October 26, 2019 • 48 mins
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.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hey everybody, it's me your old friend Josh. And
for this week's s Y s K SELEC, since we're
nearing Halloween, I chose a wonderful little episode from two
thousand and fourteen called How Haunted House Attractions Work full disclosure.
I was thinking that this one's going to be boring,
but to my surprise, it was not. So I hope
you enjoy it as much as I surprisingly did. Welcome
(00:26):
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart
Radios How Stuff Works. 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 uh dark content. Although this isn't super dark. No,
(00:51):
this isn't you know about attractions haunted attractions? Right, I'm dark?
Although thank I don't want to spoil it, but there
are some darkness. Now, is it dark or not? It's dark,
but not all of them, just just the really creepy ones.
So it's made mid level dark. What a train wreck
this is. So for those of you who tuned in
(01:13):
thinking that we're talking about haunted houses, sorry to let
you down real haunted houses, uh, of which there may
or may not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, shoot,
this I wanted to ye, 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
(01:33):
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 maybe
one of those really big daddy ones. But chances are
your small town has some form of haunted attraction, even
if it's the local uh if it's for charity and
(01:56):
they're trying to raise money for the local j c's
and it's uh it up in like a school gymnasium,
or there's enthusiasts home haunters, um, 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
(02:17):
Halloween um decorating two extremes. Well, I think that's one
and the same for a home haunter. Yeah, I think
they're they're competing guys though in the same street that uh,
someone did a documentary on because they just keep like
ramping it up and ramping it up, have become obsessed
without doing one another. But I don't know what's called,
so it just came to me right now. Me either,
(02:37):
But um, you do make a good point how haunted
houses are everywhere. Apparently in two thousand fourteen, they expect
they being the American Retail Federation who likes to put
out statistics and figures about holidays, um, they expect thirty
three million people to go into haunted houses across the
(02:59):
United States. Yeah, about four thousand of them of which
are the pay some money to go in professionally. Uh,
about three in theme parks like you know, like amusement parks.
And then about three thousand of them are the charity
ones that I spoke of, right, which you'll still pay.
But they they're not They're not going to the fat
Cat Coke Brothers or whatever. The profits aren't there going
(03:21):
to you know, your local community organization. Yeah, and those
are fun, you know, you might get some light scares,
it's not like these, um, the really super scary ones
where you pay good money to, um, you know, to
leave your body and wet your pants. Just one more
one more, um, little bit of of data statistics if
(03:44):
you know mine some numbers talk about roll reverse. Remember
you used to be static, guy, I know, I got
so bored it. Um. In two thousand and fourteen, again,
the National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend eighty seven
dollars per person on Halloween, for a total of seven
point four billion dollars. Yeah, that's right behind Christmas, right
(04:06):
behind Christmas. People love getting their scare on, they really do.
I don't decorate at 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, you know,
I mean, what is the point at that point? There
is no point. Emily thinks we could do it for
(04:29):
people that drive by during the month of October, like,
you know, to see the house. But I don't know, man,
you gotta you gotta whatever you put up, you gotta
take down that. And plus it's like you get no
satisfaction from somebody driving by a sound like they honk
at your declarations. With little kids coming up and trick
or treating, there's some sort of payoff, I guess to
your your effort, right, that's right, scarring them for life.
(04:50):
All right? So, um, 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 um. At first,
(05:12):
when I read some of this history, the ancient history,
I was like, come on, this is from Fangoria magazine,
by the way, o us. But then when I started
really getting into us, like you know what, there's actually
it actually did pave the way for what we see
today in like ancient Egypt. To keep people from grave robbing, Basically,
they would uh make little scary things like trap doors
(05:35):
and um snakes and creepy insects and things to keep
people away from robbing their ancestries, their ancestors graves. They
put an old lady in a rocking chair who would
go behold the ravages of age? What's that from the Simpsons? Okay? Uh?
Greeks and Romans um uh kind of paved the way
(05:58):
as well. They had um mazes and labyrinths set up
with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly,
they started stage effects. Yeah, like fake blood and things
like that. Yeah, Um, they they And that's where a
lot of this stuff finds its roots is in early
(06:18):
stage special effects. Yeah, it was, and it's still his
theater when you come down to it. It's just like
an interactive participatory theater, right that you walk through. And
then the the Dark Ages, that 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
(06:38):
during the Dark Ages, um, the the introduction of well,
the syncretism between Christianity and Paganism that led to the
adoption of Halloween, um kind of saw rise to this,
uh basically a scare show. Yeah, these little plays that
would scare people into meaning pious and remaining on the
(07:01):
narrow path, right, which is still very big today. It's
made a huge comeback. Um. But these these scare shows,
if you want to call him that, I'm pretty sure
that's not what they call them during the Dark Ages,
but they were. They featured plenty of gore and fake
blood and violence, and Um, so the the the people
who went to saw see him weren't necessarily going for
(07:24):
the religious message. They were going to you know, be
grossed out right and get a kick. Yeah. Uh. During
the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous for um incorporating like demons
and ghosts and monsters in his plays. He loved those.
And in the eighteen hundreds, We've talked about this before,
there was a big rise in spiritualists and conjuring sessions
(07:45):
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. Um. The
Victorian era also gave us um the wax museum, Yeah,
which very quickly went from celebrities to include scary stuff too.
(08:07):
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 you know,
Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and like kind of a
room and it was scary and lit oddly, and you
were meant to The intention was to scare you, even
though it wasn't. Again, there wasn't an overt scare or startle.
(08:30):
It was something that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted
houses to come. They were to instill dread in the
hearts of all. Uh. John Pepper invented something, um pretty
neat in the eighteen hundreds. It was, uh sort of
set up where here where you use mirrors to appear translucent.
If you've ever been to Disney's Haunted Mansion. Um, I
(08:52):
think Pepper's ghost is what they call. It is still
a trick they used to. Uh, you know, it's when
you it's like a hologram sort of smoking mirrors. Yeah,
but using mirrors, right, It's not like the Tuopoc hologram.
Wasn't high tech like that. No, but it still looks
pretty awesome, that's right. The twentieth century, then, Chuck is
(09:13):
where we really find the progenitors of the modern haunted house.
The dark Rides. And there's this really neat um article
on Collector's Weekly. You ever read any of their stuff.
They write a lot of really cool long form articles
about like stuff that's come and gone, like all dads
and things, And one of them was, um, it's called jeepers, creepers.
(09:35):
Why dark Rides scare the pants off of us. But
the Collector's Weekly article, it's an interview with the guy
who collects old dark rides 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
(09:57):
maybe a little boat or something that roade you through,
and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of
the wall, or you know this, the a strobe light
went off or something like that. And these were the
direct progenitors of, uh, the Haunted House. Yeah, and between
that and the traveling freak shows, um, it really, like
(10:17):
you said, everything was in place, and a couple that
with the fact that a lot of these houses from
the eighteen hundreds were starting to crumble and there was,
you know, narry a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy
old vacant house. And to keep their kids out, you know,
people would say, parents would say, you know that place,
you don't want to go in there, Well, it's all
on it because you may not come out, which is
that was an interesting point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah,
(10:41):
but the if you think of the modern conception of
when you think of a haunted house, what comes to
mind typically is uh dilapidated old Victorian mansion with a
story around it. You know, it's never just like, oh yeah,
that was where Mr Johnson, that he was a farmer
and kind of a good guy, died quietly asleep. No
reports of his ghost at all. That well, what's probably
(11:03):
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. Um, that's what I heard.
