Stuff You Should Know - How Haunted House Attractions Work

Episode Date: October 30, 2014

Ever since the Egyptians, humans have been evolving toward haunted house attractions. The level of sophistication in the scares and gore effects continues to rise over time, but the purpose remains the same: to scare the pants off you. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Just a Skyline drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is Stuff You Should Know. The pre-Halloween spooktacular week of dark content. Although this isn't super dark.

No. This isn't, you know, about attractions, haunted attractions. Right. Not dark. Although I don't want to spoil it, but there are some darkness now. Is it dark or not? It's dark. Okay.

But not all of them. Just the really creepy ones. So it's mid-level dark. What a train wreck this is. Yep. So, for those of you who tuned in thinking that we're talking about haunted houses, sorry to let you down, real haunted houses. Yeah.

Of which there may or may not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, ah, shoot, this is so bad. This is just about attractions. Yeah. These things are proven to exist. They are real. Because you can probably, if you live near any kind of major metropolitan area, you can probably find one somewhere in your town.

I think you can find them almost anywhere. If you live in a major metropolitan area, that may be one of those really big daddy ones. Right. But chances are your small town has some form of haunted attraction, even if it's the local, if it's for charity and they're trying to raise money for the local JCs, and it's set up in like a school gymnasium. Or there's enthusiasts, you know, there's home haunters, and they will, they basically

set up a haunted house in their backyard. Yeah. There's some documentary about two guys that are, I don't know if they do haunted houses or just take their Halloween decorating to extremes. Well I think that's one and the same for a home haunter. Yeah. I think they're competing guys though in the same street. Yeah.

Someone did a documentary on them because they just keep like ramping it up and ramping it up and become obsessed without doing one another. Right. But I don't know what it's called. So it just came to me right now. Me either. Yeah. So you do make a good point.

Haunted houses are everywhere. Apparently in 2014, they expect, they being the American Retail Federation, who likes to put out statistics and figures about holidays, they expect 33 million people to go into haunted houses across the United States. Yeah. About 4,000 of them, 1,200 of which are the pace of money to go in professionally. About 300 are in theme parks, like amusement parks. Right.

And then about 3,000 of them are the charity ones that I spoke of. Right. Which you'll still pay but they're not going to the Fat Cat Coke Brothers or whatever the profits are. They're going to your local community organization. Yeah. And those are fun. You might get some light scares.

It's not like the really super scary ones. Oh yeah. You pay good money to leave your body and wet your pants. One more little bit of data statistics, if you don't mind. Sure. Some numbers. Talk about role reversal. Remember, you used to be a stat guy.

I know. I got supported. In 2014, again, the National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend $87 per person on Halloween for a total of $7.4 billion. Yeah. That's right behind Christmas. Right behind Christmas. People love getting their scare on.

They really do. I don't decorate it all anymore at the house just because I think I've talked about this before. We don't have trick or treaters on my area of the street. So it just seems kind of pointless. Oh yeah. I mean, what is the point at that point? Yeah.

There is no point. You have to do it for people that drive by during the month of October to see the house. But I don't know, man, whatever you put up, you've got to take down. That and plus, it's like you get no satisfaction from somebody driving by. It's not like they honk at your decorations. With little kids coming up and trick or treating, there's some sort of payoff, I guess, to your effort. Right?

That's right. Scarring them for life. All right. Let's talk the history of this because it turns out that haunted house attractions are relatively new. But they're probably not as new as trick or treating in the United States. Did you know that? Not as new.

So they predate trick or treating? By a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. And when we look at, at first, when I read some of this history, the ancient history, I was like, come on. This is from Fangoria magazine, by the way. Oh, it was.

But then when I started really getting into it, I was like, you know what, it actually did pave the way for what we see today in like ancient Egypt to keep people from grave robbing basically. They would make little scary things like trap doors and snakes and creepy insects and things to keep people away from robbing their ancestors graves. Right. They'd put an old lady in a rocking chair who would go, behold the ravages of age. What's that from?

It's from Thompson. Oh, okay. Greeks and Romans kind of paved the way as well. They had mazes and labyrinths set up with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly, they started stage effects like fake blood and things like that. Yeah. And that's where a lot of this stuff finds its roots is in early stage special effects.

Yeah. And it still is theater when you come down to it. It's just like an interactive participatory theater that you walk through. And then the dark ages, the medieval ages, I think the dark ages, the medieval ages are part of the dark ages, but they're not one and the same. But during the dark ages, the introduction of, well, the syncretism between Christianity and paganism that led to the adoption of Halloween kind of saw a rise to this basically a scare show.

