Halloween Haunted Home Actor Hazards

Debi

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Haunting can come with hazards for haunted house actors

KALAMAZOO, Mich. — Haunted houses are often home to chainsaws, clowns and creatures that go bump in the night, but it’s customers that can be most frightening for the workers behind the masks.

Whether it be a response to fear or another influence, haunted house workers say it’s not unheard of for customers to touch or injure actors on the job.

Cortney Collia, an actress at Haunt Park inside of the Kalamazoo Speedway, said it’s rare for customers to have a physical reaction to fear. More often, she said, people try to escape by either running away or freezing up. She said in the instances where people do get violent, they don’t do so intentionally.

“Some people will come in, and their response will be to take out whatever has scared them,” she said.

Collia said she’s never been hit during her nine years as an actress. Chelsea Stommen, who also acts and whose brother and father own the park, had a similar story— until recently.

After spending her whole life in the haunted house business, Chelsea said she’d never been hit until a few weeks ago. Chelsea plays an escaped prisoner in Haunt Park’s Psycho Ward. While most actors are warned to stay back from customers for safety reasons, Chelsea said she takes the risk to perform close-up scares.

“It’s worth it,” she said. “Scaring people is a thrill.”

Chelsea said during one scare, a man punched her in the gut out of instinct. She said he immediately apologized. Being that he hadn’t acted deliberately, she said she opted to stay in character and let him continue through the haunted house.

While Collia’s never been hit, she said she has dealt with people who come into the haunted house while under the influence of drugs or alcohol. Collia’s position also requires her to be in charge of other actors’ safety, so when someone needs to be escorted out, she said she’s sometime the one to do it.

“We have had people come into the haunt that have been under the influence of things that appear that they're fine when they get here, but when they start getting fear-filled, whatever's in their system can start to cause harm,” she said.

Collia said the crew is always on the lookout for customers who might be impaired, watching for warning signs like stumbling, yelling and becoming overly rowdy before entering the haunted houses.

Collia admitted customers have run into her while trying to escape something else. She said the Haunt Park has a no touching and no running rule to protect customers and staff, but sometimes, people’s emotions get the better of them.

“It’s interesting to watch people shove their best friend into harm’s way so that they can get away,” she said. “Or to watch them shove whoever they’re in a relationship with into harm’s way so they can get out—it’s an interesting behavior to see in humans. But, it’s survival.”

Jake Stommen, co-owner of the park, said there’s also been situations where people expose themselves or talk inappropriately to workers.

“Some of the hazards that we have are primarily to guests that kind of forget, yes, they're here to have fun and yes, we're here to entertain them, but this is also a job for our staff members,” he said.

Jake said each year, both new and returning staff members undergo a multi-day training session. He said trainings include fire safety, scare tactics and how to deal with customers who are overly scared or inappropriate.

“We start off by teaching our staff members how to interact with those individuals. [We teach them to] completely back off, do not be confrontational at all,” he said. “And then they immediately radio their team leads, our security staff, and our security staff takes a look, sees what we need to do, and escorts them out if we deem that appropriate.”

Collia said being an effective haunted house actor takes more than just saying “boo.” The training actors go through also teaches them how to perform different kinds of scares, the safest places to perform them, and how to keep groups moving through the attractions.

“If someone's going to deck you, which is very rare that it happens, you're not going to want to scare them directly from the front.”

Jake said the park has trained medical staff on site to help and customers or workers who might get injured. He said most commonly, injuries are a result of someone running into another person in the darkness of the haunted house.

With customers paying good money for a good scare, Collia said its up to workers to be aware of how patrons are reacting to the attractions. She said both customers and actors know if a guest has their hands up, scaring them is off-limits.

“We'll scare other people in their group, but we're not going to scare them, because they've gotten to a point where we know if they get any more, they're going to be in a bad place,” she said. “We want people to be entertained, not so frightened that their body doesn't function.”
 
We've been to dozens of haunted attractions, probably 50 or more, most in the midwest, over the past thirty plus years. The business has come a long way in that time, lots more technology in play than back the 80s.

There is a wide range of how far the various attractions will go to scare customers. The one we went to this past weekend actually charges an extra $2.00 for a "touch pass" if you want the actors to touch you.

Dead Acres | Haunted Hoochie | Haunted House Ohio | Forest Haunt Patatskala

This is the best one I've ever been to, definitely for mature customers. Extremely graphic, actors who use language that would embarrass a longshoreman, and scantily clad females.
 
