I Scare because I care

Since I was 16 years old I have wanted to own my own haunted house attraction. I built my first haunted trail at that age. It started as a bike trail next to my aunts trailer in the Ocala National Forest in Florida. My uncle and I cut the trail and tested the trail each night for the best scares. It took about a month to put together. we built the sets and made a flyer to advertise. we ran with a small cast of about 20 and ran for 2 nights. the electric company even came out to shut off a few key street lights for us. they did it for free because we were providing a community service. we pulled in about 600 people in those 2 nights. when i was 22 i moved to utah and a friend informed me of a haunted house he worked at every year called the Haunted Forest. We went to the audition. they handed us masks and had us hide in a cave and we were to scare them as they came through. I was hired. this was my first real job at a haunted house and i had never done any kind of acting before so i was very nervous my first night.I was assigned to the mine shaft.I had spent the days between the audition and my first night working on my costume which consisted of a hardhat i had burned holes in and a shirt i severly distressed. I was so scared that first night. about halfway through that night i had a realization that helped me greatly. none of these people knew who i was or would recognize me on the street. not to mention these people paid for me to entertain them. i was then able to break out of my shell and have a blast. I wore my throat out that night and lost my voice the next day. it was ok though because i was in the cemetery the next night as a zombie.I will never forget that night. I crawled on the ground and grabbed at peoples feet. moaning and growling i laid on that graveyard floor in the dirt and rocks all night. I made it a point to stay in character all night. I even tried to scare the security guys and my trail manager. By the end of the night i was covered in dirt and my cloths were tattered beyond recognition. I couldnt tell the real blood from the fake and i had more bruises than i could count. but it was exilerating. I would have to say that night in the graveyard was when the spook in me started to awaken. I started to work different sets every night. I wanted to try every character. if there was a set the other spooks didnt want to work i was first to volunteer. the more challenging the better. I teamed with other spooks and worked alone. I worked with props and animatronics. I did my own costuming and makeup almost every night. I experimented with the sets i worked in every night. I worked out the timing and the best places to approach the crowd. i worked out dialog and ways to use my body language to give the patrons the best show i possibly could. every night as the spooks met in the cast room i would here many complain that the night was slow. or that tonight was just a tough crowd and hard to scare. I can honestly say I dont remember having a night like that. of course there are people who just cant be scared but I dont really remember any of them. I do however remember vividly the faces of those I was able to frighten. the groups of 7-10 people who would fall on there butts as one and then scatter into the woods. My personal favorite where the big guys who complained about not being scared. there girlfriends held tight to there arm cowering. The saying goes and any spook will tell you "if your crying,your dying!" They will single out the most scared person in the group and focus on them. the logic is if that person is scared enough the rest will either laugh at them or get scared themselves. Thus everyone is entertained. The way I see it is if you target the biggest meanest looking one in the group and are able to scare him the rest will fall inline. I cant count how many times I heard a group comming and some guy will be talking about not being scared. Until I come around the corner swinging a live chainsaw above my head running full speed at him. Then it was all over but the crying. literally! Now I just want to take a moment to talk about my favorite set,The Meat Shack! This set was comprised of little more than some old wood and a few fake body parts. there were 2 hanging animatronic bodies hanging in the middle. they were activated by a touch pad hidden in the dirt as you entered the set. the meat shack came after the clowns and strobe rooms and was before the cemetery. This is where i got my first chainsaw experience. I remember at first I would just hide in the woods by the exit and jump out with the saw revved. But i found this was only effective about 75% of the time. sometimes the saw wouldnt start or was out of gas. so i worked on making the set effective without a running saw. I learned that the patrons would be disoriented after leaving the strobe hallway and entering into the dark woods. so i would stand just behind the doorway in the woods. I would let them pass me then step in behind there group and then i walked into the shack with them. they would activate the animatronics and that would scare some. I would wait till they were done checking out the flopping bodies. When it seemed they