The hallway is dark. It is surprisingly quiet and terribly noisy at the same time. We hear your footsteps and see you turn the sharp corner as you brace yourself and jump from the insane person screaming in your face. You come our way and we re-set, getting prepped to scare you. You are inside our haunted house.
Recently, I worked inside my first haunted house, the night before Halloween. It was quite different being on the other side of things. It was exciting, exhausting, fun, and pretty messed up. Here's some insight from someone working inside a Haunted House for the first time.
- It's a lot of fun the first
couple of times. Seeing everyone's reaction to something we worked
extremely hard on is really rewarding. When you scream or are frightened
in any way, we know we’ve done our job right. Thanks!
- It is exhausting. The down
time between people entering our section of the haunted house is down time
for us to remember how tired we are.
- To keep ourselves from
falling asleep, we hang out in other sections of the haunted house and
either A. scare each other, B. talk about your reactions, or C. contemplate new ways to scare.
- Like I said, it is pretty
messed up. After spending more than 10 minutes in our room, we start to
think we might actually be going crazy.
- Scaring strangers is ten
times better than scaring people we know.
- Keeping our cool when people
make remarks to us is a challenge.
- We either have a headache,
sore throat, bad breath, need for the bathroom, or are dehydrated because
we can't leave the haunted house.
- If a girl was drowned from
your tour group, or someone random was victim to Bloody Mary, pray for
them. They are planted actors and have to jump into every new group and do
it all over again. They have the hardest job.
- Once you enter our room or
scare section, we are so in the zone that we don't even really know what's
happening.
- Everyone inside the haunted house is a team. We are all working together to create the best experience for us and for our victims. We are working to stay energized, refreshed, and on our A-game.
If you went to a Haunted House at all during this Halloween season or are going to one soon, keep this in mind! Those working to put it on have worked hard and love when you enjoy/hate it. Now that I have worked inside a haunted house, I have a whole new level of appreciation and respect for the ones trying to scare me.
