Pizza Hut puts on a horrifying display, despite a near-washout, thanks to two men with macabre leanings and big hearts.
By LETITIA STEIN
Published October 15, 2004
BRANDON - A howl reverberates through the parking lot. Skeletons cluster along Lakeside Drive. A few brave souls warm the tables outside a darkened restaurant.
These days, the Pizza Hut on W Brandon Boulevard is serving up as many frights as pizzas.
Two floodings during the recent hurricanes have closed the restaurant's doors. Customers can carry out pizzas from a trailer in the parking lot until the main dining area reopens.
But the Brandon restaurant still plans to "bury" its competition this Halloween.
A black hearse greets customers. Along the side of the parking lot, a set of tombstones bear ominous inscriptions.
Little Caesar, Died Making Two Pizzas Out of One.
Hungry Howie, Died Hungry.
Dominoes, Died in 30 Minutes.
Customers enter the closed tent behind the restaurant where a maze of makeshift black walls holds surprises behind every turn. Corpses awake in caskets and shake in their shackles. Fake walls collapse to reveal angry demons.
"All of my stuff is based on startling people - get them to look one way, then jump out another way," said Jim Beam, the haunted house's creator. "I enjoy scaring people."
Now in its third year, Beam's haunted house holds more black-light thrills than ever. After trying out another location last year, Beam is back at the Pizza Hut in Brandon.
Beam and restaurant manager Jim Crawford share an undying passion for Halloween.
Crawford began installing tombstone displays at the restaurant more than a decade ago, when he came to the Brandon restaurant. He purchased a red hearse and launched Halloween displays with the slogan "Pizza Hut: burying the competition."
"That's how it all started - a few tombstones and a hearse. That's all," Crawford said. "And a few smoke machines."
At the time, Crawford treaded carefully. A double homicide at the Brandon Pizza Hut had recently claimed the lives of an assistant manager and a restaurant employee. Crawford came as manager after the murders. He was prepared to take the Halloween displays down if customers showed alarm.
But the goulish concept took off. After growing the business in Brandon, Crawford was transferred to the Pizza Hut in Plant City, where he continued the Halloween displays.
Soon stories that the restaurant made pizza deliveries in a hearse reached Beam in Brandon.
Beam had his own hearse, called the Last Ride Hearse, which he rigged with a fog machine behind the driver's seat. Beam had helped build haunted houses during his childhood in Mississippi, then as an adult in Ybor City. Beam and Crawford became friends when Crawford was transferred back to Brandon's Pizza Hut about four years ago.
Beam was looking for a place to build a haunted house when Crawford offered the store's parking lot. Since neither was looking to make money, Crawford suggested that Beam donate proceeds from the haunted house to the United Food Bank in Plant City, where Crawford volunteers.
The partners were on a roll until the rainy season. The parking lot where they planned to stage their biggest haunted house yet flooded four times as a lake beside the restaurant overflowed. Twice water reached the interior of the restaurant, climbing several inches high after Hurricane Jeanne. Carpeting, drywall and furniture had to be removed.
The disappointment grew as Halloween approached.
All year, Crawford had been telling customers about the extravagant haunted house planned for the fall. After the show, customers in years past had enjoyed a pizza dinner. Now all he could offer were a few tables outside.
"We don't even have a dining room for the people I've been talking to all year," said Crawford, who does not know when the full restaurant will reopen.
"It's going to affect us a lot," Beam said, noting that traffic was down in the first nights of the haunted house that opened last week.
About 600 people toured the house last year, which was held away from the Pizza Hut. In the first week of this year's run, about 150 have found their way to the flooded-out Pizza Hut parking lot.
Adults jump. Children whimper. For Craig Baker, the scariest part was a pass at the beginning of the maze in pitch-black darkness.
"You don't know what's going to come out," said Baker, who formerly worked with Beam, whose day job involves stringing wires as an electrician. "I like the dark. Makes it more interesting."
The haunted house is open from 6 to 9 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and from 5 p.m. to midnight weekends through Halloween at the Pizza Hut in Brandon, 1200 W Brandon Blvd. Tickets cost $6 for adults and $3 for children 10 and younger. Proceeds will benefit the United Food Bank in Plant City. Donate a new toy valued at $6 or above on Wednesdays and get into the haunted house for free. To volunteer, call Jim Beam at 545-0561.
