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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Millionaires’ Haunted House Is A Real Treat

One nerve-jolting stroll through the Gumbo-Fest “Haunt in the Holler” haunted house and I can’t decide which is scarier: “Ghoulia Child” slicing and dicing a live, wailing head in her butcher shop of horror.

Or two high rollers gambling $5 million on turning a seedy section of Spokane into a New Orleans-themed recreation complex.

I get the creeps just thinking about that last one.

Although the ambitious project at 1003 E. Trent is weeks behind schedule, Steve Livingstone - one of the rich guys betting a bankroll - acts as if he doesn’t have a worry on planet Earth.

“To be able to play these kinds of kids’ games is just great,” Livingstone says, casually sipping a glass of cherry pop.

“Hey, if it isn’t fun, why do it?”

The three-acre development is dubbed Riverwalk. It’s a choice location. Now.

It took half a million dollars alone to cart away decades of junked auto parts and dig up tons of soil contaminated by oil. The dirt removal left a hole so deep that water from the nearby Spokane River seeped in, forming a mini-lake.

Lake Livingstone eventually was filled and made into a parking lot. When everything is finished, Livingstone promises a microbrewery, music hall with three concert stages, restaurant and specialty shops all playing off the Cajun motif.

“New Orleans has a universal appeal,” Livingstone explains with optimism. An accordion player, he jokingly suggests he really built this to have somewhere to play “where nobody could ask me to leave.”

Those who know Livingstone and his main partner, Tom Vincent, say the two men are as far away as it gets from the stereotypical stressed-out, buttoned-down tycoons.

You can say that. Livingstone, 47, is a former chemistry honor student at Purdue University who literally ran away from school to join a carnival.

He made his money in Spokane with amusement centers and his now-defunct Livingstone wine. The Harley-riding Vincent, 47, owned Spokane Builders Supply.

“They don’t seem to have the watchdogs guarding their money like most rich guys do,” says Bob Buhl, Riverwalk’s entertainment director. “They care about the bottom line, sure, but they really do want to have a good time.”

A case in point is how the partners reacted when they realized their project would blow its scheduled Aug. 1 opening.

Most developers would have gone ballistic. Not this pair. Instead, they put their heads together, got out some wine from the Livingstone reserves and dreamed up Gumbo-Fest to fill in the lag time and keep the laughs rolling.

Half carnival, half food fair, Gumbo-Fest is centered around a haunted house that is several cuts above the usual October scare-fest.

This is not one of those church basement pageants where blindfolded guests are forced to stick their hands in bowls of cold spaghetti.

Livingstone and Vincent don’t do things in a small way. They hired Richard Linton, a California special-effects whiz with a background in movies and theme parks such as Knotts Berry Farm.

Linton created “Haunt in the Holler,” a dark maze filled with black-clad boogeymen, chain saws, strobe lights, smoke machines and several disturbing sights.

“I’m a Halloween freak,” says Patti Dawson, who plays a wicked old crone named Hattie in one of Holler’s better scenes. “So it means something when I tell my friends that this is the haunted house to go to this year.”

It does have some good ghastly touches. Just don’t go too fast or you’ll miss out on a lot of scary details. A trip through “Haunt in the Holler” should take at least six or seven minutes to get the full effect.

And watch out for the street kids who haunt this house. “I love scaring people,” says Marcus, one of the Holler’s volunteers. “This is about the only way I can do it without getting in trouble.”

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: Gumbo-Fest Open Wednesdays through Sundays at 5 p.m. through Halloween. Haunted house tickets are $5 for adults, $4 for children 12 and under.

This sidebar appeared with the story: Gumbo-Fest Open Wednesdays through Sundays at 5 p.m. through Halloween. Haunted house tickets are $5 for adults, $4 for children 12 and under.