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SYSK Selects: How Haunted House Attractions Work · Stuff You Should Know

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