by Nathan Stout (of AccordingToWhim.com)
As you well know by now According To Whim has be active helping Hangman’s House of Horrors in Fort Worth, Texas. We have been putting our video skills to use making various videos for them. I have been also helping them with their website which has been outdated for a few years now. I have also helped the owner with one of her other charities (A Wish With Wings) with a tiny bit of video work.
Over the last year I had been thinking about various things about the house that I’d like to see changed. I just didn’t come right out and start telling her ‘you should do this’ or ‘you should do that’. I am a new comer to this and it would seem rude. I decided last year to involve myself with the planning meetings that the Core members hold in March. I quickly found out that my ideas wouldn’t be accepted by this group so I kept them to myself until I had a voice… that is to say that I wouldn’t put forward any ideas until I was a more prominent member of the team.
As you read in my last post, I have been feeling discontent with the main group of volunteers there. I don’t feel that I am making any headway into being more apart of that group. They don’t seem to want to add new people. There is this sort of clique of people and they don’t want ‘outsiders’. The owner seems to be aware of this. That’s ok since I am only really interested in helping her and I don’t have to be in them to in order to do some good for the charities.
This brings me to my thought a few days ago. The house property has the main building and 2 single wide mobile homes that house a couple of smaller attractions. The property has always looked drab and uninviting. One the first ideas I ever had was to decorate the grounds. Surely she could get some landscaping company to come in and do some work to spruce up the place. It could be made to really add a whole new level of creepiness. I also had the idea of replacing one of the single wides with a double wide. I needed to know a few facts about the property so I emailed her and found out that they are only renting the property and that one day the owner is looking to tear down the old warehouse (the main haunted house) and sell the property (I’m sure it’s worth an nice chunk of change because of it’s location). She never wanted to do any upgrading of the property since they could be kicked out any year.
I also asked her permission to start soliciting for a new double wide. I didn’t want to go off and be representing myself as apart of this organization when I had no right to. My idea is to send out letters to several of the mobile home manufacturers in the North Texas area asking for a double wide. One issue with this is that if the structure is over 1000 square feet it will require a sprinkler system. If I can procure one I will just have to find a company to donate the sprinkler system. I also committed to getting the money to have the mobile home moved and mounted. I figure if I can get the fantastic feat of getting a mobile home donated then surely I can get the money to have it moved!
So there you go. I wanted to start documenting this attempt in case it actually works out. Keep an eye out in the future for updates to see how I am doing.