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How Haunted House Attractions Work · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:13
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is
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Speaker 1: Stuff you should Know, the pre Halloween Spooktacular week of
0:21
Speaker 1: dark content. Although this isn't super dark. No, this isn't
0:27
Speaker 1: you know about attractions? Haunted attractions? Right? Dark? Thank? I
0:33
Speaker 1: don't want to spoil it, but there are some darkness. Now,
0:36
Speaker 1: is it dark or not? It's dark, okay, but not
0:39
Speaker 1: all of them, just just the really creepy ones. So
0:41
Speaker 1: it's mid mid level dark. What a train wreck this is.
0:46
Speaker 1: So for those of you who tuned in thinking they
0:49
Speaker 1: were talking about haunted houses, sorry to let you down.
0:53
Speaker 1: Real haunted houses, uh, of which there may or may
0:57
Speaker 1: not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, shoot,
1:00
Speaker 1: this is just about attractions. Yeah, these things are proven
1:04
Speaker 1: to exist. They are real because you can probably if
1:07
Speaker 1: you live near any kind of major metropolitan area, you
1:11
Speaker 1: can probably find one somewhere in your town. I think
1:16
Speaker 1: you can find them almost anywhere. If you live in
1:19
Speaker 1: a major metropolitan area, that maybe one of those really
1:21
Speaker 1: big daddy ones. But chances are your small town has
1:25
Speaker 1: some form of haunted attraction, even if it's the local Uh,
1:30
Speaker 1: if it's for charity and they're trying to raise money
1:32
Speaker 1: for the local j c's and it's set up in
1:35
Speaker 1: like a school gymnasium, or there's enthusiasts home haunters, um,
1:42
Speaker 1: and they will they basically set up a haunted house
1:46
Speaker 1: in their backyard. Yeah, there's some documentary about two guys
1:49
Speaker 1: that are I don't know if they do haunted houses
1:52
Speaker 1: or just take their Halloween um decorating two extremes. Well,
1:56
Speaker 1: I think that's one and the same for a home haunter. Yeah,
1:59
Speaker 1: I think they're they're competing guys on the same street
2:01
Speaker 1: that uh someone did a documentary on because they just
2:04
Speaker 1: keep like ramping it up and ramping it up, have
2:06
Speaker 1: become obsessed without doing one another. But I don't know
2:09
Speaker 1: what's called. So it just came to me right now.
2:11
Speaker 1: Me either, But um, you do make a good point
2:15
Speaker 1: how haunted houses are everywhere. Apparently in two thousand fourteen,
2:19
Speaker 1: they expect they being the American Retail Federation who likes
2:24
Speaker 1: to put out statistics and figures about holidays, Um, they
2:29
Speaker 1: expect thirty three million people to go into haunted houses
2:34
Speaker 1: across the United States. Yeah, about four thousand of them,
2:37
Speaker 1: twelve hundred of which are the pay some money to
2:40
Speaker 1: go in professionally, uh, about three or in theme parks
2:43
Speaker 1: like you know, like amusement parks. And then about three
2:46
Speaker 1: thousand of them are the charity ones that I spoke of, right,
2:49
Speaker 1: which you'll still pay. But they they're not they're not
2:53
Speaker 1: going to the fat cat Coke Brothers or whatever. The
2:56
Speaker 1: profits aren't. They're going to you know, your local community organism. Yeah,
3:00
Speaker 1: and those are fun, you know, you might get some
3:02
Speaker 1: light scares, it's not like these, um, the really super
3:06
Speaker 1: scary ones where you pay good money to um, you know,
3:10
Speaker 1: to leave your body and wet your pants. Just one more,
3:14
Speaker 1: one more, um, little bit of of data statistics. You
3:19
Speaker 1: don't mind some numbers, talk about roll over ifs. Remember
3:23
Speaker 1: you used to be static guy, And I know I
3:24
Speaker 1: got so bored it. Um. In two fourteen, again, the
3:28
Speaker 1: National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend eighty seven dollars
3:33
Speaker 1: per person on Halloween, for a total of seven point
3:37
Speaker 1: four billion dollars. Yeah, that's right behind Christmas, right behind Christmas.
3:43
Speaker 1: People love getting their scare on. They really do. I
3:46
Speaker 1: don't decorate at all anymore at the house, just because
3:49
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about this before. We don't have
3:51
Speaker 1: trick or treaders on my area of the street, so
3:54
Speaker 1: it just seems kind of pointless. Oh yeah, you know,
3:58
Speaker 1: I mean, what is the point at that point? There
4:01
Speaker 1: is no point. Emily thinks we could do it for
4:04
Speaker 1: people that drive by during the month of October, like,
4:07
Speaker 1: you know, to see the house, But I don't know. Man,
4:09
Speaker 1: you gotta you gotta whatever you put up, you gotta
4:11
Speaker 1: take down that. And plus it's like you get no
4:14
Speaker 1: satisfaction from somebody driving by. Sound like they hank at
4:17
Speaker 1: your generations with little kids coming up and trick or treating,
4:21
Speaker 1: there's some sort of payoff I guess, to your your effort, right,
4:24
Speaker 1: that's right, scarring him for life? Right. So, um, let's
4:28
Speaker 1: talk the history of this, because it turns out that
4:30
Speaker 1: haunted house attractions are relatively new, but they're probably not
4:36
Speaker 1: as new as trick or treating in the United States?
4:39
Speaker 1: Did you know that? Not as new? So they predate
4:43
Speaker 1: trick or treating by a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that
4:45
Speaker 1: makes sense. And when we look at um at first,
4:48
Speaker 1: when I read some of this history, the ancient history
4:50
Speaker 1: else like come on, this is from Fangoria magazine, by
4:52
Speaker 1: the way, oh us, But then when I started really
4:55
Speaker 1: getting into us, like you know what, there's actually it
4:58
Speaker 1: actually did pave the way for what we see today
5:01
Speaker 1: in like ancient Egypt. To keep people from grave robbing. Basically,
5:06
Speaker 1: they would uh make little scary things like trap doors
5:11
Speaker 1: and um snakes and creepy insects and things to keep
5:15
Speaker 1: people away from robbing their ancestries, their ancestors graves. They
5:21
Speaker 1: put an old lady in a rocking chair who would
5:23
Speaker 1: go behold the ravages of aids. What's that from the Simpsons? Uh?
5:30
Speaker 1: Greeks and Romans? Um. Uh kind of paved the way
5:33
Speaker 1: as well. They had um mazes and labyrinths set up
5:37
Speaker 1: with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly,
5:42
Speaker 1: they started stage effects, yeah, like fake blood and things
5:46
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah. Um, they they And that's where a
5:50
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff finds its roots is in early
5:53
Speaker 1: stage special effects. Yeah. It was, and it's still his
5:57
Speaker 1: theater when you come down to it. It's just like
5:59
Speaker 1: an interactive participatory theater, right that you walk through and
6:03
Speaker 1: then the the dark ages that medieval ages I think
6:08
Speaker 1: the Dark Ages, the Medieval Ages are part of the
6:11
Speaker 1: Dark Ages, but they're not one and the same. But
6:14
Speaker 1: during the Dark Ages, UM, the the introduction of well,
6:19
Speaker 1: the syncretism between Christianity and Paganism that led to the
6:23
Speaker 1: adoption of Halloween, UM kind of saw rise to this, uh,
6:29
Speaker 1: basically a scare show. Yeah, these little plays that would
6:33
Speaker 1: scare people into remaining pious and remaining on the narrow path, right,
6:38
Speaker 1: which is still very big today, has made a huge comeback. Um.
