Danger Run
As I am sure you can imagine, we get A LOT of questions regarding the Danger Run each year. Most often, they are from people simply trying to understand the game a little more clearly. In fact, between our new FAQ page and our Facebook page, addressing questions and providing the answers you are looking for was a primary objective as we completely redesigned our website this year.
Aside from the questions we address on those areas of the site, I am surprised at the the number of times each year that I am asked "Where did you come up with this idea?" or more simply, "Why do you do this?" So, for those of you who wonder such things (or even care), we have added this history page to the site this year. If you?'re main concern is this years details, dates & times, or you are here to have some fun on our all new virtual run, you might want to click on the appropriate link, and we will look forward to seeing you on this year?'s Run. For the rest of you, whose morbid curiosity has kept you reading this far, please feel free to continue:
The Danger Run is a very unique event. In fact, no other event of its kind exists anywhere in the world, other than in the Louisville, KY area (now don?'t you feel special?). That being said, The Danger Run was not entirely my idea, but simply the evolution of ?"Ghost Run?" events existing throughout the Louisville area for many years. I discovered these Ghost Runs as a child, riding along in the car with my older brothers and sisters. I have always loved puzzles and logic problems. Once I was old enough to take an active roll and could actually contribute to the clue solving process, I was hooked. As the years went by, especially after I was old enough to be ?"the driver?", I found myself looking forward to October, just so I could go on my next Ghost Run. Whether it was the Buechel Fern Creek Jaycees Ghost Run, the New Albany Jaycees Ghost Run, or the KJ-100 Spirit Chase, I could always count on such a Run to provide a full night of unparalleled fun.
My wife and I were married in October, 1989. A week before our wedding, I took her on her first Ghost Run. Like me, she enjoyed the experience very much. As we continued participating in these events for the following few years, however, we both noticed a gradual degradation in the overall quality of the Runs. The clues were becoming more unimaginative (and way too easy), and the haunts were anything but scary or fun. We finally hit rock-bottom in 1993. We were on one of the local Ghost Runs (I don?'t recall which one - and probably wouldn?'t say if I did), and had just finished a set of boring clues, that were little more than flat-out directions, leading us to the Run?'s only haunt. We were horrified (and not in a good way) to discover that this ?"haunt?" was literally comprised of garbage bags stretched over monkey bars and playground equipment at a children?'s elementary school playground. - Really - I?'m not kidding. Sarcastically, I proclaimed that even ?"I could put together a Ghost Run better than this!?" My wife simply replied: ?"Why don?'t you, then??", and thus, The Danger Run was born.
Even still, I never really considered it again after that night, until Labor Day weekend in September of the following year, when my wife, Mary, brought it up again: ?"What happened to that Ghost Run thing you wanted to do? You love it so much, who better to put one together than you??" So then, I really started thinking about it. Had I realized, at the time, the amount of effort this was going to require, or how utterly in over my head I was about to be, I would have run away like a frightened schoolgirl?... but sometimes ignorance is a good thing. Could I really do this? Could I do it in a month? What could I do differently than the other Runs to make people want to come on mine?
I realized that, above all else, I had to make it FUN. Since I didn?'t know much about creating fun things for other people at time, I decided it would be best to build my Ghost Run by eliminating the things that made some other Runs NOT fun. That had to start with the ?"haunt?". I would not stretch garbage bags over monkey bars on my Run. Instead of a small haunt set up exclusively for the event, I decided that this Run would be the first ever to include a full-scale stand-alone commercial haunted house. After all, if the haunt was good enough to sell tickets on its own and stay in business, it was far better than what other ghost runs were offering. My plan was to go to an existing haunt and purchase blocks of tickets for a discount. Pretty much the only haunted house in town at that time was The Haunted Hotel. Having no experience and no history to this event, the ?"discount?" I was able to negotiate was meager to say the least. However, I knew that being the first and only ghost run to include admission to a premium haunt such as this would have long-term benefits.
Now that I had the haunt squared away, I turned my attention toward the clues. On average, people spend about 3 hours or so on a ghost run, only 10-15 minutes of which is inside the haunted house. The rest of the time they are in their car, driving around solving clues. I realized that it didn?'t matter how great the haunt was if I bored the pants off people for 2+ hours getting there, so my clues had to be more entertaining and had to be different. The problem was that I had no idea how I was going to achieve this.
This was the exact thought running through my head one day as I sat on the couch watching TV. I like old TV shows, and one of my favorites of all time is the Andy Griffith Show (but only the black and white ones - before Barney left). Anyway, the Andy Griffith Show came on while I was thinking about the whole clue issue. It was the episode where Barney stormed into the Sherriff?'s office, all upset because of a poem he found written on the wall behind the courthouse:
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