A Modern Day Addams Family
Upon entering the Timid Rabbit, one instantly becomes intrigued. The musky smell of history hits the nose and slightly fades as the eyes travel around the store, flickering between masks and props with childlike enthusiasm as they attempt to see every item crammed inside like a jack-in- the-box, ready to explode.
The ring leader of the show, Anthony Intgroen, who goes by his stage name Anthony Gerard as well as the rest of the family, instantly bounds up to greet a new customer, eager to share a story and play for a while.
The family represents the new version of the American family, a vision Charles Samuel Addams would have been overjoyed by. They created a costume and prop empire and only continued to add to it as the years went on, even opening a haunted house. The store has over 1,100 costumes and is crowded with cinema relics like a spear used in Ben Hur and hiding somewhere in the back is the original shark fin strapped to the boy’s back used in Jaws. It sells most anything you can find at huge Wal- Mart type Halloween centers like Halloween USA, which continue to pop up on October 1 every year.
They also own a 18,000 square foot warehouse in which they store a labyrinth of items that includes everything from a giant pair of scissors for cutting ribbons at openings to a rocket launcher. The Intgroen family, which has owned the store for over 35 years, has a running joke with its regulars: Try to think of an item owner and collector Anthony Gerard doesn’t have.
“The Halloween USA and places like that cannot afford the types of things we have. They come in and play Halloween for one month out of the year and poof they’re gone. When I say name something you don’t think I have it’s very difficult,” Intgroen said.
The store sells and rents intricate costumes and masks as well as the same essentials easily found at Halloween USA. With the age of the Internet and pop up stores, however, the Timid Rabbit has seen a drop in sales during their busiest month.
“If you have a restaurant and everyone goes to the restaurant across the street that’s in a trailer and they’re gonna be gone at the end of the season. How would you feel? I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t give a shit,” Intgroen said. “I’ll be here tomorrow. I’ll be behind the counter dead for three years before they notice it.”
A benefit of the Timid Rabbit, besides the vast amount of options, is the ability to rent. There one can rent a deluxe costume which would normally cost upwards of $500 for a fraction of the price.
“I find that we have a 99.999999 percent positive response, very rarely do we have a negative comment and I think that’s because we don’t do double renting. There is too much of a chance the item could come back damaged, ruined or just not come back at all,” Intgroen said.
The family learned this lesson after a student planned a party around his costume and the man that had rented it two weeks before him ruined it.
“To him I was now the anti-Christ,” Intgroen said. “He had already gotten all his decorations to go with the costume and I’ll never see him again. I’ve got 1,100 costumes. If the one you want is gone, plan a little earlier next year.”
Laura Intgroen, Anthony’s wife of 31 years, finds it hard not to become attached to certain costumes. “It’s a grueling business, it sounds funny, but it can be a lot of work. There can be a lot of cleaning and work and when someone does ruin something it’s like they’re tearing your arm off or something. Some things you just can’t put a price on,” Laura Intgroen said. “It’s hard to say this is worth about $400,000 but I can only charge you $50. Being a college town we have to be really careful.”
Along with costuming the family creates props and masks, and can duplicate almost anything. “We’re working with state of the art technology. I can duplicate a camera and in each piece of the camera you could see your fingerprints with a magnifying glass,” Anthony Intgroen said.
All of the masks and heads, which the Intgroen’s both sell and rent, are hand sculpted and painted by the family.
“My mom tells an amusing story of when I was about 4 or 5 years old and she was making bread on the kitchen table,” Anthony Intgroen said. “She started shooing the dog out and when she came back I was sculpting something with the bread dough. There was just something in me that always wanted to create.”
Anthony Intgroen had his first piece appear in the TV show “Miss Jean’s Romper Room” in 1959. He made three puppets, which came in 1st, 2nd and 3rd. He has now created up to 1,000 sculptures all ranging from simple to intensive projects.
“From beginning to end we have to first sculpt it. So all the giant heads and masks in the store started out as clay and we sat there and sculpted each little piece by hand and then you have to cast it. Then the latex is poured and let it dry and pull it. Then paint it and cut it out,” Tony Intgroen, 29, said.