6:42
Speaker 1: But these these scare shows, if you want to call
6:45
Speaker 1: them that, I'm pretty sure that's not what they call
6:47
Speaker 1: them during the Dark Ages, but they were. They featured
6:50
Speaker 1: plenty of gore and fake blood and violence and um,
6:54
Speaker 1: so that the the people who went to saw see
6:57
Speaker 1: Him weren't necessarily going for the religious message. They were
7:01
Speaker 1: going to you know, be grossed out right and get
7:04
Speaker 1: a kick. Yeah. Uh. During the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous
7:08
Speaker 1: for um incorporating like demons and ghosts and monsters in
7:12
Speaker 1: his plays. He loved those. And in the eighteen hundreds,
7:15
Speaker 1: We've talked about this before, there was a big rise
7:17
Speaker 1: in spiritualists and conjuring sessions and mediums and fortune telling
7:23
Speaker 1: and communicating with the dead was like a really popular
7:26
Speaker 1: thing during the Victorian era, so it was debunking it. Yeah,
7:30
Speaker 1: that's true. Um. The Victorian era also gave us um
7:35
Speaker 1: the wax museum, which very quickly went from celebrities to
7:41
Speaker 1: include scary stuff too. So you could walk through a
7:44
Speaker 1: waxed museum and while the stuff didn't move or jump
7:46
Speaker 1: out at you, you would come across like some sort
7:49
Speaker 1: of tableau of you know, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde
7:53
Speaker 1: and like kind of a room and it was scary
7:55
Speaker 1: and lit oddly, and you were meant to The intention
7:59
Speaker 1: was to scare you. Yeah, even though it wasn't again,
8:02
Speaker 1: there wasn't an overt scare or startle. It was something
8:06
Speaker 1: that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted houses to come.
8:09
Speaker 1: They were to instill dread in the hearts of all. Uh.
8:13
Speaker 1: John Pepper invented something, um pretty neat in the eighteen hundreds.
8:18
Speaker 1: It was uh sort of set up where here where
8:20
Speaker 1: you use mirrors to appear translucent. If you've ever been
8:24
Speaker 1: to Disney's Haunted Mansion, UM, I think Pepper's ghost is
8:28
Speaker 1: what they call. It is still a trick they use
8:31
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, it's when you it's like a
8:35
Speaker 1: hologram sort of smoking mirrors. Yeah, but using mirrors. It's
8:39
Speaker 1: not like the Tuopoc hologram. It wouldn't high tech like that,
8:43
Speaker 1: but it still looks pretty awesome. That's right. The twentieth century, then, Chuck,
8:48
Speaker 1: is where we really find the progenitors of the modern
8:53
Speaker 1: haunted house, the dark rides. And there's this really neat
8:56
Speaker 1: um article on Collector's Weekly. You ever read any of stuff.
9:00
Speaker 1: They write a lot of really cool long form articles
9:03
Speaker 1: about like stuff that's come and gone, like dads and things,
9:06
Speaker 1: and one of them was, um, it's called jeepers, Creepers,
9:11
Speaker 1: why dark rides scare the pants off of us? But
9:14
Speaker 1: the Collector's Weekly article, it's an interview with the guy
9:17
Speaker 1: who collects old dark ride stuff. But dark rides were
9:21
Speaker 1: like if you went to some rinky dink amusement park
9:23
Speaker 1: or whatever. They couldn't afford to have a roller coaster,
9:26
Speaker 1: but they could afford a little dark building with the
9:30
Speaker 1: walls painted black inside and a little train track or
9:32
Speaker 1: maybe a little boat or something that rode you through
9:35
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of
9:37
Speaker 1: the wall or you know this a strobe light went
9:40
Speaker 1: off or something like that, and these were the direct
9:43
Speaker 1: progenitors of uh, the haunted house. Yeah, and between that
9:48
Speaker 1: and the traveling freak shows, um, it really, like you said,
9:53
Speaker 1: everything was in place. And couple that with the fact
9:56
Speaker 1: that a lot of these houses from the eight hundreds
9:59
Speaker 1: are starting to crumble and there was, you know, narry
10:01
Speaker 1: a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy old vacant house
10:05
Speaker 1: and to keep their kids out, you know, people would say,
10:08
Speaker 1: parents would say, you know that place, you don't want
10:10
Speaker 1: to go in there. It's all on it because you
10:11
Speaker 1: may not come out, which is that was an interesting
10:14
Speaker 1: point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah, but if
10:17
Speaker 1: you think of the modern conception of when you think
10:20
Speaker 1: of a haunted house, what comes to mind typically is uh,
10:24
Speaker 1: dilapidated old Victorian mansion with a story around it. You know,
10:28
Speaker 1: It's never just like, oh, yeah, that was where Mr Johnson,
10:31
Speaker 1: that he was a farmer and kind of a good guy,
10:33
Speaker 1: died quietly asleep, no reports of his ghost at all.
10:37
Speaker 1: That Well, what's probably funny is that was the real story.
10:40
Speaker 1: But what you heard was that he killed his family
10:42
Speaker 1: and had their name written on each knife blade. Um,
10:47
Speaker 1: that's what I heard. The first official recorded haunted attraction.
10:52
Speaker 1: According to this person who wrote this article in Fangoria,
10:57
Speaker 1: Beha McKendry. He says that Orton and Spooner, the Orton
11:01
Speaker 1: and Spooner ghost House in the UK uh and the
11:04
Speaker 1: Edwardian Fair in nineteen fifteen was the first, uh like
11:08
Speaker 1: a genuine haunted attraction. Yep, that was the first ghost house.
11:13
Speaker 1: And in France they had something called the Grand uh
11:16
Speaker 1: guen All and um that was sort of similar, i think,
11:19
Speaker 1: and around the same time. So you've got that haunted house,
11:24
Speaker 1: You've got the dark houses that are coming up in
11:26
Speaker 1: places like Coney Island and stuff like that, and then
11:29
Speaker 1: finally you have the first big time permanent haunted house
11:34
Speaker 1: as we understand today. What you've already mentioned the Haunted
11:36
Speaker 1: Mansion that that was first built in nineteen sixty nine
11:40
Speaker 1: at Disneyland, and apparently it was supposed to go up
11:43
Speaker 1: at Disney oh know, it was so Disneyland, the one
11:47
Speaker 1: in California and the one in Disney World that came
11:51
Speaker 1: up in the seventies, right, uh, late seventies, early eighties.
