A Frightening Strategy: Amber Arnett-Bequeaith of Full Moon Productions
Written by David Day
Scaring customers is business as usual for these hauntrepreneurs.
By Kate Leibsle
Amber Arnett-Bequeaith knows her look confounds those with a preconceived notion of what someone in her business should look like. Up late interviewing zombies and ghouls for her four haunted houses the night before, Amber breezes into the Full Moon Production offices in a summer dress, coffee and notebook in hand, looking businesslike, and, well, normal.
“People think I should be Goth,” she said. “We’re not like that. We’re a true theatrical production.”
And the magnitude of their seasonal theatrical production is astounding. More than 200 “on-stage” and behind the scenes employees will frighten the bejeezus out of more than 100,000 people this year—in just 29 days—at the company’s four haunted houses in Kansas City.
From Humble Beginnings
The four houses—The Best, Edge of Hell, Chambers of Edgar Allan Poe and Macabre Cinema—are the culmination of a family’s theater dream that started in the Ozarks during the 1970s. Bequeaith’s grandparents, the parents of her uncle, Monty Summers, Full Moon’s president, operated Summers Moonglo Theatre, an outdoor summer theater at the Lake of the Ozarks. Catering to tourists, the family performed in a variety of vaudeville-type shows, such as “Uncle Sam’s Bicentennial.”
But producing summer theater was expensive and didn’t bring in enough money to sustain itself. The family figured they needed another way to make money, so they started “The Chambers of Edgar Allan Poe,” on the Square in Independence, charging $2 admission.
“It was a big success,” Bequeaith said. “So, in 1975, we started the Edge of Hell at 7th and Wyandotte. Well, the media went crazy. The phone book wouldn’t list it because of the word, ‘hell.’ There were all sorts of problems.”
But the problems with the name notwithstanding, the family realized it had struck gold and it was permanently in the haunting business. The Edge of Hell remained in its original location until after the 1987 season when it moved under the 12th Street bridge in the West Bottoms, where it is today. In 1991, it was joined by The Beast and in 2007 by the revived Chambers of Edgar Allan Poe and the Macabre Cinema.
The Beast and the Edge of Hell are for-profit houses, while a portion of proceeds from the Chambers of Edgar Allan Poe and the Macabre Cinema benefit The Dream Factory. Those two houses are staffed by volunteers.
Haunted, Not Gory
Each of the four houses is built on a different theme, playing on a high impact of scaring visitors, not grossing them out. The houses aren’t about blood, guts and gore, Bequeaith said.
“Gore is silly and distasteful,” she said. “This is high impact scare—haunted theater. We want to take people out of their everyday life and take them somewhere else. We’re looking at the psychology of fear.”
In the Edge of Hell, visitors are taken on a journey through life and life choices. They are given a glimpse of heaven before they are plunged down the house’s infamous spiral slide into hell.
The Beast is the largest haunted house in the country and was a pioneer in the field because of its open format, allowing patrons to be fully in the scenes, without guard rails or ropes keeping them away from the set décor, Bequeaith said.
“It means we have to get in and do a lot of repairs, but it allows people to really be in the scenes,” she said. “The Beast is all about our phobia of being lost and finding our way out. It also addresses the true beast that is within all of us.”
The other two houses, The Chambers of Edgar Allan Poe and the Macabre Cinema, give Full Moon the opportunity to concentrate on its charitable and educational side. In the Chambers, visitors walk through scenes from Poe’s works. Bequeaith traveled to Poe’s hometown of Baltimore, Md., to research his life and perfectly recreate his gravesite on the fourth floor of the house.
The Macabre Cinema begins with visitors watching horror movies from the 1930s on a big screen. They then walk through the screen into scenes from the movies.
Writing the Guide Book
Unlike some business owners, when Bequeaith’s family founded The Edge of Hell 35 years ago, there wasn’t a “Haunted Houses for Dummies,” book to help ensure success. Even today, she said, there aren’t any “how-to” manuals on setting up and running a successful operation, because so many haunted houses are seasonal and fly-by-night operations. If there was going to be an insiders’ guide, she and Summers would have to write it. They, afterall, are acknowledged around the country as the experts in how to run successful operations. Indeed, in Kansas City alone there were 13 Haunted Houses in 1988. Today, Full Moon’s are the only ones remaining.
Bequeaith is quick to point out that one of the reasons that’s true and that the company is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year is the family has never treated Full Moon as anything less than a real business. These aren’t haunted houses slapped together in someone’s basement every July and then torn apart in November only to be set up again the next year. They are permanent structures with carefully considered designs and plans.
Bequeaith, Summers and the rest of the team are always tweaking displays and the experience so that guests, whether they are first-timers or have been through the houses on a yearly basis are continually frightened.
“No other haunted attraction does what we do. We are constantly looking at how to bring in more haunting,” she said.
Where do the ideas come from for a new scene? Bequeaith said they can come from anywhere. Like any good business owner, she is constantly on the lookout for the next big thing or new innovation. With degrees in business and broadcasting and marketing, she is mindful not only of how the scene will look, but how it will impact the bottom line.
Full Moon owns the patent on several aspects of its houses, including the four-story straight shoot slide in The Beast. And it’s rare that the company can buy an animatronic device and use it straight from the box.
“People see this and think it must be so easy,” she said. “They think that at $20 a head, we must be sitting back in Jamaica. But our buildings are not cheap. And the demands of the public are huge.
“Surviving after 35 years is quite a feat. It’s not because we’re making money hand over fist, it’s because we have a love and a passion for what we do. Our business model is not one I’d recommend. Being open for 30 days is not easy. We don’t get another quarter to make our numbers, and there are so many elements that go into whether or not we get there.”
Lessons Learned
Bequeaith has been in the business since she was five years old. She would start evenings as a ghost and when she got tired, slip into an open casket in the lobby and play dead (i.e., fall asleep), with visitors filing past until the house closed up for the night. Through the years, she has learned a few things about being a small business owner.
One is the finicky nature of customers. Back in the day, it was easier to implement a new idea. Now, a new idea involves multiple meetings, electricians, plumbers, IT professionals and others. And a new scene can be in the works for several years before the public sees it.
Bequeaith also shares the common complaint of many entrepreneurs over the amount of time she spends on paperwork.
“I’m in awe of the complexity of being a small business person in America,” she said. “I’m constantly learning about new paperwork. I relish the days I get to work on scenes for the houses.”
Not Just About Haunting
But Full Moon isn’t just about the haunted houses – it can’t be. The company has a commercial real estate division, which owns 12 buildings with 20-25 tenants. Next year, the Full Moon Book Shop will expand to include a coffee shop/Internet café. Currently, the company is a warehouse distributor/consignment bookstore. With the opening of the retail operation in the lobby, patrons will be able to sip lattes and search for books online, and runners will retrieve the books from the warehouse for purchase. Both the commercial real estate and bookstore are ways for Full Moon to bring in revenues year round, Bequeaith said.
But the haunted houses remain the core of the business, and that’s clearly where Bequeaith’s heart and soul lie.
“Scaring people isn’t easy,” she said. “You have to be able to read the fear and the phobia in people from the outside. It’s all about timing. We have actors who look at you and your skin crawls. There are a lot of screams, but the laughter isn’t far away.”
Kate Leibsle is managing editor of KC Small Business. (913)432-6690//
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