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When I was a kid back in California we would go to the various amusement parks during Halloween. Universal Studios was especially fun because they had full access to the Hollywood special effects and make up teams. I saw a werewolf costume there once that was almost too realistic.

When I was 12 my friends and I went to Knott's Berry Farm which had been transformed into Knott's Scary Farm for Halloween. We went on the log flume ride, where you just sit in a hollowed out "log" and float around a mountain on a track. The end of the ride puts you at the top of the mountain and sends you down a huge water slide. It's normally a fairly boring ride and the only reason people go on it is to get to the big drop at the end. This time however they had people in various costumes jumping out to scare people. Nothing to intense, mostly just jumping out from behind something 3-5 feet away and screaming.


Exceptf forone guy who was wearing a rubber wolf mask, he actually got up close and grabbed the sides of the log. Unfortunately he chose me as his victim, jumping out and placing his hands on the log to either side of me to growl in my face. My instinctual reaction manifested as a fist to his face. I felt the rubber mask fold into the solid bone of his skull and I heard a wet crunchy sound followed by a grunt and a curse. I turned as much as I could in the log and yelled "sorry" as the guy was sort of hunched over by the side of the track. A half second later the log was falling down the slide and into the splash zone.

Right when the log first begins it's big drop there is a camera set up to take a picture of everyone in the log. My friends wanted to stay and wait for our picture to come up but I told them we had to get as far away as possible right away. So we ran to the furthest corner of the park and ducked into a video arcade. It was then that I told them that I may have broken the wolfmans nose and that the log ride photo would be the evidence they used against me. We spent the rest of the night playing videogames in the arcade, and if anyone asked us we would say that we had been playing games all night and never went on any of the rides. Though I kept waiting for the Knott's police to come in waiving the photo of me and arresting me.
 
When I was a kid back in California we would go to the various amusement parks during Halloween. Universal Studios was especially fun because they had full access to the Hollywood special effects and make up teams. I saw a werewolf costume there once that was almost too realistic.

When I was 12 my friends and I went to Knott's Berry Farm which had been transformed into Knott's Scary Farm for Halloween. We went on the log flume ride, where you just sit in a hollowed out "log" and float around a mountain on a track. The end of the ride puts you at the top of the mountain and sends you down a huge water slide. It's normally a fairly boring ride and the only reason people go on it is to get to the big drop at the end. This time however they had people in various costumes jumping out to scare people. Nothing to intense, mostly just jumping out from behind something 3-5 feet away and screaming.


Exceptf forone guy who was wearing a rubber wolf mask, he actually got up close and grabbed the sides of the log. Unfortunately he chose me as his victim, jumping out and placing his hands on the log to either side of me to growl in my face. My instinctual reaction manifested as a fist to his face. I felt the rubber mask fold into the solid bone of his skull and I heard a wet crunchy sound followed by a grunt and a curse. I turned as much as I could in the log and yelled "sorry" as the guy was sort of hunched over by the side of the track. A half second later the log was falling down the slide and into the splash zone.

Right when the log first begins it's big drop there is a camera set up to take a picture of everyone in the log. My friends wanted to stay and wait for our picture to come up but I told them we had to get as far away as possible right away. So we ran to the furthest corner of the park and ducked into a video arcade. It was then that I told them that I may have broken the wolfmans nose and that the log ride photo would be the evidence they used against me. We spent the rest of the night playing videogames in the arcade, and if anyone asked us we would say that we had been playing games all night and never went on any of the rides. Though I kept waiting for the Knott's police to come in waiving the photo of me and arresting me.
OMG! Steve, although I feel for the poor guy in the mask, that is one heck of a story! lol
 
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It is seriously dangerous as someone’s fight or flight response is tested. Steve, did it go something like this?Lol
 
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When I was in high school, a small group of friends and I went to a haunted house set up inside of an actual museum. Cool cause real mummies! One of the vignettes was a disco dance hall (this was in 1979) taken over my monsters. There was a bare chest male actor tied down to a table in the DJ area being tortured by a werewolf in a polyester leisure suit. Any hoot, one of the girls in our group was a total flirt. She ran over and started tickling the actor. Unfortunately he actually was particularly held down by his fake chains and he couldn’t break away. I had to literally pry my friend off of that poor actor. I was surprised that the werewolf didn’t do more than just stare at the surprising efforts...probably had to obey their “no touch” policy and let the other actor’s actual torture continue.
 
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