The first Rebel Yell was held on Halloween night, 2000. I had been organizing small haunted houses for the Southwest YMCA In Saratoga, and the Los Gatos Saratoga Recreation Department for several years, and would then use the props and experience from those events in my parent's front yard each Halloween night. Most of this was done with the help of my friends Ernie Lopez and Tom Logan, among many others.
After the '99 Haunted Woods I organized at Los Gatos Youth Park, I realized I'd grown kind of tired of these annual haunts. All the work of moving equipment back and forth, and setting everything up and breaking it down on a very short schedule was just too much. I decided that the following year (2000) it would be fun to focus on expanding the haunted cemetery in the front yard into a mini haunted house.
I recruited Ernie and Tom and some other friends to help out, and we started serious planning about a month before Halloween. We decided to use the driveway, garage, and side yard, and keep a small cemetery set up in the front yard. It was a lot of work, but we had more time to work on things since we all lived nearby. Although we forgot about some important details (like how to build the walls) until the last minute, everything came together just in time.
I think we had about 175 people come through that year. It was more than we expected, probably because we already had a bit of a following since we'd been haunting the yard for so many years.
We didn't have much of a theme the first year. Our victims entered through the cemetery, then were chased by a guy with a chainsaw who came out of a "crypt" (storage shed). From there they went into a dungeon sort of room, then a hallway with strange lights and then into a room full of spiders. The last room was sort of a human butcher shop with lots of body parts and dripping blood. I've always liked the effect of using pumps and red-colored water to make blood drip off of tables, out of bodies and generally just squirt all over the place.
We have been to many haunted attractions over the last several years, and have come to realize that the best ones are those that have a consistent theme all the way through. Pirates Of Emerson in Fremont is a good local example. We are also big fans of dark ride attractions like The Haunted Mansion at Disneyland and try to borrow a bit from those. Over the last few years, we have developed more of a theme for the Rebel Yell. The story can be read here.
Our peak attendance for our hom ehaunt on Rebel Way was around 600 people, which is pretty good considering we never advertised it. We never charged admission for the home haunt, but in 2002 we did start asking for donations. Most people paid the suggested donation of $2, and a few actually gave more. In 2005 we gave all of the collected donations to the Red Cross for their Hurricane Katrina relief fund.
In 2007, Rebel Yell went "pro" and opened a commercial haunt as part of the Haunting Fields in Fremont. I will include more details here in the near fuiture, as well as our plans for the future. Stay tuned.
