Aline Stokes slumped in her chair Saturday night, her wrists in bandages, her arms splattered with blood.”I’m really disappointed,” Stokes said. Tonight, they couldn’t find her tubes, and she wouldn’t even be getting stitches.But Stokes, theatre senior, was still amped for the night ahead of her working at what Hauntworld magazine ranked “The #1 Haunted House in America,” The 13th Gate.Now on her second Halloween season, Stokes describes the experience as “wild.””You get spit on. You get hit. You get harassed, but whatever,” she said. “Scaring the shit out of people is really fun.”Stokes said she started the job last year after a run through the house with some friends who acted there. She hung out with them afterward and asked for what may be the perfect job for a horror flick-loving theater major like Stokes.”It’s like a performance for six hours,” she said. “It’s really awesome.”Her shift starts around 4:30 p.m. when roughly 200 actors  get into hair, wardrobe and, of course, makeup. The doors open at 7 p.m.”We use a lot of prosthetics, a lot of fake blood, obviously, a lot of latex and glue,” Stokes said, revealing patches of leftover latex on her hairline.Waiting for their turn with one of about 15 makeup artists, the actors — dressed in costumes ranging from corpse brides to gutted zombies — kill time dancing around to “Brown Eyed Girl” and “Cotton Eye Joe” and taking numerous cigarette breaks.Stokes’ “head nurse” costume for the night includes corn syrup blood, painted on stitches, airbrushed sick yellow complexion and blue veins. She adds in her own red rimmed contacts — accidentally stained with fake blood one night — and her favorite part, black and yellow teeth paint that she said tastes “like mint.””I was vomit girl,” she said of her original role. “But the head nurse quit.”Makeup complete, Stokes said she would smoke with the rest of the cast until they called places and headed to an area outside that, at first glance, looked like a fog machine had been switched on.The line already formed outside finally gets to move in at 7 p.m., and the cast can begin scaring.Stokes said scaring adults is more fun because kids are so easy.”You can hear them coming down the hallway like, ‘I ain’t scared. I ain’t scared,'” she said. ” And when they see me, and they come around the corner, they’re like, ‘Aw shit!’ It’s my favorite part.”Like most jobs, Stokes’ said hers has its setbacks and challenges. She describes the work as very mentally and physically taxing. Most nights Stokes is on her feet from 7 p.m. to around 1 a.m. for every Thursday, Friday and Saturday for the house’s two-month run. She has difficulty with the “no obscenities” rule and compared the constant contact with people to a job in the restaurant business.But there is one problem unique to her trade. “When you work at the haunted house, the one thing that you’re not supposed to say out loud is what you’re afraid of,” she said. “If they hear about that, during downtime, before the show opens, they’ll try to freak you out.”Stokes learned that the hard way.”During HAuNTcon, which is the people that rank the haunted houses in the nation, someone heard that I was afraid of clowns.” she said. “So I was sitting in my room, and this huge clown came and scared … me. Like got up in my face and everything.”Working in the house, actors learn to grow less afraid of their coworkers. But Stokes said being on the visitors’ side never loses its scare.”Even though I know where everyone is, I know where all the dropwalls are and stuff like that … I’ll still be scared,” she said.The night usually ends with makeup removal, cigarettes and free pizza if an attendance record was broken. The house has broken 5,000 guests in a night, stage manager Brian Longstreet said.Not a bad night for a girl who spent her Saturday cleaning house and studying for mid-terms.”I usually come home with dirt and fake blood everywhere,” Stokes said.- – – -Contact Julie Gutierrez at [email protected]