Haunted Denver

Haunted Denver is a website that lists and reviews haunted attractions in Denver, Colorado. It is maintained by Haunted Denver Media, LLC.

History

Haunted Denver was created in 2000 by Denver residents Rob and Dayvid Sanchez. At the time, the only other website publishing information about haunted attractions in Denver was Scared.com, a website owned and operated by a local association of haunted attractions called the Rocky Mountain Haunted House Guild. The brothers visited all of the haunted house attractions in the Denver area and posted reviews on their website.

In 2002, Haunted Denver began awarding ratings to each haunted attraction, based on a 1- to 10-star rating system.

In 2004, Haunted Denver introduced a message board website called the October Lounge as a new feature of Haunted Denver, allowing readers to post their own thoughts and reviews of Denver haunted attractions.

In 2005, Haunted Denver received widespread local media coverage from the Rocky Mountain News, Denver Post, Westword, Denver Daily News, and Boulder Daily Camera newspapers. Several of the higher-scoring haunted attractions began incorporating excerpts from their Haunted Denver reviews in their newspaper and radio advertisements as well. The site's growing prominence resulted in the largest amount of traffic in its history during the month of October 2005. According to the site, an estimated 318,000 unique visitors logged onto the Haunted Denver website during that month, and the subscriber list grew to approximately 50,000.

In August 2006, Haunted Denver made several format changes. For the first time, they began openly soliciting applications from readers interested in becoming haunted house critics. Over one hundred applications were received, and out of thirteen finalists, three new critics were selected. The brothers formed a limited liability company, Blood Brothers Media Group, LLC, to oversee operations for Haunted Denver.

In 2007, Haunted Denver was sold to Haunted Denver Media, LLC.

Reviews and Ratings

Perhaps the largest claim to fame for Haunted Denver is its publication of Denver haunted house reviews and ratings. Readers have pointed out that haunted houses are somewhat expensive (usually priced $13-18) and that reviews serve as a consumer resource to help readers select an attraction that they will consider to be worth the money.

Haunted Denver rates on a 10-star, 4-category rating system. The four categories are Scare Factor, Actors, Set Design, and Length. Each critic rates each haunted attraction, assigning a score of 1-10 in each category. The critics' scores are averaged together for both a category score as well as an overall score, which is rounded to the nearest half-star.

Haunted Denver's published descriptions of each 'star' is as follows:

The highest-scoring haunted house to date, based on raw average, was Scream Park in Brighton, Colorado, in 2005. It received a perfect score of 10.0, meaning that every critic rated it a 10 in every category. The lowest-scoring haunted house to date, based on raw average, was Afraid of the Dark in Aurora, Colorado. It received an overall score of 3.5.

Controversy

Neutrality in reviews

Critics of the Haunted Denver review model have argued that haunted houses are inherently impossible to review objectively due to many various, constantly changing factors, such as the critic's prior haunted house experience, personal preference, the time of day, the number of actors currently working in the haunt, and so on.

Haunted Denver acknowledged this in 2004 and stopped claiming to offer "unbiased, neutral reviews." They now state that each critic is instructed to judge each haunted house as objectively as possible, without comparison to other haunted houses or comparison to previous years at that haunt, while acknowledging that personal bias would be impossible to completely exclude when writing a review.

ee also

* Haunted house
* Haunting

External links

* [http://www.haunteddenver.com HauntedDenver.com] - Official website
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4MdyVUkHgc YouTube.com] - Video clip from 2005 CBS-4 news story about Haunted Denver