Today we’d like to introduce you to Sue & Rick Rose & Williams.
Hi Sue & Rick, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Our Halloween attraction began quite by accident in California in 2017. We were living in a dome home on 14 acres in the foothills outside of Sacramento-Gold Rush country- & decided to get married in October of that year. Because we both love Halloween, we also decided to do a Halloween-themed wedding; have our guests come in costume, & take them through a haunted forest on our property. (In hindsight, we wouldn’t recommend hosting your own wedding AND Halloween event- haha. It was enormously stressful! But Rick & I can’t do anything “small.”) We only had about 4 months to prepare for this occasion, which included having to clear the land, create a 3/4 mile trail AND decorate it. Not to mention doing wedding prep! Anyway, the event was a huge success & our guests loved it. Because it had taken so much work to prep for the event, we decided to leave it up for awhile & invite the neighbors to walk the trail. They loved it, so we decided that very year to “go pro.” Insane decision, you’d naturally think, but Rick & I had both had much experience in our lives with business management & event coordination, so it was sort of a natural evolution for us. We instinctively knew where & how to begin. So we launched Web of Fears that year, but it didn’t become official until 2018. We settled on the name, “Web of Fears,” because our objective was always to focus on immersive scenes depicting common fears & phobias. We held the event the next 2 years in California, each year with a different theme, our first being comedically called, “A Farm to Fork Event”. In 2019 we decided, as retirees, to move cross country- because we wanted new adventures & experiences- & landed in South Georgia, once again on 14 acres. We got here in June of 2019, but our Halloween props didn’t arrive until August, so we once again had to rush to set up our event, which again included land clearing & one-mile trail creation. We worked so hard & covered EVERY SINGLE inch of that trail with props. It was an enormous effort for just the two of us. Our new community loved it & was very welcoming, & we have continued to present day, with each year being more successful. We change our event yearly so as to keep it fresh & entertaining for our guests, & always donate to local animal rescues, which is an effort that is near & dear to us. We also like to include bits of historical information with a twist-“twistory” as we like to call it- & local urban legends & ghost stories, along with injections of humor throughout.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
There are always challenges when running an operation, especially one of this magnitude. We put through hundreds to thousands of guests annually. Foremost, it is just the two of us managing every aspect of the event- staff recruitment, training, advertising, trail management, scene decoration, ticketing, building structures/props, parking, etc. It is an enormous task & we aren’t aware of any other Halloween attraction of comparable size that only has 2 individuals running everything. Most have build teams, costuming & staff managers, & more, And we are in our 60s! However, Rick & I have been involved in fitness our whole lives, which has fortunately given us the physical endurance to continue to work hard. Regarding specific challenges, we encountered an issue the first year with our portable toilets- a necessary event addition haha. We reserved some for the event dates but they never showed up & the company would not take our calls. So we were forced at the last minute to find another company from out of town to provide them at a much higher cost. Staffing has been extremely difficult in this rural area. We have never been able to hire enough actors to fill our roster and/or see our complete vision come to life. We prefer to hire individuals who have theatrical training or experience with costuming or makeup, but that is a challenge in this area. Because we run short of staff every year- & this past year was especially difficult with our lowest staff ever- we must constantly move staff around & reconfigure the trail positions, but we still inevitably have gaps. And that is noticeable to guests. Many staff don’t want to wear masks, which we require for our event. We prefer to have “gender-neutral” characters- we don’t want our guests knowing if the characters are male or female & want them to sort of feel a sense of realism, like, the monsters are real. This is difficult to do if the actors just wear makeup. But many staff find that they’re allergic to the material or the masks don’t fit, so adjustments have to be made, & almost always at the last minute. We also have instances where guests become hostile & combative & vandalize props or harass staff, & we are required to respond & handle these issues mid-event. Weather in the South is also a huge challenge for running an outdoor event, & one we didn’t have to contend with in California. The rain & humidity destroy our props & trail, & leads to excessive growth & maintenance of the brush- which, I might add, Rick does manually. We have had to re-route our trail numerous times due to flooding, & actually clear new trails just to hold the event. Hurricane Helene really threw us for a loop in 2024, as it happened right before our event. We had extensive damage & little time to repair. In spite of this, we’ve only had to cancel one date due to rain, I believe. And of course, we have to deal with an abundance of venomous critters in this region. An additional issue, & one worth noting, is the cost of running a haunted attraction. Anyone who operates a large event needs to have event insurance, & commensurate with insurance rates across the country, rates have soared. Ours has increased hundreds of dollars annually. Cost of building materials also continues to rise, as well as everything else. And families have less discretionary money at this point in time. So it of course becomes a balancing act to establish a price point each year that will be affordable to guests & still allow for coverage of expenses & a profit margin.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
