The Haunted Attraction Association held its annual State of the Industry Seminar on Friday, March 28, in Room 241 at the America’s Center during TransWorld’s Halloween & Attractions Show in St. Louis. The session was moderated by outgoing president Jim Werner (Pennhurst Asylum) and sponsored by Stiltbeast Studios, which provided coffee for the morning audience.
Werner opened the seminar by acknowledging what he described as “potentially dark clouds on our horizon,” including economic instability, gas prices, global unrest, and pressure on consumer discretionary spending. But he framed the industry’s overall state in positive terms, calling it “strong,” “growing,” and “evolving,” and pointing to the TransWorld show floor as evidence of innovation across the space.
“We don’t react, we adapt, we evolve, and we are constantly pushing forward,” Werner said. “And in that idea, we are strong enough to weather any storm that is ever on our horizon.”
The seminar covered the Association’s three-year strategic plan, the ongoing insurance situation, AI’s expanding role in operations and marketing, and a call for collaboration over competition. It was preceded by HAA’s annual member meeting, which elected new leadership and seated four new board members.
Table of Contents
Listen To The State of the Industry
Listen to the full State of the Industry recording using the player below or here.
The Three-Year Strategic Plan
Werner presented updates to the three-year strategic plan built from an industry survey the Association conducted in late 2025. The plan is organized around HAA’s three guiding pillars: promote, protect, and educate.
Under “promote,” Werner said the Association will focus on elevating the visibility of haunted attractions, providing marketing tools, and strengthening collaboration among operators. He noted that haunted attractions are no longer the only October activity competing for consumers’ attention. Under “protect,” the plan calls for stronger safety standards, certification programs, and improved insurance positioning. Under “educate,” Werner highlighted plans to expand the Association’s digital library of online classes, grow the CHAOS safety certification program, and begin offering national-level training for actors and makeup artists.
The plan is structured as a three-year rollout: foundational work in year one, implementation in year two, and benchmarking in year three. Werner said the board will conduct annual industry surveys and publicly report results to maintain accountability.
The full strategic plan will be posted on the Association’s website. Werner described it as a 14-slide document designed to be “understandable and executable.”
Ongoing Insurance Challenges
For the second consecutive year, insurance was the dominant topic of the seminar.
Werner described a landscape of rising premiums, carriers leaving the haunted attraction space, increased scrutiny from underwriters, and a lack of standardized documentation between operators and their insurance providers. He polled the room on several questions, asking how many attendees knew what their insurance agent wanted from them, or could explain what their agent does beyond confirming coverage. Few hands went up.
“If you’re not reading your exclusion section, you might as well just not have insurance,” Werner said, referring to policy exclusions that can quietly eliminate coverage for specific activities or scenarios. He urged operators to read their exclusions carefully, understand what they mean, and negotiate them rather than simply accepting them.
During the session, Kim Ayers, a haunt and agritourism insurance agent with Risk Services/Leavitt Group, who was in the audience, confirmed that another carrier is exiting the haunted attraction market. Ayers also affirmed that waivers make a meaningful difference in claims outcomes.
What HAA Says It's Doing
Werner said the executive board has been working directly with insurance carriers and is in the process of bringing a new provider into the market. He described the provider as strong but still learning the industry, calling it a “honeymoon phase” where both sides are getting to know each other.
This builds on discussions from the 2025 State of the Industry, in which Werner described the insurance situation as “a real insurance crisis” and said the Association was exploring a sponsored member insurance program.
Werner also compared the industry’s safety record favorably to other sectors, asserting that “the rate of falls in supermarkets is actually higher than the rate of falls in haunted houses.” He acknowledged, however, that when incidents occur in haunted attractions, factors such as fog, darkness, and theatrical elements can heighten perceptions of risk and increase claim costs.
Waivers No Longer Optional
The Board reinforced the idea that waivers for each customer are no longer optional, and operators must integrate that signing process into their operations.
HAA President Benjamin Gagne shared his experience implementing individual waivers at The Thirteenth Hour in Indianapolis after switching insurance carriers, saying the first weekend was “pretty rough.” The team initially tried to integrate waivers into the online ticket purchase flow, but customers abandoned their carts because the process required too many steps. They shifted to a system where the ticket purchaser received a waiver link by email, signage throughout the queue line reminded guests to sign, and staff verified waivers at the scan point, with enough buffer before entry to avoid a bottleneck.