The first official recorded haunted attraction according to this person
who wrote this article in Fangoria, Beckham McKendry. He says
(11:23):
that Orton and Spooner, the Orton and Spooner ghost House
in the UK uh and the Edwardian Fair in nineteen
fifteen was the first UH like genuine haunted attraction. Yep,
that was the first ghost house. And in France they
had something called the Grand uh guen All and um
that was sort of similar, I think, and around the
(11:45):
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. And then finally you
have the first big time permanent haunted house as we understand,
to which you've already mentioned, the Haunted Mansion that that
was first built in the nineteen sixty nine at Disneyland,
(12:06):
and apparently it was supposed to go up at Disney
Oh no, it was so Disneyland, the one in California,
and the one in Disney World that came up in
the seventies, right, uh, late seventies, early eighties. I'm not sure.
Actually I've been to that one though, if you want
to know more about that stuff. Though, I think, um,
Stuff you missed in History class did like a whole
(12:27):
episode on the Haunted Mansion Ride. Oh Holly from Stuff
You miss in History Class is an absolute Haunted Mansion fanatic,
So I think they have a whole episode on. 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 about Holly, she knows more
about it than Walt Disney. Um. Originally, the the Haunted
(12:51):
Mansion Ride was a walkthrough ride like today's Haunted Houses. Um.
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.
That's what they did. Yeah, which we'll get to this later,
(13:11):
but that's a big part of running your own haunted
houses is the flow. 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 credit old, dilapidated psycho house in
the middle of their lovely park. So they says, well,
we can make it creepy on the inside, and let's
just make it like a really lovely Victorian on the outside. Yeah.
(13:34):
And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the
Winchester Mystery House, I recommend it's pretty neat this one
of ours. Yeah, yeah, man, that was a good one.
Not the Disney podcast, right. Um, So then you mentioned
that j C's Chuck and I didn't realize this, but
the idea of a semi permanent so not not located
in like an amusement park or something like that, but um,
(13:57):
they an annual attract action that just comes up around
Halloween and then comes down in November. November one. Um,
as far as haunted houses go in the United States
was created by the j c S, which is the
United States Junior Chamber, which is like a community organization
with chapters across the country. And in the seventies, the
(14:20):
j c's hit upon this idea of well, why don't
you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers,
and it just took off like a rocket, and the
j CS became synonymous in the seventies and eighties and
up to the nineties 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 j c's. Yeah,
(14:41):
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, yeah, just vary like kid oriented minor uh,
spooks and goblins. Um, we'll get into hell houses later.
But um, even though I did go to Baptist which
it wasn't anything like that surprising. Yeah, I mean that
(15:03):
was before the concept of the hell house. Um. Yeah,
it was just like we would have like a Halloween carnival,
you know, bob for apples and did that little fishing
game where you get something clipped to your fishing pole
behind the curtain. It's so funny. Do you remember when
you were a kid just being like, God, this Halloween
(15:23):
carnival is really well done. Yeah. Man, if you go
to one as an adult, you're like, this is really junkie,
Like are these kids really falling for all this stuff?
And yeah they are. It's wonderful. Yeah. My elementary school
had a pretty rock and Halloween carnival every year too.
It was one of the highlights of my year. But um, yeah,
you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples,
(15:43):
there's no way I would put my face in that
disgusting water, you know. Yeah. Um. Anyway, out of the
j CS in there were a couple of guys from
a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois named Jim Goulden, Tom Hill
Gas and they says, you know what, let's just create
our own Haunted House book basically like a yeah, I
(16:08):
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
twenty copies, and it was they formed the Haunted House
Company and it was the first real U group of
outfit to kind of just sell the plan and the
stuff that you needed, the props right, like details like
(16:29):
how to do special effects, a starter kit exactly. UM.
And because of the success of the j cs UH
in the seventies and eighties, private companies finally were like, oh,
we can make some cash off of this. Starting in
the nineties, and so the haunted houses that we think
of today, the sure profit ones like Another World in
Atlanta or Thirteenth Story of New Orleans is another big one.
(16:53):
UM that that they came out of the nineties. Do
you go to those? No interest? Yeah? Do you now?
Emily and I we still may go. She she has
a hanker in this year to go to another world
just because we haven't been to I think we went
to one in l A that was pretty decent. Um.
I'll go, I guess if she wants to. But it's
(17:16):
not my favorite thing. I mean, I don't I like
I like scary movies and stuff. I'm not I don't
avoid that stuff. I am depressed. Chuck on Twitter the
other day, I said the best scary movie or the
best horror movie. I haven't seen go and I have
heard of Vampire Brooklyn, Eddie Murphy, every single every single suggestion,
(17:37):
and there are a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back.
So I realized I'm really running low on good horror movies.
But there 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. Um, 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.
(18:00):
But um, the ones these days, man, just that the
disgusting torture important 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, just repulse me exactly, which is
a totally different sensation, you know. But that's fine if
you like to be repulsed in whatever like that's it's
great for that. But that's not true fear. It's not
(18:23):
um being scared necessarily, it's different. Yeah, I do have
a recommendation for you, though. It's called either the Lady
in Black or Woman in Black, and it's a it
starts a growing up Harry Potter, so it's fairly new.
I think it's that came out in the last couple
of years. Daniel Ratcliff okay, and he does a great job.
It's almost exclusively just him in the movie Lady and Black.
(18:46):
He does double duty. And there are some like um
like Conjuring esque style like c g I ghost graphics,
but it's not overdone, and it's not overblown, and it
is genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay, it was okay.
This way, I would say this one might be better.
(19:07):
And and that guy is it I don't know if
it's Tie or t West tis his name. He's a
director that did Um 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.
It's um. He tries to build genuine suspense. And Dread
(19:29):
the same guy to both of those movies. Uh not
the Conjuring, No, No, The Innkeepers and the House of
the Devil. I think so because both of those were
good movies. Yeah, they seem totally different though. Yeah, I
may be wrong in that, but Innkeepers that was a
slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took
a long time to build. That was a little slow,
Like he didn't even try to start the scares until
(19:53):
like thirty minutes in. Yeah, you know the lady that's
in that is uh Kelly McGillis, did you realize that? Yeah,
I didn't know till the end of the movie, it
said Kelly McGillis was like, Oh, she's got the same
name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, but then
it's really her. She looks so different now. So that's
our Josh and Chuck's for a movie corner. You know,
(20:44):
we should we should have done a Maybe next year
we'll just do one of those, like a total horror
movie 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
(21:04):
houses are going to be alike Sometimes these folks that
opened 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 apparently Eastern State Penitentiary is converted.
(21:25):
Yes here and that is a scary, scary place. Just normal. Uh.
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 oh like
a sales jewelry closed down right, yeah, yeah, the ghost
of capitalism. Um. And then you have themes, some of them.
(21:46):
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 crazy scientists,
or like vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Yes,
those are two very different kind of themes. Apparently, Um,
Rob Zombies got his own jam going and called his house.
(22:12):
Yeah pretty much. Um it's called Rob Zombies Great American Nightmare.
I think it's supposed to be a play on the
American Dream. But one of the rooms is the John
Wayne Gayzy Room, and it's like 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
(22:34):
a recline or whatever. And this is Chicago, and that's
where John Wayne Gazy killed his victims, and a lot
of the victims families are still around, so everybody's up
in arms and rob zombies like could not care less.
