I was the original Silver Bullet Cowboy. The pictures on the billboards back then were of me, just like the Silver Bullet Cowboy of today. I also wrote all of the street shows and the original Wild West Stunt Show.

I eventually became a Production Manager. In 1978, Knott’s promoted me to Assistant Talent Manager. In 1980 or 1981 I was promoted to Talent Manager and in 1987, I became the Director of Entertainment.

I left Knott’s in 1989 after 19 years of service. I went to work at Knotts in 1970 as a summertime job and it led to a lifetime entertainment career.


Ultimatehaunt: We have read the interviews with Bill Hollingshead, Gene Witham and Jan Cranston [If you haven't, you really should!] and heard their respective stories on how the event began. In your recollection, how did the Halloween Haunt begin?

We just got together and started brainstorming a few things and decided if we could get approval from the Knott family to do this, we should try it.

Obviously we got the approval and an explosion of talent emerged to produce Halloween Haunt l [one], the first ever.

We were sold out! We had not previously presented events that were sold out. This, to my knowledge, was our first really big hard ticket special event and it sold out. We only did three nights and Friday and Saturday were our biggest nights. Halloween actually fell on a Wednesday that year. We did nothing on that night for our event was the weekend prior.


Ultimatehaunt: To obtain a better understanding as to what Ghost Town looked like during the first year, can you describe the décor?

Our first year, we had cobwebs and very limited smoke on the streets. Ghost Town was decorated with eerie scenes and looked pretty spooky. We did not decorate Fiesta Village and very little in the Gypsy Camp. Camp Snoopy, of course, was not even there yet. It was mainly Ghost Town, toward the theatre and into Gypsy Camp.


Ultimatehaunt: Without knowing how the guests would react, how did you direct the characters in Ghost Town?

During the first Haunt, I doubled as one of the first street monsters as well as handling my supervisor duties. I was a monster mainly to witness what our small band of monsters had to endure, and to see what worked and what didn’t work as a street monster. We only had 9 street characters that year. I needed to find out what I could and could not expect from them.

We wanted them to scare the guests and we wanted them to jump out at the guests.
Another guideline we came up with was to pair up the monsters; they never went out alone. We learned about possible negative reactions from the guests the first year after we were attacked a few times. No monster was to go out alone. They could go hide in the ivy as long as there was another monster in the ivy. So, no touching and no going out alone were the first monster rules.

We came up with cans, with nuts and bolts in them and the entertainers would rattle them at the guests. The reason we did this was because the entertainers would lose their voices.

That first year, we used actual characters: Dracula, The Mummy and Planet of the Apes. Then we were threatened with lawsuits, so we changed them to “Gruesomes”. Gruesome 1, Gruesome 2, Gruesome 3 and so forth.

By doing this with a “Gruesome”, it gave a lot more of an opportunity for us to create original monsters. We realized that the characters didn’t have to be based on a familiar monster.


Ultimatehaunt: In our interview with former Ghost Town Monster, Bob Vernon, he tells us about the Monster Massacre show in Ghost Town. Can you talk a little bit about the show as well as the other shows in Ghost Town at the time?

The Monster Massacre came around during the second Halloween Haunt (in 1974). The tremendous success of this event was bringing so many people in that we had to create a diversion so they wouldn’t all go to the Log Ride or Mine Ride at the same time. The lines for those rides were already three hours long. This diversion was street entertainment and mini shows.

We did almost the same thing, except we used our [monster] characters (Gorilla, the Witch and others), but with no dialogue in it. The Witch came out and she shot the Gorilla (who had climbed up the side of the building) and she did a cackle, smoke envelops her and she’s was gone.

We had another show in Ghost Town entitled Forest of the Unfortunate in front of the Bird Cage Theater. We ended up moving the show to the Wagon Camp for there was more seating capacity and renamed it Creature Feature. It was very visual as I had originally written it for mimes. One of the characters from this show, John Casino, works today as Kurt Russell’s double.

