Halloween Haunt Ghost Town Monster Alumni: 1973-1976
A delightful woman! Very kind and courteous,
Jan's take and history of the Haunt is incredible, to say the least.
Jan's mark in serious Haunt history is made by having been one of the
first Ghost Town Street Characters in the Haunt's inaugural year of
1973!
That's right! Jan was part of the small group of Ghost Town Monsters
in 1973. If you're a Haunt character, your roots and Monster "family"
was created and first established by a tight-knit group of Knott's Berry
Farm employees, of which Jan Cranston was a part. Jan and her fellow
employees in 1973 helped establish the foundation that you now stand
on.
For you fans out there, anytime you have been
scared or entertained by a Knott's Scary Farm Monster, the "blood
line" can be traced directly back to Jan Cranston and the other
characters from that first year of Haunt.
Jan looks back at her years with Knott's Berry Farm very fondly as you
will soon read. She has been back to Knott's Berry Farm only a couple
of times since her park employment run ended and she has not been back
to the Halloween Haunt for over two decades. With that in mind, read
on to discover the pure facts of Halloween Haunt in 1973.
It is a complete and total honor to introduce to you, Halloween Haunt
Monster of 1973, Jan Cranston:
When did you start working for Knott's Berry Farm and what were you hired
to do?
I started in January of 1973 and I was hired to work with the stuntmen.
It was part time work mainly during the holidays and summer season. It
wasn't too long after that that they put me in full time.
I worked in Ghost Town with the stuntmen, but it also entailed doing the
magic show up at the (John Wayne) theater. I also did parades, like the
Buena Park float that had Ms. Buena Park and representatives from Knott's,
the Wax Museum and other various aspects of the city. And the Hollywood
Christmas Parade. That was fun!
I did that a couple of years and then I moved into supervising and worked
with Gary Salisbury [Director of Entertainment at the time]. I supervised
the street entertainment, hired people for the shows, scheduling and in
charge of the entertainment in Ghost Town and the Roaring 20's (not the
theater, they had a different person who booked the theater). Then I moved
over to marketing and worked over there in the Adventures Club. I was
Adventures Club Coordinator, and it wasn't long after that when they asked
me to become a Sales Representative.
I left in late 1978.
In your recollection, how long had the Entertainment
Department been around by the time you were hired in 1973?
There was a member of the Knott family that was in charge of the different
divisions within the park. We were on a first name basis with these people.
I don't exactly know how old the Entertainment Department was when I got
there in 1973, but it wasn't that old. There was only one girl who worked
with the stuntmen before me. When I got there, there were only maybe three
or four stuntmen working in Ghost Town at the time, so it was the very
beginnings of what was going on.
Gary Salisbury was writing some of the skits that we would do for the
gunfights, so it was working at the time. It was fun to be at the beginnings
of that of what was to come for the entertainment department.
What was the first Halloween Haunt like and
what were you assigned to do?
It was not a big deal, the first one.
We just heard that they were going to do something for Halloween, and
we were going to be working it because we were already in entertainment.
We worked a full day in the park and then they shut the park down at 6:00pm.
We had an hour to go up to the theater to be made up and then we hit the
streets.
We were just supposed to walk around and scare people. That was our job.
What character were you that first year?
My first year I was a Planet of the Apes character. Gene Witham, who
was doing my makeup, said that the pieces he used on me were actually
from the movie. That was a lot of spirit gum! It took a long time to get
made up and I think even longer to get it all off. I had the whole thing:
the wig, the hair, the clothes and everything.
Do you have any special memories of your scares
that first year?
The first night out, when I was dressed as the Planet of the Apes character.
Of course, we were supposed to scare people. So, I walked up to a couple,
actually came up behind them. I walked over to the girl's side because
I figured I could scare her pretty well, better than him. I sneaked up
behind her and put my arm around her and started walking beside her and
she got really freaked out. Her boyfriend got upset with me and was going
to hit me because he thought I was a guy. So I said, "No, no, no! I'm
a girl! Don't hit me!" Then he backed off. We weren't supposed to talk
to the guests, but I felt in that situation, it was the best thing to
do.
We didn't have any noisemakers and I didn't carry anything with me. I
just relied on the darkness because you could stand in a dark corner and
wait for somebody to come down and step out in front of them really quick.
We took advantage of knowing Ghost Town and knowing where the best places
were to hide out and wait for people.
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And what character were you that second year?
The second year I was
the Bride of Frankenstein. That's when I did the little bits with Seymour
in the theater.
The third year I was the Mummy. They just wrapped me up in bandages and
they took me outside and they threw all of this dust on me. When I walked
down the street, I was kind of limping and trailing my leg and I had the
bandages and a cloud of dust coming off of me.
That was tough because little kids were rough on me in that costume.
They would come up and stomp on my bandages from behind. They'd hit me,
which was pretty easy to do because I had these bandages across my face,
with just a little slit that I could see out of, and so I couldn't catch
them. They think that when you're a character, they have all this free
reign to come up and bonk ya.
Another one of the characters in Ghost Town was this guy who was also
made up like Planet of the Apes like I was and we went out in pairs and
worked together. They had the Spiderwoman and the Peek-Ins. I didn't do
any of the Peek-Ins, I was just on the streets walking around.