Thank you for the free press, right exactly, Well, clowns
are I posted something on our Facebook page a day
because that new clown and um American horror story. Have
(22:55):
you seen this clown yet? No, Twisty the clown? Huh.
The guy that made that show is like just wait, Like,
I know clowns can be scary, but I have got
the scariest clown ever. And it's pretty scary, dude. 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
(23:15):
in just to see what it was. Like. Yeah, it's
pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And
and there's a broad Daylight killing which are always super
scary to me. Oh yeah, like they don't care about
there's no hiding it or any Yeah. Thats like a
beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field, and those
kind of creep me out more. Yeah, because the whole
idea of like, oh, it's a good day to die
(23:38):
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, 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. Uh So, if you're opening one of these
huntit houses, you can count on spending because this is
(23:59):
a good idea. You can make some good dough if
you've got the funds to get it going. Um per
square foot for decorating in special effects is what just
that alone is what you're gonna and that's not counting
the renting or buying of the structure itself. Right, so
you have five thousand foot scare footage. Okay, that's what
I was going for. That's good. You can be spending
(24:20):
up to a 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. So you want to turn over
like that each year it's a new stuff. And like
(24:44):
you said, themes often change, So just changing the theme
alone is going to require that you change this this, um, well,
your layout, I guess to an extent. Yeah, Like, if
you're doing scary clowns, you're probably gonna have to get
rid of your O R setting or whatever, unless you
(25:05):
do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary,
but it just seems a little off. Yeah, you clown
doing surgery, that's just um, that'd be pretty scary. The
clown hospital, Yeah, yeah, well don't they have that children's
hospital has a clown character? That's what I'm thinking, Rob Cordrey, Yeah, sure. Um.
(25:25):
And by the way, this is written by Kristen Konger
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. I was
just making mine, not oh you are, Um, they said
to open one up. You're not only obviously it's it's
a fun job, but you've got to have a lot
(25:46):
of business acumen too. It's not just like, oh, this
will be a hoot, Like you've got to be super
focused and have a good business brain or you're not
gonna make any money. Plus also, um, safety is a big,
big deal, especially after a fateful of four. At six
Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, there was they had
(26:06):
a seventeen trailer interconnected modular haunted house dark ride basically
but a walking dark ride. So it's a haunted house. Um.
And it was basically a fire trap and it went
up and eight teenagers got trapped inside and died in
the fire. There were no fire sprinklers, there were no obvious, um,
(26:30):
emergency exit signs or anything like that. And um, that's
what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think like by
the time the eighties 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 eighties, so people
smoked everywhere. The whole thing's gonna go up because it's
(26:52):
all plywood and foam, and maybe we should put fire
sprinklers in. But apparently it took this tragedy to really
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,
(27:13):
anything can happen to go wrong and someone can get injured.
So yeah, And actually, did you hear about the girl
In two thousand eleven, 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 it is
(27:34):
so well documented that it actually did happen. I'm quite sure.
But she survived. Oh Um, 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, 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
(27:56):
passed her by thinking that. She was like, that's what
was is 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 just
a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you need
to go watch the most recent don't be dumb. Oh
it comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes?
(28:17):
Is that an old Well, don't spoil it. Okay, people
should go watch it. Go watch don't be dumb about that. Man,
Go and tell him Josh that you know. 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 material, you've got camera set up everywhere, everyone assigned
(28:37):
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. What you're gonna
have is some sort of amaze like structure where you're
walking around sort of lost but really just getting shuffled
along a path. And there's, like you said earlier, there's
(28:59):
this thing called through put. 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
because you're in a group. It depends, but I don't
know six or right people. But and you don't want
(29:19):
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 tree 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 numbers that Conger
(29:40):
gives UM is to to get five people through in
a night. You can put a group of six. You
can set them out every to thirty seconds, and they
shouldn't bump into one another. 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 scaring forward, which makes sense,
(30:03):
it does. It's 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 backward. Yeah, so they want
to scare you forward, and that is a little tip.
(30:23):
If you are not into being 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. Yeah,
but I think I'm going to be in the back
and I'll be just fine. Yeah, you're the one that's
gonna 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
(30:46):
into the group behind, and that's very bad. Yeah, and
I say get grabbed, you probably won't get touched. Now.
There apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching.
But you're going to be fully informed. That's so crazy.
He really does light touching. You're gonna be fully informed,
Like it's not gonna you're not gonna not know that
(31:06):
it's coming. Like in line, they're going to be like
sign this an initial here, an initial here, an initial here,
and we're gonna give you a heart detect 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. Right, And then have
(31:29):
people craving, well, well 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. Uh. And since we mentioned actors hiding,
those are called scare pockets, Yeah, where they hide and
(31:49):
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 fox tree trunk that has
the smell of a chainsaw. Yeah, but there won't be
any blade on that chainsaw, by the way. No. And
(32:10):
a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yeah. Um,
Because the longer they hang out and they're like yeah right,
the more you're gonna be like you're just some teenager, yeah,
who who doesn't scare me? Yeah, And if you're looking
to save a little money, you might want to double
up and have that scare pocket have a couple of
different ways that it can go, Like I can jump
(32:32):
out on these people on the right who are in
this one part of the haunted house, and then 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 and then apparently chuck lastly. Um.
(33:19):
A lot of the attractions are run on compressed air
that is set off either through motion sensors, which I
think everybody expects, but also through touch pads, which makes
sense because you can control that right well with a
with a motion sensor. Every group is going to set
off that effect at the right and what it does
(33:39):
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, 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, so not every group is going to
(34:01):
get the same set of scare, 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 scream exactly when you get
to that curve, you're gonna be prepared. And if nothing happens, well, then,
my friend, you're just even more keyed up for the
next one. That's right, Yeah, And you're keyed up to
(34:22):
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 in the line.
They might have creeps dressed up roaming around. Uh. They
may have sound effects and spooky music and like an
airhorn blast, which is really uncool, and that's just got
you on edge. By the time you walk in that place,
(34:43):
you're ready to be scared. Um. Alright, chuck, Yeah, we've
teased it 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, I
don't even like these things to be called extreme haunted
houses because they're so extreme. Yeah, that's what I gather,
(35:07):
and these are to say these are interactive, is uh
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. Uh. McCamy. Manner is renowned
(35:32):
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 their writhing on top of you in
the dark, and you're trying to get out and they're
pulling you back in right and and just like it's insane.
How intense this thing looks. Yeah, they had a cage
(35:52):
that locks your head in that they're dropping like fake
snakes in, which is not as bad as life snakes,
but it's still pretty bad. And apparently the um the
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 mckami manner. It's open year round and
(36:16):
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. Supposedly, the one rule, like you
have to apply fill out an application to go through
(36:38):
this thing and be super fit and super psychologically fit
and um, because you're getting physically like abused in some cases,
like nothing you can't walk away from. But you know
they're 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
(36:59):
stuff out of it, like stuff like that. So on
one hand, it is like physically abusive. On the other
it's like almost laughable that they like, these people really
put their minds to it. Yeah, and they came up
with shooting stuff out of a toilet in your face. Um,
but supposedly you can't leave this one at all, Like
(37:19):
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 really yeah, it's free. And the
and that's the one hook is is that you're not
allowed to leave what you You sign a document that
says I'm going to go through this thing from beginning
to end. That's what I say. I would trust me.
