October – undoubtedly the spookiest month of the year – invites a yearly visit a haunted house. While you may have your eyes squeezed shut, unable to take in the details, these attractions are no small feat to put on, requiring countless hours of prep to make sure everyone who walks though has an excellent (and terrifying) experience.
“There is an enormous amount of work that goes into putting on the show each October, most of which the guests will never see or know happened,” says Jesse Anderson, the Attraction Experience Lead at Psycho Path in Tulsa.
The process starts with prep – months of cleaning the property, repairing and rebuilding structures, and making sure the timing and storylines are up to par before the “real work” begins.
“By the time a guest arrives in October, buys a ticket and experiences Psycho Path for the night, they’re seeing the finished product of months of construction, repairs, technology, creative development, testing and planning,” says Anderson. “The goal is for the guest to never think about any of that work. For them, the lights come on, the fog rolls in and the world is simply there waiting for them.”
Actors and makeup artists are a huge part of what makes these haunted experiences so memorable to guests. Luckily for Psycho Path, plenty of veterans make the process easier for new hires.
“For new and additional roles we need to fill, we post an interest form each year that anyone can complete,” says Anderson. “From there, we work on matching people with roles that fit their personality, strengths and comfort levels.”
For repeat customers, seeing the same scares every single year would become dull, which is why switching up the narrative is important.
“One of the biggest things we do is change the storyline every year,” says Jason Muri, owner and operator at Oklahoma Asylum in Nowata. “Even if the change isn’t enormous, a new storyline gives us the ability to change costumes, themes, rooms, characters and actor dialogue. That lets us significantly change the experience from year to year without having to completely tear down and rebuild the entire haunted house every season.”
Psycho Path is located in a remote, wooded area, lending itself to the opportunity for spooky jump scares –intentional and not.
“Over the years we’ve had plenty of people come back with stories about something they swear they saw moving, a noise they couldn’t explain, or something that just didn’t feel right,” explains Anderson. “Occasionally, we never do figure out what it was. Other times, there is a perfectly reasonable – and usually hilarious – explanation.”
Every year has its challenges, but the juice is always worth the squeeze.
“One of the hardest parts is timing and throughput,” says Muri. “You have to figure out exactly how much time to leave between groups and how many people to send though at once.”
In the end, though, as long as audience members leave wowed by the experience – thinking, “how did they pull this off?” –Anderson is more than happy.
“If that’s their reaction,” he says, “then all of that invisible work did exactly what it was supposed to do.”
