The Face of Horror? Gulf Coast High grad competes for $13k in spooky U.S. contest

Ian Eubanks has been scaring people for years. Now he wants to do it for a living.

A key part of his plan: Winning $13,000 in an online contest for horror-movie enthusiasts.

Eubanks — a former Naples resident who now lives in New Orleans — has made it to the quarterfinals in the national contest Face of Horror. He’s one of hundreds of horror fans competing for votes from now through Oct. 27.

There’s just something great about scaring people, Eubanks says. That's why he wants to start a professional haunted-house business.

Eubanks has been making people scream since he was a kid and he set up a fake electric chair at his parents' house for Halloween. Then he and his friend waited for the trick-or-treaters to arrive.

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“I had on a melted werewolf mask,” says Eubanks, who moved to Naples in the sixth grade and lived there until 2011. “Trick or treaters would come, and my friend would answer the door. Then I’d pretend to get electrocuted, and I’d jump out and scare’em.

“I had a lot of fun with that. So it’s just something I want to keep going.”

That led to Eubanks and his friends putting on elaborate haunted houses every year at his parents’ 5-acre property in Naples (and one year in Bonita Springs, too). He started doing that in the sixth grade.

“I wanted to do something for the trick-or-treaters,” he says. “So I started getting friends together and doing haunted houses.”

A longtime fan of horror and Halloween

For the 38-year-old Eubanks, Halloween and the horror genre have become a lifelong obsession. He writes horror short stories. The cast of the TV show “The Walking Dead” once filmed a couple episodes at his former Georgia pub. He’s acted and helped with special effects in several independent horror movies. And he even runs an online radio station called The Crypt that plays scary music 24/7.

“I listen to Halloween music all year round,” he says and laughs.

The 2002 Gulf Coast High School graduate says he used to get picked on in school, so there was something freeing about dressing up as characters like an evil scarecrow — his go-to character for his Naples haunted houses.

“I’ve always been big into Halloween,” he says. “It was always kind of an escape for me. Once people started telling me that I was getting too old to trick or treat, I started scaring people.”

Now Eubanks hopes to take that to the next level with his business, Pumpkin King Entertainment. Once he leaves the U.S. Coast Guard in two years, he want to move back to the Florida/Georgia area and start putting on haunted houses for a living.

“I just enjoy entertaining,” he says.

The contest money would help that business get started, he says. So would another part of the contest’s grand prize: A photo shoot with horror legend Kane Hodder (aka Jason Voorhees in the Friday the 13th movies) for Rue Morgue Magazine.

How to vote in the Face of Horror contest

Voters in the Face of Horror contest get one to three free online votes each day. Registration is required through Facebook or a credit card.

You can also purchase votes for $1 each. That money goes to pediatric cancer charity Andrew McDonough B+ Foundation.

You can vote for Eubanks from his contest profile page at faceofhorror.org/2022/ian-eubanks.

The contest winner also gets a walk-on role in an independent film and a two-night stay at Buffalo Bill’s House, the setting for serial killer Buffalo Bill’s home in the movie “Silence of the Lambs.”

It’s unclear if other Southwest Florida horror fans are competing in the contest. Face of Horror doesn’t include contestants’ cities or states of residence in their profiles.

The quarterfinals round — aka the “Hellraiser Round” — continues through Oct. 27. After that there’s the “Apocalypse" semifinals round (Oct. 28-Nov. 3) and the “Final Cut” finals round (Nov. 4-10).

Eubanks says his haunted houses and other events have always donated part of their proceeds to charity. He wants to continue that with his business Pumpkin King Entertainment, and also donate $1,000 of the prize money to the New Orleans Women and Children’s Shelter.

To learn more about the contest, visit faceofhorror.org.

Connect with this reporter: Charles Runnells is an arts and entertainment reporter for The News-Press and the Naples Daily News. Email him at crunnells@gannett.com or connect on Facebook (facebook.com/charles.runnells.7), Twitter (@charlesrunnells) and Instagram (@crunnells1).

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: Face of Horror contest: Naples, New Orleans man competes for $13K