Yeah. These little plays that would scare people into remaining pious and remaining on the narrow path. Right. Which is still very big today. Yeah. It has made a huge comeback. But these scare shows, if you want to call them that, I'm pretty sure that's not what

they call them during the dark ages, but they featured plenty of gore and fake blood and violence so that the people who went to see them weren't necessarily going for the religious message. Right. They were going to be grossed out. Right. Get a kick. Yeah.

During the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous for incorporating demons and ghosts and monsters in his plays. He loved those. And in the 1800s, we've talked about this before, there was a big rise in spiritualist and conjuring sessions and mediums and fortune telling and communicating with the dead was like a really popular thing during the Victorian era. So it was debunking it. Yeah, that's true.

The Victorian era also gave us the wax museum. Yeah. Which very quickly went from celebrities to include scary stuff too. So you could walk through a wax museum and while the stuff didn't move or jump out at you, you would come across like some sort of tableau of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and like kind of a room and it was scary and lit oddly and the intention was to scare you. Even though it wasn't, again, there wasn't an overt scare or startle, it was something that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted houses to come.

They were to instill dread in the hearts of all. John Pepper invented something pretty neat in the 1800s. It was sort of set up where you use mirrors to appear translucent if you've ever been to Disney's haunted mansion. I think Pepper's Ghost is what they call it is still a trick they use to, you know, it's like a hologram sort of. Smoking mirrors. Yeah, but using mirrors.

Right. Like a two-pot hologram. No. It wouldn't be high-tech like that. No, but it still looks pretty awesome. That's right. The 20th century then, Chuck, is where we really find the progenitors of the modern haunted house, the dark rides, and there's this really neat article on Collectors Weekly.

You ever read any of their stuff? No. They write a lot of really cool long-form articles about like stuff that's come and gone, like old fads and things. One of them was, it's called Jeepers Creepers, Why Dark Rides Scare the Pants Off of Us. Nice. But it's a Collectors Weekly article. It's an interview with a guy who collects old dark ride stuff.

But dark rides were like if you went to some rinky-dink amusement park or whatever, they couldn't afford to have a roller coaster, but they could afford a little dark building with the walls painted black inside and a little train track or maybe a little boat or something that rode you through and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of the wall or a strobe light went off or something like that. These were the direct progenitors of the haunted house. Yeah. And between that and the traveling freak shows, it really, like you said, everything was in

place and coupled that with the fact that a lot of these houses from the 1800s were starting to crumble and there was nary a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy old vacant house. And to keep their kids out, people would say, parents would say, you know that place? You don't want to go in there. Right, it's haunted. Because you may not come out. Which is, that was an interesting point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah.

But if you think of the modern conception of when you think of a haunted house, what comes to mind typically is a dilapidated old Victorian mansion. With a story around it, you know, it's never just like, oh yeah, that was where Mr. Johnson lived. He was a farmer and kind of a good guy. Yeah. Died quietly asleep. No reports of his ghosts at all.

Well what's probably funny is that was the real story. But what you heard was that he killed his family and had their name written on each knife blade. That's what I heard. The first official recorded haunted attraction according to this person who wrote this article in Fangoria. Becca McHenry. He says that the Orton and Spooner Ghost House in the UK in the Edwardian Fair in 1915 was

the first, like a genuine haunted attraction. Yep, that was the first ghost house. And in France they had something called the Grand Guignol and that was sort of similar I think and around the same time. So you've got that haunted house. You've got the dark houses that are coming up in places like Coney Island and stuff like that. Sure.

And then finally you have the first big time permanent haunted house as we understand today which you've already mentioned, the haunted mansion that was first built in 1969 at Disneyland. Yeah. And apparently it was supposed to go up at Disney, oh no it was Disneyland, the one in California. Yeah. And the one in Disney World, that came up in the 70s, right? The 80s, 70s, early 80s?

I'm not sure actually. I've been to that one though. If you want to know more about that stuff though, I think Stuff You Miss in History Class did like a whole episode on the haunted mansion ride. Oh, Holly from Stuff You Miss in History Class is an absolute haunted mansion fanatic. Right. So I think they have a whole episode on it. She knows more about it than anyone, more than Walt Disney himself knew I think.

