People Aren't Paying You to Scare Them

The haunted attractions industry is a business built on the premise of fear. An industry widely understood as a service of scaring people, it relies on throngs of teens and young adults who turn out annually to pay gobs of money for us to scare their pants off. But there's a problem with this way of understanding our art: it's wrong.

Fear is without a doubt a negative emotion, one that no person in this world would willingly subject themselves to. And yet the goal in the back of any good scareactor's mind is to do just that, scare people. As such, haunted houses create quite the interesting paradox of fear-thirsty scareactors battling it out against fear-weary patrons. And this is where the question arises: Why, then, are haunted attractions fun?

Western psychology is getting there with an understanding of that question (try a Google search for opponent process theory of emotion if you want to learn more; I'm not going to delve too deeply into it). For the purposes of this post, the idea is much easier understood through the ancient Chinese concept of yin and yang, which describes, in very general terms, that in order for darkness to exist, there must also exist light. Yin and yang have been used to describe just about every aspect of human experience that any person has ever lived, but today I might be the first to apply it to the science of haunted attractions. (If at this point you're feeling skeptical of this post because of it's reliance on eastern philosophy, I assure you that Western psychology says practically the same things. I'm just referencing yin and yang instead of the opponent process theory of emotion and motivation because I think it's something that, as a whole, is easier for most people to understand. If you'd like to brush up on the western perspective on the subject, you might try the Google search above or read these few Wikipedia paragraphs to give yourself a general sense of the topic.)

Yin-yang is a concept the Chinese ancients liked to apply to everything. In psychology, it reasons that we only understand feelings because of their opposites. For instance, we only have a standard for pain because we have an understanding of pleasure. That's why, in remote, food-deprived corners of the world, children are ecstatic to receive an extra serving of rice, while at the same time gobs of fat Americans throw tantrums when restaurants serve their cheeseburgers with the wrong damn toppings. Likewise, we have a standard of relief thanks only to our experiences of fear. This, not surprisingly, is where things get interesting for us haunters.

Haunted attractions not only provide fear, they are roller coasters that drive patrons into deep intense fear before whipping a rapid U-turn and dropping them promptly in the pleasure of relief.

By creating a temporarily high standard for fear, haunted houses are able to make patrons feel a rush of relief and pleasure upon returning to what were (earlier in the evening) merely their everyday lives. To further illustrate this point, let's talk about cocaine. Drugs function similarly, but oppositely to haunted attractions. Let's imagine you've just snorted a line of cocaine off a prostitute's buttocks (bet you didn't see that one coming). Your body's going to do two things: 1) Give you a brief high that lasts between 15 and 30 minutes (according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse), and then 2) because of that high, create an inherent low that, for addicts, is characterized by withdrawal. Interestingly enough, haunted attractions create this same process in reverse, and without the health risks of drug use. First, haunted attractions immerse their patrons in a scary (ideally, terrifying) environment, then supply fear's pleasurable counterpart in the form of relief. Often, haunters do this without even knowing.

Even more interestingly, haunted attractions function as more than just a twenty-minute-long low followed by a high; they're actually composed of a series of miniature lows and highs within the whole, each playing out in its own scare or scene. For more on this, check out this video I filmed earlier this year comparing haunts to roller coasters; I think it really helps reinforce the concept from an interesting perspective:

To close out this post, here's another great thing to compare haunted attractions to: jokes. When walking through a haunted attraction, we are always on the lookout for the next actor that might attempt to scare us. Furthermore, we often find ourselves hoping that an actor won't jump out and scare us! Yet, a haunted attraction would be as useless without its pop-out scareactors as a joke without its punchline. Here, let me tell you a joke: what do vegan zombies eat? What if I just didn't tell you the answer? Wouldn't that suck? Here you are all built up and prepared for me to make you laugh, and I give you nothing. The tension you experience waiting for the punchline of a joke is almost identical to the tension haunted attractions' patrons experience as they anticipate a startle. It's the startle itself that actually causes an onslaught of pleasurable relief.

The joke's answer? Grraaaaiiiiinnnss. See what I mean about relief? I bet you feel so much better now!

And as always, Happy Haunting!

-Collin

Creating Walls on a Budget

Saving money is one thing that just about every haunter, on any level of professionalism, likes to do. So with that in mind, I've compiled a list of wall construction techniques for new haunters and veterans alike! Keeping in mind that with increased quality comes increased increased price, I'm going to TRY to organize these ideas roughly in order along that spectrum.

LOW PRICE - LOW QUALITY

Caution tape and stakes can be used to create an outdoor path through a backyard or a patch of woods for virtually nothing. Don't waste your money on the decorative crime scene tape; in the dark, yellow caution tape looks identical to 95% of your patrons and you can get a massive roll for 6 or 7 dollars.

Black plastic walls, construction stage, The Terror, 2008

Black painter's plastic is the cornerstone of just about every infant haunted house there's ever been. Much like every great CEO starts out as an intern, every top haunted house starts out with black plastic walls. This extremely versatile material is perfect for creating quick walls by hanging it from the ceiling of a garage or from ropes strung across a backyard.

Old bed sheets can be hung just like black painter's plastic to create a scene specific to the color of the sheets. White sheets splashed with fake blood can create an easy butcher or asylum scene!

