When one thinks of a haunted house, what imagery comes to mind? For most it is the typical concoction of blood, gore, and people jumping out at them. But for Drew Dominguez, the creator of Haunted Fresno, it is all about playing with people’s emotions; he prefers subtle hints of scary elements.
“I used to do super bloody scary [attractions] but I don’t do that anymore” said Dominguez. “I changed my theories on haunted houses.”
Haunted Fresno is comprised of two “themed haunted adventures,” the first one being Fortress of Fear, an attraction based on the Van Helsing stories. “We offer stuff that’s just different,” said Dominguez, “it’s a different little slice of Halloween pie.”
“No one really does houses with the ‘terrible three monsters'” said Dominguez, which is what he said inspired himself and his crew to incorporate ‘the terrible three’: Vampires, Werewolves, and Frankenstein. Dominguez described his attractions as a double feature movie and stressed the theatrical aspects of Haunted Fresno. “It is very actor driven, especially Fortress of Fear… The vampire house shows the true beauty and majesty of the Halloween season,” he said.
The second attraction in Dominguez’s double feature is House of Zombies, which he described as a homage to George Romero, the creator/director of Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), Day of the Dead (1985), and Land of the Dead (2005).
“The whole idea for this particular attraction came to me one day around Christmas time when I was listening to ‘More Human Than Human’ by Rob Zombie…and then eight months later it became a reality,” said Dominguez.
Dominguez has been involved in the haunted house business for 37 years and has built 35 houses starting at age 13. Most of his attractions were in the Los Angeles area up until eight years ago when he moved to Fresno.
When Dominguez is not scaring the living daylights out of people, he works as a carpenter. Dominguez began scaring people at KnottScary Farm when it opened, and
stayed with it long enough to become the lead prop master for 12 different houses. “[KnottScary Farm] is really the queen mother of theme park Halloween attractions,” said Dominguez, “No one was really doing them until KnottScary Farm.”
Even though Dominguez has been in the haunted house business for so long, he still gets emotionally tied to every house he does. Haunted Fresno is the attraction that he is most emotionally tied to, though, because it is made up of things that he has wanted to do for quite some time.
“I’ve wanted to do a Dracula house forever, and now I’m finally getting to,” he said.
Haunted Fresno is located at 665 Fulton Street, on the corner of Fulton and Mono, in a 25,000 square foot warehouse. The enormous warehouse gave Dominguez and his creative team space to create an atmosphere almost as if one is living in a scary movie, allowing patrons space to get involved with the different rooms in each attraction and to move around. “I want [them] circling around you, giving you the full experience,” he said.
It took the creative team of Haunted Fresno two months and a very large budget to build the ‘houses’ that make up Haunted Fresno. The amount of creativity necessary to build something of this caliber may be hard for some people to imagine. “It took [our team] a whole evening to work the lighting out for one hallway,” said Dominguez, illustrating their attention to detail. Dominguez, as well as Xandra Hobe, Matt Hobe, and many other dedicated people have been working together for at least the last five years, some longer than that. “We always get together once a year and do something,” he said.
