What's in a Name?

Hello all my fright buddies!

I've been meaning to get back to the writing recently but vlog'n has been so much fun! It's still slightly weird for me to be in front of a camera but I do enjoy saying hello to everyone and so far the response has been pretty good. In case you want to watch any of the vlogs or see other videos I have posted on my haunt Grimlock Manor Haunt then please feel free to swing by my youtube page HERE.

I've been pretty excited this week because I am headed to my first ever Make and Take on Saturday with the NJ/PA Make & Take Group. I've been talking to most of them on Hauntforum and they all seem like a great group of people. Our first project this year is a one armed grave grabber. You can catch a quick tutorial on how to build this prop HERE if you are interested in building your own. I have never been real handy with motors and making things animated but I am really looking forward to diving right in to this prop. I am also really interested to exchanging some haunt stories with my local haunt brethren.

Speaking of stories...this brings me to my title for this post "What's in a Name?" Of course most, if not all of us home haunters have a name for our haunts. Our name defines us, it's how we introduce ourselves and it is how our community or industry for that matter will come to know who each of us are. You might have a a signature or handle you call yourself like for instance I am Frightguy, but your haunt name is where it is really at. We slave over our haunts for that one special night a year and it's the name of your haunt that people are going to tell their friends and family  when they say "BLANK" was the most awesome haunt I've ever seen! My big question is how do we pick our names? Some people choose to use their first or last names in the title while others might use their street name and house number and then there are those who create totally unique names but how do we finally say that "this is it!" how do we know it's the right name? Well I will tell you how I got mine and if your interested leave a comment in this post so we know how you came up with yours.

When I was thinking of my haunt's name I knew I wanted something original or at least something that hadn't been used yet. I also knew I wanted a manor/mansion theme so that had to be a part of it as well. I wrote out countless names and I also started various logo designs to see how the names would look when complete and with different fonts and finally I settled on Grimlock Manor. To me Grimlock sounded well "Grim"and kind of sinister which was perfect for our back story but actually the name Grimlock came to me a lot easier because it was the name of a favorite childhood cartoon character of mine. Can you guess which one??? Yup you got it! Grimlock is a character from Transformers. He was introduced as the Dinobots leader and he was a Tyrannosaurus Rex (My favorite Dinosaur!) I've always been a big cartoon geek so when I was having trouble settling on a name I started to try and pull inspiration from the cartoons that I loved and once I remembered Grimlock I thought it had a nice and unique sound to it and it was fitting for a haunt name.

So that's my story of my my haunts name Grimlock Manor. I hope if your reading and have a haunt or are looking to start one you will comment on how you came up with your name. Before I go I've posted a quick tribute video of Grimlock. Thanks for the name buddy!