But here's a little known fact, besides what you just said. Yeah, about Holly. She knows more about it than Walt Disney. Originally the haunted mansion ride was a walkthrough ride, like today's haunted houses. But instead they found that the, I guess the people, the ushers couldn't get people on a pace easily enough and so there'd be traffic jams and backups and everything so they said we'll turn it into a dark ride and that's what they did. Yeah, which we'll get to this later but that's a big part of running your own haunted houses

is the flow. The throughput. Yeah. Also the haunted house and the haunted mansion in Disney was based on the Winchester Mystery House as far as the look. Yeah. They didn't want to have some cruddy old dilapidated psycho house in the middle of their lovely park so they said well we can make it creepy on the inside and let's just make it like

a really lovely Victorian on the outside. Yeah. And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the Winchester Mystery House I recommend it's pretty neat. It's one of ours. Yeah, yeah. Man, that was a good one. Not the Disney podcast.

Right. So then you mentioned the JC's Chuck and I didn't realize this but the idea of a semi-permanent so not located in like an amusement park or something like that. But an annual attraction that just comes up around Halloween and then comes down in November. November 1st. Yeah. Yeah. As far as haunted houses go in the United States was created by the JC's which is the

United States Junior Chamber which is like a community organization with chapters across the country and in the 70's the JC's hit upon this idea of why don't you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers and it just took off like a rocket and the JC's became synonymous in the 70's and 80's and up to the 90's with haunted houses. Like if you went to a haunted house in your town it was probably put on by the local chapter of the JC's. Yeah, I remember specifically going to some of those as a kid as well as my church would have their own haunted houses not hell houses.

Oh, a haunted house though. Yeah, just very like kid-oriented minor spooks and goblins. We'll get into hell houses later but even though I did go to Baptist church it wasn't anything like that. Surprising. Yeah, I mean it was before the concept of the hell house. Yeah. Yeah, it was just like we would have like a Halloween carnival you know.

You bob for apples and do that little fishing game where you get something clipped to your fishing pole behind a curtain. Oh yeah. Remember that? Those are awesome. It's so funny. Do you remember when you were a kid just being like, this Halloween carnival is really well done and if you go to one as an adult you're like, this is really junky.

Like are these kids really falling for all this stuff? And yeah, they are. It's wonderful. Yeah, my elementary school had a pretty rockin' Halloween carnival every year too. The Catholic school I went to had a good one. It was one of the highlights of my year. But yeah, you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples, there's no way I would put my face in that

disgusting water. No. You know? Yeah. Anyway, out of the JC's in 1975 there were a couple of guys from a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois named Jim Gould and Tom Hillegoss and they says, you know what, let's just create our own Haunted House book basically like a, I don't know if it was a book, yeah I guess it was a book.

And let's teach people how to open these up and sell it. And they distributed about 20,000 copies and it was, they formed the Haunted House Company and it was the first real group of outfit to kind of sell the plan and the stuff that you needed, the props. Right. And like details, like how to do special effects. Like a starter kit. Exactly.

And because of the success of the JC's in the 70s and 80s, private companies finally were like, we can make some cash off of this starting in the 90s. And so the Haunted Houses that we think of today, the for-profit ones, like Nether World in Atlanta or Thirteenth Story in New Orleans is another big one, that they came out of the 90s. Do you go to those? No. No interest?

No. Yeah. But we still may go, she has a hankering this year to go to Nether World just because we haven't been to, I think we went to one in LA that was pretty decent. I'll go, I guess, if she wants to, but it's not my favorite thing. I mean, I like scary movies and stuff, I don't avoid that stuff. I am depressed, Chuck. On Twitter the other day, I said, the best horror movie I haven't seen go.

And I have heard of fanci- Vampire Brooklyn, Eddie Murphy. Every single suggestion, and there are a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back. So I realized I'm really running low on good horror movies. They aren't around much anymore, like the ones that are, to me, the ones that are genuinely scary are the ones that get into your head. And I'll take a fair amount of jump scares because that's a part of it if it's got the tension ratcheted up. But the ones these days, man, just the disgusting torture porn thing, I'm just not into that.

No, I'm not either. It's just such an easy, cheap- Yeah, they don't scare me. Exactly. They just repulse me. Exactly. Which is a totally different sensation. You know, it's fine if you like to be repulsed in whatever. Yeah.

Like, it's great for that, but that's not true fear. No. It's not being scared necessarily. It's different. Yeah. I do have a recommendation for you, though. A movie? Yeah.

It's called Either the Lady in Black or Woman in Black, and it stars a grown-up Harry Potter. So it's fairly new. I think it came out in the last couple of years. The Daniel Radcliffe guy? Uh-huh. Okay. And he does a great job. It's almost exclusively just him in the movie.

Oh, wow. Is he the Lady in Black? He does double duty. Oh, nice. And there are some, like, conjuring-esque style, like CGI ghost graphics, but it's not overdone. It's not overblown, and it is a genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay. It was okay.

