Our record-breaking Halloween fundraiser!

WE DID IT!! 10 nights of running Damian's Not-So-Haunted House and what a rush! We will get into the analytics in a minute, but I'll tease the results by telling you upfront that this was our BEST YEAR EVER.

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DAMIAN’S NOT-SO-HAUNTED HOUSE

If you weren’t able to make it out to “the happiest haunt in Santa Clarita” this year, I got you covered! Here is our annual walkthrough video with all the angles!

As I expected, I wasn’t able to add everything I had wanted to do, but I was able to make all the major upgrades I planned come to life!

Corridor of Doors

This upgrade has been on my to-do list since 2023 so I am STOKED that it finally happened this year!! Previously our Corridor of Doors was made with neon posterboard and black tarp and while it was perfectly functional, it was due for an artistic upscale.

The design of these wooden doors was inspired by the doors in Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion (of course!) but while the theme park version has a scary face hidden in each door’s transom vent grille, I took the opportunity to fill each space with the faces of more classic Disney characters!

The impact was substantial and it was fun to give some of the older visitors (older than 5 at least!) a new challenge during their visit. By the way, this name-the-character challenge isn’t easy unless you’ve watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! Not everyone knows Clarabelle or Pete - and no, that isn’t Scrooge! Try again! ;)

Ghostly Ball

Two new walls made our ghost room become pretty grand if I do say so myself! Clearing out more space in the garage and building the new walls created a light lock, blocked the immediate view of the exit from the ghost room, and even allowed space to create a new hallway, which made the whole walkthrough feel twice as long as last year!

My vision of the ghost room was to create a “Ghostly Ball” reminiscent of the ballroom scene in the Haunted Mansion, where all the ghosts are gathered for a “swinging wake.”

Our not-so-haunted version includes a ton of cute and smiling ghosts – one wearing Mickey ears and two holding hands – all dancing under a flickering crystal chandelier!

I had been scouring Facebook Marketplace multiple times a day for weeks trying to find the perfect crystal chandelier in my price range before I finally found this one on Amazon for a fraction of what others were charging for their used ones (I converted it to be a plug-in fixture using this DIY kit). And these low-light flickering flame bulbs made the chandelier look SO COOL and perfectly on-theme in our Not-So-Haunted House! The finishing touch to make it look like a party was adding one of Damian’s favorite light fixtures: an aurora projector set on the red/blue/purple setting.

The Bake Sale Gazebo

One of the biggest differences we made this year was putting effort into making the bake sale area feel a true part of the Halloween experience. Before this year, we used a simple blue pop-up tent to cover the bake sale area that didn't really match anything, but it’s arguably the second-most important space of the whole experience (some people show up, or come multiple times, specifically for it!) and it was time to make it fit in aesthetically! Our pop-up tent actually broke during a storm last year so it needed to be replaced anyway, so I opted for a metal 8x8 patio gazebo that I got for a steal of a deal from Facebook Marketplace. The cover was ripped and needed replacing, so this green cover went on my Amazon registry (thank you to ALL who helped with this registry by the way!!!)

Luckily the green turned out to be the perfect deep forest color and when I paired it with my purple banners (formerly used to decorate Buena Vista Street at Disney California Adventure!) our bake sale area looked AMAZING!!

I even ended up adding an additional table and getting an outdoor potting bench for extra storage/retail space, and STILL we sold out of all our baked goods nearly Every. Single. Night.

Which brings us to the reason we are all here reading this blog post in the first place…

THE RESULTS

Like I said, this was our best year ever. We broke record after record and I ended every night with my jaw on the floor. I couldn't help but frequently think back to our very first year when we had somewhere around 30-40 visitors on opening night and I remember being SO excited thinking, "WOW, people actually came!?"

This year I spent a lot more time focusing on making social media content for my own accounts and not nearly as much time reaching out to other social media groups to advertise, and because of that I'll admit that there were a few afternoons where I thought, "maybe no one will come tonight..." Maybe that sounds silly, but it's such a unique thing to put on a public event where people don't RSVP and you just don't know exactly what to expect! But we had SO much support. Local news shows and newspapers reached out to me for interviews, and several popular social media accounts that share local happenings spread the word about our event throughout the month!