The show was about a hunter who stumbles into a forest and he was followed by a vampire. The vampire attacks the hunter and puts him in a coffin on the stage. The vampire then takes a knife out and starts stabbing the inside of the coffin, apparently killing the hunter. Then the vampire takes out an 8-foot long clear plastic tube and sticks it into the coffin/the dead body of the hunter. The vampire starts to suck on the tube and the guests could see blood coming up from the coffin and into the vampire’s mouth (he was really sucking up Berry Punch).

The vampire starts walking away and the hunter (who looked normal before being attacked) opens up the casket and this horrible monster jumps out. The monster throws a knife into the back of the vampire (who doesn’t die because you can’t kill a vampire that way), who runs off and is later shot off the high-fall. That was the basic idea of the show.

We came up with the Hanging as another street mini show. If you have the Hanging at 9:00 and Midnight, some of these lines for the attractions would start to diminish.

We put entertainment into the lines to entertain the guests who were waiting great lengths of time for their favorite attraction. We had mimes and jugglers and their only job was to entertain our guests in very long lines. Randy Pryor, who is a well-established comedian/juggler, got his start working the lines of the Halloween Haunt. We probably had 12 novelty acts that would just entertain lines.

In addition to the Monster Massacre we produced sideshows in Ghost Town like Spider Woman, the severed head and the severed hands.

We wanted to have a Hanging. We thought, of course, all hangings were cowboy-based. We hadn’t developed the witch concept yet, so we hung Bob Rochelle, who was one of our stuntmen. We went down to Grant Boys where they sold surplus army products and I found a parachute harness to use to create the illusion of Bob being hung.

For this show we started the procession down the streets from the hanging platform. The guests would hear through the speaker system:

(Excerpt from the actual script)

“Having been tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree by his peers, it is the sentence of this court that the prisoner shall be executed. Further, let the record show that the judgment shall be accomplished by hanging and the prisoner shall be hung by the neck until dead. This sentence will be carried out immediately in the Ghost Town Calico Square. Court is now adjourned.”

Then you would hear and see a lonely drummer playing a snare drum slowly marching up the street followed by several monsters pulling a two-wheel cart with the prisoner standing in it with his hands tied behind his back. He was paraded up the gallows and the executioner placed a black hood over the prisoner’s head and placed the rope around his neck. The drummer began a sustained drum roll, increasing in volume until the trap door was sprung. The prisoner was hung.

Then, they brought the prisoner back up onto the platform by pulling up the rope and he says:

“Thank you. Thank you for coming to my hanging. It was really quite a nice affair. It was for you, the public, who made it all possible. Thank you again and good night.”

The Hanging had been met with success and so we knew we would bring it back. This time we thought, “Let’s hang a witch!” We had to change the ending to make it more dramatic and more theatrical.

We built a hidden compartment into the floor of the gallows that was not visible from the ground. Everything else was the same in the show: The judgment, the procession and so forth. Except now, the witch had some lines.

She was denying that she was a witch. She was struggling the entire way down the street. She would go up the steps continuing to deny that she was a witch.

Then, they put the rope around her neck and all of a sudden…She changed………

With a calm evil look on her face she cried out, everybody would pay in this town for what they have done to her. She will bring havoc into the town.

She gives a large cackle and they pull the lever and she was hung.

The Hanging basically stayed that way for many years until we later added pyrotechnics to it in 1986 and made it even more spectacular.

I remember watching it and the ending was so dramatic that you really believed that the witch was hung and disappeared. We got real good doing the hanging. The audience seemed paralyzed for what they had just witnessed, nobody said anything! There was just a dead silence as the smoke faded into the night’s sky. Then after a few moments, the applause would slowly start and then everyone else would join in. I think our guest were just shocked. It was very real. People would stand around the gallows wondering what happened to the witch, where had she gone. Some stayed for a half hour, sometimes even longer. The witch didn’t want to come out because she didn’t want to expose the illusion.

