Happy Hollow-scream, boys and Ghouls! Since to-fright is a time in which all things ghastly are celebrated, I thought I’d share a little horror story of my own. It’s a tale of gravely low pay, ghoulish customers and the grisly death of my dignity. Gather around, children and let me tell you the chilling tale of…

THE TIME I WORKED AT A HAUNTED HOUSE.



It all started in the acting class of my first and only semester of community college. The teacher suggested we peruse the want ads in the newspaper (this was 2001, people. Only nerds knew about craigslist then) for work in haunted houses. She cited it as “paid acting experience”. I saw an ad for Spookyworld (now defunct) in Shakopee, MN. After a quick phone interview consisting of “have you ever worked in a haunted house before” and “why do you want to work here” answered by “no” and “my acting teacher said it’s be good experience” (pretty sure I heard some laughter stifled on the other end of the line) I was told that pay was $6 an hour for a four hour night and to come on out to orientation on Monday.

I showed up to orientation with a couple dozen other “actors”. The talent manager showed us the three main attractions. A standard haunted house, a 3-D “clown maze” (the maze was brightly lit and painted red and blue. People would come in wearing those 3-D paper glasses and the three dimensional space would jump out at them… in 3-D!) and a haunted hayride. We were told that we would be assigned to a different attraction every night to keep things fun and under no circumstances were we to touch a customer no matter what they did. I lasted three nights.

NIGHT ONE:
I started out in the standard haunted house. I showed up wearing all black as requested and they threw a monster mask and some gloves on me. After popping my head out of collapsable wall panels and narrowly avoiding punches to the face (not that I was quick, the guys who took swings were just usually drunk off their asses) for a few hours a supervisor put me in the “rattle cage”. A dark room with a cage up against one of the walls so you have to walk around it to get to the exit. I was inside the cage waiting for people to walk up to the front so I could run at it and rattle the loose bars. Every two minutes I would have to run up to the cage and shake it with all my might. By 9 PM I was just laying on the floor and weakly kicking at the cage. One guy spit on me.

NIGHT TWO:
Still sore as hell from the rattle cage workout, I was thrown into the 3-D clown maze for night two. My specific role was as a statue in the “clown museum”. I was put in a super baggy clown outfit and placed in a hallway with three clown statues and an empty space. My job was to stand perfectly still in a menacing pose as people walked in. Once they got up to me I’d move and freak them out. I don’t know if it was the clown outfit or the fact that I was the only “actor” in the room but customers just manhandled me like crazy. I was shoved, slapped, shin kicked and one girl made out with me (clown fetish?). I fucking snapped, though when some kid punched me in the balls (come back tomorrow for the full story on my sweet, sweet revenge).

NIGHT THREE:
Beaten and bruised, I was looking forward to working the haunted hayride. The customers only came by every five minutes and I’d jump out from behind a bail of hay far from their reach. As I walked up to the supervisor he handed me a harness and told me I’d be working the barn that night as the flying ghost.

This actually sounded kind of cool. About halfway through the hayride the tractor goes through a big barn open on both sides. The tractor would stop for a minute inside the barn and I’d jump out and fly over them and scream. Pretty sweet. Kind of tricky, though as the “flight” was made possible by me pushing off of the catwalk and zipping to the other side of the bar hanging from a rope hooked up to a wheel on a track. The wheel would “catch” on the other side and swing me up a bit so my momentum would wheel me back. I didn’t want to push off too hard or I’d fly past the customers too quickly. If I pushed off too slow, there wouldn’t be enough momentum to carry me back to the catwalk and I’d just hang in the middle of the barn like a haunted piñata.

So there I am hanging in the middle of the barn like a haunted piñata over 20 laughing customers.  One of them stole one of my shoe right before the tractor started up again.  After a guy dressed up as a werewolf pushed me back to the catwalk with a rake I took off my harness and hopped back to the entrance.

The next week I told the acting class about my experience (I was the only one in the class who worked a haunted house).  Afterwards I asked the teacher if I’d still be eligible for part of the extra credit even though I quit.  That’s when she told me she never said anything about extra credit.