TV Interview with The Buzz

Watch the segment

We made the front page of The Signal!

Read the article

TV Interview with Canyons News

Watch the segment

We had such an incredible turnout last year (a total of 1,661 people!) and I assumed that it would grow a little bit this year, but I was wrong. Our visitor count more than doubled.

First off, our opening night was our largest opening night ever - and I did NOT expect that to be our slowest night!! Last year, only on our busiest night did we welcome more than 300 guests, but this year we averaged 366 EVERY NIGHT!!! WHAT?!?! On our very busiest night (the second Saturday), we had a line that went down our driveway, across the street, and down the sidewalk!! I couldn't believe it!!

Even better than numbers though, these people were incredible humans. Some came as far as Pasadena and Simi Valley to support our fundraiser. Some didn't know there was a bake sale but still came with cash anyway because they wanted to donate. I don't know how so many people heard about our campaign, but they did and they showed up.

If I had to estimate, I would say about 30-40% of the people who came did not know it was a fundraiser. They saw the event somehow (many people came from the popular SoCal Haunt List website, many people saw it advertised on @WhatsUpSCV, some saw it listed on the city's public calendar) and brought their families, often all dressed up in their Halloween costumes! (What a JOY for me to see all these kids in their fall attire & costumes by the way! Oh my goodness, these kids were the best!) But when they found out at the bake sale why we created this event, everyone was incredibly generous.

It's honestly such a compliment that people would come simply because it looked like a fun event. That was my goal. I always always hope that everyone who interacts with me and our campaign, whether they see my reels or YouTube videos, come to our events, or buy anything from our online shop, feels personally better off having done so. We have received so much help and I always want people to feel they've come out ahead and that real value was exchanged. It made me so happy to overhear families as they came out of the walkthrough talking about their favorite parts or to hear kids who were timid to go in come out asking if they could go again!

On the nights when there was a long line, I would be surprised to sometimes see a family go through twice! One mom told me, "She [my daughter] doesn't do well with lines but she begged me to get into this one again! I've never seen her so patient!" I don't think I can ask for a better review, right??

But then there were families who have come to every iteration of the Not-So-Haunted House since our first year and they say it has become a must-do family tradition for them now! It makes me want to cry to hear that!

Ok. Are you ready for the rest of the numbers? I'll just tell you now: you're not ready. But here they are:

Just - just take a second.

Just from the bake sale we raised over twenty thousand dollars. Just from the bake sale we raised over twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand dollars. Twenty thousand dollars. I am still in shock about it, to say the least. My goal was to raise a little over $15K so that we could reach a major milestone in our overall campaign. We are now past that. I haven't made the manual adjustment to our GoFundMe count yet (which I periodically adjust so it reflects our total fundraising efforts) but I will be adding the funds we got from cash, Venmo, PayPal, and Zelle over the next couple days and it is going to be a BIG MOMENT to watch that number finally climb past $1.2 million.

Y'all. I am so. So. SO. Blown. Away.

HALLOWEEN MIRACLES

It’s now officially been one week since we closed Damian’s Not-So-Haunted House and yet today is the first day I haven’t felt at least 80% depleted. This is not nearly all due to the event, because as you can imagine, when you spend all your time on an event like this, the rest of life’s demands tend to pile up. I’ve been putting out "life fires" non-stop ever since Halloween, even pulling a couple all-nighters to complete a lot of tasks, which is why I haven’t posted a single thing this week! (Not to mention Brock had to unexpectedly leave on a work trip for about 2 weeks! He just got back, yay!!)

But my goodness I have SO SO SO much to be grateful for. A little side note – this year in my daily scripture study I’ve been deep-diving into the Old Testament and I think if I could summarize this half of the Bible in one sentiment it would be “never never never forget what God has already done for you – and let that remind you to trust Him.” When I was younger, the story of when the Israelites complained to Moses that they were all going to die even though they had just seen God’s power literally divide the Red Sea made me think the Israelites were unjustifiably worried and even annoying.

Reading that story again this year though, I realize I am like those Israelites far more often than I'd like to admit – and it’s made me determined to work on that. I think sometimes I'm inclined to think that active worrying will somehow help my situation. Somehow, I’ve thought stressing about something will make the struggle go away or that stress will make me work faster or harder. But it doesn’t. Worrying just makes me notice even more things that are going wrong, produces more problems, or even worse, dismiss anything that is going right. As one of my favorite quotes goes, “worrying just means you suffer twice.”

