AUSTIN, Texas — Halloween is one of the biggest holidays in the United States, but there are very few places dedicated to preserving and celebrating its haunted history, until now.
The creators of Scream Hollow Wicked Halloween Park have been in the spooky business for more than 20 years. This Halloween, they’re putting their passion for the holiday’s history on display, which dates back more than 6,000 years. While the museum highlights Halloween’s biggest moments, the historians behind this exhibit are just as fascinating.
Tammy Pruitt is the curator of the Texas Halloween History Museum. The Central Texan appreciates the creepy-crawly things in life. One of her hobbies is taxidermy, a skill she learned as a child. She spends a lot of her free time putting snakes and spiders into jars for the museum displays, and decorates her house with dead animals too.
“I think it’s even better than a vase on a shelf or a picture frame,” Pruitt said.
When it comes to Halloween, there’s not much Pruitt doesn’t know.
“All of my friends probably know me as the creepy Halloween girl,” she said.
One of the big projects for the museum was to create a massive timeline detailing the history of Halloween from its beginning to present day.
“This right here is basically our masterpiece of the history of Halloween,” Pruitt said.
She spent years researching and collecting artifacts from around the country. You will find the original piano that played “Nosferatu,” at the Hollywood Theater in New York and an exact replica of the Annabelle doll from Tennessee. There are also plenty of spooky items from Texas too, including a medical gown from the haunted Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston.
“Anything that you can think of somehow touches on Halloween or the origins of it,” Pruitt said.
This isn’t just a passion for Pruitt. To her, the spooky and scary are an escape from her own haunted past.
“I came out of a pretty rotten abusive marriage,” she said.
Which is how she ended up at Scream Hollow.
“We call it a haunt family and there’s a reason for that,” she said.
The father of this “Haunt family” is Norm Glenn, the owner of Scream Hollow. Glenn got his start in Haunted Houses when he was just a boy.
“We turned the basement into a haunted house for my sister’s Girl Scout troop,” he said.
His haunted houses aren’t in his basement anymore, but his work is still close to home. He lives on the park grounds in a castle that he built himself.
“This is where I got to get away from it all,” Glenn said.
Pruitt and Glenn still have day jobs, but Halloween is their way of life.
“It’s more than just a job. It's more than just showing up for a job. We truly are a second family and a community,” Glenn said.
To these Texans, the museum is more about celebrating life than death. The Texas Halloween History Museum is open through October 31.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story erroneously said the Texas Halloween History Museum opens Oct. 14. This has been correction on all platforms.