I would say this one might be better. And that guy, is it, I don't know if it's Thai or Ti West, Ti is his name. He's a director that did the Innkeepers and... Oh, yeah. That was a good one, too. Yeah. And then I can't remember the... Did he do House of the Devil?

Those are pretty good, because he's a little more old school. He's not just trying to outgore you or shock you. He tries to build genuine suspense and dread. The same guy did both of those movies? Not the conjuring. No, no. The Innkeepers and House of the Devil. I think so.

Because both of those were good movies. Yeah. They seemed totally different, though. Yeah. I may be wrong in that. The Innkeepers, though, is a slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took a long time to build up. Yeah, it was a little slow.

Like, you didn't even try to start the scares until, like, 30 minutes in. Yeah, you know, the lady that's in that is Kelly McGillis. Did you realize that? Yeah. I didn't know until the end of the movie it said Kelly McGillis. It's like, oh, she's got the same name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, I think... But then it's really her.

Right. She looks so different now. Yes. So, that's our Josh and Chuck's horror movie corner. We'll get back to the actual podcast right after this message. I'm Mangesha Tickler, and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking.

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You know, we should, we should have done a, maybe next year we'll just do one of those okay. Like a total horror movie, uh, talk fest. Sounds good. Those are fun. But back to the more boring subject of haunted house attraction, um, the industry is huge.

Like you said, there's a lot of money to be made and, uh, no too haunted houses are going to be alike. Sometimes these folks that open them by an old home or something and own it and do this every year, sometimes they rent out of space. Uh, the ones I've been to haven't been in the actual space. Wasn't some like cool old house or like a penitentiary or. Yeah. Apparently Eastern state penitentiary is converted.

Yeah. And that is a scary, scary place. Just normally. Yeah, the only ones I've been to are the ones that is, it's like, it's in a big open, like a shopping center where there used to be a, uh, oh, like a sales jewelry closed down. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

The ghost of capitalism. Um, and then the, you have themes, some of them, uh, I think the better haunted houses have themes because when you talk about scares, you can be all over the map, um, from doing something like with a movie theme where you have classic horror movies or serial killers or craze scientists or like vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Yes. Those are two very different kind of themes. Apparently, um, Rob Zombie's got a, his own jam going in Chicago.

It's called his house. Yeah. Pretty much. Um, it's called Rob Zombie's great American nightmare. Yeah. Which I think is supposed to be a play on the American dream, but one of the rooms is the John Wayne Gacy room and it's like John, a guy dressed up like John Wayne Gacy's bubbles the clown.

I think that was the name of his clown, wasn't it? Uh, that sounds right. Um, just kind of hanging out in like a recliner or whatever. And this is Chicago and that's where John Wayne Gacy killed his victims. Yeah. And a lot of the victims' families are still around. So everybody's up in arms and Rob Zombie's like, could not care less. Thank you for the free press.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Well, clowns are, I posted something on our Facebook page a day because of that new clown and, um, American horror story. Uh-huh. Have you seen this clown yet? Uh, twisty the clown?

Uh-huh. The guy that made that show was like, just wait, I have to, like, I know clowns can be scary, but I have got the scariest clown ever. Awesome. And it's pretty scary, dude. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm not bothered by it, by things like that much, but I saw this clown and I'm not

into that show, but I did watch the scenes that that clown was in just to see what it was like. Yeah. It's pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And there's a broad daylight killing, which are always super scary to me. Oh yeah.

Like they, they don't care about. Yeah. There's no hiding it or anything right down the open. Like a beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field. Oh yeah. And those kind of creep me out more. Yeah. Because the whole idea of like, oh, it's a good day to die, to me, that doesn't mean

it's beautiful out. It means like it's, like the world's already ending. Now it's a good day to die. Right. You know? Yeah. The earth is opening up and magma is pouring out. That is possibly a good day to die.

Then the serial killer can come along. Right. Yeah. And so if you're opening one of these haunted houses, you can count on spending, this is a good idea. You can make some good dough if you've got the funds to get it going. Sure. Um, 15 to $25 per square foot for decorating and special effects is what.

Just that alone. Yes. Which are going to, and that's not counting the renting or buying of the structure itself. Right. So you have a 5,000 foot scare footage. Okay. That's what I was going for. That's good.

So you'll be spending up to 125 grand just in decorations and scares and tricks. Yeah. And you may be able to reuse a lot of that from year to year, but you probably shouldn't put out the same thing every year because if you're in the same space doing the same thing, you're not going to get repeat customers. No. So you want to turn over like 30 to 40% of that each year to new stuff. Right.