11:55
Speaker 1: I'm not sure. Actually, I've been to that one though,
11:57
Speaker 1: if you want to know more about that stuff. Though,
11:58
Speaker 1: I think, um, Stuff you missed in History Class did
12:02
Speaker 1: like a whole episode on the Haunted Mansion Ride. Oh,
12:05
Speaker 1: Holly from Stuff You miss in History Class is an
12:08
Speaker 1: absolute Haunted Mansion fanatic, right, I think they have a
12:11
Speaker 1: whole episode on. She knows more about it than anyone,
12:14
Speaker 1: more than Walt Disney himself knew, I think. But here's
12:17
Speaker 1: a little known fact besides what you just said about Holly,
12:21
Speaker 1: she knows more about it than Walt Disney. Um. Originally,
12:25
Speaker 1: the the Haunted Mansion Ride was a walkthrough ride like
12:29
Speaker 1: today's Haunted Houses. UM. But instead they found that the
12:35
Speaker 1: I guess the people the ushers couldn't get people on
12:38
Speaker 1: a pace easily enough and so there'd be traffic jams
12:41
Speaker 1: and backups and everything. So they said, we'll turn it
12:44
Speaker 1: into a dark ride. That's what they did. Yeah, which
12:46
Speaker 1: we'll get to this later, but that's a big part
12:48
Speaker 1: of running your own haunted houses is the flow. Yeah. Also,
12:53
Speaker 1: the Haunted House and the Haunted Mansion in Disney was
12:56
Speaker 1: based on the Winchester Mystery House. As far as the look,
12:59
Speaker 1: they didn't want to have UM credit Old dilapidated psycho
13:01
Speaker 1: house in the middle of their lovely park. So they says, well,
13:05
Speaker 1: we can make it creepy on the inside, and let's
13:06
Speaker 1: just make it like a really lovely Victorian on the outside.
13:10
Speaker 1: And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the
13:12
Speaker 1: Winchester Mystery, also recommend it's pretty neat. The Son of Ours. Yeah, yeah, man,
13:16
Speaker 1: that was a good one. Not the Disney podcast. Um
13:19
Speaker 1: So then you mentioned the j c's, Chuck, and I
13:22
Speaker 1: didn't realize this, but the idea of a semi permanent
13:28
Speaker 1: so not not located in like an amusement park or
13:31
Speaker 1: something like that, but um, they an annual attraction that
13:36
Speaker 1: just comes up around Halloween and then comes down in November.
13:40
Speaker 1: November one. Um, as far as haunted houses go in
13:44
Speaker 1: the United States, was created by the j c's, which
13:48
Speaker 1: is the United States Junior Chamber, which is like a
13:51
Speaker 1: community organization with chapters across the country. And in the seventies,
13:56
Speaker 1: the j c's hit upon this idea of well, why
13:59
Speaker 1: don't you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers,
14:03
Speaker 1: and it just took off like a rocket, and the
14:06
Speaker 1: j CS became synonymous in the seventies and eighties and
14:09
Speaker 1: up to the nineties with haunted houses. Like if you
14:12
Speaker 1: went to a haunted house in your town, it was
14:13
Speaker 1: probably put on by the local chapter of the j c's. Yeah.
14:16
Speaker 1: I remember specifically going to some of those as a kid,
14:20
Speaker 1: as well as my church would have their own haunted houses,
14:24
Speaker 1: not hell houses. Yeah, just very like kid oriented minor
14:30
Speaker 1: uh spooks and goblins. Um, we'll get into hell houses later.
14:33
Speaker 1: But even though I did go to Baptist Church, it
14:35
Speaker 1: wasn't anything like that surprising. Yeah, I mean that was
14:39
Speaker 1: before the concept of the hell house. Um. Yeah, it
14:43
Speaker 1: was just like we would have like a Halloween carnival,
14:44
Speaker 1: you know, Bob rapples and did that little fishing game
14:48
Speaker 1: where you get something clipped to your fishing pole behind
14:51
Speaker 1: the curtain. It's so funny. Do you remember when you
14:56
Speaker 1: were a kid just being like, God, this Halloween carnival
14:59
Speaker 1: is really well done. Ye. Man, if you go to
15:02
Speaker 1: one as an adult, you're like this is really junkie,
15:06
Speaker 1: Like are these kids really falling for all this stuff?
15:08
Speaker 1: And they are. It's wonderful. Yeah. My elementary school had
15:11
Speaker 1: a pretty rock and Halloween carnival every year too. The
15:15
Speaker 1: Catholic school I went to had a good one. It
15:17
Speaker 1: was one of the highlights of my year. But um, yeah,
15:19
Speaker 1: you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples,
15:22
Speaker 1: there's no way I would put my face in that
15:23
Speaker 1: disgusting water, no, you know, yeah. Um. Anyway, out of
15:30
Speaker 1: the j CS in there were a couple of guys
15:34
Speaker 1: from a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois named Jim Goulden Tom Hillagas,
15:39
Speaker 1: and they says, you know what, let's just create our
15:41
Speaker 1: own Haunted House book basically like a yeah, I don't
15:46
Speaker 1: know if it was a book. Yeah, I guess it
15:47
Speaker 1: was a book, and let's teach people how to open
15:50
Speaker 1: these up and sell it. And they distributed about twenty
15:54
Speaker 1: copies and it was they formed the Haunted House Company,
15:58
Speaker 1: and it was the first real UH group of outfit
16:02
Speaker 1: to kind of just sell the plan and the stuff
16:05
Speaker 1: that you needed, the props, right, like details like how
16:07
Speaker 1: to do special effects. Um. And because of the success
16:13
Speaker 1: of the j C s UH in the seventies and eighties,
16:16
Speaker 1: private companies finally were like, we can make some cast
16:20
Speaker 1: off of this. Starting in the nineties, and so the
16:23
Speaker 1: haunted houses that we think of today, the sure profit
16:25
Speaker 1: ones like Another World in Atlanta or thirteen Story of
16:29
Speaker 1: New Orleans is another big one. Um that that they
16:33
Speaker 1: came out of the nineties. Do you go to those?
16:35
Speaker 1: No no interest? Yeah? Do you now? Emily and I
16:41
Speaker 1: we still may go. She she has a hanker in
16:43
Speaker 1: this year to go to another world just because we
16:46
Speaker 1: haven't been to. I think we went to one in
16:48
Speaker 1: l A that was pretty decent. Um. I'll go, I
16:51
Speaker 1: guess if she wants to. But it's not my favorite thing.
16:55
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't I like. I like scary movies
16:58
Speaker 1: and stuff. I'm not. I don't avoid that up. I
17:00
Speaker 1: am depressed. Chuck on Twitter the other day, I said,
17:04
Speaker 1: the best scary movie or the best horror movie I
17:07
Speaker 1: haven't seen go and I have heard of Vampire Brooklyn,
17:11
Speaker 1: Eddie Murphy, every single every single suggestion, and there are
17:15
Speaker 1: a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back. So I realized,
17:20
Speaker 1: I'm really running low on good horror movies. But there
17:23
Speaker 1: they aren't around much anymore. Like the ones that are
17:26
Speaker 1: to me, the ones that are genuinely scary are the
17:28
Speaker 1: ones that get into your head. Um, and I'll take
17:32
Speaker 1: a fair amount of jump scares because that's a part
17:35
Speaker 1: of it, if it's got the tension ratcheted up. But um,
17:39
Speaker 1: the ones these days, man, just that the disgusting torture
17:43
Speaker 1: porn thing. I'm just not into that. I'm not either.
17:45
Speaker 1: It's just such an easy, cheap Yeah, they don't scare me,
17:49
Speaker 1: just repulse me exactly, which is a totally different sensation.
17:52
Speaker 1: You know. That's fine if you like to be repulsed
17:55
Speaker 1: in whatever like that's it's great for that, But that's
17:59
Speaker 1: not true fear. It's not um being scared necessarily. It's different. Yeah,
18:05
Speaker 1: I do have a recommendation for you though. It's called
18:08
Speaker 1: either The Lady in Black or Woman in Black, and
18:11
Speaker 1: it's starts a growing up Harry Potter, So it's fairly new.
18:15
Speaker 1: I think it's that came out in the last couple
18:16
Speaker 1: of years. Daniel Recliff, and he does a great job.
