Greetings from the grave, scaries! As of this week, we’re officially less than three months away from LA’s biggest and baddest Halloween celebration: ScareLA 2014. We’re celebrating with a new installment of “Halloween Heroes”, where we highlight some of the creative forces who make Halloween in LA what it is today. Our featured guest today is none other than Knott’s Berry Farm‘s own Jeff Tucker, who plays the role of Show Supervisor for Knott’s annual “Halloween Haunt” event. Peep our Q&A with the Haunt Pro below.
Q: What’s your fondest Halloween memory?
A: In the late ’70s, my brother and his friends built a haunted house in a garage two streets behind my house. They worked on it for weeks, and the night of Halloween, the line to get in was 3 hours long. I was just a young kid, obsessed with Star Wars, and dressed as Luke Skywalker, complete with foil-covered toilet paper roll tube lightsaber hanging from my belt. My brother and his friends created an amazing walk-through attraction, complete with Pepper’s ghost effects, moving chessboard pieces, and freshly-dug graves. The local media covered it, and it was the talk of the town for months afterwards. One of my brother’s friends, Vern, was dressed up as Darth Vader – flashing chest panel and all. It was like meeting one of my heroes! He carried me around on his shoulder, and I truly felt like I was living in the Star Wars universe. It was the Halloween when two of my passions collided – Star Wars and my love of the movies, and watching a home haunt come to life before my very eyes! I never forgot that night, and I’ve been lucky enough to find a career that enables me to recreate that feeling every year (on a much bigger scale!) at Knott’s Scary Farm.
In a chilling postscript to that night, the FBI visited my house a few months later to let us know that Vernon had been arrested, and was accused of being part of a duo dubbed “The Freeway Killers” by the news media. William Bonin and Vernon Butts were serial killers who had terrorized California for quite some time. The Darth Vader who carried me around that night was a very real monster.
Fondest Halloween memory? Mostly. Most chilling Halloween memory? Definitely.
Q: What frightens you the most and why?
A: Deadlines. Because they’re always looming.
Q: What’s the biggest source of inspiration for your work?
A: The fans. Every year, I meet so many amazing people, and I love the passion that they have for Knott’s Scary Farm. Everything I do is designed with them in mind. What will scare them? What new things can we come up with to amaze them? And, increasingly, how do we stay one step ahead of them, so we can give them something they are truly not expecting?
Q: Favorite part of ScareLA 2013?
A: Meeting the amazing fans of Knott’s Scary Farm. And watching my 7 year-old daughter (she was the ghost, Maggie, in Possessed at Haunt last year) meet her hero, Eric Fox, from the makeup reality show Face-Off. We had tears in our eyes when we saw how excited she was.
Knott’s Scary Farm Halloween Haunt – ScareLA 2013 Panel
Q: What are you most looking forward to in the 2014 Halloween season?
A: Screams. Lots and lots of screams.
As the 2014 Halloween season approaches, so does LA’s annual Halloween celebration in the summer, ScareLA! Halloween heroes like Jeff Tucker will be joining us at The Reef in LA this August, so be sure to buy your weekend passes online NOW for a 30% OFF discount!
Happy hauntings, scaries.