“The trick is don’t check your waiver right before they go in,” Gagne said. “Give yourself a buffer.”
An attendee with legal experience offered a broader perspective, describing waivers as a “continuum” of protection rather than an absolute shield. “It always makes a difference,” the attendee said. “Tons of lawsuits are brought even though the waiver has been signed, but their chances of recovering on that is a little less. The other thing it does: it discourages people from bringing lawsuits.”
Werner echoed this, framing waivers as one layer among many that operators should build into their operations. He listed documented staff training, incident reporting systems, proactive risk management, and mid-show safety checks as additional layers of protection, and said operators should have this documentation in place before an incident, not after.
Board Member Perspectives on Insurance
Two of the Association’s newly elected board members also weighed in on insurance during separate interviews at TransWorld.
Rob Winfield II, owner and operator of Terror Manor in Roanoke, Virginia, said his attraction invests heavily in safety infrastructure. “A lot of our senior staff members are literally firefighter paramedics,” Winfield said. “We have some nurse practitioners on staff, so we’re big on safety orientations.” He emphasized the value of camera coverage, calling it “worth its weight in gold.”
Bart Butler, operator of Terror in the Corn in Erie, Colorado, spoke to the difficulty of securing coverage after a claim. “We had a claim a couple years ago that has made it, we’ve had a hard time finding insurance,” Butler said. The claim is expiring this year, which he expects will improve their positioning. He echoed Werner’s message on exclusions: “Make sure the exclusions don’t basically make it where you shouldn’t even have insurance in the first place.”
AI in the Haunted House Industry
The AI discussion was shorter and more philosophical than last year’s session, which featured specific operational recommendations from Allen Hopps of Stiltbeast Studios and Dark Hour Haunted House. This year, Werner framed the conversation around responsible use and industry culture rather than specific tools.
Werner acknowledged that AI is “a legitimate threat to artists” and “a legitimate threat to several fields of business,” but argued that artists who evolve will become more valuable, not less. He cited professionalism, unique creative voice, reliability, client relationships, and real-world execution as advantages that human artists hold over AI-generated work.
“AI can generate content, but it cannot replace craftsmanship,” Werner said.
He also pushed back on the hostility he said he’s seen on social media toward operators who use AI. “You just accused somebody of being a terrible person for using something that’s just there,” Werner said. He pointed out that some operators, particularly smaller ones with limited budgets, may use AI tools out of necessity rather than preference.
An audience member shared that their attraction is developing an internal AI use policy that defines what the organization will and won’t use AI for. Werner called this “a very progressive move” and encouraged others in the room to adopt a similar approach, saying it provides a framework for responding to criticism.
Collaboration Over Competition
Werner said the Association received a significant increase in complaints this past year from operators dealing with competing haunted attractions leaving bad reviews, staff from other haunts disparaging their business, and what he described as the “weaponization of reviews.”
“It happened enough that I realized that it’s really something that the association needs to number one address, but also support the positive outcome from this,” Werner said.
He argued that haunted attractions operate in a shared market, comparing haunt customers to moviegoers. “They don’t go to one movie a year. They go to the movies every weekend,” Werner said. “There is a shared market. We can never lose sight of that.”
Werner also pointed out that negative reviews from competing haunts don’t just harm the targeted attraction; they also harm the haunts that post them. If customers searching for local haunted attractions see bad reviews across multiple operators, he said, they may skip haunted attractions entirely and choose a different form of entertainment.
Several attendees shared practical approaches to fostering collaboration in their markets. One described the Passport of Terror, a program organized by Ohio Valley Haunts in which 10 haunted attractions in the Cincinnati area partner on a shared passport that customers get stamped at each location, with a hoodie awarded to those who visit all 10. Another attendee described proactively reaching out to a neighboring haunt after review-bombing allegations surfaced, initiating a conversation to establish that the behavior wasn’t coming from their team.
Werner shared his own experience of opening a haunted attraction in what he described as a hostile market. He said he began by offering to display other haunts’ banners on his exit line, shouting them out on social media, and “just giving with no expectation of receiving.” He said reciprocation began within a year and genuine collaboration within two.
Several attendees recommended adding language to actor handbooks that establishes standards for how staff should behave when visiting other attractions.
Werner urged operators to consider the simplest starting points. “Not getting along with somebody isn’t an excuse to not be professional to them,” he said. “You don’t have to work with them, but when you’re working around them, you could just be professional.”
