New Ulm Nightmares History:
New Ulm Nightmares started out with my love of Halloween and having fun on Halloween night,dressing up as a zombie to scare local children who were trick or treating at my house. I had coached gymnastics for many years in Seattle and created a haunted house event at the gym. As I was the coach of the Turner Hall Gymnastics team, I thought it would be fun to create a haunted house at the New Ulm Turner Hall to raise money to buy new gymnastics equipment. I made all the walls and props with the help of my friend Dean. My gymnasts and their parents helped set up the haunted house downstairs at Turner Hall. We were going to open for one night only on Halloween night. I was hoping for 100 people to come through, we had over 1,000 come through!! It was a fun success! I decided to go bigger and better the next year with all new themes. My friends and family all helped along with my gymnasts and it was another success. We were able to raise money to buy new mats and other gymnastics equipment.
It was much work to set up and take down all the walls and props as we had to move them up and down three floors to store them. Since I wanted more space and time to build the haunt, I made the descison to move to downtown New Ulm. There we created a much, much larger haunted house that was a huge success. We even added a kids day, where a young child could tour the haunt with lights on and no scare actors with so many families bringing their young children. We could only rent the building for a few years and had to move out in 2021. I asked the Brown County fair if they would be interested in having the haunt at the fairgrounds they said yes. In 2021 we opened not one but two haunted houses at the fairgrounds with huge success. We had people come from all over Minnesota to enjoy our haunted houses. We love providing great detail in our sets, design, story and actors to our customers. All props are hand built by us or modified from store bought items. Each year we change up the entire haunt themes, room and scares. We don't use very much gore to scare. I think of a haunted house walk through as living in a scary movie. We love hearing the screams and laughter as our customers go through the haunted houses.
Returning this year, I have Nick Vigil, recent high school grad student and Halloween super fan, helping build the haunt. He will be creating and building The Woods haunt this season. His love of Halloween and all things scary will surely bring delight and screams to the guests. We also have two 5 minute, mini escape rooms and a pumpkin slingshot to add more fun to the experience.
Volunteers needed!!
Would you love to scare people? Do you love Halloween? Do you like scary movies? Then email us asap! We are looking for fun, hard working volunteers to learn to be scare actors for the 2023 season.
Email: [email protected]
