If you’ve ever been to a haunted house, I’m sure you know the routine. Ghouls and goblins, dark hallways, startling sounds and motions, chainsaws whirring. Many haunts follow a similar pattern so as best to serve the desires of patrons. For three years, I worked at a haunted house that took a different approach.
Each room in our haunt was set up like a scene from various horror films and tales. I worked as Samara from The Ring and Regan from The Exorcist. Haunt actors often get shuffled around when other actors aren’t able to work their scene. Joining the haunt industry is often compared to becoming a member of a new family. Once you’re part of the crew, you learn how to assimilate to their primary customs.
To give you a better idea of what it’s like to work at the haunt, you need to understand some of the language we “haunters” are accustomed to.
Haunters: people who work at a haunted house.
Screamers: actors who have one self-explanatory job: to scream.
Howling: when everyone is in position and the haunting hour begins, it is customary for haunters to howl. This is a way of saying, “we’re ready to go.”
There are three noteworthy codes that actors are commended for provoking:
Code Yellow: someone scared a customer so bad that they wet their pants.
Code Brown: similar to code yellow but worse. Much worse.
Code Black: a customer had their wits scared out of them and passed out.
As customers travel with their pack from one room to the next, they are greeted with familiar cult terrors from films past. When approaching The Exorcist room, customers begin to hear me scream and call out, “Mother? Mother, make it stop! It’s burning! It’s burrrrrning!” As the last sentence trails off, I acquire a demonic, gravelly tone and cackle evilly while customers enter. The room is a replica of Regan’s bedroom in the film. I hold on to ties that seemingly bind me to a blood-stained bed. This gives customers a sense of false security and oftentimes they will get closer to the edge of the bed as a result. This is when I quickly crawl to the end of the bed, hoist my leg over my shoulder and say, “Keep away! The sow is mine!” My next step is to to stand up, break free of one of the ties and aggressively reach out for the customers as a priest pops out yelling, “The power of Christ compels you!”
One particular evening, I decided to take it a step further. A group came in to the room in conga formation, one clinging to the next. A man in the middle of the lineup seemed particularly squeamish, leaning as close to the wall opposite me as possible. I hopped off the bed, spun around so my back faced them, and as the priest began to chant, I arched my head back towards the group as far as I could. I began to drag the bed towards them, screeching and reaching for the squeamish middle man. The group squealed and ran from the room, jumping in surprise as the priest popped out. A pungent odor lingering in the room was explained by the man’s screams from the hallway, “I think I just shit my pants!” The priest and I were commended later that evening for what seemed to be a code brown achievement.
There are many noteworthy incidents like this that one is bound to encounter in the haunt industry. Groups are stereotyped by the volume, terror, and actions. I had a knocking system worked out with actors in the room opposite The Ring room. Two knocks on the wall for a routine group, three knocks for a fun group, and four knocks for groups of jerks. This allowed me to converse with other actors since I often worked alone in The Ring room.
On slow nights, actors would visit the other rooms and do walkthroughs to see what the haunt is like from customers’ perspective. Often times these walk throughs would be filmed and later turned into a film that we all would gather to watch at the end of each season. We even gather with other haunts for post haunt meetings and celebrations, just to keep in touch.
If you’ve ever wondered whether the effect the haunt actors had on you was reciprocated, the answer is yes. Chances are your group was talked about right after you left the room. Haunters live for the screams, we thrive on fear and positive reactions from customers. So next time you visit a haunt, be sure to put on a show for them too.
Beth Beck's Blog 