| |
One of
the very first magazines in the industry, Fright Times
magazine
was created in 1996 by John Denley of Boneyard Productions.
Issue #1
went to print in spring of 1997 and it took off like
a storm.
The issues continued to get larger and more widely published
and continued
until issue #14 in the winter of 2001. In 2002, John
stopped producing
Fright Times magazine and went off to focus on
a music career and
went on to produce quite a few albums.
|
The following history is from
one of the original
contributors of Fright Times magazine, Ricky
Dick a.k.a.
Gravely Macabre of Castle Blood:
"The Transworld Halloween
Trade Show in 1995 and 1996 was a time when
the
haunt 'industry' was really starting to form.
As with many creative ventures,
people have widely different ways of doing things
and widely different motivations
for the things they do.
It became clear that many people
wanted to work as hard as possible on their
projects,
but were determined to make sure it was always
fun. The goal was to never forget why
they started all this in the first place.
A group of people always seemed
to gather after the show floor closed, to go
out to dinner,
and then hang around the hotel in the evening,
talking and exchanging information, acting as
sounding boards for each other's creative ideas.
We didn't really know each other that well
at the time, but realized we all had a common
way of seeing this hobby that was now a business.
|
|
When John thought about trying to write
down all the information that would flow between
the beers, the seeds of what would be Fright Times
was planted.
The first few issues of Fright Times
were written by the folks around those tables.
It started just the way most of our haunts did; we
weren't pros at it, but we knew
what we liked, and others seemed to like it as well.
And the most important thing was, that while we would
take what we were doing
seriously, we never took ourselves too seriously.
So sometimes we came off as goofy,
or a bunch of smart asses, but the heart of the magazine
never changed. And when it
got political, and people would fight about it, is
when we knew to walk away.
We would never let all of that taint
that which we loved the most; the essence of Halloween
and Haunting."
Gravely Macabre of Castle Blood
|
|
