Today we’d like to introduce you to Alexis and Josh Jaramillo.
Alexis and Josh, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Our operation, which sees well over 1,400 people pass through in just 15 days, began in the front yard of our parent’s house in the mid-90s. Every year for a few weeks around Halloween, they would put up cheap paper decorations, spiderwebs and string lights in an effort to be the best house in the neighborhood–my brother and I absolutely loved it. Every year after that, the competition for the neighborhood’s scariest house escalated, especially when it came to our neighbor across the street. With a bigger budget and therefore, more access to higher quality props, he forced us to become more creative with the lights and the decorations that we did have.
My brother, Josh Jaramillo, who I would call the creative director/fabricator, eventually became the person we looked to for direction and artistic vision. Even before he perfected the art of the scare, he was taking what little we did have and manipulating it in a way that was truly custom and unique. At Christmas, he would request Halloween decorations. Throughout the rest of the year, he took scrap materials from dumpsters, thrift stores and garage sales and combined them with things like plumbing pipes to create lifesize monsters that he could position in different ways.
However, we consistently failed to surpass our neighbor, who eventually opened his house to trick-or-treaters for a walk-through complete with multi-hundred dollar props one night a year. Given the layout of my parent’s house and the lack of decorations to cover both the outside and inside of the house, we had to concede the battle for best house–until 2013. In 2013, my brother had decided that he wanted to finally create his own experience and take all the skills he learned and the elements he collected to put together the free-of-charge walkthrough he had always envisioned.
“I wanted to express my creativity and to make a neighborhood experience,” Josh said when asked why he wanted to start on a new path.
“Some people don’t have $80 to $100 to take their whole family to a regular haunted house.”
Little did we know, the portable carport he constructed in the driveway would not survive the violent winds that year. It was extremely disheartening for everyone because he had sold us all on his vision and we listened as every trick-or-treater that year expressed interest in the shell of the carport, saying they thought it would be something really cool.
That experience left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth, but my brother didn’t give up. While I went away for college, he commandeered my parents 24’ by 17’ garage and painstakingly created five unique rooms out of plywood and paint, giving each room its own theme: like a prison cell, a neon-polka dot clown room, and a creepy motel. Compared to where we are today, it was a bit rudimentary, but at that time, it was the most exciting and polished thing that each of us had seen. More importantly, we finally became the house everyone looked to for scares.
The next year, my brother decided to start the work even earlier, and most likely to the chagrin of our neighbors, open it every weekend in October until Halloween. As my brother and I got older and got full-time jobs, we found that we could funnel more assets into the project. We acquired more advanced props or animatronics that once belonged to places like Waterworld and professional prop-makers, and he also learned to make his own.
“I taught myself how to weld to make pneumatic props because for those who don’t know, they’re very expensive and cost between $2,000 and $10,000,” Josh said.
“I can turn the price down to between $700 and $1,000 per prop, making them myself,” said Josh.
We also began going to an inclusive Halloween industry trade show, where we saw the possibilities of where the house could go. Eventually, we manifested our ultimate vision and expanded to the backyard, adding more space and allowing us to accommodate more professional equipment. Through our attention to detail and by crafting each scene with painstaking focus, we built up a reputation as the premier home haunt that is often compared to large-scale haunted houses around Denver. While we do not have the budget and most importantly, the space, to best these behemoths of the industry, I am so proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish thus far.
It truly is a family business, with each one of us taking turns greeting people, stepping in as scare actors, and for a solid month out of the year, becoming full-time set designers. Now featuring 11 unique rooms that pay homage and expand upon those original rooms, we have created an experience where guests can flee from deranged killers, travel down to the sewers, come face to face with 7’ clown and wade through a creature infested swamp, all without having to spend a dime.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Our most definitive challenges to date have been space and time. Our venture is truly a passion project as we all have full-time jobs. Whatever time we devote to the haunted house is the time we would have normally spent relaxing, doing activities or seeing friends. So, there are most definitely times when each of us doesn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. When you devote essentially all your free time to something that does not yield traditional profits in the way other businesses would, it’s difficult to understand why you’re doing the thing in the first place.
There’s also the angle of there never seeming to be enough time to accomplish everything to the standard we need to execute at. I remember our opening night last year, where we saw around 250 people come through and my brother walking in and saying to me how embarrassed he was by the lack of finishing details and how in his mind everything looked bad. The other major challenge is space. We are severely restricted by the dimensions of my parent’s garage and backyard. There are only so many ways a room can be rearranged and there’s no way we can start knocking down walls, ha!
Horror Theater Haunted House – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We are a premier home haunted house experience. Like a traditional walk-through, guests self-guide themselves through our elaborate maze of props and actors before ultimately leaving gasping, laughing, hacking, or raving about what they just experienced.
We are known for meticulous detail work like hand-painting rooms and adding in real home furnishings to add ambiance to the experience. Through a combination of lights, sounds, movements, and sometimes smells, we create a truly immersive environment. Our experience also features over a dozen high-value professional animatronics that is triggered when guests interact with the house in a certain way. As a small operation, we are proud to offer such a high-dollar experience for free. There are always those in the community who can’t afford to go to the major haunted house. Through our little house, they get that experience and can say they visited one of the best haunted houses in Denver 🙂
What is “success” or “successful” for you?
We categorize our success in two major ways. Our first indicator being guest satisfaction. It’s generally easy to tell whether someone enjoyed the haunted house or not. If we can get people to come out with smiles on their faces or in some cases a look of sheer terror, then we know we did a good job.
Another way we define our success is the number of people that come each year. When we started, we were lucky to get ten people on a Saturday, but now we see 200-300 on major event nights. While that can be stressful from a crowd management perspective, it’s great to see that so many people have heard of us and are willing to bring friends and family because they want to share that experience with them.
Contact Info:
- Address: 4504 S Independence St. Denver, CO 80123
- Website: https://horrortheaterdenver.com/
- Phone: (724) 268-0307
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/horrortheaterdenver/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/horrortheaterdenver/
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