18:19
Speaker 1: It's almost exclusively just him in the movie Lady and Black.
18:24
Speaker 1: He does double duty. And there are some like um
18:29
Speaker 1: like Conjuring esque style like c g I ghost graphics,
18:35
Speaker 1: but it's not overdone and it's not overblown, and it
18:37
Speaker 1: is a genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay, it
18:42
Speaker 1: was Okay, that's way I would say this one might
18:45
Speaker 1: be better. And and that guy is it I don't
18:47
Speaker 1: know if it's Tie or t West tis his name.
18:50
Speaker 1: He's a director that did Um The Innkeepers and oh, yeah,
18:54
Speaker 1: that was a good one too. Yeah, and then I
18:56
Speaker 1: can't remember the did he do House with the Devil?
18:58
Speaker 1: Those are pretty good because he is a little more
19:00
Speaker 1: old school. He's not just trying to outgore you or
19:04
Speaker 1: shock you. It's um. He tries to build genuine suspense
19:07
Speaker 1: and dread. The same guy to both of those movies.
19:09
Speaker 1: Uh not The Conjuring, No, No, The Innkeepers and The
19:13
Speaker 1: House of the Devil. I think so, because both of
19:15
Speaker 1: those were good movies. They seem totally different. Though, Yeah,
19:19
Speaker 1: I may be wrong in that Innkeepers. That was a
19:21
Speaker 1: slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took
19:25
Speaker 1: a long time to build. That was a little slow,
19:27
Speaker 1: Like you didn't even try to start the scares until
19:31
Speaker 1: like thirty minutes in. Yeah, you know the lady that's
19:34
Speaker 1: in that is uh Kelly McGillis, did you realize that? Yeah?
19:38
Speaker 1: I didn't know till the end of the movie. It
19:40
Speaker 1: said Kelly McGillis was like, oh, she's got the same
19:42
Speaker 1: name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, but then
19:44
Speaker 1: it's really her. She looks so different now, So that's
19:49
Speaker 1: our Josh and Chuck's for a movie corner. We'll get
19:52
Speaker 1: back to the actual podcast right after this message. You know,
19:59
Speaker 1: we should we should have done a Maybe next year
20:01
Speaker 1: we'll just do one of those, like a total horror movie. Uh,
20:05
Speaker 1: talk fest sounds good. Those are fun. But back to
20:08
Speaker 1: the more boring subject of haunted house attraction. Um, the
20:14
Speaker 1: industry is huge, Like you said, there's a lot of
20:16
Speaker 1: money to be made, and uh no too. Haunted houses
20:20
Speaker 1: are going to be alike. Sometimes these folks that open
20:23
Speaker 1: them by an old home or something and own it
20:26
Speaker 1: and do this every year. Sometimes they rent out of space.
20:30
Speaker 1: The ones I've been to haven't been in the actual space.
20:33
Speaker 1: Wasn't some like cool old house or like a penitentiary
20:36
Speaker 1: or yeah, apparently Eastern State Penitentiary is converted ye here,
20:40
Speaker 1: and that is a scary, scary place, just normally. Yeah,
20:45
Speaker 1: the only ones I've been to are the ones that
20:47
Speaker 1: is it's like it's in a big open like a
20:49
Speaker 1: shopping center where there used to be a like a
20:52
Speaker 1: sales jewelry closed and right the Ghost of Capitalism. Um.
20:59
Speaker 1: And then the you have themes, some of them. I
21:02
Speaker 1: think the better haunted houses have themes because when you
21:04
Speaker 1: talk about scares, you can be all over the map.
21:07
Speaker 1: Um from doing something like with a movie theme, where
21:10
Speaker 1: you have classic horror movies or serial killers or gray scientists,
21:14
Speaker 1: or like vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Yes,
21:18
Speaker 1: those are two very different kind of themes. Apparently, Um,
21:21
Speaker 1: Rob Zombies got his own jam going and she called
21:26
Speaker 1: his house yeah pretty much. Um, it's called Rob Zombies
21:31
Speaker 1: Great American Nightmare. I think it's supposed to be a
21:34
Speaker 1: play on the American Dream. But one of the rooms
21:37
Speaker 1: is the John Wayne Gayzy Room, and it's like a
21:40
Speaker 1: guy dressed up like John Wayne Gacy's Bubbles the clown.
21:43
Speaker 1: I think that was the name of his clown, wasn't it.
21:46
Speaker 1: Uh that sounds right. Um, just kind of hanging out
21:49
Speaker 1: in like a recline or whatever. And this is Chicago,
21:52
Speaker 1: and that's where John Wayne Gacy killed his victims, and
21:55
Speaker 1: a lot of the victims families are still around, so
21:57
Speaker 1: everybody's up in arms, and Rob Zombies like could not
22:00
Speaker 1: less thank you for the free press, right exactly. Well,
22:04
Speaker 1: clowns are posted something on our Facebook page a day
22:06
Speaker 1: because that new clown and um American Horror story. Have
22:10
Speaker 1: you seen this clown yet? Twisty the Clown, The guy
22:14
Speaker 1: that made that show is like, just wait, Like, I
22:17
Speaker 1: know clowns can be scary, but I have got the
22:20
Speaker 1: scariest clown ever. And it's pretty scary, dude. Yeah, Like
22:24
Speaker 1: I'm not bothered by it by things like that much,
22:26
Speaker 1: but I saw this clown and I'm not into that show,
22:29
Speaker 1: but I did watch the scenes that that clown was
22:31
Speaker 1: in just to see what it was. Like, Yeah, it's
22:32
Speaker 1: pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And
22:35
Speaker 1: and there's a broad daylight killing, which are always super
22:37
Speaker 1: scary to me. Oh yeah, like they don't care about
22:41
Speaker 1: there's no hiding it or any Yeah. That like a
22:45
Speaker 1: beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field, and those
22:48
Speaker 1: kind of creep me out more. Yeah, because the whole
22:50
Speaker 1: idea of like, oh, it's a good day to die,
22:53
Speaker 1: to me, that doesn't mean it's beautiful out. It means
22:56
Speaker 1: like it's like the world's already ending now it's a
22:59
Speaker 1: good day to die. You know, the earth is opening
23:02
Speaker 1: up and magma is pouring out that is possibly a
23:05
Speaker 1: good day to die. Then the serial killer can come along.
23:09
Speaker 1: Uh So if you're opening one of these hunted houses,
23:11
Speaker 1: you can count on spending. This is a good idea.
23:14
Speaker 1: You can make some good dough if you've got the
23:16
Speaker 1: funds to get it going. Um, fifteen dollars per square
23:21
Speaker 1: foot for decorating and special effects is what. Just that
23:24
Speaker 1: alone is what you're gonna and that's not counting the
23:26
Speaker 1: renting or buying of the structure itself. Right, so you
23:28
Speaker 1: have five thousand foot scare footage. Okay, that's what I
23:33
Speaker 1: was going for. That's good. You can be spending up
23:35
Speaker 1: to grand just in decorations and scares and tricks. Yeah,
23:42
Speaker 1: and you may be able to reuse a lot of
23:43
Speaker 1: that from year to year. But you probably shouldn't put
23:46
Speaker 1: out the same thing every year because if you're in
23:48
Speaker 1: the same space doing the same thing, you're not going
23:50
Speaker 1: to get repeat customers. No, So you want to turn
23:54
Speaker 1: over like that each year. It's a new stuff. And
23:59
Speaker 1: like you said, themes often change, So just changing the
24:02
Speaker 1: theme alone is going to require that you change this this. Um, well,
24:07
Speaker 1: your layout I guess to an extent. Yeah, Like, if
24:10
Speaker 1: you're doing scary clowns. You're probably gonna have to get
24:17
Speaker 1: rid of your O R setting or whatever unless you
24:20
Speaker 1: do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary,
24:23
Speaker 1: but it just seems a little off. Yeah, clown doing surgery,
24:27
Speaker 1: that's just um, that'd be pretty scary. The clown hospital. Yeah, yeah,
24:33
Speaker 1: well don't they have that children's hospital has a clown character.
