History of The Haunt

Although The Haunt is in its ninth season at its current location, The Haunt's creator Richard Stoudt has had a lifelong obsession with Halloween and things scary. In 1978 Richard was 12 years old and too big to Trick or Treat so he got his friends together and built his first haunted house made of large refrigerator boxes in the form of a maze. This went on in his Tempe neighborhood for five straight years until 1983.

Taking his love for the movie "Halloween", Richard then began appearing on Halloween night as the film's scary villain Michael Myers or "The Shape" as Richard puts it. Playing music from the film, he would stalk around his parents' house as The Shape with the music from the film playing. This went on from 1984 to 1989 until Richard decided that the 30 to 40 people who would camp out to catch a glimpse of Michael Myers on Halloween was getting too large. In 1990, with the help of his friend Tony, the two started a nine year tradition of building haunted house mazes (mostly out of cardboard boxes) mainly for Richard dressed as Michael Myers and Tony dressed as the Grim Reaper could get scares inside "The Tunnel" to customers who flocked back each year.

Soon family and friends began helping out and in 2000, at his own house, Richard put on his first haunted house using wood walls at the current location. The home haunt grew every year with Tony and his wife Beth helping and Richard's wife Darlene and daughter Jessica helping out on the annual spectacle. Jessica's friends Ryan and Amanda joined the cast as performers and in 2002, the haunted house expanded into the backyard and has grown every year since.

Richard began thinking of doing the haunted house professionally around 2002 and a search for a name was underway. Family friend Beth McClure named it "The Haunt" which is what it has been called since 2003. The Haunt expanded its nights in 2002 to include the 30th as well as Halloween night and then in 2004 it expanded to three nights. This year (2008) it will go to 4 nights for the first time. Many hours of time, work and effort has gone into doing The Haunt through the years and we thank all those who have participated and lent their talent and skills to past and current versions of "The Haunt".