And like you said, themes often change. So just changing the theme alone is going to require that you change this, um, your layout, I guess, to an extent, like if you're doing scary clowns, you're probably going to have to get rid of your OR setting or whatever, unless you do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary, but it just seems a little off. Yeah. You know, clown doing surgery, that's just dumb. That'd be pretty scary.

The clown hospital. Yeah. Well, don't they have that? Uh, children's hospital. Right. A clown character. That's what I'm thinking of. Rob Cordry.

Yeah. Sure. Um, by the way, this is written by Kristen Conger from Stuff Mom Never Told You and she actually interviewed a few owners of haunted houses to get some good inside poop. And, um, that's where we're like getting these numbers and they say to open one up, it's I was just making mine up. Oh, you were? Yeah.

Um, they said to open one up. Obviously it's, it's a fun job, but you've got to have a lot of business acumen too. It's not just like, oh, this will be a hoot. Right. Like you've got to be super focused in it and have a good business brain or you're not going to make any money. Plus also, um, safety is a big, big deal. Oh, it's huge.

Especially after a fateful event in 1984 at Six Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey. Yeah. There was, they had a 17 trailer interconnected modular haunted house. Dark ride, basically, but a walking dark ride. So it was a haunted house. And it was basically a fire trap and it went up and 18-agers got trapped inside and died in the fire. Yeah.

There were no fire sprinklers. There were no obvious, um, emergency exit signs or anything like that. And as a result, yeah, 1984. That's what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think like by the time the 80s rolled around, people would have figured out, oh, if somebody likes a match in here or doesn't put their cigarette out, because again, it's the 80s, so people still smoke everywhere. The whole thing's going to go up because it's all plywood and foam.

And maybe we should put fire sprinklers in. But apparently it took this tragedy to really, uh, change the industry. But it did. Yeah. And safety is, like you said, a huge, huge part of it because you're in the dark. You've got things flying out and props swooping down and people jumping out. And, uh, I mean, anything can happen to go wrong and someone can get injured. So yeah.

And actually, did you hear about the girl in 2011? No. There was an employee at one of the ones outside of St. Louis called Creepy World. And um, she worked there and somehow got caught in a noose and accidentally hung herself. That sounds like a story that you hear. You would think so. Yeah. It is so well documented that it actually did happen.

I'm quite sure. Crazy. But she survived. Oh. She suffered some brain damage to it, to an extent from what I understand. Um, I don't know if it was extensive or not. I'm on a roller coaster of emotion here. Right.

But she, I mean, she did survive, but she, she accidentally got caught in the noose and hung herself. And it's possible some patrons pass her by thinking that she was like, that's what was supposed to be going on. Yeah. I've, I've heard some story that is not that of someone who hung themselves on Halloween and everyone thought it was a, uh, just a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you need to go watch the most recent don't be dumb.

Oh, really? It comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes. Is that an old white? Well, don't spoil it. Okay. People should go watch it.

Go watch. Don't be dumb about that. And tell them, Josh, that, yeah. Um, so after you've got your safety system worked out, you've got your fire safety, got your sprinkler system, you've got flame retardant, uh, material, you've got cameras set up everywhere. Someone assigned a lengthy waiver, even if they do get hurt, um, they could probably still try and see you, but you're trying to avoid that at all costs. Uh, what you're going to have is some sort of a maze like structure.

Yeah. Uh, where you're walking around sort of lost, but really just getting shuffled along, uh, a path. Right. And there's, like you said earlier, there's this thing called throughput. So there's a lot of thought put into it because apparently the worst thing you can do in a haunted house, and this makes sense, is to let the group behind catch up to the group ahead.

Yeah. That ruins the whole thing. Ruins everything. Cause you're in a group. It depends. But I don't know, six or eight people. But yeah. And you don't want the scare that already happened to be apparent to the group that hasn't gotten

there yet. Like you see the chainsaw guy crawling back into his little, right, exactly. So, um, this throughput is basically a calculation of how many people you can push through at what intervals to say, meet your nightly ticket quota. So the, the numbers that Conger gives, um, is to, to get 500 people through in a night, you can put a group of six, you can set them out, uh, every 25 to 30 seconds and they shouldn't bump into one another. Yeah.

And then one of the ways that, that, um, employees make sure that these groups don't bump into one another is the way that they scare people. Yeah. It's called, uh, scaring forward, which makes sense. It's, uh, kind of an interesting, boring term. Um, but what they're doing is usually jumping behind you as you walk through the group to make you go in a forward. They don't want to jump out in front of you and have you move in that, in the direction

you just came from. Right. Backward. Yeah. So they want to scare you forward and that is a little tip. If you are not into being the, the, the lead person being scared, then you should be in the lead because it's probably going to come from behind you. It's pretty counterintuitive, but it's, I'm going to be in the back and I'll be just fine.

