St Patrick’s Revenge 2022 at Hudson Haunted House

Philip: Coming up Hudson Haunted House in Hudson, Ohio is opening this weekend for St. Patrick's Revenge. Hudson Haunted House is one offshoot of the Hudson Jaycees established in 1972. They're looking to engage the community year round, and St. Patrick's Revenge is just a first step in that family entertainment plan.

Here's Jeremiah to explain more, and we started off with the basics of the haunted house.

Jeremiah: The Hudson Haunted House has more of an old school haunt. We don't have all of the fancy projectors and animatronics that a lot of other places have, because we like to put the experience solely on the actors, good acting with great sets, and properly painted scenes that have great audio to accompany it.

Everyone who is participating at the Hudson Haunted House is a volunteer. We have people that start as young as eighth grade, as a junior Jaycee, all the way up until when they graduate high school. Once you turn 18, you can be a full-fledged Jaycee and continue all the way through the age 40.

One of the perks of being a Jaycee is, not only do you get to learn first-hand more about your specific skillset needed for whatever craft or honing, but we also try to do whatever it is we can to help make it easier to go to school through receiving some small grants from the Jaycees.

We like to take the opportunity to use the haunted house, to teach our youth, and some young adult, more of a business mindset. We teach everything from how to handle the money side of things, to how to interact and engage and speak with different members of the local government, how to advertise on the radio, and maybe you are going to be a professional set builder. There's so many different things that you could do, even if you just wanted to learn the financial side of things so that you could become an accountant do people's taxes.

Philip: You are doing something for St. Patrick's day, and this is, I think, your second year that you're doing the St. Patrick's day event?

Jeremiah: So, for St. Patrick's Day we're doing a lot of the same stuff that we did last year, but there are some twists, and I don't want to give too much away because I love people to come out and see it. But, we've got a couple of giveaways that we're going to do, we've got a specific theme and a themed room for you, we've got some new merchandise coming out this year.

The reason why we chose to do St. Patrick's Revenge is, we used to do My Bloody Valentine, and a lot of other haunted houses do My Bloody Valentine, and instead of competing with our fellow haunters we decided let's let them have that day, and let's take this day. It just spreads the love around.

Philip: Is there a linear storyline that you guys are working off of? Or is it more like vignettes? The scene by scene?

Jeremiah: I would say it's more scene by scene. A lot of it is going to be very similar to a standard haunt season with just a little bit of leprechaun here, green there, may be a pot of gold somewhere.

Philip: You also, this year, are partnering with a dance group, an Irish dance group, that you have performing.

Jeremiah: Yes. So, we've got The Academy Irish Dance Company. They're going to be coming out for us on Friday the 18th from 7:30 to 11:30, and also on Saturday, the 19th, 7:30 to 11:30. They are World Championship Irish Dancers. They've got six local girls from Hudson, they're a part of their group, and they reached out to us and said, "Hey, we are interested in coming out to perform for you. Is that something we could do?" And absolutely, we're very excited about that, because that's what the Jaycees do is, we help people in the community.

Philip: You're doing an off-season event, and even though it's a scary off-season event, you can still partner with other entertainment, to bring other entertainment to the venue. It's okay to have the scary thing partnered with other performers, and then if people really don't want to go to the scary part, they don't have to, but it's about working with other partners in the community to bring authentic entertainment to this event.

Jeremiah: Absolutely. If there's one thing that we're here to do, it's to entertain people. We want to make it family friendly for everybody, whether you want to go inside and have pants scared off, or you want to stay outside and watch some Irish Dancers.

Philip: Last year, I know that you did an at-home Easter Extravaganza, with the Jaycees, what are you planning to do this year for Easter with the Jaycee side?

Jeremiah: Last year, in the midst of COVID, a lot of people were interested in having their own private, at home, Easter Extravaganza. So, they had the ability to fill out a form, donate a little bit of money, and we would do their own personal Easter in their front yard, backyard, whatever they desired.

This year, with the restrictions being less than they were, we are going back to our annual Easter Extravaganza at the park, right next door to the Hudson Haunted House. That is Oak Grove Park, and it's going to be April 9th from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM.

Philip: What I want to underscore here is, again, the tie back to the community, because you are doing this as a Jaycee, but the haunt is still there because you're still able to kind of cross promote what is happening at the haunt. So, I think what I always try and tell listeners is, look for opportunities to engage in your community, wherever and however you can engage. You know, maybe it's not coming and doing like a scary Easter egg at the Jaycees, you know, maybe it's not that, but maybe it's some tie in to participate in the community, to remind people that you're there.

Jeremiah: Absolutely. So, myself, I'm not an actor, I don't try to be an actor, but I really love being able to teach people how to perform different aspects of construction. So, when we're building stages, and building sets, me being able to pass on that knowledge and information to a younger generation makes me feel good. It makes them feel good, and they've got a sense of accomplishment out of it, and who knows, maybe they will end up becoming an architect because that one summer they went and helped build stages for a haunted house.

Philip: Is there anything else that you guys have planned for this year?

Jeremiah: So, during Christmas we've got a program that we call Kids Helping Kids. It used to be, years and years ago, we would partner with the Hudson School System, and we would figure out who needed help during the holidays and provide them some of the essentials of what they needed, whether it was clothes, food, gifts for kids at Christmas, that's what we would take care of.

The Hudson school system now has their own program that does that, so we're by ourselves but we, again, go out and provide clothes and food and gifts to families that are in need. We wrap it and then we come and deliver it, whether it be dressed as Santa or just as regular individuals.

We're really excited about a lot of the opportunities that we have coming up in the future. Hopefully the pandemic is drawing to a close, and that's going to afford us a lot more ability to have different activities for the entire family. Whether it's coming out to meet the Grinch or coming out to be a part of Santa's Workshop, you might even be able to meet Jack Skellington and the rest of the group from the Nightmare Before Christmas. It's really going to be, how much time do you want to spend with us?

We want to spend all of our available time with you, that's why we want to open up multiple times during the year. Hopefully, we'll be able to have a group of dedicated individuals that would enjoy coming to see us, because we want to have fun for the whole family, and make sure that we can provide activities that are going to bring in some revenue to where we can give back to the community.