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Spotlight: ‘Ghost Guru’ Alan Ostrander on the Art & Science of Spooky Season

The many faces of special effects makeup artist, creature creator, and haunted attraction consultant Alan Ostrander, modeling his own work.
Alan Ostrander
/
AEO Studios
The many faces of special effects makeup artist, creature creator, and haunted attraction consultant Alan Ostrander, modeling his own work.

With the Halloween fever that seems to grip Central Florida each year and all the seasonal events and experiences on offer, you might wonder – is there a haunted attraction expert in Central Florida that teaches the creepy craft?

A ghost guru, perhaps? A petrifying professor? A soothsayer of scary? A nightmare know-it-all?

The answer is yes. Meet Alan Ostrander, the how-to-haunt consultant!

He’s also president and creative director of AEO Studios, Orlando’s oldest makeup, special effects, retail, and production center…and in it, he produces wildly realistic prop body parts, creature features, and other nightmare fuel for award-winning movies, cosplayers, shows and yes, haunted attractions. He also helps design some attractions and helps others execute the science of a good scare.

But, Ostrander himself is not a scary guy. Horror isn’t even his favorite entertainment genre when he leaves work for the day. “My main love is actually musical theater,” Ostrander said with a laugh.

But he does love his work and the niche he has found in the world of haunts and horror. “Every new job is a challenge, and I love the puzzles and problem solving of special effects…whether it's an exploding head for a horror film, or, like right now, when the [production] shop is full of corpses and bodies for haunted attractions.”

Indeed, scattered across his shop are prop severed limbs in a variety of stages of decomposition, along with the paints, brushes, makeup, and fleshy-looking goop used to create each piece by hand. In the corner is what looks like a small green forest made of upright ogre hands, costume parts waiting to be shipped out for “Shrek: the Musical.” An absolutely enormous and disconcertingly furry spider prop dangles from the ceiling, drawing a gasp from a visiting arachnophobe (me). Monster busts from past projects squat along the walls and working spaces, with expressions ranging from menace to glee. Little shop of horrors, indeed. But there’s also a sense of zest and levity that’s undeniable.

“I love creating things that affect people, whether we scare them, whether they're laughing…the bottom line is, you're presenting a show for an audience, and you want them to be happy, enjoy the show and hopefully return.”

Ostrander said in his experience, there’s an excitement around Halloween this year that has been absent at least since COVID.

“I think Halloween this year is going to be the biggest that it has been over the last few years. People are ready to move forward,” he said. “And yes, it's great escapism. You get to be someone else.”

Nicole came to Central Florida to attend Rollins College and started working for Orlando’s ABC News Radio affiliate shortly after graduation. She joined Central Florida Public Media in 2010. As a field reporter, news anchor and radio show host in the City Beautiful, she has covered everything from local arts to national elections, from extraordinary hurricanes to historic space flights, from the people and procedures of Florida’s justice system to the changing face of the state’s economy.
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