We started and created the first hanging and contrary to popular belief it was not a witch that was hung, it was merely a skinny cowboy. The hanging has become a focal point for present day Halloween Haunt. However, I will take no responsibility for the content of this show after 1989.


Ultimatehaunt: Regarding the auditions for the Halloween Haunt, some people have indicated that it was simply a media event as opposed to actual working auditions. Can you talk about how the audition program came about and what it entailed?

We did not do the auditions at first. When we started increasing the amount of Ghost Town monsters, we had to hire outside personnel to staff the positions. We hired mostly from the local colleges.

I started noticing that a lot of these new people did not compare to our previous monsters, which were from our in-house pool of entertainers. Our entertainers were a lot more aggressive and outgoing.

Now, these new people (not all of them, but some of them) would sit back and just stand off to the side during the event, they were afraid to approach the guests.

I thought we needed to have a way of telling which ones were more prone to this type of position and which ones would be better off working in a library! I decided we would do auditions.

I remember thinking to myself, “How in the world are you going to audition people who have no theatrical experience. It’s going to totally freak them out!”

The auditions, at that time, were held in the upstairs of Independence Hall. We advertised in local papers and colleges and two to three hundred people would show up. There were three of us that sat in the room and judged the applicants.

I would call about six people at a time to come up on the stage and I would say things like, “okay, you’re a gasoline lawnmower.” If the person acted like a gasoline lawnmower, which was really stupid (but really funny to watch), they were a possibility. The others, who would just stand there and didn’t know what we were talking about…well, we would just thank them and they would leave because those were not the personalities we wanted.

The auditions would show that they are not intimidated and that they’re outgoing and can be obnoxious at times. Those were the traits that we wanted in our monsters. It’s a grueling task to be a monster. It looks like a fun job, but it is also a lot of work. We ended up with the right combination of monsters that would run around shaking the cans and scaring the daylights out people.

I know that the auditions really worked. The newly hired individuals were processed and hired on the spot. Human Resources had tables and staff to accomplish this procedure at the site of the auditions.

Now, it became a press event because we invited the press to cover the auditions for the added free publicity in regards to the Halloween Haunt itself. It worked, we had NBC and ABC plus all the major papers coming to cover the auditions, because no one could understand how we could possibility audition for monsters. We certainly showed them how it was done. However, it was never intended to be a press event. As a note of interest, we always invited the press to cover all of our regular auditions not associated with Halloween Haunt.

Ultimatehaunt: Can you share some excerpts in the Procedure Manual to allow us to visualize some of what was happening at the event in 1976? Also, how was this book developed?

This book came about because we didn’t keep great documentation of what was happening at the Haunt. Each year we would lose [managing] personnel and so the next year, we would ask each other how we did particular things the prior year and nobody could remember. That’s why this book was put together.

Staff: Don Dale
Nancy Johnson
Dorothy Alice
Martha Davis”

The people listed above would go to the different divisions at Knott’s Berry Farm and would ask each of them, “Okay, what do you do for Halloween Haunt? What are your plans for this year?” The information gathered was compiled into this book, which became our operations manual.

The following are some excerpts from this manual:

The Mad Magician of the Midway. This was a melodrama show at the Bird Cage Theatre. They used the same cast from the regular melodrama show, but now it had a Halloween theme.

Dracula’s Hands: This was a show where you had these hands that were suspended and very eerie looking. It was in Ghost Town, on Main Street at the General Store on the wooden boardwalk.

(From the actual script):

“Barker: ‘Ladies and Gentleman, step right up. Here is the legend of Dracula’s Hands. See the gruesome sight of two severed hands before your very eyes. You decide if the story we’re about to tell you is fact or fiction. See the disembodied hands of Dracula. They’ll make your flesh crawl and your blood run cold. It’s weird, it’s startling, it’s incredible!’