Rick & I have done so many diverse things in our lives, but all have given us the requisite experience & foundation for running our Halloween attraction. Rick & I met in 1987 when we were working as Correctional Officers in CA. Rick worked for 25 years as a C/O, including Death Row at San Quentin- with Charles Manson, Tex Watson & other notorious criminals-but also ran his own adult semi-pro football team for 10 years. He also served as President/CEO of the largest amateur football league in California, with 24 teams, & was Commissioner of the league, while owning & coaching his own team. His team, NorCal Lawmen, won 3 state championships in 4 years & was the second-highest ranked amateur team in the U.S. in 2002. This was an amazing feat, especially considering he was also basically a single parent raising 2 young boys. Rick & his team were also in the movie, “Pursuit of Happyness” with Will Smith, wherein his players portrayed members of the SF 49ers & the NY Giants. Rick himself portrayed former Niners coach Bill Walsh. Rick retired from football in 2002 & from Corrections in 2012. I have had many different careers, including medical, peace officer, governmental, political, & health & fitness. I have been a personal trainer & fitness instructor for over 40 years, formerly working as an in-home mobile trainer (“Lady Rose Fitness”) & even owning my own gym during the 90s. My education is in holistic nutrition & I was a pioneer in the 80s & 90s in combining alternative healing with physical training. I worked with medical patients, forging a relationship with the local medical community, & offered post-rehabilitative training & exercises for those with chronic disease. I worked as a nationwide educator for a fitness company that provided certifications/training for fitness professionals, & traveled the country providing health & fitness seminars, physical training & testing. I also medaled in powerlifting in the CA Police Olympics & Corrections Olympics in the 80s. And occasionally provided fitness education to elementary-schoolers. I am still involved in fitness to this day, offering sessions via YouTube. My workouts are functional, very diverse & intense, & I haven’t taught the same session twice in over 40 years. My primary career in the latter part of my work life was in state government. I worked at the State Capitol in CA for a State Representative & a Governor of California. In the latter capacity, I served as liaison to the Governor for the Central Valley, & assisted with creation & coordination of the first annual Central Valley Summits, which included leaders of every institution in that central CA region. I later worked for the CA Department of Veterans Affairs, where I served for 15 years, & retired as, the Equal Employment Opportunity Officer for that agency. That position required me to report directly to the head of the agency, create statewide agency policy, train staff, & investigate discrimination complaints. While at Veterans Affairs, I worked for a time in Public Affairs, where I coordinated an event in collaboration with celebrity performers from Korea, who were traveling the U.S. to award service medals to Korean War veterans. I retired from CalVet in 2017, which is of course when Rick & I decided to marry & launch our Halloween attraction. So I didn’t rest for long. In addition to fitness, we are both artistic & spend a huge amount of time thrifting & antiquing, & repurposing/creating art & decor for our home. Every room in our house has a different theme & we get so much pleasure out of designing & adding treasures to each area. One of the scenes in our haunt is the “Haunted Dollhouse,” wherein we have 300+ dolls that I have “reimagined” in the most horrific of ways. My creations are called “Hateful Dead Dolls,” & the scene continues to grow yearly as we find more dolls in our treasure hunts. We have a huge collection of antique dolls, too, that we have not restored because they’re creepy enough as is. Several are rumored to be haunted & we won’t dispute that. Rick & I are extremely proud of our accomplishments, as well as the creation & growth of our Halloween event. Our attraction is unique in the industry & is ever-evolving. As artists, the event provides us an outlet for our creative energies.
We’d love to hear about how you think about risk taking?
Rick & I have always been risk-takers. We both come from dysfunctional families where we had to parent ourselves AND our parents, & we both left home at an early age. We learned that no one was going to do anything for us & if “it” was going to get done, we had to make it happen ourselves. So we learned quite young to be self-sufficient & developed a lot of confidence in our abilities. Our biggest risk was actually deciding to go pro with our event the very first time we put it together, without ever having any experience in the industry. Most pro haunters spend years working in different haunts, developing skills & learning the business. But not us, haha. We trust in our mutual abilities to do anything we set our minds to. Rick is the more calculating of the two of us, the one who plans & is more strategic in his approach to projects. I’m the one who just goes out & does it, without any planning or research whatsoever. I learn from my mistakes while doing the project, which is quite funny really, & probably not real smart. But we balance each other out very well. And we believe in ourselves & that is reflected in everything we take on. We knew we could become haunters & be successful at it, in spite of the naysayers- & we had a lot of them when we started. People close to us just knew that we’d fail, but we proved them wrong. If there’s a project we want to do, we just launch. We don’t wait for it to come to us, we just do it. Without fear. Our second biggest risk was opting to move & relocate our entire business cross-country. It was an enormous effort & we made a lot of mistakes in the process, but we learned from those. And that’s key for us- we may make mistakes when we take risks, but we analyze & learn from those mistakes, & come back better. We strive to continually improve, & know that we can accomplish anything we want to do. It’s not ego, it’s a confidence borne of survival. The only thing we struggle with, & we laugh about it, is that we truly can’t do anything on a small scale. We’re a bad influence on each other because we love to create, & our projects just get bigger & bigger & bigger.
Pricing:
- Average $17-20 per ticket, but changes based on industry averages
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.weboffears.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weboffears
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1CN3bcJC8U/
