The business grossed $1.9 million in 2019. Once you consider payroll, marketing, and other expenses, some years I've been close to $500,000 into loans and lines of credit. They build props and sets, and they maintain the farm and Christmas trees - I do "cut your own" Christmas trees and a light show in December.ĭuring Halloween, there can be up to 200 people working on any given night. I also have five full-time staff working year-round. #BATES MOTEL PA UPDATE#Then I use what's left in the bank to update the attractions and to live on for the rest of the year.Īround April I have to start dipping into loans and my two lines of credit to carry me over until the next Halloween. I spend that income over the course of the next six months paying staff and all my bills from the prior year. The majority of my income comes during six weeks of the year when the Bates Motel attractions are open. I made $125,000 from the new attraction alone. The first year I opened the corn maze, it had 25,000 visitors. I spent $10,000 on corn and props, as well as on updating things I had lying around. I added a third and final attraction to the farm in 2000. By 2000, my partner was fed up with me spending more time on the Halloween business than on ours, so he bought me out. #BATES MOTEL PA FULL#It cost $25,000 to construct and $10,000 to outfit.īetween 19, in addition to working on the Bates Motel, I worked full time on my business installing burglar alarms and later as an installation manager for a chain of 200 electronics stores. I used the profits from earlier years and my other incomes to facilitate the build. When I got home, I decided to build the Bates Motel haunted house alongside the hayride on our property. In 1996, I was invited to a Halloween trade show in Chicago. So I just broke even the first couple of years. So by 9 p.m., 60 of her friends had trickled in.īack then, making a profit didn't matter that much because I wasn't relying on it as my income. Luckily, a neighbor's daughter had a big house party nearby. October 31 arrived, and I was all geared up to make a killing.īy 8:30 p.m., no one had shown up. I'd spent around $10,000 on equipment and wages for the five nights. I had monsters hiding behind tree stumps, a Frankenstein set, and some ghosts and witches. #BATES MOTEL PA DRIVERS#Our first year, I paid 25 friends $5 an hour to work as tractor drivers and actors. I could see there was a demand for this kind of attraction in the area, and I had the land, so the next year I started a Halloween hayride. I live on a family farm in Pennsylvania, and in the 1980s my neighbors would always do a haunted trail through their field in October. In college, I installed car stereos to pay for my tuition. I've started a lot of businesses over the years. It has been edited for length and clarity. This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Randy Bates, a 60-year-old who runs a haunted house throughout October in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. #BATES MOTEL PA DRIVER#
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