I would get out of that place like I would. Yeah,
(37:41):
I would bust through a wall or something. That's what
it took Chuck Murck. But that is McCamy manner, and
that is was constructed by Russ McCamey, who's a terror fanatic. Uh.
They also have one in New York and l A
called Blackout, one called Gates of Hill in Las Vegas.
And the common denominator or of all these is you're
(38:03):
getting physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want
to wear again, because you're gonna 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. Right, it's really dark, so disturbing.
They with Haunted House enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things.
(38:23):
It's usually because they say there's no story to it.
There's very rarely build up. It's all just payoff, off, payoff,
like all of it. It's just there's no there's no well,
there's no ratcheting up of tensions. It's like those movies
that we're talking about. It's the haunted attraction version of Uh.
I don't even know what there are. I don't watch
(38:43):
any of them. Like Hostile Okay, I did see that one. Actually,
what do you think anytime if you're gonna pull out
that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me. Yeah,
that is such a trope by now you know you
know who did do it well was the first couple
of hell raisers. They used medical instruments to real was
(39:04):
back in the day disheartening degree effect. Yeah, the ones
that scare me the most. Again, to delve back into
movies like did you ever see Wolf Creek and it's
setting the Australian Outback is like, yeah, it's the kids
whose car breaks down and all of a sudden, the
rest of the movie is them getting traced chased by
this homicidal maniac. Okay, that to me is what's called
(39:26):
the psychological thriller. Yeah, that's not I mean, yes, I
understand it is horror Friday thirteenth, that's like Hallmark Corp.
But it's different. Yeah, the slasher movie is just it's
just different. I mean there's not enough true, genuine horror
movies in my opinion, which amount to basically supernatural horror.
(39:46):
I guess that's how you'd put it. That's what I
meant too. You should check out Wolf Creek. It's the
the will. I have no problem with it. It's just
as far as horror goes. I'm not scared by that.
I want to be scared. You might be scared. Okay,
I'll check it out. The 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. Yeah,
(40:08):
like yeah, one of the good slashers. Um which brings
us to the hell houses, which um, like we said,
was sort of started back in the dark ages of Christianity. Uh,
they they do this today. The most famous is in uh,
Cedar Hill, Texas. And there's a documentary called hell House
(40:28):
on these things. I think from like two thousand to
camp and uh, the idea of these is run by
churches usually and they are too just like in the
old days, scare you into walking the straight and narrow, right,
And actually they were they were originated by Jerry Folwell
(40:50):
back in the seventies. Yeah, those are the first ones,
I think. Yeah. And then in the nineties that church
in Texas you mentioned took over Abundant Life Christian Center, um,
and they took over and they started actually packaging it.
They started selling hell houses for like tucks, and it
was kind of like do you remember those j c's
(41:10):
in the seventies that came up with the Haunted House package.
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 as the
abortion room. And in the abortion room, UM, you're taught
how to use raw meat that's like a stand in
(41:32):
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,
so that their suggestion, that's a room from hell house. Yeah,
and this is to keep you from having premarital sex exactly. Obviously,
(41:54):
subtlety is not a hallmark of the hell House. Um.
So for example, like if you there was, there's one
from New Destiny Christian Center. Um, it's called the Rave
scene and basically it's about um club drugs and death,
teenage death. Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their
(42:16):
own life. Um, as a result of of sin, Yes,
of their sin. Yeah, like the lesbian suicide Room, where uh,
you know, a young lady succumbs to lesbianism and uh
is so mistreated and um, she she goes to she's
she's not a lesbian, she's just saving herself and is
(42:38):
mistaken for a lesbian confusingly, and then uh it then
kills herself because her best friend rejects her and calls
her a lesbian when she went to go hugger. That
was that was from the Vice article you sent at least. Yeah,
that's a great article. Um, but it's all repercussions of sins.
So there's the lesbian suicide room. There is the aide room,
(43:01):
the abortion room, the domestic violence room, the d u
I room, and they're all just enacting these horrific scenes
and until you get finally to Hell is at the end,
at the very end. Um in Hell is where they're
you know, displaying what Hell looks like with ghouls and
demons and uh. And then finally you get to go
(43:21):
to Heaven. Well, this is what makes the Hell House.
The Hell House end through these different types of sin
into Hell, and then when you come out, you emerge
through Hell and then the real life preachers there, yeah,
saying hey, how about you repent and for those of
you who aren't saved, why don't you come on over
(43:42):
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 is bad cop. And he's like,
you can avoid all this scary stuff if you, uh,
you know, take the Lord Jesus as your savior. And
sometimes they'll do that right in the room and have
you signed something? Oh, I can imagine, and uh, that's
(44:04):
the Hell House. And in that Vice article, it's crazy. Um,
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, yeah,
I guess so vomit from fear for your soul. And
they're still around. It seems like something that um might
(44:25):
have gone by the wayside. But yeah, you can still
go to hell houses in one of places. I have
one more thing for you, Chuck what you got. Go
to BuzzFeed dot com. You may have heard of that website, uh,
and search for forty four best picks of scared brows
at Haunted. Yeah. I can't remember where the Haunted House is,
but it's all the same background, but very much like
(44:47):
roller coasters. They take a photo of this one spot
and it's like the scariest spot, and um, the people
are they're wonderful, hilarious photo and like it's been around.
I think they first started publishing them in two thousand eleven,
so they've been around for years and they're still just
as funny as ever. It's great that the scared face
(45:09):
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. Yeah, it's whatever is happening in that two seconds.
It's pretty great. So that's Haunted House attractions everybody I know. Uh,
(45:29):
if you want to know more about them, type those
words in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
I'm gonna call this Karate Kid an email Awesome, which
was the scariest movie I've ever seen. Uh. If you
listen to Karate episode, we wax philosophical about the Karate
Kid movie and we got a lot of emails of um,
(45:50):
people feeling great ways of nostalgia uh and talking about it. Um.
So here we go. I imagine guys will get dozens
of versions of this similar email. Uh. Just listened to
Karate and Uh, 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
goose bumps along with Chuck. I may have also had
(46:12):
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 that Mr Miyagi is
truly a genius. Um. By the way, Ralph Maccio is
named his son Daniel 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
(46:34):
that despite what his friends and media try to tell him,
he will know that Ralph Maccio is the original and
only Karate Kid. When I called him and asked what
his favorite part was, he actually started singing, You're the
best around, nothing's ever gone and get you down. It
was the proudest moment of my aunt hood so far. Now, Chuck,
I implore you to watch The Karate Kid too, after
(46:55):
all the other films that attempt to be a part
of the franchise or a travesty to his an in
credibly good. It is very good. The Peter stera song
Josh mentioned Glory of Love was my first ever favorite
song when I was six because of the film is
a classic, and I think you were 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
(47:17):
from Nicole Beal at Jed's barber shop. It's a Lake City, Utah.
Go get her to cut your head. Nice hair, not
your head. It's doing a terrible job. She's cutting your head.
Thanks a lot, Nicole. Um. Did you know her friend
Van Nostrin? Uh, does his band the Bangalore's do a
cover of your The Best Around? I knew he loved
(47:37):
that song. I don't know if I knew they actually
covered It's good. You can go to SoundCloud search Bangalore's
and You're the Best Around. It's on there. I'm gonna
do that right after this. Uh. 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
(47:57):
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works
dot com, and as always, joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(48:18):
to your favorite shows. H
M Hey everybody, it's me your old friend Josh. And
for this week's s Y s K SELEC, since we're
nearing Halloween, I chose a wonderful little episode from two
thousand and fourteen called How Haunted House Attractions Work full disclosure.
