“I think people need monsters. Wouldn’t it be depressing if there was nothing out there worse than people?” Allen said recently on the Horrorble podcast.
Dark Hour operates its own production company and fabrication shop, where its artists create all of the creatures, sets and props used in the haunted house and museum. The team also operates a monster-making school, which began offering classes in 2017.
“All the exhibits and everything that you see, we make in-house,” Shannon says. “When we make it in-house, it’s a very unique look.”
Allen is the operation’s primary designer and monster maker, the “genius” behind the haunted house, she says.
Visitors can explore on their own ($16) or take a guided tour ($23) with museum employees dressed as rangers, who explain the legends and lore behind each of the museum’s creatures.
Some guests even suggest creatures from their own hometowns and regions.
“People who aren’t from Texas are like, ‘I grew up in Santa Cruz. I’m from Maryland,’ and they get super excited, like seeing a friend,” Shannon says. “‘That’s a Jersey Devil. I’ve seen it. I used to live up north.’”
One of the biggest surprises, they say, has been hearing from people who believe they have encountered the creatures themselves, with one going so far as to email recordings of strange noises heard outside their homes.
“People who have seen things want to be heard,” she says. “They have a desperate need to be heard. And we didn’t expect that either.”
And with each visitor suggestion, the Hoppses are taking notes. Part of an upcoming expansion includes an alien section and the viral raccoon named Jimothy. The alien exhibit will even include a cow rising into the air.
“It’s putting a little humor in there because people are going, ‘Oh my God, this is intense,’ and then there goes the cow,” she says.
The humor of it all distinguishes the museum from the next-door haunted house. Dark Hour is designed to scare people. The museum is more family-friendly and “fright-free.”
“We have a lot of kids who end up coming to us, which surprised me,” she says. “It’s very important, while this is dark and it’s intense, that it is accessible to kids and families.”
In the future, a “dark zone” will eventually give the museum somewhere to place its more intense creatures and displays that families or more sensitive viewers can skip.
The museum isn’t designed to be stuffy and stagnant. In addition to the incoming additions, the museum also hosts events like Cryptids and Cocktails, a lecture series with a fully catered dinner, a cash bar and a presentation by cryptozoologists.
And Dark Hour Haunted House isn’t going anywhere. The haunted house will be open on select nights from Sept. 19 to Nov. 13.
The North American Cryptid Museum is open Thursday through Sunday at 701 Taylor Drive.