Hasta La Creative!

Melissa Carbone is a real-life scream queen. Her company, Ten Thirty One Productions, bills itself as the “world leader in the horror attractions industry” and operates Haunted Hayrides in Los Angeles and New York (which was looking for a new location this year but plans to be back in 2018), The Great Horror Campout and other spine-chilling attractions. She scared up a $2 million investment on from Mark Cuban on “Shark Tank.” Carbone also just published a book, “Ready, Fire, Aim: How I Turned a Hobby Into an Empire.” She talked to Ad Age about terrifying ads, why horror marketing can model Disney and why fear is “America’s favorite drug.” The transcript is lightly edited.

How did you get into the haunted house business?

Every Halloween, my partner and I at the time created these elaborate Halloween displays in our yard and I mean, really elaborate. It was pretty much we threw up Halloween on our front yard. And so these kids in the neighborhood would come through two, three, four times, and parents started coming through.

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