24:37
Speaker 1: That's what I'm thinking about, Quardrey. Yeah. Um. And by
24:41
Speaker 1: the way, this is written by Kristen Konger from Stuff
24:43
Speaker 1: Mom Never Told You, and she actually interviewed a few
24:45
Speaker 1: owners of haunted houses to get some good inside poop
24:48
Speaker 1: and um, that's where we're like getting these numbers and
24:52
Speaker 1: they say to open one up. I was just making mine,
24:55
Speaker 1: not oh you are Um, they said to open one up.
24:58
Speaker 1: You're not only obviously it's it's a fun job, but
25:00
Speaker 1: you've got to have a lot of business acumen too.
25:02
Speaker 1: It's not just like, oh, this will be a hoot,
25:04
Speaker 1: Like you've got to be super focused in and have
25:06
Speaker 1: a good business brain or you're not gonna make any money.
25:09
Speaker 1: Plus also, um, safety is a big, big deal, especially
25:13
Speaker 1: after a fateful event in at six Flags Great Adventure
25:18
Speaker 1: in New Jersey, there was They had a seventeen trailer
25:25
Speaker 1: interconnected modular haunted house dark ride basically but a walking
25:30
Speaker 1: dark ride. So it was a haunted house. Um and
25:33
Speaker 1: it was basically a fire trap and it went up
25:36
Speaker 1: and eight teenagers got trapped inside and died in the fire.
25:41
Speaker 1: There were no fire sprinklers, there were no obvious, um
25:45
Speaker 1: emergency exit signs or anything like that, and um, as
25:51
Speaker 1: that's what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think like
25:54
Speaker 1: by the time the eighties rolled around, people would have
25:57
Speaker 1: figured out, oh, if somebody likes the man each in
26:00
Speaker 1: here or doesn't put their cigarette out, because again, it's
26:03
Speaker 1: the eighties, so people smoked everywhere. The whole thing's gonna
26:06
Speaker 1: go up because it's all plywood and foam, and maybe
26:10
Speaker 1: we should put fire sprinklers in. But apparently it took
26:12
Speaker 1: this tragedy to really change the industry, but it did. Yeah,
26:17
Speaker 1: and safety is, like you said, a huge, huge part
26:19
Speaker 1: of it. Because you're in the dark. You've got things
26:22
Speaker 1: flying out and props swooping down and people jumping out
26:27
Speaker 1: and uh, I mean, anything can happen to go wrong
26:30
Speaker 1: and someone can get injured. So yeah, and actually, did
26:33
Speaker 1: you hear about the girl in two eleven. There's an
26:35
Speaker 1: employee at one of the ones outside of St. Louis
26:38
Speaker 1: called Creepy World, and um, she worked there and somehow
26:42
Speaker 1: got caught in a noose and accidentally hung herself. That
26:46
Speaker 1: sounds like a story that you hear, you would think,
26:48
Speaker 1: so it is so well documented that it actually did happen.
26:52
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure. But she survived. Um, she suffered some
26:57
Speaker 1: brain damage to it to an extent from what I understand,
27:00
Speaker 1: And um, I don't know if it was extensive or not.
27:03
Speaker 1: I'm on a roller coaster of emotion, right, but she,
27:06
Speaker 1: I mean, she did survive. But she she accidentally got
27:08
Speaker 1: caught in the nuise and hung herself. And it's possible
27:10
Speaker 1: some patrons passer by thinking that she was like that's
27:14
Speaker 1: what was supposed to be going on. Yeah, I've I've
27:17
Speaker 1: heard some story that is not that of someone who
27:19
Speaker 1: hung themselves on Halloween and everyone thought it was a
27:23
Speaker 1: just a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you
27:25
Speaker 1: need to go watch the most recent Don't Be Dumb.
27:29
Speaker 1: It comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes?
27:32
Speaker 1: Is that an old well, don't spoil it. Okay, people
27:34
Speaker 1: should go watch it. Go watch. Don't be dumb about
27:36
Speaker 1: that man, ask and tell him Josh that you Um, so,
27:41
Speaker 1: after you've got your safety system worked out, You've got
27:44
Speaker 1: your fire safety, got your sprinkler system, you've got flame
27:47
Speaker 1: retardant material, you've got camera set up everywhere, everyone assigned
27:52
Speaker 1: a lengthy waiver. Even if they do get hurt, um,
27:56
Speaker 1: they could probably still try and see you, but you're
27:57
Speaker 1: trying to avoid that at all costs. What you're gonna
28:01
Speaker 1: have is some sort of amaze like structure where you're
28:05
Speaker 1: walking around sort of lost but really just getting shuffled
28:09
Speaker 1: along a path. And there's, like you said earlier, there's
28:14
Speaker 1: this thing called through put. So there's a lot of
28:16
Speaker 1: thought put into it because apparently the worst thing you
28:20
Speaker 1: can do in a haunted house, and this makes sense,
28:23
Speaker 1: is to let the group behind catch up to the
28:26
Speaker 1: group ahead. Yeah, that ruins the whole thing, ruins everything
28:29
Speaker 1: because you're in a group. It depends, but I don't
28:31
Speaker 1: know six or right people. But and you don't want
28:34
Speaker 1: the scare that already happened to be apparent to the
28:37
Speaker 1: group that hasn't gotten there yet. Like you see the
28:40
Speaker 1: chainsaw guy crawling back into his little tree, right exactly.
28:44
Speaker 1: So UM this throughput is basically a calculation of how
28:47
Speaker 1: many people you can push through at what intervals to say,
28:51
Speaker 1: meet your nightly ticket quota. So the numbers that Conger
28:55
Speaker 1: gives UM is to to get five people through in
28:59
Speaker 1: a night you and put a group of six. You
29:01
Speaker 1: can set them out every thirty seconds and they shouldn't
29:05
Speaker 1: bump into one another. And then one of the ways
29:07
Speaker 1: that that UM employees make sure that these groups don't
29:11
Speaker 1: bump into one another is the way that they scare people. Yeah,
29:14
Speaker 1: it's called scaring forward, which makes sense. It does. It's
29:20
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, boring term UM. But what they're doing
29:23
Speaker 1: is usually jumping behind you as you walk through the
29:28
Speaker 1: group to make you go in a forward They don't
29:30
Speaker 1: want to jump out in front of you and have
29:32
Speaker 1: you move in the in the direction you just came
29:34
Speaker 1: from backward. Yeah, so they want to scare you forward.