Tony has seen his father create a mask in two to three days, which is almost unheard of in the industry, while some can take a year to sculpt. Anthony Intgroen began doing magic shows while studying to become a marine biologist in Gaylord. After an accident which broke 28 bones and caused severe brain damage, Anthony was only allowed to dive recreationally so he opened up the Timid Rabbit in 1974.
“I had actually died in the accident. The state police officer who arrived at the scene first, actually told me the only reason he did CPR is I was dating his daughter,” Anthony Intgroen said.
In 1975 he received a costume catalog which he ordered two costumes for that Halloween out of, regardless off their 12 for more minimum. The remaining 22 costumes he put in the store to sell. He soon found out that running a costume shop was much more lucrative than only a magic shop and began frequenting estate sales and thrift stores to gain more looks.
Anthony Intgroen moved to Kalamazoo in 1978 to take a job at the state hospital as a locksmith, where he met his future wife, Laura.
“He did his first magic trick for me on our second date, it was pretty cool. He actually had me take a deck of cards and peel off as many cards as I wanted and put them in a pile and then turn them over and asked if any of the numbers meant anything to me,” Laura Intgroen said. “It was my social security number. And I have an inkling on how he got my social security number because he was a locksmith and he had access to a lot of records, I don’t know. He won’t tell me.”
The pair’s shop quickly grew in size and soon they moved to their current location on West Main as their family grew as well. Tony, the oldest son in the family, was working in the shop as soon as he could stand.
“There’s always positives and negatives to family run businesses. It’s great getting to design all these costumes and masks that are sold all over the world but on the flip side I’ve never really been to a Halloween party, especially now that we own the haunted house I don’t get to do anything,” Tony said.
Phobia House, which was established in 2001, quickly became a run-away success. It has been named in the top three Michigan haunted houses since it’s inception.
“Phobia house is definitely a haunted house to wear your running shoes to. Last week we had several adults come up to us and say they wet their pants and two of them were guys. We actually sell diapers at the concession stand,” Anthony Intgroen said.
The family takes the duty of scaring people very seriously, one can find all of the Intgroen men dressed and hunched, ready to frighten the unsuspecting victim within the walls of the terror factory.
“We try to train the actors on how to walk and snarl. We received two comments from our victims, I mean guests, this year and they said they felt like they were sucked into a video game,” Anthony Intgroen said. “To create suspension of disbelief is something very difficult.”
Anthony Intgroen, who dabbles in a little of everything including psychology, has used conditioning to draw the guests into their ultimate phobia.
“You can condition a person’s response. We like to think we’re all individuals but you and I are the same. Pretty much the same body parts, same type of mind, we’re all essentially the same,” Anthony Intgroen said. “Understanding that you can actually condition the way a person is going to respond can be a game changer.”
The family is something of a modern day Addams family, celebrating the unusual as it binds them together.
“I’ve been watching horror movies since I was old enough to understand films. The difference is most kids are either weird out by them or crying; I was critiquing them at 4 or 5 years old. I would say ‘oh if you cut off the arm it wouldn’t bleed out that much,’” Tony Intgroen said.
Though each member of the family is adventurous and out of the ordinary, the patriarch clearly has had an effect on them.
“The first time Laura’s dad met me he said ‘if that guy does 10 percent of what he says is true he’s 80 years old. A year later he realized I’m just a very adventurous person,” Anthony Intgroen said.
Anthony Intgroen consistently proves that when pursuing a passion it doesn’t become work, it becomes play time.
The store, which is open seven days a week including Halloween, has brought many opportunities and like-minded people into the family’s life. Anthony Intgroen suggests that he is merely doing what many only dream about.
“I like living and I look at so many people and they watch their passions on TV. I go out and do it,” Anthony Intgroen said. “I was rock climbing and I thought I was having a heart attack. I wedged myself between two rocks and figured people know where I am. If I die at least I die doing something I love.”