I was thinking that this one's going to be boring,
but to my surprise, it was not. So I hope
you enjoy it as much as I surprisingly did. Welcome
(00:26):
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart
Radios How Stuff Works. 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 uh dark content. Although this isn't super dark. No,
(00:51):
this isn't you know about attractions haunted attractions? Right, I'm dark?
Although thank I don't want to spoil it, but there
are some darkness. Now, is it dark or not? It's dark,
but not all of them, just just the really creepy ones.
So it's made mid level dark. What a train wreck
this is. So for those of you who tuned in
(01:13):
thinking that we're talking about haunted houses, sorry to let
you down real haunted houses, uh, of which there may
or may not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, shoot,
this I wanted to ye, 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
(01:33):
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 maybe
one of those really big daddy ones. But chances are
your small town has some form of haunted attraction, even
if it's the local uh if it's for charity and
(01:56):
they're trying to raise money for the local j c's
and it's uh it up in like a school gymnasium,
or there's enthusiasts home haunters, um, 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
(02:17):
Halloween um decorating two extremes. Well, I think that's one
and the same for a home haunter. Yeah, I think
they're they're competing guys though in the same street that uh,
someone did a documentary on because they just keep like
ramping it up and ramping it up, have become obsessed
without doing one another. But I don't know what's called,
so it just came to me right now. Me either,
(02:37):
But um, you do make a good point how haunted
houses are everywhere. Apparently in two thousand fourteen, they expect
they being the American Retail Federation who likes to put
out statistics and figures about holidays, um, they expect thirty
three million people to go into haunted houses across the
(02:59):
United States. Yeah, about four thousand of them of which
are the pay some money to go in professionally. Uh,
about three in theme parks like you know, like amusement parks.
And then about three thousand of them are the charity
ones that I spoke of, right, which you'll still pay.
But they they're not They're not going to the fat
Cat Coke Brothers or whatever. The profits aren't there going
(03:21):
to you know, your local community organization. Yeah, and those
are fun, you know, you might get some light scares,
it's not like these, um, the really super scary ones
where you pay good money to, um, you know, to
leave your body and wet your pants. Just one more
one more, um, little bit of of data statistics if
(03:44):
you know mine some numbers talk about roll reverse. Remember
you used to be static, guy, I know, I got
so bored it. Um. In two thousand and fourteen, again,
the National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend eighty seven
dollars per person on Halloween, for a total of seven
point four billion dollars. Yeah, that's right behind Christmas, right
(04:06):
behind Christmas. People love getting their scare on, they really do.
I don't decorate at 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, you know,
I mean, what is the point at that point? There
is no point. Emily thinks we could do it for
(04:29):
people that drive by during the month of October, like,
you know, to see the house. But I don't know, man,
you gotta you gotta whatever you put up, you gotta
take down that. And plus it's like you get no
satisfaction from somebody driving by a sound like they honk
at your declarations. With little kids coming up and trick
or treating, there's some sort of payoff, I guess to
your your effort, right, that's right, scarring them for life.
(04:50):
All right? So, um, 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 um. At first,
(05:12):
when I read some of this history, the ancient history,
I was like, come on, this is from Fangoria magazine,
by the way, o us. But then when I started
really getting into us, like you know what, there's actually
it actually did pave the way for what we see
today in like ancient Egypt. To keep people from grave robbing, Basically,
they would uh make little scary things like trap doors
(05:35):
and um snakes and creepy insects and things to keep
people away from robbing their ancestries, their ancestors graves. They
put an old lady in a rocking chair who would
go behold the ravages of age? What's that from the Simpsons? Okay? Uh?
Greeks and Romans um uh kind of paved the way
(05:58):
as well. They had um mazes and labyrinths set up
with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly,
they started stage effects. Yeah, like fake blood and things
like that. Yeah, Um, they they And that's where a
lot of this stuff finds its roots is in early
(06:18):
stage special effects. Yeah, it was, and it's still his
theater when you come down to it. It's just like
an interactive participatory theater, right that you walk through. And
then the the Dark Ages, that 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
(06:38):
during the Dark Ages, um, the the introduction of well,
the syncretism between Christianity and Paganism that led to the
adoption of Halloween, um kind of saw rise to this,
uh basically a scare show. Yeah, these little plays that
would scare people into meaning pious and remaining on the
(07:01):
narrow path, right, which is still very big today. It's
made a huge comeback. Um. But these these scare shows,
if you want to call him that, I'm pretty sure
that's not what they call them during the Dark Ages,
but they were. They featured plenty of gore and fake
blood and violence, and Um, so the the the people
who went to saw see him weren't necessarily going for
(07:24):
the religious message. They were going to you know, be
grossed out right and get a kick. Yeah. Uh. During
the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous for um incorporating like demons
and ghosts and monsters in his plays. He loved those.
And in the eighteen hundreds, We've talked about this before,
there was a big rise in spiritualists and conjuring sessions
(07:45):
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. Um. The
Victorian era also gave us um the wax museum, Yeah,
which very quickly went from celebrities to include scary stuff too.
(08:07):
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 you know,
Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde and like kind of a
room and it was scary and lit oddly, and you
were meant to The intention was to scare you, even
though it wasn't. Again, there wasn't an overt scare or startle.
(08:30):
It was something that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted
houses to come. They were to instill dread in the
hearts of all. Uh. John Pepper invented something, um pretty
neat in the eighteen hundreds. It was, uh sort of
set up where here where you use mirrors to appear translucent.
If you've ever been to Disney's Haunted Mansion. Um, I
(08:52):
think Pepper's ghost is what they call. It is still
a trick they used to. Uh, you know, it's when
you it's like a hologram sort of smoking mirrors. Yeah,
but using mirrors, right, It's not like the Tuopoc hologram.
Wasn't high tech like that. No, but it still looks
pretty awesome, that's right. The twentieth century, then, Chuck is
(09:13):
where we really find the progenitors of the modern haunted house.
The dark Rides. And there's this really neat um article
on Collector's Weekly. You ever read any of their stuff.
They write a lot of really cool long form articles
about like stuff that's come and gone, like all dads
and things, And one of them was, um, it's called jeepers, creepers.
(09:35):
Why dark Rides scare the pants off of us. But
the Collector's Weekly article, it's an interview with the guy
who collects old dark rides 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
(09:57):
maybe a little boat or something that roade you through,
and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of
the wall, or you know this, the a strobe light
went off or something like that. And these were the
direct progenitors of, uh, the Haunted House. Yeah, and between
that and the traveling freak shows, um, it really, like
(10:17):
you said, everything was in place, and a couple that
with the fact that a lot of these houses from
the eighteen hundreds were starting to crumble and there was,
you know, narry a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy
old vacant house. And to keep their kids out, you know,
people would say, parents would say, you know that place,
you don't want to go in there, Well, it's all
on it because you may not come out, which is
that was an interesting point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah,
(10:41):
but the if you think of the modern conception of
when you think of a haunted house, what comes to
mind typically is uh dilapidated old Victorian mansion with a
story around it. You know, it's never just like, oh yeah,
that was where Mr Johnson, that he was a farmer
and kind of a good guy, died quietly asleep. No
reports of his ghost at all. That well, what's probably
(11:03):
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. Um, that's what I heard.