29:37
Speaker 1: And that is a little tip. If you are not
29:40
Speaker 1: into being the the lead person being scared, then you
29:45
Speaker 1: should be in the lead because it's probably gonna come
29:48
Speaker 1: from behind you. It's pretty counterintuitive, but I think I'm
29:51
Speaker 1: going to be in the back and I'll be just fine. Yeah,
29:53
Speaker 1: you're the one that's gonna get grabbed because if they
29:56
Speaker 1: jump out at the front of the group again, it's
29:57
Speaker 1: gonna push the group backward, and the group ahead is
30:00
Speaker 1: going to run into the group behind, and that's very bad. Yeah,
30:03
Speaker 1: and I say get grabbed, you probably won't get touched. Now,
30:07
Speaker 1: there apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching.
30:12
Speaker 1: But you're going to be fully informed. That's so crazy.
30:15
Speaker 1: He really does light touching. You're gonna be fully informed,
30:18
Speaker 1: Like it's not gonna you're not gonna not know that
30:21
Speaker 1: it's coming. Like in line, they're going to be like
30:23
Speaker 1: signed this an initial here, an initial here, an initial here,
30:27
Speaker 1: and we're gonna give you a heart attach test first,
30:31
Speaker 1: just to make sure please step on this treadmill that
30:34
Speaker 1: kind of thing. See, that's how I would really scare
30:36
Speaker 1: people to say, you know, none of the actors are
30:38
Speaker 1: allowed to touch anyone, so if you're getting touched, I
30:41
Speaker 1: mean something has gone horribly wrong. Right, And then have
30:44
Speaker 1: people well, well we'll get to in a minute, um,
30:49
Speaker 1: the new extreme ones where there's not only touching, like
30:53
Speaker 1: it's beyond anything that you could imagine. But we'll get
30:57
Speaker 1: to that soon. Uh. And since we mentioned actors hiding. Uh.
31:01
Speaker 1: Those are called scare pockets. Yeah, where they hide jump
31:05
Speaker 1: out from. Yeah. So like they're hiding behind that tree,
31:08
Speaker 1: and they may distract you with a bat swooping down
31:11
Speaker 1: in the other direction. There's a lot of distraction going
31:13
Speaker 1: on because what they don't want is you to be
31:15
Speaker 1: focused on the clearly placed fox tree trunk that has
31:20
Speaker 1: the smell of a chainsaw. Yeah, but there won't be
31:24
Speaker 1: any blade on that chainsaw, by the way. No. And
31:25
Speaker 1: a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yeah. Um.
31:30
Speaker 1: Because the longer they hang out and they're like yeah, right,
31:34
Speaker 1: the more you're gonna be like you're just some teenager, yeah,
31:38
Speaker 1: who doesn't scare me. Yeah. And if you're looking to
31:40
Speaker 1: save a little money, you might want to double up
31:42
Speaker 1: and have that scare pocket have a couple of different
31:45
Speaker 1: ways that it can go. Like I can jump out
31:48
Speaker 1: on these people on the right who are in this
31:50
Speaker 1: one part of the hunted house. Now I can scramble
31:52
Speaker 1: back and then hit these people on the left, not
31:54
Speaker 1: hit them, jump out and scare them. Um. And that
31:57
Speaker 1: way you're saying a little dough with your actors. Yeah,
31:59
Speaker 1: double or tippling your people and then apparently chuck. Lastly, Um,
32:04
Speaker 1: a lot of the attractions are run on compressed air
32:09
Speaker 1: that is set off either through motion sensors, which I
32:12
Speaker 1: think everybody expects, but also through touch pads, which makes
32:16
Speaker 1: sense because you can control that right well with a
32:20
Speaker 1: with a motion sensor, every group is going to set
32:22
Speaker 1: off that effect at right, And what it does is
32:25
Speaker 1: it opens the valve and all of a sudden, the
32:27
Speaker 1: skeleton sits up in the coffin or comes out from
32:29
Speaker 1: the side or something exactly right. Um, that was a
32:35
Speaker 1: really good impression with a touch pad. Though, if you say,
32:40
Speaker 1: place the square off to the left or something, not
32:42
Speaker 1: every group is going to walk over the touch pad,
32:45
Speaker 1: so not every group is going to get the same
32:47
Speaker 1: set of scare. So it kind of randomizes the thing,
32:50
Speaker 1: which in turn makes the whole experience even more frightening,
32:53
Speaker 1: because if you hear the group ahead at the curve
32:56
Speaker 1: scream and scream exactly when you get to that, you're
33:00
Speaker 1: gonna be prepared and if nothing happens, well, then, my friend,
33:03
Speaker 1: you're just even more keyed up for the next one.
33:06
Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, and you're keyed up to begin with
33:08
Speaker 1: walking in there because a good haunted house will put
33:11
Speaker 1: a little bit of money into getting you all ramped
33:14
Speaker 1: up in the parking lot in the line that we
33:17
Speaker 1: might have creeps dressed up roaming around. Uh, they may
33:20
Speaker 1: have sound effects and spooky music and like an airhorn blast,
33:24
Speaker 1: which is really uncool, and that's just got you on edge.
33:27
Speaker 1: By the time you walk in that place, you're ready
33:29
Speaker 1: to be scared. Um alright, chuck, Yeah, we've teased it enough.
33:34
Speaker 1: Let's talk about extreme haunted houses, which apparently are so
33:38
Speaker 1: extreme that people who are haunted house enthusiasts, like people
33:44
Speaker 1: who are like in the industry, don't even like these
33:46
Speaker 1: things to be called extreme haunted houses because they're so extreme. Yeah,
33:51
Speaker 1: that's what I gather. And these are to say these
33:54
Speaker 1: are interactive, is uh not really putting a fine point
33:57
Speaker 1: on it. They are. You're basically paying money to be
34:03
Speaker 1: treated like an assault victim for up to seven hours,
34:07
Speaker 1: like you might be put in a headlock. You might
34:11
Speaker 1: where's the one there's one in San Diego? Yeah. Uh.
34:15
Speaker 1: McCamy manner is renowned as like the worst of the worst.
34:19
Speaker 1: The video that I saw it was like you are
34:21
Speaker 1: like covered in blood, dude. It was unbelievable put into
34:25
Speaker 1: like a coffin, and somebody is like in their writing
34:27
Speaker 1: on top of you in the dark, and you're trying
34:30
Speaker 1: to get out and they're pulling you back in and
34:32
Speaker 1: and just like it's insane, how intense this thing looks. Yeah,
34:36
Speaker 1: they had a cage that locks your head in that
34:40
Speaker 1: they're dropping like fake snakes in, which is not as
34:44
Speaker 1: bad as life snakes, but it's still pretty bad. And
34:46
Speaker 1: apparently the the the catchphrase of everybody who goes through
34:52
Speaker 1: these things is let me out of here. Is that
34:54
Speaker 1: they shout or cry it. Well, yeah, but apparently supposedly
34:58
Speaker 1: McCamy manner, it's open year round and they only take
35:02
Speaker 1: four people a day through this thing, but like you said,
35:05
Speaker 1: it's up to seven hours long in some cases, right, yeah,
35:08
Speaker 1: so they'll take in I think, just one at a time.
