PopHorror Let's Get Scared
As a kid, I lived for haunted houses. They were always a terrifying kind of fun. I can’t recall how many times I freaked out at them. As an adult, I learned the art, and now I have been a professional haunter for several years. It is the experience. I know who is coming, where they are coming from, and I love relying on shadows for that big jump scare. It takes talent, dedication, and passion. It is one big Broadway play with chainsaws. My haunt family is sometimes closer to me than my own flesh and blood family.
However, extreme haunts are now a main staple of Halloween. I personally don’t think they belong in our haunt community, and I will explain all this now.
Killing Tradition
I don’t know what excites people about extreme haunts. If I had to sign a 40-page waiver to participate in something, I wouldn’t consider it to be fun and games anymore. Here, the actors can touch you (always a no-no in a traditional haunt). I could never participate in them either, knowing that I was contributing to the most brutal hours of torturing someone. Totally not my style. I feel like this is a form of kidnapping, even though the person technically knows what is about to happen. There is no safe word at these haunts… there is no way out. Once you enter those doors, they have you. Some people have spent up to 12 hours having to swallow their own puke when they just can’t take it any more. The fear makes them sick. There always feels like there are far worse waiting for you.
McKamey Manor
One extreme haunt on my radar would have to be McKamey Manor. Founded in 1989, it began as a story to love. Russel McKamey set up his own haunt in a military camp just for something to ease the stress of the real-life world for a while. After that, Russel became a legend, but for all the wrong reasons. When you aren’t looking, you are being recorded for each torturous hour that you’re there, and he can put you up on the haunt’s website. McKamey Manor was just the start of a growing trend of extreme haunts, with actors being able to hit you or lock you in a coffin for hours before they decide to let you out, just so they can continue to torture you.
The McKameys were run out of every town that they moved to as they tried to continue servicing the community with their extreme haunt. As of late, it has landed in San Diego and has turned into a boot camp-like experience. Gone are the days of Russel recording every second of someone’s most traumatic experience. McKamey Manor now sits as a shell of what it was, joining other houses like Blackout. These haunts have faced tons of lawsuits over sexual assault experiences and disturbing images that get into one’s psyche and break them.
In The End
To me, these are not true haunts; they are like the Terrifiers of the industry, always becoming more extreme as things progress. I highly advocate against anyone going to these extreme haunts. Just because you want to challenge yourself, you don’t need to sign up to be that terrified. It is one part of the industry that almost every other haunt practitioner hates with a passion. People pay us to scare them; there is no waiver at our haunt. There is always a safe word or emergency exits. This is what brings people back. It is all about those pesky little feelings of a good type of fear, not fearing for their lives.