The first official recorded haunted attraction according to this person
who wrote this article in Fangoria, Beckham McKendry. He says
(11:23):
that Orton and Spooner, the Orton and Spooner ghost House
in the UK uh and the Edwardian Fair in nineteen
fifteen was the first UH like genuine haunted attraction. Yep,
that was the first ghost house. And in France they
had something called the Grand uh guen All and um
that was sort of similar, I think, and around the
(11:45):
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. And then finally you
have the first big time permanent haunted house as we understand,
to which you've already mentioned, the Haunted Mansion that that
was first built in the nineteen sixty nine at Disneyland,
(12:06):
and apparently it was supposed to go up at Disney
Oh no, it was so Disneyland, the one in California,
and the one in Disney World that came up in
the seventies, right, uh, late seventies, early eighties. I'm not sure.
Actually I've been to that one though, if you want
to know more about that stuff. Though, I think, um,
Stuff you missed in History class did like a whole
(12:27):
episode on the Haunted Mansion Ride. Oh Holly from Stuff
You miss in History Class is an absolute Haunted Mansion fanatic,
So I think they have a whole episode on. 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 about Holly, she knows more
about it than Walt Disney. Um. Originally, the the Haunted
(12:51):
Mansion Ride was a walkthrough ride like today's Haunted Houses. Um.
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.
That's what they did. Yeah, which we'll get to this later,
(13:11):
but that's a big part of running your own haunted
houses is the flow. 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 credit old, dilapidated psycho house in
the middle of their lovely park. So they says, well,
we can make it creepy on the inside, and let's
just make it like a really lovely Victorian on the outside. Yeah.
(13:34):
And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the
Winchester Mystery House, I recommend it's pretty neat this one
of ours. Yeah, yeah, man, that was a good one.
Not the Disney podcast, right. Um, So then you mentioned
that j C's Chuck and I didn't realize this, but
the idea of a semi permanent so not not located
in like an amusement park or something like that, but um,
(13:57):
they an annual attract action that just comes up around
Halloween and then comes down in November. November one. Um,
as far as haunted houses go in the United States
was created by the j c S, which is the
United States Junior Chamber, which is like a community organization
with chapters across the country. And in the seventies, the
(14:20):
j c's hit upon this idea of well, why don't
you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers,
and it just took off like a rocket, and the
j CS became synonymous in the seventies and eighties and
up to the nineties 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 j c's. Yeah,
(14:41):
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, yeah, just vary like kid oriented minor uh,
spooks and goblins. Um, we'll get into hell houses later.
But um, even though I did go to Baptist which
it wasn't anything like that surprising. Yeah, I mean that
(15:03):
was before the concept of the hell house. Um. Yeah,
it was just like we would have like a Halloween carnival,
you know, bob for apples and did that little fishing
game where you get something clipped to your fishing pole
behind the curtain. It's so funny. Do you remember when
you were a kid just being like, God, this Halloween
(15:23):
carnival is really well done. Yeah. Man, if you go
to one as an adult, you're like, this is really junkie,
Like are these kids really falling for all this stuff?
And yeah they are. It's wonderful. Yeah. My elementary school
had a pretty rock and Halloween carnival every year too.
It was one of the highlights of my year. But um, yeah,
you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples,
(15:43):
there's no way I would put my face in that
disgusting water, you know. Yeah. Um. Anyway, out of the
j CS in there were a couple of guys from
a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois named Jim Goulden, Tom Hill
Gas and they says, you know what, let's just create
our own Haunted House book basically like a yeah, I
(16:08):
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
twenty copies, and it was they formed the Haunted House
Company and it was the first real U group of
outfit to kind of just sell the plan and the
stuff that you needed, the props right, like details like
(16:29):
how to do special effects, a starter kit exactly. UM.
And because of the success of the j cs UH
in the seventies and eighties, private companies finally were like, oh,
we can make some cash off of this. Starting in
the nineties, and so the haunted houses that we think
of today, the sure profit ones like Another World in
Atlanta or Thirteenth Story of New Orleans is another big one.
(16:53):
UM that that they came out of the nineties. Do
you go to those? No interest? Yeah? Do you now?
Emily and I we still may go. She she has
a hanker in this year to go to another world
just because we haven't been to I think we went
to one in l A that was pretty decent. Um.
I'll go, I guess if she wants to. But it's
(17:16):
not my favorite thing. I mean, I don't I like
I like scary movies and stuff. I'm not I don't
avoid that stuff. I am depressed. Chuck on Twitter the
other day, I said the best scary movie or the
best horror movie. I haven't seen go and I have
heard of Vampire Brooklyn, Eddie Murphy, every single every single suggestion,
(17:37):
and there are a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back.
So I realized I'm really running low on good horror movies.
But there 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. Um, 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.
(18:00):
But um, the ones these days, man, just that the
disgusting torture important 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, just repulse me exactly, which is
a totally different sensation, you know. But that's fine if
you like to be repulsed in whatever like that's it's
great for that. But that's not true fear. It's not
(18:23):
um being scared necessarily, it's different. Yeah, I do have
a recommendation for you, though. It's called either the Lady
in Black or Woman in Black, and it's a it
starts a growing up Harry Potter, so it's fairly new.
I think it's that came out in the last couple
of years. Daniel Ratcliff okay, and he does a great job.
It's almost exclusively just him in the movie Lady and Black.
(18:46):
He does double duty. And there are some like um
like Conjuring esque style like c g I ghost graphics,
but it's not overdone, and it's not overblown, and it
is genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay, it was okay.
This way, I would say this one might be better.
(19:07):
And and that guy is it I don't know if
it's Tie or t West tis his name. He's a
director that did Um 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.
It's um. He tries to build genuine suspense. And Dread
(19:29):
the same guy to both of those movies. Uh not
the Conjuring, No, No, The Innkeepers and the House of
the Devil. I think so because both of those were
good movies. Yeah, they seem totally different though. Yeah, I
may be wrong in that, but Innkeepers that was a
slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took
a long time to build. That was a little slow,
Like he didn't even try to start the scares until
(19:53):
like thirty minutes in. Yeah, you know the lady that's
in that is uh Kelly McGillis, did you realize that? Yeah,
I didn't know till the end of the movie, it
said Kelly McGillis was like, Oh, she's got the same
name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, but then
it's really her. She looks so different now. So that's
our Josh and Chuck's for a movie corner. You know,
(20:44):
we should we should have done a Maybe next year
we'll just do one of those, like a total horror
movie 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
(21:04):
houses are going to be alike Sometimes these folks that
opened 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 apparently Eastern State Penitentiary is converted.
(21:25):
Yes here and that is a scary, scary place. Just normal. Uh.
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 oh like
a sales jewelry closed down right, yeah, yeah, the ghost
of capitalism. Um. And then you have themes, some of them.
(21:46):
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 crazy scientists,
or like vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Yes,
those are two very different kind of themes. Apparently, Um,
Rob Zombies got his own jam going and called his house.
(22:12):
Yeah pretty much. Um it's called Rob Zombies Great American Nightmare.
I think it's supposed to be a play on the
American Dream. But one of the rooms is the John
Wayne Gayzy Room, and it's like 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
(22:34):
a recline or whatever. And this is Chicago, and that's
where John Wayne Gazy killed his victims, and a lot
of the victims families are still around, so everybody's up
in arms and rob zombies like could not care less.
Thank you for the free press, right exactly, Well, clowns
are I posted something on our Facebook page a day
because that new clown and um American horror story. Have
(22:55):
you seen this clown yet? No, Twisty the clown? Huh.
