116 3rd St SE
Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
It’s a horror thing
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Seasonal business in Belle Plaine has grown out of a love for Halloween
Andy Neuhaus has his Hollywood elevator pitch down.
“The idea is, it’s a fictional town of Neuviall,” he said one recent afternoon. “We make believe serial killers took over the funeral home. He’s dismembering bodies and feeding the spare parts to this beast in the garage. From there you go through the town of Neuviall. You go through the school. It’s in Iowa, so you’ve got to have a farm scene. This year, the Neuviall cousins have come to town. They’re the carnival cousins, so we’re going to have a clown. We’re basically an old Seventies-style slasher (film).”
The production team of Neuhaus and Danny Viall are preparing for their fifth season of creeping out Belle Plaine and its neighbors at their Deranged Haunted Attraction. The seasonal business grew out of a mutual affinity for Halloween.
“I was born Oct. 30, and my mom’s favorite time of year is Halloween,” said Viall, 39. “Growing up, I loved Halloween. It’s my favorite thing ever. It gets me excited — the horror movies, all that good stuff. I would say my mom had a lot to do with it.”
Viall began attending the annual TransWorld Halloween & Attraction show in St. Louis every March — “the ONLY industry trade show of its kind in the world,” according to its website — before Neuhaus moved from Cedar Rapids in 2015 to own and operate the Hrabak-Neuhaus Funeral Home.
“I went to College Community. When I was in elementary school my parents ran the October elementary fest that they did, and they had a haunted house,” said Neuhaus, 44. “That kind of got me going in this direction. I worked at a haunted house in Cedar Rapids, and met these guys.”
“My brother saw him in a dinosaur outfit doing some stuff to get kids to the funeral home,” said Viall, who owns Premier Buildings in Belle Plaine. “That’s how I actually met Andy.”
“We wanted to try to get more people and kids to the funeral home trick-or-treating on Halloween night,” said Neuhaus. “We started doing different things. I met these guys and we started putting together jump-scares and stuff. It just kind of grew from there.”
That meant a larger, permanent location. Viall suggested a former sale barn owned by “silent partners” Heath and Michelle Kusel.
“They’re the owners of the property, and they’ve been gracious enough to let us play down here, and they help out when they can,” Neuhaus said.
A permanent venue allows what any successful horror franchise needs: sequels.
“Andy’s very good at mazes, and we share a lot of the same skills,” Viall said. “We start (building sets) in an area and it just grows from there. He gets ideas. It’s hard to sleep at night, because you’re always thinking, you’re always writing stuff down.”
It takes about 30 minutes for a visitor to work their way through the saga of Neuviall, its name a combination of the producers’ last names. Hidden passages designed for the cast’s movement allow overwhelmed youngsters (or their parents) an escape, if needed. All of the sets are equipped with video cameras.
“We catch them on the camera or we have one of our actors say ‘Hey, these guys need a break,’” Neuhaus said. “Some families will want to stay and we’ll have some fun with them. With little kids we’ll say, ‘Want to scare your mom and dad?’ and we’ll go through and jump out, and the next thing you know it’s awesome.”
“We don’t want anybody just to leave,” Viall said. “We want everybody to go through it.”
In addition to their wives Casey Neuhaus and Diana Viall, the producers credit their cast, which will number about 50 this year, for their continued success.
“Our actors are the most important thing,” Neuhaus said. “I always tell them, ‘We can build the coolest haunt, but it takes you guys to make it go.’ We have an awesome base of actors. We’ve got junior high, on up to my parents.”
This year’s season begins Oct. 4 and runs weekends through the month, with a “lights on” trick-or-treat night for children Oct. 26. Admission is $20 or $25, depending on the night, with tickets sold only at the door. The last performance is a Nov. 1.
”We’re already thinking for next year,” Viall said.
Know a business that should be considered for a “My Biz” feature? Let us know by emailing zack.kucharski@thegazette.com.
The Deranged Haunted Attraction
Owner: Andy Neuhaus, Danny Viall
Address: 102 Eighth St., Belle Plaine
Phone: (319) 551-9694
Website: https://www.thederangedhauntedattraction.com/
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