Chris Stafford’s company, Thirteenth Floor, now pays 4,500 seasonal workers every Halloween and is branching into Christmas.

By Jonathan Small | edited by Dan Bova | Oct 22, 2026

Chris Stafford was 15 when a friend invited him to help scare people at his haunted house for Halloween. “I was bit by the bug,” Stafford tells People .

Years later, while working in banking in Colorado, he reconnected with fellow haunted house alum Warren Conard. In 2002, the pair opened a haunted house in a Denver strip mall, funding it themselves and charging about $15 a ticket. “It was terrifying,” Stafford recalls. “People were running out the exit.”

That business started as a side hustle , but the 2008 financial crisis convinced Stafford to eventually leave his job in banking and make it a full-time creep fest.…