Yeah. You're the one that's going to get grabbed. Because if they jump out at the front of the group again, it's going to push the group backward and the group ahead is going to run into the group behind and that's very bad. Yeah. And I say get grabbed. You probably won't get touched. No, there apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching, but you're

going to be fully informed. That sounds so creepy. It really does. Light touching. You're going to be fully informed. Like it's not going to, you're not going to not know that it's coming. Like in line, they're going to be like, sign this and initial here and initial here and initial here.

And we're going to give you a heart attack test first. Yeah. Just to make sure, please step on this treadmill. That kind of thing. See, that's how I would really scare people to say, you know, none of the actors are allowed to touch anyone. So if you're getting touched, I mean, something has gone horribly wrong and then have people grabbing him.

Well, we'll, we'll get to in a minute, um, the new extreme ones where there's not only touching, like it's beyond anything that you could imagine, but we'll get to that soon. And since we mentioned actors hiding, uh, those are called scare pockets. Yeah. Where they hide. Yeah. Jump out from. Yeah.

So like they're hiding behind that tree and they may distract you with a bat swooping down in the other direction. There's a lot of distraction going on because what they don't want is you to be focused on the clearly placed foe tree trunk that has a smell of a chainsaw. Right. Exactly. Yeah. But there won't be any blade on that chainsaw, by the way.

No. And a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yeah. Um, because the longer they hang out and they're like, yeah, huh, right. The more you're going to be like, you're just some teenager who doesn't scare me. Yeah. And if you save a little money, you might want to double up and have that scare pocket have a couple of different ways that they can go.

Like I can jump out on these people on the right who are in this one part of the haunted house. Now I can scramble back and then hit these people on the left, not hit them, jump out and scare them. Um, and that way you're saving a little dough with your actors. Yeah. Doubling or tripling your people. That's right.

Uh, and then apparently Chuck, lastly, um, a lot of the, uh, attractions are run on compressed air that is set off either through motion sensors, which I think everybody expects. Yeah. But also through touch pads, which makes sense. Cause you can control that, right? Well, with a, with a motion sensor, every group's going to set off that effect at the same point. Right.

And what it does is it opens the valve and all of a sudden the skeleton sits up in the coffin or comes out from the side or something. Right. Exactly. Or some weird air. Exactly. Right. Um, that was a really good impression.

With a touch pad though, if you say place the square off to the left or something, not every group is going to walk over the touch pad. Yeah. So not every group is going to get the same set of scares. So it kind of randomizes the thing, which in turn makes the whole experience even more frightening. Because if you hear the group ahead at the curve scream, and you hear that scream, exactly. When you get to that curve, you're going to be prepared.

And if nothing happens, well, then my friend, you're just even more keyed up for the next one. That's right. You're keyed up to begin with walking in there because a good haunted house will put a little bit of money into getting you all ramped up in the parking lot and the line. Might have creeps dressed up, roaming around. They may have sound effects and spooky music and like an air horn blast, which is really uncool.

And that's just got you on edge by the time you walk in that place, you're ready to be scared. Um, all right, Chuck, we've teased in enough. Let's talk about extreme haunted houses, which apparently are so extreme that people who are haunted house enthusiasts, like people who are like in the industry, don't even like these things to be called extreme haunted houses because they're so extreme. That's what I gather. Yeah.

And these are, to say these are interactive is not really putting a fine point on it. They are, you're basically paying money to be treated like an assault victim for up to seven hours. Like you might be put in a headlock. You might, where's the one? There's one in San Diego. Yeah. McKamey Manor is renowned as like the worst of the worst.

The video that I saw, it was like you are like covered in blood. Dude, it was unbelievable. Put into like a coffin and somebody is like in there, writhing on top of you in the dark and you're trying to get out and they're pulling you back in and just like, it's insane how intense this thing looks. Yeah. They had a cage that locks your head in that they're dropping like fake snakes in, which is not as bad as live snakes, but it's still pretty bad.

And apparently the catchphrase of everybody who goes through these things is, let me out of here, that they shout or cry it. Well, yeah, but apparently supposedly McKamey Manor, it's open year round and they only take four people a day through this thing. But like you said, it's up to seven hours long in some cases, right? Yeah. So they'll take in, I think just one at a time, you have to come through by yourself and they only do four people a day.

