Blending chills and charity for Halloween
For 17-year-old Kurtis Lammer, what started as a small scale spooky attraction in his parents’ basement has grown into a full-scale haunted house in downtown Guelph. Unit 6, the brainchild of Lammer, is a zombie containment themed haunted house, and the culmination of years of planning and organization with the goal of putting on the best local Halloween experience possible.
“Everyone who does this stuff, they all have the same story essentially, which is they start with pumpkins out on the front porch and they add a skeleton. They add small things and, before you know it, you’re taking up the front garage and front driveway,” Lammer explained.
“…a zombie containment themed haunted house…”
He joked that once his Halloween attractions started destroying his parents’ grass he had two choices: either scale it down or take his haunt to a whole other level.
“I decided to partner with the Guelph General Hospital as a charity for all of the proceeds to go to. I wanted to do a charity haunted event with them and they’ve helped me put on this event,” said Lammer.
Guests to Unit 6 are led through a tour of the zombie containment facility, which the touring scientist Douglas assures is completely safe and state of the art at the beginning. This turns out not to be the case as the zombies end up running rampant and the facility quickly turns into a death trap that guests must escape from.
The idea for Unit 6 came about three years ago. This led to the planning, building, and procuring of the vacant lot for Unit 6 over the next two years.
“I decided to partner with the Guelph General Hospital as a charity for all of the proceeds to go to.”
“There’s so much involved,” said Lammer in regards to how much work was put into planning the attraction. “Ten years ago you could just turn off the light in a basement and get some ketchup and put it around your mouth and call it a day. Now there’s so much in getting the layout done because people expect so much more from these kind of attractions.”
To reach the necessary level of quality that Lammer was looking for in Unit 6, he travelled to TransWorld’s Halloween & Attractions show in St. Louis, Missouri, the largest Halloween haunt exhibition in North America, to shop for the set dressings that were needed. While haunts are picking up traction in Canada, according to Lammer, they are booming with business in the United States.
While Unit 6 is the brainchild of Lammer, it took plenty of volunteers from Guelph to bring his Halloween haunt to life.
“We had some people that were breaking in. That’s why we have security cameras. They broke in and stole…”
“We just put up a volunteer form on our website and put a few posts out on Facebook and we found our community. We found a great group of people who are dedicated and love Halloween,” Lammer shared.
From construction and insurance problems, to theft and vandalism, Lammer has had his share of challenges in bringing Unit 6 to life.
“We had some people that were breaking in. That’s why we have security cameras. They broke in and stole a decent amount of money’s worth of speakers from us.”
Despite these challenges, Unit 6 has been a success as “interactive theatre” for the city of Guelph.
“Scaring people is easy, it’s hard to make something that’s entertaining and scary,” Lammer concluded.