were ready to move on to the next set I would light up the saw. I would then chase them out of the shack. after they were up the trail abit I would cut the saw off and wait. as they rounded the turn towards the cemetery I would cut through a trail in the woods i had cleared and intersect with them again before the graveyard. then I would run back to my start position. one weekend night a security officer came to my set and called me over in between groups. he asked me if i could tone my scare down a bit. turns out his teenage daughter had come through with some of her friends and i made one of them pee. he said they were still trying to calm her down. Then there was another night I was in the shack and this group of girls came through. I could tell they were going to be a good group because you could hear them coming from sets away. already screaming at everything they saw and heard. When they exited the clown house I jumped out as usual and the group ran for the exit. Except for these 2 girls who ran past me back into the clown house. I ran after them with the saw revved. they were curled up in a ball just inside the clown house. as i approached them they were petrified. I cut the saw and let them pass. they ran past me and into the shack. I heard the animatronics go off and decided to give chase once more. I revved the saw and ran after them full speed. they fled the shack at top speed. I waited for them to round the turn and ran to meet them again. when they heard the saw for the third time they curled up in the trail and wouldnt move. I ran up and stood over them with the saw blaring. The next thing i knew there was a burst of laughter from ahead of me in the woods. It was my trail manager. he was like" ok.ok there scared! They have had enough." so i let them go. I worked many different sets that first year, including the mineshaft,cemetery,truck(horn),the radioactive area,swamp,clown house,mad scientists chamber(both scientist and experiment),blacklight maze,snake pit,end saw maze,mountainman shack,ghost grove,mummies tomb,electric chair,dungeon,and the meat shack. The next year I returned to the haunted forest. I also got a job at the mall working at a halloween store called Halloween FX. I was hired as a sales rep but moved to doing makeup demonstrations for cinema secrets. I would work all day in the mall in full makeup then go home and change costumes to go spook at night. One day at the store a customer came in who ran another local haunted attraction. after talking for a bit he offered me a job spooking for there hayride. since it only ran on weekends i changed my schedule at the forest and worked there on weekdays. I didnt work the ride for long. I was moved out front to do line entertainment. the next season I designed and built sets for both attractions. I helped with cast,costuming, and makeup as well as spooked nightly. The next season I worked primarily at the hayride. I had picked up a job working at a makeup supplier called taylormaid. I did makeup by appointment there and my schedule was pretty full. One day at taylormaid i had three appointments in a row. as i worked on my first appointment a small group of people gathered to watch me turn this guy into the cowardly lion. A few stayed after i was finished. some set up appointments but this one gentleman wanted to have a word with me. he pulled me aside and asked me how much i charge to do an appointment. I told him what the store was having me charge which was $30 per half hour appointment. He told me that i should be charging more like $50 an appointment. I laughed and said that would be nice. He then said "thats what i want you to charge from now on." i said if i could i would. he said "no I dont think you understand i'm your boss and im telling you to." The man was John Taylormaid. I had never met him before. needless to say I was both suprised and flattered. not to mention from that point on i was making $100/hr. plus tips to do makeup. the next season i built a walkthrough for the hayride,and began construction on a new haunted house called the haunted hospital.I was hired as a consultant in charge of room design-construction,casting,makeup,and promotions. I held nightly cast meetings. At the end of that season i decided i wanted to own my own attraction. I evaluated my resume and came to a rather startling realization. the most i had made in one season was $1480.00 for the whole season. that was the year i worked at the store and the 2 attractions. the average amount the haunted forest pulls in annually is 2.3 million dollars. I decided it was my time and started working on my business plan. I now have over 300 room designs completed and a 1st,3rd,5th,and 10th year plan. all im missing now is a place to run it. since i have moved to pa i have built a hayride for my family on halloween. I hope to be able to get at least a start by this season. I will then have all the things i will need to start making films.props,cast,sets,makeup,lighting,sound. I also want to open a community theater in the off season. there isnt much to do in this town for entertainment or recreation. I want to do my part to give kids something else to do than get into trouble or drugs.