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So on the day before we opened Damian’s Not-So-Haunted House, when I was running on just a couple hours of sleep, the new wooden doors still weren't built or painted, the new walls weren't painted, the “endless hallway/Mickey ghost” gag wasn't built, we didn't have any flowers or banners put up around Pumpkin Mickey, the train tunnel project hadn't even been started, and on top of everything else, I got a text from our medical equipment vendor saying that the new wheelchair and standing frame we've been trying to get for over a year now would likely be delayed another several months due to bureaucratic complications with Medicaid that would require a lot of work for me to deal with... I began to panic.

But then, I thought of the Israelites panicking about starving to death when God had already repeatedly proven that He would take care of them. I was in the same boat. Realistically, I already knew our fundraiser wasn’t going to fail. How many times has God – and so many people – proven that they were behind me? So what would worrying and stressing actually do to help me? Absolutely nothing.

I decided that from then on until we closed on Halloween, I would stop ruminating about what was going wrong and only look for miracles that I knew from experience were inevitably going to happen. And happen they did.

Here are just 4 examples:

1. High winds were set to hit our city, and as time passed, it looked more and more likely to hit its peak right as we were supposed to open on opening night. All the rain and wind had been preventing me from working on all the outdoor decor I had planned and was previously stressing me out - but when I only looked for miracles, the imposing weather forecast prompted me to simply drop all of that work from my priority list. Maybe a weird thing to be grateful for, but that storm gave me an out. Most of our outdoor decorations weren't completed for our opening weekend, but with the storm, we couldn't put them out anyway even if they had been ready. It was the perfect excuse to just not worry about it.

2. When the winds finally did hit, power was turned off to about half the city as a precaution against potential fires. Friends on neighboring streets had their power turned off without warning on that Friday. We never lost power. About half of the people who came to our opening night told us they didn’t have power at home. We never lost it. And even when the winds were high, it was never bad enough to deter people from coming between 5-8pm.

3. A couple of the nights the following weekend we were forecasted to have heavy rain right during our event. We DID end up having really heavy rain, but it stopped a little before 5pm and started up again immediately after we closed. Like clockwork.

4. I had volunteers every night help me with running the bake sale! I try to get at least two friends to help me every night and I made sure ahead of time that I was covered each day. There were two nights when unforeseen circumstances occurred that left me short some help at the last second – and those just happened to be the two nights when other friends reached out randomly and asked if I needed more help that night.

I could name a bunch more - there were so many times that I watched big tasks suddenly turn into simple tasks through inspiration as I scrambled to complete our 2026 walkthrough experience in time. And my goodness, just seeing the crowd every night that showed up to our event, often forming a line down our driveway and sometimes even down the street, was a MIRACLE. The love and generosity I felt from our guests and the success we saw each of the 10 nights all felt like a dream. I am so so grateful.

WHAT’S NEXT?

It is truly incredible how quickly October zoomed by. Every operation day, I would wake up, go to the store for supplies and be home by noon, prep baked goods from noon to 3pm, start setting up at 3, orient volunteers at 4:30, open officially at 5 and go until 8pm, start cleanup and do closing tasks until 9, run the nightly report and make a supply shopping list and to-do list until 10, have dinner and give Damian his medicine, prep social media content and be in bed ideally by 1am, and then do the whole thing again the next day (on the days where we had back-to-back operation days). The whole month ZIPPED by!

We now have only a little over a month until we open our home again, which means we only have a few weeks to make some upgrades to our Christmas event!! I’ve been planning for a bit and will share more soon, but if you’ve seen my most recent collaborative post, you’ll have seen that a group in our community is planning for an even sooner charity event and have very generously chosen our campaign as the beneficiary! Click here to see the post!

The last quarter of the year always seems to rush by, and this one is no different. I just hope you know how grateful I am for your help and support. Yes, I’m tired, but I wouldn’t change a thing. It is incredibly fulfilling for me to put my skillset to work to help my son, and it is so humbling and heartwarming to connect with all of you and to make these visions come to life and make real progress with your support.

Thank you so much for being here. <3