Watchdog Report: Denver Haunted Websites
When you type in a Google search, such as “haunted houses in Colorado,” the vast majority of the search engine results you’ll receive are for websites created by (or, as is more often the case, paid to a web designer to be created by) haunted house owners themselves. This article is a “watchdog” article of sorts to explain who’s behind the various websites you may have encountered while looking for information on Denver haunted houses.
As a general rule, there are three types of haunted house websites.
Type 1: ”Cooperative Advertising” Websites. Over the years, various haunted houses in Colorado have worked in cooperation with each other to promote their haunted houses on the internet, even though these haunts are competing against each other for customers. This is usually done to allow these haunted houses to get more for their advertising dollars or web development dollars than they would get if they each paid for their ads and websites separately.
The oldest of these groups is called Rocky Mountain Haunted House Guild, LLC. Most of us in Denver have seen, in years past, the Guild’s full-page, full-color display ad in the Denver Post (and formerly, the Rocky Mountain News). They usually hire a professional to design their graphics and their ad, and it usually features coupons to each of their haunts. Their website is www.scared.com and it lists information on their various haunts. This group, collectively, was able to muscle out a number of smaller haunts who did not have large advertising budgets. For years, many hauntgoers in Denver mistakenly assumed that the Guild’s ad and site, published as the “Rocky Mountain Haunted House Guide,” were publications of a media outlet, not an advertisement, and that it included all of the haunts in the Denver metro area.
Another variation of a cooperative advertising site is Haunted Denver Media, LLC, which operates the website www.haunteddenver.com. According to the Colorado Secretary of State’s website, Haunted Denver is privately owned by Christopher Stafford, the co-owner of Screamworks Entertainment which produces haunted houses such as The 13th Floor and The Asylum. Haunted Denver originally began as a fansite, similar to Spooky Colorado. According to a Wikipedia article about Haunted Denver, the website was purchased by Haunted Denver Media, LLC in 2007. The site features information for selected haunted houses in Denver while excluding others, and also displays advertisements for several haunts, including those produced by the site’s owners, as well as several others (who presumably pay to advertise on the site).
Type 2: Haunt-Owned Websites. These usually promote a single haunted house. An example is The 13th Door, a haunted house whose website, www.13door.com, appears in the top Google results for “denver haunted houses.” Another is the haunted house Frightmare and its website www.denverhauntedhouses.com. These sites each list information for a single haunted attraction, and they are usually owned and maintained by the haunt owners themselves.
Some haunted house production companies who operate multiple haunted house attractions build a single site to feature each of their haunts. One example is the website www.getscared.com, owned by the aforementioned Screamworks Entertainment. The Get Scared website promotes their three haunted houses. Another is www.pf13.net, a website registered (according to public WHOIS data) to Dale Ervin. The site promotes both of his haunted houses, Primitive Fear and 13th Street Manor.
Occasionally there are hybrids of haunt-owned sites, such as the site www.hauntedratings.com. Public nameserver information for this site as well as archived versions of the site’s WHOIS data list the owner of Haunted Ratings as Stephen Walker, a haunt owner whose attractions include The 13th Door, Curse of Slaughterhouse Gulch, and The Butcher. In years past, this site has featured ads only for the site owner’s attractions, but with the bonus of including informational listings for all Denver-area haunted attractions, in a similar style to that formerly utilized by Haunted Denver. This year, Haunted Ratings features ads for all of the haunts that participate in the Rocky Mountain Haunted House Guild, so perhaps it would now make more sense to classify Haunted Ratings as a “Type 1″ site — a cooperative advertising website.
Type 3: “Dummy” Websites. This final type of website represents a disturbing new trend amongst Denver haunted house owners. In an effort to compete for search engine results, some haunt website owners have started saturating the internet with “dummy sites” designed to bolster the search engine rankings for their other sites. A dummy site is saturated with keywords but usually lacking in content. It may utilize some custom design work, or even a few hastily-written articles or blog posts, to give the appearance of being a legitimate site, but it usually only takes about 30 seconds of reading to realize that the site is not intended to be informational, but rather just to be indexed by search engines and then steer traffic elsewhere.
An example of a site like this is www.hauntedcolorado.com. It contains incomplete content copied from Haunted Denver, laden with clickable keywords, to fool a search engine into perceiving it as having a higher value to visitors. While the public WHOIS information for Haunted Colorado is listed as private, it contains only links to other websites owned by Screamworks Entertainment. Also, the site itself states that it is developed by Chad Savage’s Sinister Visions, the web design firm hired by Screamworks to develop all of their other sites. While neither of these facts are proof that Screamworks is behind the development of these dummy sites, we can’t think who else might design a dummy site that links solely to the other websites owned by Screamworks. A similar dummy site exists at www.halloweendenver.com.
It’s certainly an interesting exercise in search engine manipulation, but ultimately this scheme does Denver hauntgoers a huge disservice by making them sift through site after site of useless, link-laden dummy articles in their quest to find actual information about Denver haunted houses.
It’s time for Type 4 to return to the scene. As far as we know, there are no other websites right now that are operated fansite-style, free of interference from haunt owners, besides this one, Spooky Colorado. (If there are others, let us know — we’ll verify their independence and then link to them!) As we have mentioned recently, this site is not affiliated with any haunted house, owned by any haunted house, or maintained by any haunted house. We are strictly an independent information and opinion source written BY haunted house fans FOR haunted house fans.
Keep spreading the word. In the words of Good Times, “we’re gonna be big!”
There are 7 Comments to "Watchdog Report: Denver Haunted Websites"
Good stuff! Thanks for setting the record straight!
Very nice information. I thought I heard that Haunted Ratings was a Tom Martino site? Or was that another site???
Haunted Ratings is not a Tom Martino site. It is indeed run by a haunt owner.
Tom Martino? The Troubleshooter? LOL. It would be fun if he had an interest in haunted houses, but so far as we know he doesn’t.
We did a Google search for “tom martino” and “haunted houses.” What came up was an older page on Haunted Ratings that contained a review of Spider Mansion by someone named Kelly “Tank” Parr who is supposedly part of the “Tom Martino Troubleshooter Crew.” What exactly that means, we’re not quite sure, but so far as we know, the Haunted Ratings site still belongs to exactly who we said it did.
Ok Kelly Parr is who I am talking about. He told others that he was part of the new Tom Martino Haunted House review site and came through the haunt. I swore he said he was with Haunted rating. So last season they were let through and it was exciting because it gave is a new face unbiased. He even posted a review online, it was always hard to find for me, but I figured I was just an idiot. To make this even funnier, I flippen know the guy. Haven’t seen him in years until last season. When I saw him I got his number and hooked back up. Too funny, we got had. I was wondering last season when the name of Tom Martino was brought up and how everyone was excited, I was thinking that I have had more bad run ins with anyone involved with him then good, but again figured I was full of it and missing something.
Ok Kelly Parr is who I am talking about. He told others that he was part of the new Tom Martino Haunted House review site and came through the haunt. I swore he said he was with Haunted Rating. So last season they were let through and it was exciting because it gave us a new face unbiased. He even posted a review online, he even did awards for best of crap. It was always hard to find for me, but I figured I was just an idiot. To make this even funnier, I flippen know the guy. Haven’t seen him in years until last season. When I saw him I got his number and hooked back up. Too funny, we got had. I was wondering last season when the name of Tom Martino was brought up and how everyone was excited, I was thinking that I have had more bad run ins with anyone involved with him then good, but again figured I was full of it and missing something.
Sorry for the stutter.