Haunted houses are not my idea of a fun evening – I scare pretty easily. I’ve never even been into a haunted house.
That is, until Thursday night.
I decided as an alternative to the usual coverage of the haunted houses and other Halloween attractions that seem to spring up out of the ground this time of year, I was instead allowed an opportunity to be an actor at the 13th Gate Haunted House. I would get to figure out what kind of people go into, and more importantly work in these kind of places.
When I arrived at the 13th Gate at about 5:45 p.m., there were people walking around in a kind of “Why am I at work again?” stupor – just like any other job. Only here, they looked like some sort of human-monster-undead amalgamation, as their makeup was not finished yet.
I met Lea Ann Hawkins, a stage manager, and she asked if I had any preferences about where I would be scaring and if I would be there all night. I told her it didn’t matter to me.
She told me I was going to be a patient in an insane asylum and fitted me in a hospital gown.
Blain Quam, the makeup artist, put something called collodion down the middle of my face, for what he told me was a “great scar effect.”
“This is going to stretch your skin and pull it tight,” Quam told me. “It’s going to feel really weird.”
It did. It felt like he had taken my face in his hands and pulled my skin tight down the center of my face. Then he covered it in some sort of stage blood. A lot of stage blood.
Then he airbrushed me so much I felt like a Playboy centerfold.
After makeup was done, I got a chance to walk around the house before everything was set up with the lights still on.
Hawkins took me on a tour of the whole facility. With the lights on and the people in costumes sitting around in various stages of makeup, I was able to brave all 13 gates.
Hawkins said Sanburn’s attention to detail – almost to a fault – is what gives the 13th Gate its scary edge.
Hawkins told me one of the details that makes a big difference is the swamp part of the house. It is actually outside, and when Sanburn built it, he used regular wood, not fake prop wood. Because the swamp has been outside and subject to the weather for about six years, it now looks like an actual swamp with rotten bridges and tall, overgrown weeds.
The house is a huge winding maze of rooms, props, sets and wax creations that combine to make an amazingly detailed experience.
Finally, it was time for everyone to get in their places. The lights were turned off and the doors were opened.
At this point, I’m pretty nervous. I don’t know what to expect and I don’t know really what I’m supposed to do.
I’ve locked myself in this padded room that faces a hallway with a window covered by an iron grate. My partner, Katie Sills, sits outside my room in a wheelchair and straightjacket and tells me to do whatever I think would scare people.
Sills tells me to scream or bang or jump out and surprise them – anything to get a reaction.
She also gives me a walkie talkie to call for security if anyone touches her or me. No one’s allowed to touch anything in the haunted house – nor are we allowed to touch them.
Sills tells me I’ll be able to hear them coming, and not to worry.
And sure enough, before long a family – with two small children – rounds the corner. It’s dark as hell, with only a few flickering lights, so I remain motionless as they walk, single file past my window.
I trigger the dummy across the hallway that thrashes around to distract them. Then, I jump up and scream – no real words, just loud – and both the boy and girl scream and take off running without their parents.
Now, I’m not a sadist or anything. And I don’t know if it was job satisfaction, but when those kids screamed, it felt pretty good to know I had caused it.
Throughout the night, I did a lot of things. I jumped on my window sill and screamed, I stuck my arm through the grating, I pounded the grating and severely cut up my hand – which added real blood to my costume.
I altered what I screamed. Nothing was really off limits because I was in an asylum. I screamed everything from “Welcome to Hell” to “Mommy!” I also simply watched people and whispered unintelligible things as they walked by.
The whole atmosphere of the haunted house is one of fear. It doesn’t really matter what you do, chances are people are going to be scared.
Some people, though, walk through as though they are in a park on a summer day.
This leads me to believe two things about them: either they are severely disturbed or they wasted their money by coming in with their head set so they couldn’t be scared.
Hawkins told me before we started if people come in and tell themselves they won’t be scared, then they probably won’t be. It’s the ones who come in with an open mind and imagination who scream, get scared and have a good time.
But, in spite of all the spoilsports – one high school girl told her friend that’s why she was going to college so she could get a “real job and not have to work in a haunted house” – I still had a good time.
Plus, Sills said I made a guy pee his pants. And, isn’t that what Halloween is all about?
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