Painted cardboard wall, The Terror, 2008

Cardboard is often underestimated as a haunt construction material for no good reason at all. True, it's not all that sturdy, but when attached to a solid frame it can be painted and detailed just as you would detail a wooden wall.

Landscaping fabric, which can be found in convenient four foot wide rolls, is the perfect material for a transition from black plastic to more detailed wooden panels. If you can build four foot wide frames out of 2 by 2s and staple on the fabric, not only can you paint the fabric much better than black plastic, but you can also reuse the frames in future years with plywood or OSB instead.

Scrap wood walls, The Terror, 2009

Old scrap wood is extremely useful for creating a farm or hillbilly atmosphere and can often be found for free if you're feeling resourceful! Pay close attention to neighbors remodeling their homes or replacing their fences (there's nothing better than the look of old weathered cedar in a haunt).

Pallet wall behind shelves, Creep Acres, 2013

Pallets can often be found for free but take a good deal of effort to find and move to your haunt. It takes time to find businesses with a few spare old pallets and even more time to move them to your location, but the payoff can be incredible and often cost you nothing!

Cull lumber facade, 2012

Facade in action, Creep Acres, 2013

Cull lumber can be found at the back of your local Lowe's or Home Depot. When these stores find pieces of lumber that are warped, smashed, or dented, they tag them with spray paint and sell them for dirt cheap prices (my Home Depot sells cull lumber for $0.51 a piece). You can often find cracked fence pickets and dented plywood pieces that look perfect in a haunted house!

A behind-the-scenes look at wall panels, Creep Acres, 2013

Panels can be made by building modular (usually 4' by 8') frames out of dimensional lumber and then screwing on OSB or plywood. OSB is the cheaper option, though plywood soaks up less paint and ultimately can be made to look more realistic. Once you have a set of panels, modular walls are easily created by screwing together the panels in any configuration you can dream up.

Walls in the garden shed, Creep Acres, 2010

Exit of the BBQ shack, Creep Acres, 2012

Modified panels can be made out of any material you can find to help make a scene more realistic. Want an old shed? Perfect, throw on some lattice! Need a wall to look like the front of a building? Easy, cut a window in the sucker!

Custom-designed repair shop facade, Creep Acres, 2013

Non-modular walls are one of the final stops for high-detail haunts. While panels limit you to formulaic structures, building your walls from scratch for each project allows for near-infinite creativity. Of course, there's a downside that these walls cannot be instantly re-purposed for future years, so one should always consider carefully the costs of building sets this way.

HIGH PRICE - HIGH QUALITY

Increasing Startle Effectivity (Part 2): Startle Timing

In part one of this article, we discussed the components that made a startle scare successful in the instant it takes place. Now, it's time to take a step back and look at how we prepare guests for the biggest reaction possible using startle timing. This will be a shorter article that the first, but just as important.

Scare actors in haunted houses most frequently jump out at the front of the group; after all, it’s the most convenient place from them to leap out at. But is this really the most effective scare tactic? Most haunters agree, it is not.

Imagine yourself in a group about to enter into a haunted attraction. You’re reading about haunted house scare tactics (you little nerd), so we’ll assume you’re more familiar with haunted houses than most. As such, you’re the most courageous member of your group, so you get nominated to take the lead. Conversely, imagine that there’s also a blonde, teenage girl (not to stereotype) who’s more scared than anybody else in the group. Logically, the group suggests she hide in the middle of the bigger, tougher members. Let the monsters either leap out in front of you or trail behind the back of the group; either way she’ll be safe. This scenario happens with virtually every group who enters a haunted house; it is practically human nature to shelter the most scared group member within the fearless, experienced members. And this is where we get our first theory of scare timing.

Scare the middle is the tactic that emphasizes directing actors’ scare efforts more often at the middle of the group, where its most frightened members are often hidden. This tactic preys upon the contagious nature of fear; if a person in the middle of the group becomes terrified, everyone else will either scream too or laugh (and laughter is a good thing too), but if the tough, unwavering group leader doesn’t flinch to a scare, then nobody in the group will. Of course, this tactic has its limits; if every actor jumped at the middle of the group, things would get a little stale for those on its outskirts. However, until actors start showing the same natural initiative towards targeting those in the middle as they show to those on the periphery, it will be up to those who train them enforce that they do indeed scare the middle.

The second tactic of timing, developed by Leonard Pickel, is what he calls scare the gap. Its principle is simple: rather than targeting one patron or another, target the space in between them. According to Pickel, both patrons will react nearly identical to the way they would had only one of them been targeted. How Pickel discovered this tactic, I’m not sure we’ll ever know; yet it does prove itself surprisingly effective. Patrons, unsure who exactly the monster wants, feel almost the same fight-or-flight simulation as when the monsters jump at them and them alone.

Some of My Old Haunt Writing

Over the years, I've done lots of various writing on the concept of creating and improving haunted attractions for anything from Yahoo Answers to blogs like this one, so I decided it might be nice to archive a few of these long-lost pieces for the general public of haunters to have access to. I've formatted four of these articles into a document on my Google drive for easy access. I'll keep this short and sweet; not everything up on this page is complete or well-written, but there is some good information especially for new haunters and those looking to gain a wider breadth of knowledge of the craft. Without further ado, here is the link for your reading pleasure!

Old Haunt Tutorials

Happy Haunting!

-Collin