The guy that made that show is like just wait, Like,
I know clowns can be scary, but I have got
the scariest clown ever. And it's pretty scary, dude. 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
(23:15):
in just to see what it was. Like. Yeah, it's
pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And
and there's a broad Daylight killing which are always super
scary to me. Oh yeah, like they don't care about
there's no hiding it or any Yeah. Thats like a
beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field, and those
kind of creep me out more. Yeah, because the whole
idea of like, oh, it's a good day to die
(23:38):
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, 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. Uh So, if you're opening one of these
huntit houses, you can count on spending because this is
(23:59):
a good idea. You can make some good dough if
you've got the funds to get it going. Um per
square foot for decorating in special effects is what just
that alone is what you're gonna and that's not counting
the renting or buying of the structure itself. Right, so
you have five thousand foot scare footage. Okay, that's what
I was going for. That's good. You can be spending
(24:20):
up to a 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. So you want to turn over
like that each year it's a new stuff. And like
(24:44):
you said, themes often change, So just changing the theme
alone is going to require that you change this this, um, well,
your layout, I guess to an extent. Yeah, Like, if
you're doing scary clowns, you're probably gonna have to get
rid of your O R setting or whatever, unless you
(25:05):
do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary,
but it just seems a little off. Yeah, you clown
doing surgery, that's just um, that'd be pretty scary. The
clown hospital, Yeah, yeah, well don't they have that children's
hospital has a clown character? That's what I'm thinking, Rob Cordrey, Yeah, sure. Um.
(25:25):
And by the way, this is written by Kristen Konger
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. I was
just making mine, not oh you are, Um, they said
to open one up. You're not only obviously it's it's
a fun job, but you've got to have a lot
(25:46):
of business acumen too. It's not just like, oh, this
will be a hoot, Like you've got to be super
focused and have a good business brain or you're not
gonna make any money. Plus also, um, safety is a big,
big deal, especially after a fateful of four. At six
Flags Great Adventure in New Jersey, there was they had
(26:06):
a seventeen trailer interconnected modular haunted house dark ride basically
but a walking dark ride. So it's a haunted house. Um.
And it was basically a fire trap and it went
up and eight teenagers got trapped inside and died in
the fire. There were no fire sprinklers, there were no obvious, um,
(26:30):
emergency exit signs or anything like that. And um, that's
what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think like by
the time the eighties 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 eighties, so people
smoked everywhere. The whole thing's gonna go up because it's
(26:52):
all plywood and foam, and maybe we should put fire
sprinklers in. But apparently it took this tragedy to really
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,
(27:13):
anything can happen to go wrong and someone can get injured.
So yeah, And actually, did you hear about the girl
In two thousand eleven, 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 it is
(27:34):
so well documented that it actually did happen. I'm quite sure.
But she survived. Oh Um, 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, 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
(27:56):
passed her by thinking that. She was like, that's what
was is 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 just
a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you need
to go watch the most recent don't be dumb. Oh
it comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes?
(28:17):
Is that an old Well, don't spoil it. Okay, people
should go watch it. Go watch don't be dumb about that. Man,
Go and tell him Josh that you know. 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 material, you've got camera set up everywhere, everyone assigned
(28:37):
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. What you're gonna
have is some sort of amaze like structure where you're
walking around sort of lost but really just getting shuffled
along a path. And there's, like you said earlier, there's
(28:59):
this thing called through put. 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
because you're in a group. It depends, but I don't
know six or right people. But and you don't want
(29:19):
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 tree 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 numbers that Conger
(29:40):
gives UM is to to get five people through in
a night. You can put a group of six. You
can set them out every to thirty seconds, and they
shouldn't bump into one another. 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 scaring forward, which makes sense,
(30:03):
it does. It's 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 backward. Yeah, so they want
to scare you forward, and that is a little tip.
(30:23):
If you are not into being 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. Yeah,
but I think I'm going to be in the back
and I'll be just fine. Yeah, you're the one that's
gonna 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
(30:46):
into the group behind, and that's very bad. Yeah, and
I say get grabbed, you probably won't get touched. Now.
There apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching.
But you're going to be fully informed. That's so crazy.
He really does light touching. You're gonna be fully informed,
Like it's not gonna you're not gonna not know that
(31:06):
it's coming. Like in line, they're going to be like
sign this an initial here, an initial here, an initial here,
and we're gonna give you a heart detect 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. Right, And then have
(31:29):
people craving, well, well 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. Uh. And since we mentioned actors hiding,
those are called scare pockets, Yeah, where they hide and
(31:49):
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 fox tree trunk that has
the smell of a chainsaw. Yeah, but there won't be
any blade on that chainsaw, by the way. No. And
(32:10):
a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yeah. Um,
Because the longer they hang out and they're like yeah right,
the more you're gonna be like you're just some teenager, yeah,
who who doesn't scare me? Yeah, And if you're looking
to save a little money, you might want to double
up and have that scare pocket have a couple of
different ways that it can go, Like I can jump
(32:32):
out on these people on the right who are in
this one part of the haunted house, and then 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 and then apparently chuck lastly. Um.
(33:19):
A lot of the attractions are run on compressed air
that is set off either through motion sensors, which I
think everybody expects, but also through touch pads, which makes
sense because you can control that right well with a
with a motion sensor. Every group is going to set
off that effect at the right and what it does
(33:39):
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, 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, so not every group is going to
(34:01):
get the same set of scare, 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 scream exactly when you get
to that curve, you're gonna be prepared. And if nothing happens, well, then,
my friend, you're just even more keyed up for the
next one. That's right, Yeah, And you're keyed up to
(34:22):
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 in the line.
They might have creeps dressed up roaming around. Uh. They
may have sound effects and spooky music and like an
airhorn blast, which is really uncool, and that's just got
you on edge. By the time you walk in that place,
(34:43):
you're ready to be scared. Um. Alright, chuck, Yeah, we've
teased it 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, I
don't even like these things to be called extreme haunted
houses because they're so extreme. Yeah, that's what I gather,
(35:07):
and these are to say these are interactive, is uh
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. Uh. McCamy. Manner is renowned
(35:32):
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 their writhing on top of you in
the dark, and you're trying to get out and they're
pulling you back in right and and just like it's insane.
How intense this thing looks. Yeah, they had a cage
(35:52):
that locks your head in that they're dropping like fake
snakes in, which is not as bad as life snakes,
but it's still pretty bad. And apparently the um the
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 mckami manner. It's open year round and
(36:16):
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. Supposedly, the one rule, like you
have to apply fill out an application to go through
(36:38):
this thing and be super fit and super psychologically fit
and um, because you're getting physically like abused in some cases,
like nothing you can't walk away from. But you know
they're 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
(36:59):
stuff out of it, like stuff like that. So on
one hand, it is like physically abusive. On the other
it's like almost laughable that they like, these people really
put their minds to it. Yeah, and they came up
with shooting stuff out of a toilet in your face. Um,
but supposedly you can't leave this one at all, Like
(37:19):
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 really yeah, it's free. And the
and that's the one hook is is that you're not
allowed to leave what you You sign a document that
says I'm going to go through this thing from beginning
to end. That's what I say. I would trust me.
I would get out of that place like I would. Yeah,
(37:41):
I would bust through a wall or something. That's what
it took Chuck Murck. But that is McCamy manner, and
that is was constructed by Russ McCamey, who's a terror fanatic. Uh.