‘Folks, the horror which I’m about to tell you this evening began shortly a century ago. A creature roaming the country in the dead of night seeking blood from the throats of its victims. It was the fiend called Dracula. Mere bullets could not stop him.
When he was finally tracked down, he was chained and shackled to a post. Next morning, Dracula had escaped.

All that was found was a dagger and two severed hands: Still chained to the post. Some say that the hands still seem to be alive and that they rest undead behind this very door."

“Barker: ‘Ladies and Gentleman, see the legend of Elvira Smith: The Headless Lady.
Elvira lost her life in a railroad accident nearly a century ago but her head remains."

The effect was her head floating with a sword through it and she would look around. It was a great prop.

[In the] Gory 20’s, The Invisible Man

They had the Barker who started out…..

“In a laboratory in England shortly after the turn of the century, a man experimented with the principles of refracted light. The formula revealed the secret of invisibility. By using a special generator to produce Fourth Dimension light, this person became the Invisible Man”.

Someone would grab these lights and all of sudden they were gone and the lights were still on. It was a three or four-minute show that guests would just walk up to.


[Over in the] SKY CABIN:

”Good evening and welcome to the Sky Cabin. If you watch carefully as we ascend, you will see the unfortunate pilots and crew of doomed aircraft falling from space. There is a mysterious link between this tower and pyramids of Egypt and the Devil’s Triangle. At our summit, we are almost caught up in this force ourselves.

Once, in fact, one our passengers was so frightened he tried to bail out and remains forever suspended in time just outside our observation window."

We had a mannequin outside hanging caught up in the guide wires.

"We hope you have enjoyed your Sky Cabin trip. We are now descending back through the clouds to Earth and out of the grasp of that strange unknown force. But as you disembark, remember that all the restless spirits of the night are waiting to greet you as you walk the streets of Knott’s Scary Farm”.

My fond memories are working for a self-made man. I admired Mr. Knott and Cordelia Knott. I knew both of them. They were, to me, the biggest icons I had ever met, because of what they stood for and what they were able to accomplish with hard work. Talking to both of them are fond memories. They knew me by my first name.

The fondest memory of all was being given a job as a cowboy doing stunts. It was like a dream come true. I hated my days off, I would have done this job for free.

Ultimatehaunt: Do you have anything you would like to share with the fans reading this about the legacy you helped to create?


It all started at Knotts. That’s what I would like people to remember. I have spoken to people from all over the United States and many have no idea that the original or granddaddy of Halloween events started with us at Knott’s Berry Farm in the fall of 1973. That’s why I feel it is very important that the history of this major event be documented. It is the biggest event done in the amusement park industry. There is no event that compares to the Halloween Haunt at Knott’s Berry Farm, or any other amusement park.

Halloween wasn’t a big event prior to the Haunt. Then all of a sudden in 1973 a little family owned amusement park in Buena Park, CA came up with an idea that changed the course of Halloween forever. I am very proud to be a part of this very small group of individuals that charted a course that created Halloween Haunt.

Well, folks, we would like to thank Gary Salisbury for this wonderful and enlightening interview. It’s very important to remember the roots of the Halloween Haunt to have a firm understanding of where it’s at today and where it’s going in the future. Time and time again, we have shared with you our feelings regarding the legacy of the Haunt and our passions on keeping the history alive through stories and pictures like the ones seen in this interview.
Since Knott’s, Gary has stayed in the world of entertainment, most recently at Pirates Dinner Adventure in Buena Park (and Wild Bills before that). Gary is also featured in Season of Screams: The Legacy of Knott’s Scary Farm’s Halloween Haunt DVD.

On behalf of Ultimatehaunt.com and each fan taking the time to read this, Gary we thank you for sharing your stories with all of us. Your hard work and devotion for 19 years at the park helps the growth of our Legacy of Knott’s Scary Farm Halloween Haunt here on Ultimatehaunt.com and to shed light on the story and history of the event. You have helped to keep the history alive.