They shuffled down the darkened hall, past the burning corpse, through chains hung from the ceiling. They clung together and stepped lightly, almost in unison. Necks swiveled. Shoulders hunched.
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
I spent a night terrifying people at ScareHouse. Here's what you need to know about your tormentors
They shuffled down the darkened hall, past the burning corpse, through chains hung from the ceiling. They clung together and stepped lightly, almost in unison. Necks swiveled. Shoulders hunched.
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I love things like this. Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, so I feel like it would be so fun to work in a haunted house. In addition to my fascination with all things spooky, I’m really interested in the production behind it all. It’s such a different experience for all involved than traditional theater, particularly the actors. I imagine it’s a good exercise in improv because every group’s reactions are going to be different. And a lot of time the goal is simply to scare, not to tell a story, so there isn’t much an actor could do wrong, which makes it more fun too, I think.
I also like that this article wasn’t just a review from an outside perspective, but that the author actually got to experience it from behind the scenes. Sometimes I forget that these are just regular people behind all the makeup and costumes. I don’t associate haunted houses with actors the way I do with theater. But regardless of all that, now I really want to go to ScareHouse.
I admit that most of what I got from this article I that I really want to go to Scarehouse as a visitor...but that’s me. Being one of the haunted house actresses sounds fun too. I love haunted houses, and getting to see behind the the scenes and to be a part of that would be exhilarating. I have seen a couple of pieces like this about being a haunted house actor, but I have never read anyone’s perspective as a haunted house designer (or met anyone that has worked on one). I do not know if sound and lighting design work similarly in haunted houses to theatrical equivalents, but I can’t imagine that there aren’t parallels. Designing for such a high stress, emotionally charged environment could be really challenging, as the targets are expecting those emotions. With people expecting either to be scared or to experience corny scare tactics, to effectively scare them the design would have to break their expectation before it could confirm it.
There are many articles and reviews on various haunted houses but not many cover what it's like to be an actor in a haunted house. I personally love anything scary and thoroughly enjoy haunted houses, so this article was really refreshing to read. I also find it really interesting and brave that the author of this article is one that does not enjoy being scared or anything affiliated with the matter, but still decided to go through with the offer to be a haunted house actor for a night. I never understood where the process of creating a terrifying character began, but when I got to the part of the article where she showed pictures of lined up chairs and actors with makeup artists working their magic to create a character, I realized how much work was put into this. I admire the fact that everyone, being normal everyday people, put in such immense efforts to make a storyline of a haunted house come to life. Even though haunted houses are considered almost like an arcade game, they’re much more than that.
This is a pretty neat article that presented a pretty thorough description of what it is like to work in a haunted house. This experience to me sounded like it was mostly fun and a lot more thought out than most would think. My very first job was similar to this in a way. I dressed up as a character (Christmas Spirit) at a amusement park and walked around interacting with the patrons of the Park. The experience was very similar in the fact that we came in, got into makeup and costume and then went off to interact with the patrons. Everyone created a backstory for their characters, stories that were often tested when talking with curious patrons. One thing that I wish the article would have gone in to more was what happens when people do overreact or perhaps accidentally injure you. I think it is good that the managers came in every now and again to check up on them, but I am curious to know what happens in the moment when something goes wrong.
When I was around 9 or 10, I worked in a haunted house for one weekend. It was a grassroots haunted house, run in the parking lot of a Dave and Busters, one that I somehow got roped into performing in even though I hated acting and had never been to a haunted house. It has actually become one of the most interesting experiences I've ever had, and I think it may have impacted who I am, even if it was only a couple shifts. Together with my friend, we formed a team of creepy clowns, made scary almost exclusively by the fact that we were actual children. Over the course of that extremely cold evening (we were outside in 20 degree weather) I discovered a lot about the way humans think, and also the way our fear works. I have never been afraid of clowns, and haunted houses are more fun than scary for me, and I think a huge part of that might be the desensitizing that I accidentally underwent at such a young age. To be honest, I would encourage everyone, actor or not, to participate in a real haunted house at one point in their lives. Seeing people run from my mediocre acting simply because two kids dressed as clowns were running towards them helped me to understand how much our own desire to be scared plays into it. Interactive haunted houses are one of the coolest places to spend an October, and I wish I had kept volunteering for longer. This article really brought back the memories of that Halloween.