They also have one in New York and l A
called Blackout, one called Gates of Hill in Las Vegas.
And the common denominator or of all these is you're
(38:03):
getting physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want
to wear again, because you're gonna 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. Right, it's really dark, so disturbing.
They with Haunted House enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things.
(38:23):
It's usually because they say there's no story to it.
There's very rarely build up. It's all just payoff, off, payoff,
like all of it. It's just there's no there's no well,
there's no ratcheting up of tensions. It's like those movies
that we're talking about. It's the haunted attraction version of Uh.
I don't even know what there are. I don't watch
(38:43):
any of them. Like Hostile Okay, I did see that one. Actually,
what do you think anytime if you're gonna pull out
that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me. Yeah,
that is such a trope by now you know you
know who did do it well was the first couple
of hell raisers. They used medical instruments to real was
(39:04):
back in the day disheartening degree effect. Yeah, the ones
that scare me the most. Again, to delve back into
movies like did you ever see Wolf Creek and it's
setting the Australian Outback is like, yeah, it's the kids
whose car breaks down and all of a sudden, the
rest of the movie is them getting traced chased by
this homicidal maniac. Okay, that to me is what's called
(39:26):
the psychological thriller. Yeah, that's not I mean, yes, I
understand it is horror Friday thirteenth, that's like Hallmark Corp.
But it's different. Yeah, the slasher movie is just it's
just different. I mean there's not enough true, genuine horror
movies in my opinion, which amount to basically supernatural horror.
(39:46):
I guess that's how you'd put it. That's what I
meant too. You should check out Wolf Creek. It's the
the will. I have no problem with it. It's just
as far as horror goes. I'm not scared by that.
I want to be scared. You might be scared. Okay,
I'll check it out. The 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. Yeah,
(40:08):
like yeah, one of the good slashers. Um which brings
us to the hell houses, which um, like we said,
was sort of started back in the dark ages of Christianity. Uh,
they they do this today. The most famous is in uh,
Cedar Hill, Texas. And there's a documentary called hell House
(40:28):
on these things. I think from like two thousand to
camp and uh, the idea of these is run by
churches usually and they are too just like in the
old days, scare you into walking the straight and narrow, right,
And actually they were they were originated by Jerry Folwell
(40:50):
back in the seventies. Yeah, those are the first ones,
I think. Yeah. And then in the nineties that church
in Texas you mentioned took over Abundant Life Christian Center, um,
and they took over and they started actually packaging it.
They started selling hell houses for like tucks, and it
was kind of like do you remember those j c's
(41:10):
in the seventies that came up with the Haunted House package.
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 as the
abortion room. And in the abortion room, UM, you're taught
how to use raw meat that's like a stand in
(41:32):
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,
so that their suggestion, that's a room from hell house. Yeah,
and this is to keep you from having premarital sex exactly. Obviously,
(41:54):
subtlety is not a hallmark of the hell House. Um.
So for example, like if you there was, there's one
from New Destiny Christian Center. Um, it's called the Rave
scene and basically it's about um club drugs and death,
teenage death. Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their
(42:16):
own life. Um, as a result of of sin, Yes,
of their sin. Yeah, like the lesbian suicide Room, where uh,
you know, a young lady succumbs to lesbianism and uh
is so mistreated and um, she she goes to she's
she's not a lesbian, she's just saving herself and is
(42:38):
mistaken for a lesbian confusingly, and then uh it then
kills herself because her best friend rejects her and calls
her a lesbian when she went to go hugger. That
was that was from the Vice article you sent at least. Yeah,
that's a great article. Um, but it's all repercussions of sins.
So there's the lesbian suicide room. There is the aide room,
(43:01):
the abortion room, the domestic violence room, the d u
I room, and they're all just enacting these horrific scenes
and until you get finally to Hell is at the end,
at the very end. Um in Hell is where they're
you know, displaying what Hell looks like with ghouls and
demons and uh. And then finally you get to go
(43:21):
to Heaven. Well, this is what makes the Hell House.
The Hell House end through these different types of sin
into Hell, and then when you come out, you emerge
through Hell and then the real life preachers there, yeah,
saying hey, how about you repent and for those of
you who aren't saved, why don't you come on over
(43:42):
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 is bad cop. And he's like,
you can avoid all this scary stuff if you, uh,
you know, take the Lord Jesus as your savior. And
sometimes they'll do that right in the room and have
you signed something? Oh, I can imagine, and uh, that's
(44:04):
the Hell House. And in that Vice article, it's crazy. Um,
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, yeah,
I guess so vomit from fear for your soul. And
they're still around. It seems like something that um might
(44:25):
have gone by the wayside. But yeah, you can still
go to hell houses in one of places. I have
one more thing for you, Chuck what you got. Go
to BuzzFeed dot com. You may have heard of that website, uh,
and search for forty four best picks of scared brows
at Haunted. Yeah. I can't remember where the Haunted House is,
but it's all the same background, but very much like
(44:47):
roller coasters. They take a photo of this one spot
and it's like the scariest spot, and um, the people
are they're wonderful, hilarious photo and like it's been around.
I think they first started publishing them in two thousand eleven,
so they've been around for years and they're still just
as funny as ever. It's great that the scared face
(45:09):
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. Yeah, it's whatever is happening in that two seconds.
It's pretty great. So that's Haunted House attractions everybody I know. Uh,
(45:29):
if you want to know more about them, type those
words in the search bar at how stuff works dot com.
And since I said that, it's time for listener mail,
I'm gonna call this Karate Kid an email Awesome, which
was the scariest movie I've ever seen. Uh. If you
listen to Karate episode, we wax philosophical about the Karate
Kid movie and we got a lot of emails of um,
(45:50):
people feeling great ways of nostalgia uh and talking about it. Um.
So here we go. I imagine guys will get dozens
of versions of this similar email. Uh. Just listened to
Karate and Uh, 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
goose bumps along with Chuck. I may have also had
(46:12):
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 that Mr Miyagi is
truly a genius. Um. By the way, Ralph Maccio is
named his son Daniel 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
(46:34):
that despite what his friends and media try to tell him,
he will know that Ralph Maccio is the original and
only Karate Kid. When I called him and asked what
his favorite part was, he actually started singing, You're the
best around, nothing's ever gone and get you down. It
was the proudest moment of my aunt hood so far. Now, Chuck,
I implore you to watch The Karate Kid too, after
(46:55):
all the other films that attempt to be a part
of the franchise or a travesty to his an in
credibly good. It is very good. The Peter stera song
Josh mentioned Glory of Love was my first ever favorite
song when I was six because of the film is
a classic, and I think you were 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
(47:17):
from Nicole Beal at Jed's barber shop. It's a Lake City, Utah.
Go get her to cut your head. Nice hair, not
your head. It's doing a terrible job. She's cutting your head.
Thanks a lot, Nicole. Um. Did you know her friend
Van Nostrin? Uh, does his band the Bangalore's do a
cover of your The Best Around? I knew he loved
(47:37):
that song. I don't know if I knew they actually
covered It's good. You can go to SoundCloud search Bangalore's
and You're the Best Around. It's on there. I'm gonna
do that right after this. Uh. 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
(47:57):
dot com slash Stuff you Should Know. You can send
us an email to stuff podcast at how stuff Works
dot com, and as always, joined us at our home
on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff
you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit
the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(48:18):
to your favorite shows. H
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Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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