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Haunt 13 is the brainchild of Eric Garthwait, a Hollister resident who is an application engineer by day and a haunted house creator during Halloween season. With the soft opening of his fifth annual Haunted House in Hollister on Friday, Oct. 13, Eric spoke with BenitoLink about his vision and plan for this year’s theme: Night of the Living Toilet.
The story for this year’s haunted house theme is as follows: “A few rambunctious children have thrown toilet paper upon the creepiest house in town. Their actions have awoken a creature within the neighborhood sewers. Sounds of flushing water creep from within while you enter from the outhouse. Your senses will be thrown into a world of disgust and fear.”
Creating a walk-through attraction from scratch every year in his front yard, Eric plans to have special effects displays, a haunted animatronic toilet floating on water, lasers, fog and bugs. Lots of bugs.
Eric plans “to add over 120 bugs spaced out all around the walkthrough and digital bugs that you can’t decipher whether or not they are real or fake.”
The haunted house world has been a passion of Eric’s since a young age.
“My father loves Halloween and he has always done displays. The first thing that really caught my eye as a child was a picture of him with these giant foam pieces at the entrance for a haunted house that he did.”
Eric started doing his own haunted house attraction at age 16 at his grandmother’s residence in San Jose with the help of his family.
His sets and designs attracted large crowds and eventually his work caught the eye of the owner of Dead Time Dream Haunted Attractions in San Jose. Using its equipment and large display rooms, Eric was able to create different special effects that could scare the masses.
But when he and his wife Lindsay Garthwait moved to Hollister in 2018, they noticed that there was a lack of haunted attractions in the area. So, they set out to change that.
“I started out with a show in my front yard that was kind of like a haunted mansion. And we had projections and light effects and stuff like that outside. So people could drive by, tune into a radio station, and listen to a whole show,” he said. “And then eventually I expanded from there to a walkthrough and different sets.”
Eric comes up with the concept for each haunted house in July and starts building the set in September, depending on the displays needed. As a logistics coordinator, Lindsay is often his partner in building and creating the set pieces.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Lindsay said. “Last year there was a line two houses down, so I had to act as a host of sorts and entertain people while they were waiting. Which was different from my day job but I had a really great time.”
One of the haunted houses both were most proud of was last year’s “Seance of the Twins,” in which Eric built his own elevator and was able to lift people off the ground and shake them.
Eric’s impressive displays have also been recognized by the Northern California Haunters Group, a group of “halloween enthusiasts” who share active haunted house sites throughout the Bay Area. Haunt 13 is the only haunted house recognized by the group in the city of Hollister.
Eric aims to inspire the next generation of Haunted Houses’ enthusiasts.
“My hope from this is that I’m the house on the block that inspires another kid to do their own thing someday. Because I’ve had those experiences when I was younger and worked my way up to the point where I’m able to do this myself.”
Haunt 13’s Address is on Westside Boulevard and South Street in Hollister, where the website states you can find it by “following the screams.”
Dates:
Oct. 13: 8 p.m. – 9 p.m. (soft opening)
Oct. 20: 8 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Oct. 27: 8 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Oct. 28: 8 p.m. – 9:30 p.m.
Oct. 31: 8:30 p.m. – 10 p.m.
Other Halloween activities in Hollister:
1400 Kathleen Court, Hollister
- Oct. 13, 14, 20 and 28: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
- Oct. 31: 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Covey court:
- Oct. 31 sunset till dark
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