What do you think truly frightens people? Not just necessarily makes them jump, but stays with them long after they leave.

My ex-mother-in-law.

Yeah.

You know, the simple stuff, spiders, snakes, the phobia that I targeted in that was the most successful was mice.

There's a huge fear of mice.

And it's too bad because we're near Disney and it's Mickey.

But I hired and again, I was told you'll never fill this position.

You so remind me of Shep Gordon super much.

What's been the reaction to the book? How has it been received by critics and people who've bought it and read it, et

cetera? It's in the top 100 horror books on Amazon.

It ranges generally between number 20 to number 40, but it's been the top 100 since the day it came out, which was mid-May of this year.

And we're thrilled.

We're really happy with its success.

And so here I am at Midsummer Scream signing copies of the book.

And I have a Q&A, which I've done for the last month at two other horror cons.

For people who want more information on your career, the appearances that you do, and, of course, where can they buy a copy of the book with websites and social medias?

What is this idea of we should have a horror-themed amusement park?

Well, for the sake of timing, I'll give you the abridged viewpoint here.

It started when I was 14 years old.

My parents had a joke and magic shop in downtown Boston.

And with that, they had a huge section of Halloween supplies.

And to make a long story short, at 14 years old, I graduated from demonstrating whoopee cushions and hand buzzards to creating some small Halloween props for the very few handful of haunted house locations that were nearby.

And when I say haunted house locations, they were mostly fundraisers, you know, Knights of Columbus and Salvation Army and local high schools, that kind of thing.

Because this really, I think in so many ways, helps start the kind of... almost year-long celebration that halloween is now for people this idea of like no you can go out and do something related to the the holiday the festival whatever you want to call it um that wasn't there before and that it allows this were you always a big halloween guy

[laughs] Okay

... yeah, I was very popular, uh, among the nuns as, and the students.

But, uh, there was the huge Halloween super center of the Boston area, and my family owned that business.

So we were selling Halloween 12 months a year, uh, long before the chains got into it.

Uh, so I grew up in the Halloween industry, and w- when my family sold off that business, I was headhunted by one of our suppliers, Rubie's Costume Company, and I became one of their sales managers, and I helped create props and displays for independent haunted houses.

And after doing that in the late '80s, I, I thought, "You know, I should open up one of these, uh, Halloween events." And they, and again, they still weren't that popular.

Uh, but I got, uh, inspired by seeing a hayride in, in New Jersey and, uh, I thought, "I can do that so much better." So that's when I decided to go shop for a farm, and I found a, you know, a, a dairy farm that was closed, and it was owned by the bank, and made an offer to rent it, and that's the beginning.

Hmm.

Can you talk a little bit about how all of that came together? Like, were those things and mementos that you had kept over the years and had at the ready, or did the call go out in order to kinda get some of these materials?

You know, I always have said the secret to Spooky World's success are two things: one, Tom Savini, and two, the incredible ensemble staff that we had.

And that staff, you know, w- we didn't have the flip phones or the camera phones back then.

But I brought on help staffing, and a lot of them were in broadcast media.

And it was all th- through, uh, one of my connections, Fred Sherman, who was entrenched in broadcast media on the NBC affiliate, WBZ.

And so he brought on additional staffers who brought their equipment, brought their high-end quality cameras and, and, and video equipment.

And so we had the advantage of having this great photography and, um, you know, it was brought to me, you know, a- as, as they continued year by year.

Okay.