If you could use only one word to describe me i believe eccentric is as close as it comes. Ive been called a walking contradiction by those who have taken the time to get to know me. I am both light and dark in just about everything i do. by that i dont mean that i am both good and evil. I have fought with bared teeth and hands formed into white-knuckled claws against the evil my parents tried to instill in me. my mother,im pretty sure,has never truly believed in god. she states otherwise but through years of actions which show blatent lack of accountability i must say i am not convinced. she told us somewhere around the age of 8 or so that we didnt have to attend church anymore because we had "paid our dues". I still attended regardless. not just sunday either. i enrolled in the adventure core in the salvation army. i went to 2 years of summer camp with them.in miami the only church we could attend was hatian. didnt stop me from going every sunday. it was the one thing i was truly sure of. god was out there and he loved me. not to mention that church was one of the only places i ever really felt safe. graveyards being another. some say creepy i say peaceful and quite. when i was 14 i went to a new life revival weekend our church youth was attending. i went with them.on the third day they had a circle prayer. im not sure when it happened but by the time that prayer was over i knew i was to serve the lord. i attended classes and enrolled in pastor school which i regret to say i never graduated. i didnt have long to go when i stopped attending either. i had an experience over the holiday vacation in which i decided not to return. my pastor informed us of a get together on new years eve. i went and all was normal at first. then they said they wanted us to see this video. we all went into this little room with a few pews in it and a little tv in front. we were told if you were squeemish to step outside. then they started the film. about 10 seconds into it i wanted to run screaming from the room. i was traumatised. it was about 60 seconds of clips of aborted babies and babies that had been dropped in dumpsters. it terrified me. now mind you that 85% of the audience were youth. after it was over everyone was standing around eating like it hadnt happened. i asked my youth pastor"how can you possibly eat after seeing that?" he just shrugged and said"Ive seen worse" I was frightened. i didnt want to know that could be worse than that.being a pastor meant i would have to find out. i decided i never wanted to be that decencotized where i could just shrug and say ive seen worse. It didnt seem right. I am a firm believer in the lord.but i will serve him in my own way. i believe he understands because if he didnt he wouldnt be the god i know.There are those who dont understand why I want to do some of the things i do. I hope this helps to clear up some of your confusion. For starters i never met my father. in fact i didnt know that my sister and i didnt share the same father until i was 16. I was also informed at this time that I have a brother ive never met. anyway the man i considered to be my father past away when i was 6. after that we were past around to different family members,my sister and I. a great many abuses where enacted apon us during this time. I wont go into detail but needless to say i grew a great mistrust for men. then my mom started seeiing this abusive alcoholic. things got so bad we went to foster care. she married the alcoholic shortly thereafter. then she sent us to live with our grandmother in pa. home life was good but i was bullied in school. i was beat up pretty often and was targeted daily for a laugh. my grandmother sent me to a therapist. he asked me to bring in some of my drawings. i did. he said that there where only 2 things he would prescribe me. paper and pencil. he is one of the few people who understood why my artwork is so dark. I have the need to put the darkness into a physical form that I can examine without fear. Its how i process how i feel sometimes. It is a healthy creative exercise with no adverse side effects. my desire to build a haunted house and scare people for a living stems from that as well. Anybody who knows me knows i am all about facing my fears. for example I used to be claustrophobic. i had dreams of being stuck in small places. i decided to do something about it. i went to the nutty-putty caves in utah. after a few moments of fear i entered the caves through what is known as the "birth canal". I spent all day in those caves. now no more dreams of small spaces. I want others to be able to face there fears in a safe environment. my haunted house will play on the common fears we all face. as well as some others which are not so common. not because i want to hurt people or cause them any kind of trauma. i dont fantasize about hurting anyone. thats the other thing people will tell you about me. i cant stand real violence,agression,or blood. it makes me feel sick inside. i can watch horror movies all day and have no problems but show me anything containing anything real and my stomach turns. Ive seen enough of the real stuff already and i think ive reached my limit. I also remember the feelings and emotions involved in such behavior. I am a firm believer that no good can ever come from aggression on any level. the best answer to anger is kindness. so if you are looking at my makeup pictures or any of my drawings keep this in mind. I have experienced alot of darkness in my life and this is my way of trying to make sense of it. I am proud of who I am and have worked hard to not fall in my parents footsteps. All I can do in this life is try to make things better for my children so they will not know the darkness in my past. to leave them something that no one ever cared to leave me. a chance.