It's only open on the weekends and I don't know if this is true. Probably the one rule, like you have to apply, fill out an application to go through this thing and be super fit and super psychologically fit because you're getting physically abused in some cases, like nothing you can't walk away from, but they're mangling you without hurting you. Well, yeah, and they held, I saw they held one guy's face in front of a toilet and it shot up some noxious stuff out of it, like stuff like that. So on the one hand, it is like physically abusive, on the other, it's like almost laughable

that these people really put their minds to it and they came up with shooting stuff out of a toilet in your face. But supposedly you can't leave this one at all, like there is no safe word. I just don't believe that. I don't believe it either, but it's free. The one in San Diego is free and that's the one hook is that you're not allowed to leave. But you sign a document that says, I'm going to go through this thing from beginning to end.

Whatevs. That's what I say. Trust me, I would get out of that place. Sure. Like I would, yeah, I would bust through a wall or something. Yeah, that's what it took. Chuck Merrick. But that is McKamey Manor and that was constructed by Russ McKamey, who's a terror fanatic.

They also have one in New York in LA called Blackout, one called Gates of Hell in Las Vegas and the common denominator of all these is you're getting physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want to wear again because you're going to fake blood and vomit thrown in your face. Hopefully fake. And be physically assaulted. I mean, they have scenes where you're like where there's a rapist after you. It's really dark, disturbing.

With haunted house enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things, it's usually because they say there's no story to it. There's very rarely buildup. It's all just payoff, payoff, payoff, like all of it is just, there's no, there's no, well there's no ratcheting up of tension. It's like those movies. Yeah. That we're talking about.

Very much so. It's the haunted attraction version of, I don't even know what they're, I don't watch any of them. Hostel. Oh, okay. I did see that one actually. What did you think? Anytime if you're going to pull out that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me.

That is such a trope by now, you know. You know who did do it well, was the first couple Hellraisers. They used medical instruments to really... Yeah, but that was back in the day. This heartening degree effect. Yeah. The ones that scare me the most, again, to delve back into movies, like did you ever see Wolf Creek?

No. It's set in the Australian outback. Is it good? Yeah. It's the kids whose car breaks down and all of a sudden the rest of the movie is them getting chased by this homicidal maniac. Okay, that to me is what's called a psychological thriller. That's not, I mean, yes, I understand it is horror.

Friday the 13th, that's like Hallmark horror, but it's just different. It's a slasher movie. Yeah, the slasher movie is just, it's just different to me and there's not enough true genuine horror movies in my opinion, which amount to basically supernatural horror I guess is how you'd put it. That's what I meant to. You should check out Wolf Creek. It's the...

Well, I have no problem with it. It's just as far as horror goes, I'm not scared by that. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention, because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look

for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed.

Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart Podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, OK. I see what you're doing.

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And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

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OK. I'll check it out. The murderous guy is a really like kind of a great character. And I think he falls into the pantheon of classic, like Michael Myers characters. Oh, yeah. One of the good slashers, which brings us to the Hell Houses, which, like we said, was sort of started back in the dark ages of Christianity. They do this today.

The most famous one is in Cedar Hill, Texas. And there's a documentary called Hell House on these things, I think, from like 2002. Paracamp? No. Hell House. And the idea of these is run by churches, usually, and they are to, just like in the old days, scare you into walking straight and narrow. Right.

And actually, they were originated by Jerry Falwell back in the 70s. Yeah. Those are the first ones, I think. Yeah. And then in the 90s, that church in Texas, you mentioned, took over Abundant Life Christian Center. And they took over and they started actually packaging it. They started selling Hell Houses for like $299, $299 bucks.

And it was kind of like, do you remember those JCs in the 70s that came up with the Haunted House package? Yeah. These are the same things, but for Hell Houses. And then there's modules that you can buy that cost additional amounts of money so you can add rooms to it. And so like a room you might buy is the abortion room. Right.

And in the abortion room, you're taught how to use raw meat that's like a stand-in for a fetus that you throw into a glass bowl. You've got to make sure it's a glass bowl so everybody can see through into it. Dude, the quote literally from the manual that they distribute on how to run these says, quote, purchase a meat product that closely resembles pieces of a baby to be placed in a glass bowl. Right. So that's their suggestion.

That's a room from Hell House. Yeah. And this is to keep you from having premarital sex. Exactly. Obviously. Subtlety is not a hallmark of the Hell House. No. So for example, like if you, there's one from New Destiny Christian Center, it's called

the rave scene. And basically it's about club drugs and death, teenage death. Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their own life as a result of... Of sin. Yes, of their sin. Yeah. Like the lesbian suicide room. Yeah.