35:11
Speaker 1: You have to come through by yourself, and they only
35:14
Speaker 1: do four people to day. It's only open on the weekends,
35:17
Speaker 1: and I don't know if this is true. Supposedly, the
35:20
Speaker 1: one rule like you have to apply fill on an
35:23
Speaker 1: application to go through this thing and be super fit
35:26
Speaker 1: and super psychologically fit and um, because you're getting a
35:30
Speaker 1: physically like abused in some cases like nothing you can't
35:34
Speaker 1: walk away from. But you know they're they're mangling you
35:37
Speaker 1: without hurting you. Well, yeah, and they held I saw
35:40
Speaker 1: they held one guy's face in front of a toilet
35:42
Speaker 1: and it shot up some noxious stuff out of it,
35:45
Speaker 1: like stuff like that. So on one hand, it is
35:49
Speaker 1: like physically abusive. On the other it's like almost laughable
35:53
Speaker 1: that they like, these people really put their minds to
35:56
Speaker 1: it and they came up with shooting stuff out of
35:58
Speaker 1: a toilet in your face. Yeah. Um, But supposedly you
36:03
Speaker 1: can't leave this one at all, like there is no
36:05
Speaker 1: safe word. I just don't believe that. I don't believe
36:08
Speaker 1: it either. But it's free. The one in San Diego
36:11
Speaker 1: is really Yeah, it's free. And the and that's the
36:13
Speaker 1: one hook is is that you're not allowed to leave
36:16
Speaker 1: what you You sign a document it says I'm going
36:18
Speaker 1: to go through this thing from beginning to end. That's
36:22
Speaker 1: what I say. I would trust me, I would get
36:23
Speaker 1: out of that place like I would. Yeah, I would
36:26
Speaker 1: bust through a wall or something. That's what it took
36:30
Speaker 1: Chuck Murray. But that is McCamy manner, and that is
36:34
Speaker 1: was constructed by Russ McCamey, who's a terror fanatic. Uh.
36:38
Speaker 1: They also have one in New York and l A
36:40
Speaker 1: called Blackout, one called Gates of Hell in Las Vegas.
36:44
Speaker 1: And the common denominator of all these is you're getting
36:49
Speaker 1: physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want to
36:51
Speaker 1: wear again, because you're gonna fake blood and vomit thrown
36:54
Speaker 1: in your face hopefully fake and be physically assaulted. I
36:58
Speaker 1: mean they have scenes where, you like, where there's a
37:00
Speaker 1: rapist after you. It's really dark. So they with haunted
37:06
Speaker 1: house enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things, it's usually
37:09
Speaker 1: because they say there's no story to it. There's very
37:13
Speaker 1: rarely build up. It's all just payoff off, payoff, like
37:17
Speaker 1: all of it. It's just there's no there's no well,
37:19
Speaker 1: there's no ratcheting up of tensions. It's like those movies
37:22
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. It's the haunted attraction version of Uh.
37:27
Speaker 1: I don't even know what there are. I don't watch
37:29
Speaker 1: any of them. Like Hostile, Okay, I did see that one. Actually,
37:33
Speaker 1: what do you think anytime if you're going to pull
37:37
Speaker 1: out that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me. Yeah,
37:41
Speaker 1: that is such a trope by now you know you
37:43
Speaker 1: know who did do it well? Was the first couple
37:46
Speaker 1: of hell raisers They used medical instruments to in the
37:50
Speaker 1: day disheartening effect. Yeah, the ones that scare me the most. Again,
37:55
Speaker 1: to delve back into movies like did you ever see
37:57
Speaker 1: Wolf Creek and it's setting the Australian Outback, is like, yeah,
38:02
Speaker 1: it's the kids whose car breaks down and all of
38:05
Speaker 1: a sudden, the rest of the movie is them getting
38:07
Speaker 1: traced chased by this homicidal maniac. Okay, that to me
38:10
Speaker 1: is what's called the psychological thriller. Yeah, that's not I mean, yes,
38:15
Speaker 1: I understand it is horror Friday the thirteenth, that's like
38:19
Speaker 1: Hallmark Court, but it's the slasher movie different. Yeah, the
38:21
Speaker 1: slasher movie is just it's just different. I mean, there's
38:25
Speaker 1: not enough true, genuine horror movies in my opinion, which
38:29
Speaker 1: amount to basically supernatural horror. I guess that's how you
38:32
Speaker 1: put it. That's what I meant to You should check
38:34
Speaker 1: out Wolf Creek. It's the the will. I have no
38:36
Speaker 1: problem with it. It's just as far as horror goes,
38:39
Speaker 1: I'm not scared by that. I want to be scared
38:42
Speaker 1: you might be scared. Okay, I'll check it out. The
38:46
Speaker 1: murderous guy is is a really like kind of a
38:48
Speaker 1: great character, and I think he falls into the pantheon
38:50
Speaker 1: of classic like Michael Myers characters like yeah, one of
38:54
Speaker 1: the good Slashers, um, which brings us to the hell houses, yeah,
39:00
Speaker 1: which um, like we said, was sort of started back
39:02
Speaker 1: in the dark ages of Christianity. Uh, they they do
39:08
Speaker 1: this today. The most famous wasn't is in uh Cedar Hill, Texas.
39:12
Speaker 1: And there's a documentary called hell House on these things,
39:14
Speaker 1: I think from like two thousand to camp and Uh.
39:20
Speaker 1: The idea of these is uh run by churches usually
39:24
Speaker 1: and they are too just like in the old days,
39:28
Speaker 1: scare you into walking the straight and narrow, And actually
39:32
Speaker 1: they were. They were originated by Jerry Folwell back in
39:35
Speaker 1: the seventies. Yeah, those are the first ones, I think. Yeah,
39:38
Speaker 1: and then in the nineties that church in Texas you
39:40
Speaker 1: mentioned took over Abundant Life Christian Center, um, and they
39:45
Speaker 1: took over and they started actually packaging it. They started
39:49
Speaker 1: selling hell houses for like bucks and it was kind
39:54
Speaker 1: of like do you remember those j C's in the
39:56
Speaker 1: seventies that came up with the Haunted House package. These
39:59
Speaker 1: are the same things but for hell houses. And then
40:02
Speaker 1: there's modules that you can buy that cost additional amounts
40:05
Speaker 1: of money so you can add rooms to it. And
40:07
Speaker 1: so like a room you might buy as the abortion room.
40:10
Speaker 1: And in the abortion room, Um, you're taught how to
40:14
Speaker 1: use raw meat that's like a stand in for a
40:18
Speaker 1: fetus that you throw into a glass bowl. You've got
40:20
Speaker 1: to make sure it's a glass bowl so everybody can
40:22
Speaker 1: see through into it. Did the quote literally from the
40:25
Speaker 1: manual that they distribute on how to run these says, quote,
40:28
Speaker 1: purchase a meat product that closely resembles pieces of a
40:31
Speaker 1: baby to be placed in a glass bowl, so that
40:33
Speaker 1: their suggestion that's a room from hell house. Yeah, and
40:36
Speaker 1: this is to keep you from having premarital sex exactly. Obviously,
40:40
Speaker 1: subtlety is not a hallmark of the hell house. Um.
40:45
Speaker 1: So for example, like if you there's there's one from
40:48
Speaker 1: New Destiny Christian Center. Um, it's called the Rave scene
40:53
Speaker 1: and basically it's about um club drugs and death. Teenage death.
