Shade
10-15-2008, 09:24 AM
I can't remember if I've told you guys this story before or not. I think I may have years ago in the early days of the Haunted Denver message boards, but I doubt many of you have heard it.
Every time October rolls around, I find myself missing my friend Bret. I first met Bret at one of the companies my family owned, where we both worked for a while. He was the in-house IT guru, and he was great at it. Bret was older than me by 11 years, but we got along great from the start.
He drove a lime-green beetle with a license plate that said "WYSIWYG," an acronym that web designers of the day would have recognized as standing for, "What You See Is What You Get." The one time he let me drive that beetle, I got a massive speeding ticket flying down Ward Road, going 60 in a 35.
Bret liked to do big things. He didn't have just one Christmas tree. He had seven, each with a different theme, and he was proud that his house in Westminster always made the Christmas lights list in the newspaper.
At some point, Bret found out about my passion for haunted houses, and that suddenly became the only topic we ever talked about. We talked about how awesome it would be to start a haunt of our own. Bret told me how he would go about securing the funds to do it, and I soon realized that Bret had both the economic and creative skills to make it happen. He had a master's degree in strategic fundraising, and the man was a genius at being able to get money for the projects that interested him.
The more we talked, the more we realized we were serious about moving forward with this idea, and we start meeting weekly at the Starbucks on 80th & Wadsworth to discuss ideas for the haunt. To this day, somewhere I still have notebooks in a box filled with ideas and sketches we came up with. I also have notes about his ideas for business strategies and tapping into the power of publicity stunts and high-school social networking (and this was before the dawn of MySpace, so he meant actual, in-person networking) to launch huge the first year.
When we finally started looking at properties for potential haunt locations, Bret couldn't be persuaded to consider any place more seriously than the old Ridge Home buildings in Wheat Ridge. I knew too well from my own personal experience that most teenagers considered the defunct mental institution to be haunted, and it was a popular spot for late-night break-ins for kids in search of the paranormal, or at least looking to scare the hell out of each other. Bret couldn't think of anything cooler than a genuinely haunted set of buildings to create a haunted attraction. When he found that most of the buildings were slated for demolition, either as part of the planned expansion of the Red Rocks Community College satellite campus or as part of the development of the Super Target that now sits northwest of I-70 and Kipling, Bret went to the City Council to try to convince them to sell the land and buildings to him. It was a valiant effort, but our offer was about a year too late.
A few months later, life got a little busy for both of us and we talked less and less about our haunt plans, though in the back of our minds, we were certain that we eventually wanted to do it, perhaps when things slowed down a little in our personal lives. The company where we worked was sold to a larger company in Vegas and the Denver office was shut down. Bret got married, and then I got married about a year afterward. We kept in touch, though, and our conversations always included our latest haunted house ideas.
Early in the same year that I started Haunted Denver, Bret and his wife Lori were on their way back to Colorado late at night when an 18-wheeler veered into oncoming traffic and struck their vehicle. Both were pronounced dead on the scene.
Later that year, my brother Dayvid and I started Haunted Denver, not really so much as an homage to Bret, but more in an effort to keep pursuing the passion for haunted houses that I had already had but that Bret had intensified for me.
I thought it appropriate, given the time of year, to tell you about Bret Karr, one of the greatest haunt designers you never met, and whose ideas for haunted houses I hope to be able to bring to life someday when the time is right.
Every time October rolls around, I find myself missing my friend Bret. I first met Bret at one of the companies my family owned, where we both worked for a while. He was the in-house IT guru, and he was great at it. Bret was older than me by 11 years, but we got along great from the start.
He drove a lime-green beetle with a license plate that said "WYSIWYG," an acronym that web designers of the day would have recognized as standing for, "What You See Is What You Get." The one time he let me drive that beetle, I got a massive speeding ticket flying down Ward Road, going 60 in a 35.
Bret liked to do big things. He didn't have just one Christmas tree. He had seven, each with a different theme, and he was proud that his house in Westminster always made the Christmas lights list in the newspaper.
At some point, Bret found out about my passion for haunted houses, and that suddenly became the only topic we ever talked about. We talked about how awesome it would be to start a haunt of our own. Bret told me how he would go about securing the funds to do it, and I soon realized that Bret had both the economic and creative skills to make it happen. He had a master's degree in strategic fundraising, and the man was a genius at being able to get money for the projects that interested him.
The more we talked, the more we realized we were serious about moving forward with this idea, and we start meeting weekly at the Starbucks on 80th & Wadsworth to discuss ideas for the haunt. To this day, somewhere I still have notebooks in a box filled with ideas and sketches we came up with. I also have notes about his ideas for business strategies and tapping into the power of publicity stunts and high-school social networking (and this was before the dawn of MySpace, so he meant actual, in-person networking) to launch huge the first year.
When we finally started looking at properties for potential haunt locations, Bret couldn't be persuaded to consider any place more seriously than the old Ridge Home buildings in Wheat Ridge. I knew too well from my own personal experience that most teenagers considered the defunct mental institution to be haunted, and it was a popular spot for late-night break-ins for kids in search of the paranormal, or at least looking to scare the hell out of each other. Bret couldn't think of anything cooler than a genuinely haunted set of buildings to create a haunted attraction. When he found that most of the buildings were slated for demolition, either as part of the planned expansion of the Red Rocks Community College satellite campus or as part of the development of the Super Target that now sits northwest of I-70 and Kipling, Bret went to the City Council to try to convince them to sell the land and buildings to him. It was a valiant effort, but our offer was about a year too late.
A few months later, life got a little busy for both of us and we talked less and less about our haunt plans, though in the back of our minds, we were certain that we eventually wanted to do it, perhaps when things slowed down a little in our personal lives. The company where we worked was sold to a larger company in Vegas and the Denver office was shut down. Bret got married, and then I got married about a year afterward. We kept in touch, though, and our conversations always included our latest haunted house ideas.
Early in the same year that I started Haunted Denver, Bret and his wife Lori were on their way back to Colorado late at night when an 18-wheeler veered into oncoming traffic and struck their vehicle. Both were pronounced dead on the scene.
Later that year, my brother Dayvid and I started Haunted Denver, not really so much as an homage to Bret, but more in an effort to keep pursuing the passion for haunted houses that I had already had but that Bret had intensified for me.
I thought it appropriate, given the time of year, to tell you about Bret Karr, one of the greatest haunt designers you never met, and whose ideas for haunted houses I hope to be able to bring to life someday when the time is right.