lot. So
pretty cool.
Typical haunted attraction. A typical haunted attraction
average is around 8000 paid guests this figure grossly
depends on the market and the size of the attraction the
average cost for a haunted house is around 2525 bucks 25 Yeah,
major amusement parks but it's one of the major amusement parks
it's included in the the admission to the whole park. So
you get the roller coasters and and all that as well as all the
spooky stuff but yeah, it's it's a cool industry. It's fun. It's
everybody's just having a good time. And you get to do makeup
and you get to do costumes and you get to do technical effects
like lighting and, and all the the smoke machine and Feldman
smoke machines. That's good. The fog machines and and it's all a
DIY stuff and it's just really cool. We enjoy the whole the
whole idea of the haunted houses and yeah, we have a good time.
So the history of the haunted houses we kind of went over the
early 1900s Let's see if this let's see if this site jives
with what you are saying this is saying that the ancient
Egyptians a her knew well that if you wanted to keep the Body
Snatchers away from the pyramids, the best way was to
scare them. mazes moving walls, self opening doors and traps
were used and the use of snakes and insects were commonplace. So
I guess the whole idea of a haunted house kind of started
with the Egyptians trying to keep people from getting into
the tombs and stealing all the riches you make you're just
trapped but some of them were just trapped with poisonous
snake because joke's on you.
Loser you got jumped scared by a poisonous snake it bit your leg
pranked haha pranked
and then the Renaissance. We got the dark ages a little bit to
worry to prank that turn the whole thing into Halloween. We
can do that on the Halloween episode. And then you know,
things went on things went on and then in the 1900s Let's see
if they talk about the one we were talking about. These
attractions are looking okay, so that was like they had freak
shows. kind of started in the early 1900s With you You'd go
and see people with like, an extra arm or you know, like, six
fingers on each hand. That sort of thing freak shows. Amusement
parks would run amusement parks and Family Fun Center springing
up all over the nation. And they'd have a lot of mazes with
dark, dark mazes, mirrors and smoke and stuff like that. Let's
see the first recorded haunted attraction Yep, Orton and
spooners Ghost House 1915. So that's the same, the same fact I
guess as to sources unless they used each other. 1969 saw
Disney's Disneyland's haunted mansion open, featuring a
spectral sea captain at ghost wedding party transforming
portraits and a headless horseman. Walt Disney did not
like the idea of putting an old decrepit looking structure in
the middle of his park. So he took inspiration from San Jose's
Winchester Mystery Mystery House, that's a whole episode on
its own, and created a lavish mansion with a pristine
exterior. So from the outside the mansion looks amazing, but
then the inside guests who are supposed to walk through it
initially, but the park staff had problems maintaining their
pace and keeping the line moving steadily. So they turned it into
a little car riding through it is the way to go to make sure
people keep moving. Yeah, keep them moving now. 2021 haunts
across the country reported record attendance as revenues
and patrons visited in droves eager to get out of the house
and enjoy Halloween. Once again, when he attractions adopted
time, timed ticketing in the previous year and used it to
spread out customers and 2021 with great improvements to their
operations. So they adapt. Like I said, there's they're
adaptable people because they're entertainers. So it's fun. I
like going to haunted houses. I'm excited to work at a haunted
house. And we'll keep y'all updated if that if that's going
to happen with story of how we can finalize things but but
yeah, so do you have anything else to add for this week? Nope.
It's what did we say we're doing next week? I forgot to write it
down.
Clickbait Yeah. All right. Well, we should put like clickbait tad
tags in the title. Absolutely. Clickbait facts question mark.
most
controversial episode of Fun Fact Friday ever.
Number 17 will scare you will surprise you.
You will believe what Leila says. Oh, yeah, we're gonna
we're gonna clickbait it up next. That's funny. Be prepared.
Be prepared. All right, any other news? If you're not
subscribed to me this pod I'm looking to put out another
episode this weekend. So go subscribe to that means pod.com
or in your favorite podcasting 2.0. Player. Okay, folks, well,
we'll see you next week. And
bye. Have a great weekend. Yeah, bye
that's the intro. We're doing it live folks.
Oh, oh, hey, Kyle. Oh, hi. We're gonna go see your movie this
weekend. Isn't Linus
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