Midnight Syndicate – Harbored Souls

Front Yard Fright started as most haunted houses do… What once was a small display completed with plastic pumpkins and light up ghouls, is now a full board haunted house complete with over ten rooms varying in themes and a “SCREAM TEAM” of over 30 volunteers.

Our first display was around 1993 or so… It was started by John Wiechmann, about the same time Zach Wiechmann, the main creator of FYF, was born. It was located in Inver Grove Heights, MN at the Wiechmann’s family trailer. The display consisted of wooden tombstones, a couple plastic cut outs of a scarecrow, ghost, witch, and a “Happy Halloween” sign along with a wooden cut out Frankenstein which was the same height as Zach when the first display took place.

After moving to Oakdale Minnesota in 1994, the display started to grow greatly each year. The display had more wooden cut outs of pumpkins, more lights, and different monsters made out of PVC frames for the bodies and masks for the heads. In 1998, our first “scare” was added to our display. On Halloween night, Zach would dress up as a prisoner and stand in a cage located near the walkway which led up to the front door. When trick or treaters would walk up towards the house, Zach would shake the cage and yell, scaring most everyone that passed by. Zach did this for many years and each year Zach fell more  in love with Halloween along with hearing the screams of trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

Then in 2001 the Wiechmanns moved yet again to our current location, Waverly, IA. The first couple years of living here, the display didn’t change much. With John opening his own business, and with his sons Nick and Zach being too young to do much by themselves, the display stayed pretty much the same from year to year.

Only until 2005 did big changes begin to take place. In the summer of ‘05 Zach began working at a haunted house called Frightmares located in Waterloo, Iowa. After working there for a while, he realized that he wanted to attempt to do his own haunted house in his garage. He had seen others do it online, so he talked to the owner of Frightmares to help him out with some walls and props and before he knew it, there was a haunted house in his garage! Along with the walk through haunt, a large cemetery was added to the side yard which the patrons would pass through before entering the back of the garage to go through the haunted house.  Seeing as it was the first year, the layout was less than desirable, and the scares weren’t… Scary. But it was a start! The total attendance for Halloween night was about 35 people or so. Like I said… A start!

In 2006 the haunted house was completely rearranged and a layout was planned. It had good flow from room to room and had more scares and actors than the year before. There was an old organ room, a circus theme room, a child’s play room, an electric chair, along with toxic/bio hazard themed room. The attendance for the few nights we were open was 200 patrons. A big improvement from the previous year! After realizing how much work it was to run a haunted house, Zach left the Frightmares crew after the 2006 season.

2007 was a year full of additions and upgrades. Now that Zach wasn’t spending his time on two different haunted houses, he could focus on his own show and put all the skills he learned while working at Frightmares to use. “The House” was adding in 2007 which was a 16 by 20 foot modular haunted house located outside next to the garage. It nearly doubled the haunting space! “The House” had an organ room, a bathroom, and child’s room, and a study. The garage also faced major changes. The layout had stayed the same, however the rooms were rearrange. The garage consisted of a toxic/bio hazard room, a circus theme room, a new prison cell, a new funeral parlor, and new Egyptian themed room. The attendance for the year was around 500 patrons. A big accomplishment! Another big accomplishment was making the Waverly newspaper along with the Waterloo Courier!

2008 also was a year of many accomplishments, additions, and renovations. The cemetery got a new entrance, “The House” got an all new facade, a 12 foot tall clown head became the new entrance to the garage, and there were numerous rooms that were added, remodeled, and replaced. We focused more on the finer details in “The House”. All of the walls were distressed to make them look aged and weathered. The newly added kitchen was full of guts and gore – something we’ve steered clear of in past years. And all of the actors had professional grade air brush makeup. We definitely wanted to go all out! The garage got quite the overhaul also. The entire layout was changed and many rooms were completely different than past years. The clown room was larger, the Egyptian room was larger, the prison cell found it’s own “hiding spot”, the funeral parlor was moved and an all new butcher scene was added. Not only did we make both local papers again, but we also made it on the local news! Our attendance was double that of 2007! A very large, and tiresome, accomplishment!

2009 was a year of ups and downs. We ran into some problems with another haunt trying to get us shut down, the city then got involved, and we were told we needed building permits to put up our haunt. We were able to clear things up with the city and things weren’t as the city thought they were. We were able to work with the city council and get some of the concerns squared away so we were able to do everything we wanted to do and open our doors on time.

We added a lot for 2009 and really bit off more than we could chew, or so we thought. We added a brand new fun house called “The House of SLaughter”. It consisted of four rooms with long hallways in between them that were packed full of scares. We added on to the cemetery and gave it the new name “Cemetery of the Dead”. The house got a name change to “Home SCREAM Home” and was rearranged and new scares were added. Another all new haunt for 2009 was our “TOXIC Chaos” haunt which was located in the garage which had a military/factory based theme which was loud and in your face and was our most extreme of our haunts.

Attendance for 2009 was actually down from the year before due to some pretty terrible weather we experienced. We had just under 800 patrons go through the eight nights we were open. However we were able to raise plenty of money in donations to help offset the costs of operating our attraction and also raised $400 for the Waverly Humane Society!

2009 was a great success, and we had a lot of fun. Our attraction has grow so much in such a short period of time, it’s hard to believe how large it’s gotten! Which is why, for our 2010 season, we will be moving to an all new location and produce a bigger, better, and SCARIER haunt than ever before!

Details for our 2010 are still under wraps until things are finally settled and figured out. Be sure to keep your eyes open for news updates here on this site!

- Zach Wiechmann