Halloween Blast History

Back in the day, Halloween Blast was a group of friends visiting haunted houses. At first, David wasn’t a fan of haunted houses at all as a child. That would change later when he was a teenager and visited St. Pascal’s (The Catacombs) and Dream Reapers. He started working for haunts in 2012 through 2013. Then, in 2014 David created a fun event for him and his friends to do called XW Halloween Blast.

Back in around 2000, Xw stood for Xtreme Wrestling. This was attributed to David being a huge fan of wrestling. In 2008 the name was changed to Xtreme World as the group started to expand their interests beyond just wrestling. Xw was also the name of a group David called the XW Family. David ended up coming up with the name Halloween Blast around October because he felt that was the time of year you just had a blast! So he combined Halloween and blast together along with the logo XW, and XW Halloween Blast was born. The idea behind Halloween Blast was to find the scariest haunted house in Illinois. To David it didn’t matter how big or small a haunt was. To him, a haunt is a haunt. Period. He felt like even though some haunts are big, that didn’t mean they were as good as a small haunt. Sometimes a small haunt can be the scariest haunt ever! So, the idea was to find the scariest and best haunted house in Illinois. They would visit around 4 to 5 haunts a year. After every season, the group decided which was the best haunted house of that year. Halloween Blast was just a fun thing to do every October and was a chance to visit as many haunts as they could.

In the summer of 2017, David made a decision to open Halloween Blast to the public. He wanted to let people know what they thought the scariest haunted house was. Although he wasn’t sure if Halloween Blast would ever become anything big, he wanted to try anyway. He contacted Chad Savage to help him make a website for XW Halloween Blast. The website wouldn’t make its debut until later in the season due to making a website right at the beginning of the haunt season. David also brought one of his closest friends and his niece, Amanda, to help out with Halloween Blast for the 2017 season. David and Amanda also started a youtube show for Halloween Blast that same year. The idea for the show was to take people behind the scenes of the haunt industry and to do interviews with the owners and some of the haunters. As time went on, they also added a game show and other fun stuff to entertain the audience. At the end of the 2017 season, they awarded Statesville Haunted Prison for being the best haunted house of 2017. After the season was over, the haunt community gave Halloween Blast a huge, warm welcome into the industry.

In 2018, David’s goal was to extend their review list by visiting more haunted houses, but he needed more people. So, XW Halloween Blast ended up hiring new members to the crew. One of them was Karen. She was originally brought in to be a reviewer. Later, they found out that she loves taking pictures, so they had her take over social media and the photography of Halloween Blast. She was later promoted manager. It was around this time Amanda was also promoted to General Manager, since she already had a hand in everything and managed it all very well. Half way through the season, the XW was dropped from Halloween Blast. David felt that there was no need for the XW anymore, as Halloween Blast had basically become its own separate entity. Plus it sounded much better rolling off the tongue.

In the spring of 2019, David came up with the idea to do something special for the haunters. He wanted to give some of the haunters a spotlight on all of Halloween Blast’s social media pages. He felt like some of the haunters working inside the haunt weren’t getting all the recognition they deserved. You would always see the main characters of the haunts pictures everywhere, but not that much attention was focused on the other haunters. So on April 14, Haunters Spotlight was created. In David’s words, “Haunters are the heartbeat of the haunted house. No matter if you are a line actor, pop out or work anywhere in the haunt. You are important because without haunters, there is no haunt. You can have animatronics and creepy rooms, but a haunter is what makes a haunt come to life”. After the launch of Haunter’s Spotlight, the response was unbelievable. The haunt community fell in love with it! It has become the most popular creation that Halloween Blast has ever done for haunters. Later on, in June of 2020, Halloween Blast would redesign their website and add the Haunter’s Room. David wanted to make something special for the haunters. Haunter’s Room was created to be a place for all haunters to shop from vendors all over the haunt industry, as well as entertainment like podcasts and youtube shows that are haunt and halloween related. He also asked other haunters for help with ideas to make the Haunter’s Room special for them all.

In the end, Halloween Blast started out as just a group of friends going haunt to haunt and finding the scariest haunted house in Illinois. To this day that is still their goal, but that is not the only thing they do now. Halloween Blast supports the haunt community any way they can. If it helps out haunts, or the haunters. Halloween Blast will always be there to support any way they can to help. The Halloween Blast Crew shows so much love to the haunters and to the haunts themselves. At the end of it all, when the Halloween season comes around the goal is still the same as when they first started back in 2014. No matter how big or small a haunted house is, our goal is to find the best haunted house!