Like, you know, a young lady succumbs to lesbianism and is so mistreated and... She goes to... She's not a lesbian. She's just saving herself and is mistaken for a lesbian, confusingly. And then it then kills herself because her best friend rejects her and calls her a lesbian when she went to go hug her. That was from the vice article you sent, at least. Yeah.

That's a great article. But like you said, it's all repercussions of sins. So there's the lesbian suicide room, there's the AIDS room, the abortion room, the domestic violence room, the DUI room, and they're all just enacting these horrific scenes. And till you get finally to hell is at the end, on the very end. And hell is where they're displaying what hell looks like with ghouls and demons. And then finally, you get to go to heaven. Well this is what makes a hell house a hell house, like you just send through these different

types of sin into hell and then when you come out, you emerge through hell. And then the real life preacher is there saying, hey, how about you repent? And for those of you who aren't saved, why don't you come on over to our church and we'll save you. Yeah, they call it in the vice article, they call it the, it's a really cool pastor who jumps out and is the good cop to hell house's bad cop and he's like, you can avoid all this scary stuff if you take the Lord Jesus as your savior and sometimes they'll do that right in the room and have you sign something.

Oh, I can imagine. And that's the hell house. And in that vice article, it's crazy, the author mentions that a little boy goes off in vomits during the hell house, so apparently they're very effective. Well if the object is to make you sick and vomit, I guess so. Vomit from fear for your soul. And they're still around. It seems like something that might have gone by the wayside.

Oh no. But yeah, you can still go to hell houses in one place. I have one more thing for you, Chuck. What you got? Go to buzzfeed.com. You may have heard of that website and search for 44 best picks of scared bros at Haunted House. Oh, that's a good one.

Yeah. I know where the Haunted House is, but it's all the same background, but very much like roller coasters. Yeah. They take a photo of this one spot and it's like the scariest spot and the people are... It's great. They're wonderful, hilarious photos. And like it's been around.

I think they first started publishing them in 2011, so they've been around for years and they're still just as funny as ever. It's great. The scared face is just so pure to me because it's just pure reaction. Like the toughest dude in the world. Like trying to climb over his girlfriend or push her toward whatever he's afraid of or something. Yeah.

It's whatever is happening in that two seconds. Yeah. It's pretty great. Yeah. So that's Haunted House attractions, everybody. I know. If you want to know more about them, type those words in the search bar at howstuffwords.com and since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

I'm going to call this Karate Kid email, which was the scariest movie I've ever seen. If you listened to our Karate episode, we wax philosophical about the Karate Kid movie and we got a lot of emails of people feeling great ways of nostalgia and talking about it. So here we go. I imagine you guys will get dozens of versions of this similar email. Just listen to Karate and I have not finished it yet, but I'm writing about the first seven to eight minutes specifically.

Your ode to the Karate Kid was beautiful. I got goosebumps along with Chuck. I may have also had a tear in my eye. When he described that magical moment in the film where it all comes together and we realize along with Daniel Son, the Mr. Miyagi is truly a genius. By the way, Ralph Machio's name is Son Daniel. Is that right? After himself.

Yeah, I guess so. After the best version of himself. I recently sent the Karate Kid to my six-year-old nephew to ensure that despite what his friends and media try to tell him, he will know that Ralph Machio is the original and only Karate Kid. So when I called him and asked what his favorite part was, he actually started singing, you're the best around knife, nothing's ever gonna get you down. It was the proudest moment of my aunthood so far.

Now Chuck, I implore you to watch the Karate Kid too. After all the other films that attempt to be a part of the franchise or a travesty, two is incredibly good. It is very good. The Peter Cetera song, Josh mentioned Glory of Love was my first ever favorite song when I was six. It's a good song. Because the film is a classic and I think you are missing out.

I'll watch it. I'll check it out. Anyways, thanks for sending me to work this morning with an extra bounce in my step and a song in my heart. That is from Nicole Beale at Jed's Barber Shop, Salt Lake City, Utah. Go get her to cut your head. Nice. Here.

Not your head. She's doing a terrible job of just cutting your head. Thanks a lot, Nicole. Did you know our friend Van Nostrand? Does his band, The Bangalores, do a cover of You're the Best Around? I knew he loved that song. I don't know if I knew they actually covered it. It's good.

You can go to SoundCloud, search Bangalores and You're the Best Around. It's on there. I'm going to do that right after this, too. If you want to let us know that we nailed something, we want to hear about it. You can tweet to us at S-Y-S-K Podcast. You can join us on Facebook.com slash stuff you should know. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com and as always, join us at our home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com.

For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com. I'm Munga Shatikular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change, too.

Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.