Okay I hate haunted houses. I am not sure what sort of adrenaline rush people need but having someone come at me with a fake knife or chainsaw sounds like the opposite of fun. That being said I have been to my fair share because people like them so when I was in high school I went a lot. I actually spent two weeks in Scotland before college which is the haunted house capital of the world and saw a bunch of different museums and interactive experiences. From a technical standpoint they are incredibly complicated. Not just because they involve a lot of light and sound and scenic elements but because they involve people who are scared. People who are scared are not thinking and they do crazy scary things. I saw someone punch an actor a couple years ago simply out of instinct, and the actor didn't even seem mad about it. They were just used to people reacting that way. Halloween is my least favorite holiday of the year, and I really don't enjoy being scared but these are very cool theatrical experiences and I think they were the start of what we know now to be interactive theater.
Well Evan is there right now, so I am excited to read this article with hopes of hearing the follow up later. I LOVE the idea of haunted houses. The immersive experience of art is one of my favorites. However, I hate being on the other side of it; I do not like to be spooked. I am very fascinated with the casting and training process for haunted houses. Because they are such seasonal positions, I worry that actors and staff do not receive adequate training (this is my concern as a patron). Fear is such a dynamic and personal emotion that can bring up so much trauma for people that as an employer, I would be hyper-vigilant about employee training. That being said, the people going want to be scared and sign a waiver, knowing good and well what will happen. Still, with all that in mind, I think about working conditions for actors, hazing, heavy metal music, strobe, dark lighting. I know OSHA does not have a "Spooky Section" but I still would be interested to know whether there are standard practices within the haunted field.
What a simply wonderful experience. I identify very much with this man, I detest being scared, frightened, or even slightly uncomfortable. But making other people feel that wait is quite the opposite, nothing is more satisfying then watching someone shrink away from you and scream because of the terror you have inflicted upon them. I have actually been a scare-actor for my Aunt's yard haunt and a semi-professional one closer to my house. Like he says in the article it takes a bit of practice, scaring someone is very much an art. Like he did you do have to practice your lunging and movements so you know just how far you can extend your arms as to severely invade someones personal space, but not touch them. The Demon Mother is very much right it is all about the psychological scares, a slow approaching quiet scare is more mind twisting then a sudden jump scare. I have also gotten the variety of reaction, I had an entire family go running down the street, children so scared they can not even move and just stand there and scream, but also the smart asses who heckle your costume or makeup, or the ones that are simply no fun and say something calm and collected, which is almost more maddening than the hecklers. Nothing like an appropriately timed article for this the spooky season.
So I was at ScareHouse last night with Evan, and it’s kind of wild because I don’t remember seeing this girl in the article at all. I’m sure they switch out actors by night, but I don’t remember there being even much of a main storyline in the regular haunted house. Evan and I did the basement as well, which is a sort of immersive theatre experience that is absolutely terrifying and completely thrilling. I would definitely recommend the basement to anyone, as long as you’re okay with people touching you and you’re okay with sexual situations. Since we went from the basement to the general admission haunted house, I think it negatively impacted our experience because we weren’t as scared by the haunted house. I remember saying to Evan multiple times, “These people can’t touch me so I’m not afraid of them.” There were countless jump scares, but overall I felt a little disappointed by the lack of story. I do think a lot of that was due to the fact that we went from the very complex and deep basement into the regular haunted house. Regardless, we had a wonderful time at scarehouse and I would definitely recommend it to anyone.
I’m another one of those people who hates haunted houses. I’ve been dragged to a few in my life by friends and never really got any fun out of it- it was thrilling, yes, but not in a good way. But I’d totally work behind the scenes of one. I liked the look into the way the actors think about how to scare people, and the difference between a jump scare and a psychological scare (If I had to choose, I’d much rather go with the psychological one myself). It’s definitely a very different experience from traditional theater, where the whole audience is watching the same thing at once- here, the audience is moving through an experience in small groups, and the actors and technical aspects run on loops and are much more individualized. I’d be interested to hear about the lighting/sound/management side of a haunted house, and how that’s organized with guests moving between different rooms; I could totally see myself doing something like that as a seasonal gig!
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