40:58
Speaker 1: Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their own life,
41:03
Speaker 1: um as a result of of sin, yes, of their sin. Yeah,
41:06
Speaker 1: like the lesbian suicide room where uh, you know, a
41:09
Speaker 1: young lady succumbs to lesbianism and uh is so mistreated
41:15
Speaker 1: and um, she she goes to she's she's not a lesbian,
41:20
Speaker 1: she's just saving herself and is mistaken for a lesbian
41:27
Speaker 1: and then uh it then kills herself because her best
41:30
Speaker 1: friend rejects her and calls her a lesbian when she
41:32
Speaker 1: went to go hugger. That was that was from the
41:35
Speaker 1: Vice article you sign at least, yeah, that's a great article. Um,
41:39
Speaker 1: but it's all repercussions of sins. So there's the lesbian
41:43
Speaker 1: suicide room. There is the AIDS room, the abortion room,
41:47
Speaker 1: the domestic violence room, the d u I room, and
41:51
Speaker 1: they're all just enacting these horrific scenes. And until you
41:55
Speaker 1: get finally to Hell, is it the end of the
41:59
Speaker 1: very end? Um In Hell is where they're you know,
42:02
Speaker 1: displaying what hell looks like with ghuls and demons and uh,
42:05
Speaker 1: and then finally you get to go to heaven. Well,
42:07
Speaker 1: this is what makes the hell house the hell house.
42:10
Speaker 1: Like you through these different types of sin into Hell
42:14
Speaker 1: and then when you come out, you emerge through Hell
42:18
Speaker 1: and then the real life preachers there saying, hey, how
42:23
Speaker 1: about you repent and for those of you who aren't saved,
42:26
Speaker 1: why don't you come on over to our church and
42:28
Speaker 1: we'll save you. Yeah, they call it. In the Vice article,
42:30
Speaker 1: they call it the h It's a really cool pastor
42:33
Speaker 1: who jumps out and is the good cop to hell
42:35
Speaker 1: house is bad cop, and he's like, you can avoid
42:38
Speaker 1: all this scary stuff if you, uh, you know, take
42:41
Speaker 1: the Lord Jesus as your savior. And sometimes they'll do
42:44
Speaker 1: that right in the room and have you signed something? Oh,
42:47
Speaker 1: I can imagine, and uh, that's the hell house. And
42:51
Speaker 1: then that Vice article, it's crazy. Um. The author mentions
42:54
Speaker 1: that a little boy goes off in vomits during the
42:57
Speaker 1: hell house, So apparently the very effective well, if the
43:02
Speaker 1: object is to make you sick and vomit, yea, so
43:05
Speaker 1: vomit from fear for your soul. And they're still around.
43:08
Speaker 1: It seems like something that um might have gone by
43:11
Speaker 1: the wayside. But yeah, you can still go to hell
43:14
Speaker 1: houses in one of places. I have one more thing
43:16
Speaker 1: for your chuck. What you got. Go to BuzzFeed dot com.
43:19
Speaker 1: You may have heard of that website, uh, and search
43:23
Speaker 1: for forty four best picks of scared brows at Haunted. Yeah,
43:28
Speaker 1: I can't remember where the Haunted House is, but it's
43:30
Speaker 1: all the same background, but very much like roller coasters.
43:33
Speaker 1: They take a photo of this one spot and it's
43:37
Speaker 1: like the scariest spot and um, the people are they're wonderful,
43:42
Speaker 1: hilarious photo and like it's been around. I think they
43:45
Speaker 1: first started publishing them in two thousand eleven, so they've
43:49
Speaker 1: been around for years and they're still just as funny
43:51
Speaker 1: as ever. It's great that the scared face is just
43:54
Speaker 1: so pure to me because it's just pure reaction, like
43:59
Speaker 1: the toughest dude in the world, like trying to climb
44:01
Speaker 1: over his girlfriend or push her toward whatever he's afraid of.
44:05
Speaker 1: It's whatever is happening in that two seconds. It's pretty great.
44:09
Speaker 1: So that's Haunted House Attractions everybody I know. Uh, you
44:15
Speaker 1: want to know more about them, type those words in
44:17
Speaker 1: the switch part how stuff works dot com. And since
44:19
Speaker 1: I said that, it's time for the listener mail, I'm
44:23
Speaker 1: gonna call this Karate Kid an email Awesome, which was
44:26
Speaker 1: the scariest movie I've ever seen. Uh, if you listen
44:30
Speaker 1: to our Karate episode, we wax philosophical about Karate Kid
44:33
Speaker 1: movie and we got a lot of emails of UM
44:35
Speaker 1: people feeling great ways of nostalgia UH and talking about it. UM.
44:41
Speaker 1: So here we go. I imagine as will get dozens
44:43
Speaker 1: of versions of this similar email. Just listen to Karate
44:47
Speaker 1: and Uh. I have not finished it yet, but I'm
44:49
Speaker 1: writing about the first seven to eight minutes. Specifically, Your
44:53
Speaker 1: ode to the Karate Kid was beautiful. I got goose
44:56
Speaker 1: bumps along with Chuck. I may have also had a
44:58
Speaker 1: tear in my eye when Need described that magical moment
45:01
Speaker 1: in the film where it all comes together and we realize,
45:03
Speaker 1: along with Daniel Son, that Mr Miyagi is truly a genius. UM.
45:08
Speaker 1: By the way, Ralph Maccio named his son Daniel after himself, Yeah,
45:13
Speaker 1: I guess so, after the best version of himself. I
45:17
Speaker 1: recently sent The Karate Kid to my six year old
45:18
Speaker 1: nephew to ensure that despite what his friends and media
45:21
Speaker 1: try to tell him, he will know that Ralph Macchio
45:23
Speaker 1: is the original and only Karate Kid. When I called
45:26
Speaker 1: him and asked what his favorite part was, he actually
45:28
Speaker 1: started singing, You're the best around, nothing's ever gone, and
45:32
Speaker 1: get you down. It was the proudest moment of my
45:35
Speaker 1: aunthood so far. Now, Chuck I implore you to watch
45:38
Speaker 1: The Karate Kid too, after all the other films that
45:42
Speaker 1: attempt to be a part of the franchise or a
45:43
Speaker 1: Travesty two is incredibly good. It is very good. The
45:47
Speaker 1: Peter Sta song Josh mentioned, Glory of Love was my
45:49
Speaker 1: first ever favorite song when I was six because of
45:52
Speaker 1: the film is a classic, and I think you were
45:54
Speaker 1: missing out. I'll watch it. I'll check it out anyways.
45:57
Speaker 1: Thanks for sending me to work this morning with an
45:59
Speaker 1: extra bout in my step and a song in my
46:01
Speaker 1: heart that is from Nicole Beal at Jed's barber shop.
46:04
Speaker 1: It's like City Utah. Go get her to cut your head.
46:07
Speaker 1: Nice hair, not your head. It's doing a terrible job.
46:11
Speaker 1: She's cutting your head. Thanks a lot, Nicole. Um. Did
46:15
Speaker 1: you know her friend Van Nostrin. Uh, does his band
46:19
Speaker 1: The Bangalore's do a cover of your The Best Around?
46:22
Speaker 1: I knew he loved that song. I don't know if
46:23
Speaker 1: I knew they actually covered It's good. You can go
46:25
Speaker 1: to SoundCloud search Bangalore's and You're the Best Around. It's
46:29
Speaker 1: on there. I'm gonna do that right after this. Uh.
46:33
Speaker 1: If you want to let us know that we nailed something,
46:37
Speaker 1: we want to hear about it. You can tweet to
46:40
Speaker 1: us at s y s K Podcast. You can join
46:42
Speaker 1: us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
46:44
Speaker 1: You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
46:47
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and, as always, joined us
46:49
Speaker 1: at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
46:51
Speaker 1: Doc Come. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
47:01
Speaker 1: visit how stuff works dot com. MMM