Large Fierce Mammal

Source: Yore Mom

In my over 40 year career of advising clients in the methods and madness of protecting their persons, property and interests, I have been consulted many times for recommendations on solutions to problems that were so wildly unlikely to manifest as to be undetectable on any actuarial table as a potential cause of death or material loss. Persistent hand wringing pearl clutchers traditionally get steered in the direction of their insurance company with instructions to lay out for them the same concerns. If those mercenary bastards fine people are unable (or unwilling) to quote a premium, or addition to the premiums of an existing policy, I would take that as evidence that even they haven’t thought of adding it to their revenue generator.

This came to my mind from a brief conversation with the operator of an annual Hallowe’en themed attraction, specifically the Haunted House operated by Noggins Corner Farm in Greenwich, Nova Scotia. Greeting people before they enter the “Haunted House” and explaining the safety rules, she made mention of certain behaviours not being permitted on the grounds that they would violate their, “Haunted House insurance,” adding, “Yes, that’s a thing.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear this as the nature of the attraction is not supernatural, so the denizens visitors will encounter inside, other than the selection of animatronic ones, will be as human as the visitors themselves, and you know where that leads …

As described (and sold) by one U. S. insurance purveyor:

Halloween will be here before you know it! That means that it’s time to find insurance for your haunted houses, Halloween events, pumpkin patches and zombie runs! Our quotes will be based on the type of attraction you are offering and the length of the event. It is important to have coverage for your property and the customers that will be participating in your haunted house or Halloween event. Although injuries are uncommon, they can happen; trips, fainting spells, heart attacks and injuries inflicted by other frightened patrons are some examples, this is especially the case in a haunted house. Your coverage should cover not only the participants but also the employees. In scary situations (such as a haunted house) it is not uncommon for a frightened person to accidentally (or purposely) cause harm to one of the employees. The risk of injury to customers or employees is what makes haunted house insurance necessary.

As you can see, mixing live people with other live people pretending to be un-dead people is the same recipe for trouble as it is in any other venue because people will people, and I have no issues with this kind of protection. That being said though, and being one who has had one personal encounter with something that looked like a little girl but wasn’t (written about here both in prose and verse), it didn’t escape my notice that a Google search for “haunted house insurance” turns up more than coverage options for scare venues.

For example, there’s an entertaining piece by Allan Mott on the CAA/AMA website titled What Haunted Houses Can Teach Us About Home Insurance that begins with the observation —

“In his 1981 non-fiction book about the horror genre, Danse Macabre, scaremeister supreme Stephen King described how the terror people feel watching a haunted house movie isn’t just a visceral reaction to supernatural phenomena, it’s also based on the much more common nightmare of terrible things happening to your house that you’re going to have to find some way to pay for later.

“The truth is that we don’t know of any home insurance policies that offer coverages for ghost-related damages, but by looking at one of the most popular haunted house movies of all time, 1982’s Poltergeist, we can spot the scary moments that do have non-supernatural equivalents for which there may be coverage under a home policy.”

As you will discover for yourself as you read Mr. Mott’s article, he progresses through his points …

• A Bit About the Movie
• Sometimes Trees Can be Dangerous
• Sometimes Someone (or Something) Messes with Your Stuff
• Sometimes You Need to Leave and Stay Somewhere Else

To arrive at …

• Life Can Be Less Scary If You Have Insurance

Well look at that. We went through the pure horror of home ownership and how that can be factored into fiction of the horror genre, how no insurance company would cover the kind of supernatural outcomes he describes, even if they were to manifest into reality, and in the end brought us back to reinforce his initial reference to, “… scary moments that do have non-supernatural equivalents ….”

Well played Mr. Mott. Well played.