USS Nightmare Media Event ’06
By Noah Wullkotte
Starting at the left: Gary, Dawn and Jim of Ohio Valley Haunts. I’m the guy in the front with my eyes closed. Damn that flash!! Starting with me and leading to the back is Noah, Russ and Marcus of City Blood-Ohio Haunt Reviews. The guy way in the back is Randall of The House of Doom.
Every year USS Nightmarehas its annual media event or you could call it a website gathering. Haunted Cincinnati, Haunted House Tour, The House of Doom, Ohio Valley Haunts and of course City Blood attended. This year the media event was held on Wednesday, October 11th. The rustic old boat was in full force that night and of course the experience is drastically different on media night. That’s when it seems like they have more actors, everything is working just right and in my opinion it’s a better experience. It may just appear that way since it’s later in the season though. When we first arrived at USS Nightmare we were escorted to the Mess Hall Party Room where the media event was held. Pop, sandwiches, pizza and more was available while a poster, folder with all the reviews and more were at the tables.
The first order of business was getting a group photo. Unfortunately they couldn’t fit all the groups into the photo, so they took two with two groups in each. Luckily the camera was right by my face and blinded me. You’ll see that it looks like I’m sleeping in the photo. After we had gotten our pictures taken we were given tickets with random numbers for chances to win various prizes. These prizes included cruise tickets, t-shirts and even a signed door from the staff of USS Nightmare. Well, moving on. Next we ventured towards the tent near the ticket booth that was home to Pickled Brothers Sideshow.
The first night we had went to the sideshow it was pouring down rain and the electricity had went out in the tent. This time it was drastically different and near 40 minutes long. At $6 it’s a deal and really gets you pumped up for the boat. You’ll experience sword swallowing, knife juggling, a straight jacket escape and much more. Don’t forget to take a look at all the oddities that are on display. They’re strange and some very rare. After the sideshow had ended we were off to see what the boat had to offer that night and it was drastically improved from the night we had went and just awesome.
After we were done touring the boat, we went back to The Mess Hall party room where they had envelopes and prizes laID out matching the tickets given out earlier that night. I won a pass for a 2 person BB Riverboats sight cruise, but I really wanted that signed door. Oh, well life goes on. We talked some more with the review sites and the USS Nightmare crew such as Allen Rizzo and Brian Robbe. Everyone there is very nice and welcoming. After getting some more pop and grub we went through again to take pictures, which you can see on this page.
After that we came back to The Mess Hall Party Room and viewed a video of Randy of Haunted Cincinnati going through the dredge pipe. The USS Nightmare dredge pipe is a long and narrow tunnel or what some would call a pipe. It’s very dark and dirty inside and only a few people have crawled through. You can’t stand up because the ceiling isn’t high and the only way back is the way you came. It takes around 30 minutes to walk through it and I hope to do it one of these days. Well that’s pretty much how the night went. It was an eventful and fun media night and I look forward to next year. I wish everyone of the USS Nightmare a happy and safe Halloween. Till next year, happy haunting!!
Click here to check out pics from the media event.