The Eastern State Penitentiary staff contracted with Macalino Marketing of Philadelphia in 2007 to develop a new graphic look that better represents the character of the haunted house, staged in the crumbling cellblocks of a 179-year-old prison. The new logo will appear on 5.3 million printed pieces in 2007.
"We felt this was the right time to update our brand," said Program Director Sean Kelley. "Since 1998, when we first named the Halloween tours 'Terror Behind the Walls,' the show has been dramatically transformed. The new logo better reflects our philosophy of letting the raw character of the prison's architecture speak for itself."
The Halloween fundraiser began at Eastern State Penitentiary in 1991. No one could have predicted, then, how popular the event would become. Attracting a few hundred visitors each fall, the early Halloween tours funded the launch of a daytime tour program in 1994. As the Halloween event grew more popular, the historic site staff gave it a new name in 1998- Terror Behind the Walls-to distinguish the event from the daytime tour program. The Halloween event itself continued to evolve over time, from simple ghost stories in the early years to the high startle, low-gore "walkthrough" visited by tens of thousands of visitors today.
Terror Behind the Walls has become one of the nation's largest and most well known haunted attractions. It is consistently ranked as one of the "Top 10 Haunted Houses in the United States" in national media, including The Travel Channel, AOL City Guide and HauntWorld Magazine.
Terror Behind the Walls, Presented by LUKOIL will open on September 21, and run selected nights through November 3. The penitentiary is located at 22nd Street and Fairmount Avenue, just five blocks from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. More information is available at (215) 763-NITE, or at www.EasternState.org.
