I really hoped to have better news to post here, but the short version is, I have been incapacitated in one way or another – with an L5 disc injury for several months, then with vertigo for four months, then with various health crises relating to my chronic illnesses, and now again with the same L5 disc – since last December. In addition, almost all of my core team is now employed full time, in school full time, or had to move several hours away, so they’re no longer capable of coming over on a weekly basis to assist. Even if I was capable of doing what I need to do, I still wouldn’t have had the team required to help me bring my visions to reality.
So I can’t do a Haunt this year. All year I’ve kept waiting and hoping that I’d get better, and then I’d manage to cobble a new team together, and we’d be able to get working and try to make up for lost time. But month after month passed without me getting better enough that I could do so. And then we hit mid-September, and I had to accept that there was no way we’d be able to put together a Haunt for this year. But even at that point I hoped that things would improve enough in the next couple weeks that I could figure out and install a really cool front-yard display, so at least there would be SOMETHING. I held off on posting here in the hopes that if I waited, I’d be able to say that at least there’d be a display.
But now it’s nearly mid-October. I still can’t bend over at all, stretch well, or squat down much, all things that are required for creating and installing displays. In addition, last night I managed to trip over something that had been left out as I was walking through a room in the dark, faceplant between a concrete wall and a 500-lb piece of wooden furniture, bend my neck back, and fall the rest of the way to the floor. Good times. (I’ve already been to the ER; just soft tissue damage, but boy do I have bruises and cuts all over my face and knee. Thank goodness it wasn’t worse though, because the last thing I need is to be dealing with cervical disc damage in addition to lumbar disc damage.)
I think it’s time to accept that, in addition to there being no Haunt this year, there won’t be any cool front-yard display either. I’m not even sure I’ll be capable of the usual lights/tombstones we always set up for Halloween. While I often get the better of my disabilities, they’ve gotten the better of me for the past nine months, and sometimes that’s just how it goes. I wish my body was more reliable and less fragile, but to amend a cliche, a wish and $300 will buy you a decent pneumatic scare prop.
Where I’m going to leave it is this: I need a new team. If you’re interested and capable of committing to coming over for several hours one night a week, every week from about March to November (usually it’s December to November, but I’m giving myself a few extra months to hopefully recover), drop me an email. You don’t need to be skilled and/or artistic already (though it’s great if you have some skills) but you need to be able to move enough to assist with carpentry and artistic tasks, and you need to be reliable and able to commit to a weekly schedule. If I can get enough of a team together, we can make this happen for 2020 even if I myself am still not in great shape.
My deepest apologies to everyone who was excited for the Haunt this year. I so wish we could have made this happen for all of you.