More (and less) Terror Behind the Walls
Eastern State Penitentiarys annual Halloween haunted house lets passers-through customize their fear factors.
DEEP DOWN, you know that the undead who haunt Eastern State Penitentiary's Terror Behind the Walls aren't real. You know there's no such thing as ghosts. Or ghouls. Or monsters. Or rat boys.
But once you step on the grounds of the creepy prison ruin - which, from this Friday through Nov. 8, is America's largest non-theme-park haunted house - logic goes out the iron-barred windows.
It starts outside the walls, in line. You need directions. You tap a customer-service rep on the shoulder. She turns around. You see her face. You scream.
"My flesh is torn. My teeth are stained. I have rivulets of blood cascading down my cheeks," said Jenny Tomczak, an insurance professional by day, zombie guard by night.
Now in her 11th season at 24-year-old Terror, Tomczak described a typical interaction. "Customers ask who the manager is, and I show up with my face ripping off, and my bright-red eyes and my disheveled uniform, and say, 'Hello. I'm Jenny. I'm the manager. How can I help you tonight?' "
Her job, in other words, is "making sure you're feeling uncomfortable before you go in."
Organs, guts, limbs
Friendly yet frightening professionalism is key to the penitentiary's "three-S system" of actor training, according to creative director Amy Hollaman.
"The first priority is always safety - safety of ourselves, safety of our visitors," she said. Since the circa-1829 (closed in 1971), 11-acre jail, its paint peeling and walls crumbling, is not one of those lovingly restored historical sites, safety starts with shoring up the building itself.
Second "S" is specialization. "Every role is designed to have a unique scare or style," continued Hollaman. "At this level [of haunted house], we can't just put on a scary suit, jump out and say 'Boo.' Everything is pretty scripted."
The overall story line is "the prison has been taken over," she said. Each of the six-in-a-row attractions has a different theme. One is dark and silent. Another is 3-D. The new "machine shop" is chock full of "organs, guts, body parts, chunks of flesh," Hollaman said.
The last "S" is the big one: scary.
"We entertain people by scaring them," she said. "We're intimidating, creepy, unsettling, terrifying. We have all different methods of doing it. We want to bring them all the way to the edge of that cliff of fear, but we never want to put them over the cliff so that they're traumatized."
This sets Terror apart, said director Brett Bertolino.
Custom creep-out
"A lot of haunted houses have a board out where it tells you how many people peed their pants that night, how many people got escorted out," Bertolino said. "While we certainly have people that get escorted out, that's not our goal. Our goal is for guests to come, have a great experience, get scared, have your friend get scared. We want them to come back."
Bertolino and his staff of 200-plus get, however, that not all people spook the same. So they looks for signs - body language, mostly.
Five-year-veteran Luis Santiago (formerly a "rat boy," now a "soulless creature" - and a home health aide by trade), said he knows to "go for the people that are not scared, what we call the 'pillar' of the group. If you can scare them, it's such a great feeling."
A pillar can be a friend who brought along a less-willing friend. Santiago said that it's often a dad. If you can scare him, "the wife and kids, they laugh. They find it funny."
Abduction seduction
Last year, Terror launched a more intense, interactive fear factor. Guests who want ankles and shoulders grabbed, or to be led alone down a long, dark hall, wear glow sticks and have their cheeks marked. Last season, to the organizers' surprise, 67 percent opted in.
Actors treat dare-seekers differently.
Leah Houk, who's played both patient and nurse in the infirmary, likes to pick out "one of the bigger people I could find, the toughest one in the group," grab them on the elbow, separate them from their group, and take them to another part of the haunt. (Her favorite customers are the ones who "are so scared that they drop to the floor, screaming," she said.)
Still, no one gets hurt. No one gets touched anywhere approaching private-part territory. "We don't want to even get close to thinking [that] causing harm or being sexual was an intention," Hollaman said.
This insistence on propriety is, in part, a response to a new wave of extreme-fright attractions. In places such as Blackout in New York and Los Angeles, visitors pay to become victims of torture, degradation and violence.
Bertolino, who also serves on the board of the Haunted Attraction Association, disapproves of this trend. He won't even dignify them by calling them haunted houses. "Nobody knows what to call them," he said.
Monster be good
On the opposite extreme, Eastern State passers-through who feel too terrified can dial down the fear factor. Several years ago, the site introduced the idea of "Monster be good," a phrase that tells actors to take it easy. First created for kids who came on less-scary Sunday family nights, it's now available to freakers-out all 31 nights.
"I've seen little trains of six people in a row, walking into a room and chanting it," Hollaman said.
There's always the option to leave the haunt entirely. It's as simple as turning to any ghoul and asking to go. When that happens, the actor knows to break character and make conversation.
"You tell them your name and start talking to them," Santiago said. "You put them at ease."
The hope is, by the time the petrified person's safely arrived at the gift shop, he's glad he came.
"We don't want anybody to feel like it's too real," Santiago said. "We want you to scream, and then to laugh."