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Few times actually. Usually accidental. One actor came in from above which is not allowed but smart. Its usually actors going back through to their rooms to pick up bags/trash/etc they left behind because i only turn the lights out when I think everyones out. But a few good actors have made me jump, you build a room thinking you know all the twists, it just takes one really creative guy to make it his own.
"Boo! I bet I scared you, huh? Scared you in your own haunted house!"
"Nope..guess how many people have already tried the same thing you just did?"
One time a customer grabbed my ankle, he was hiding under an item but he was laying in several inches of slimey brown mud, flat on his back.
"Gotcha!"
"Oh?" (not startled or scared in the least)
"Your Mother is going to be very upset when she sees the mud all over your new sweater."
"Oh, she won't mind." (Yah! Sure!)
They stopped here after their weekend of skiing, slightly over-dressed to be laying in mud.
The couple of times I reacted somewhat in a way the customer could inturpit as me being afraid, I was afraid that the clumbsie idiot was going to fall on me! I had no fear from his actual supposid fear-inspiring act.
I mean really...I own the house, we live in it, I have done all the work here, well 98%of it, I and my wife have had actual supernatural experiences here , is some kid going to scare me?
I spent years working in dark basements by myself.
One of the few times that I was actually scared in my haunted house: My ex had left for good maybe a month before this happened . She was being picked on here by the supernatural in this house. About two weeks before she left she had her hair yanked three times as she was in the wine cellar.
Three young men showed up for a tour. Two of them had been here before, as the four of us walked into the wine cellar (the most haunted room here) One of them was walking almost beside me . The room is 31 feet long by 16 feet wide with a 12 ft, high stone arch ceiling, the lights in the room were on and I heard a woman scream!
I turned toward the guy beside me and asked him (not wishing to unduly influence his answer)"Did you just hear...something?"
For some reason even though I very distinctively heard the scream, that was the LAST thing I expected him to say when he said:
"I heard a woman scream."
Real unnamed fear shot through my body! (??) I turned and ran up the steps , leaving those three guys in the wine cellar! (Well I had to see if someone was yelling down my basement stairs ?) This was my excuse for running like a deer passed them.
No, no one was yelling down the basement stairs.
I was to later discover my ex was screaming at about the same time when we heard the scream, a drunk woman was pinching her arm as she turned to leave the "party" which was being held about a mile from here.
One of the men in the tour did not hear the scream, he was still at the top of the wine cellar steps when it happened.
This wasn't haunt related but it was a first time extreme scare experience (which I never need repeated!)
I was 10 yrs. old, playing Hide& Seek .
A summer long road construction project was happening infront of my parent's house.
It was 2 O'Clock break time for the construction crew.
I jumped from a pile of dirt to arrive at the rear of the "steam shovel"-Digger and hid inside even though the operator left it idling, "Nobody would ever think I would be hiding in here!"
As I barely balanced on a thin ledge inside the big engine room next to the massive engine thumping away slowly, belts, gears were spinning, eager to chew me up if I happened to lose my balance (real "smart", huh?)
As I was focused upon looking to see where my playmates were in the game I didn't notice the machine operator return from his break, the first thing he did was rev up the big engine (I'm balancing beside) It was deafening right there beside it inside that steel "room".
I jumped out and down to the dirt pile and ran as fast as I could for half a block, ending up under a neighbor's porch, then I felt my knees twitching from the fear, adreniline?
I was weak in the knees! Now I knew what people meant when they said that phrase!
I have done alot of running after that in my life but never felt that again!
I recently filled some blank walls here with cartoon drawings showing the numerous times I almost got killed or seriously injured in my life. I had forgotten there were so many of these instances until I began drawing them!
Not scared as muck as i was shocked. the haunt i work at is actually haunted. we had this thing where fake spikes would rase up when someone pulled a rope and when you let them go it would be really loud. well we were standing around talking and the guy that pulls the spikes up and down is holding the ropes and when he tries to pull them the ropes wont budge but the spikes are raising. i was standing on a platform so i could see if anyone else was pulling them but nope. must be the haunted souls of the furnace
One night while working in a haunted house I had 2 rooms to work. To get between the 2 rooms there was a doorway that lead from the hidden passages for the actors to in between my 2 rooms with curtains on either side. I scared group in room B and could hear the next group getting close quicker than they should have been, so I took off running and pulled back the curtain and with out looking ran straight into the lead person in group A. I screamed and went running the other direction... the funny thing was they screamed and took off into room A... Someone must have left a secret door cracked and they went into a door instead of down the hall they should have come down. I'm not sure who was more frightened... me or them. After I regained my composure I had to lead them out of room A because there was a fence surrounding them, but they were not going back through that curtain.
Yes and I love it when it happens. Because If I get creeped out or scared in the haunt then the regular guests well they don't have prayer Mwhahahahahahahahahaha.
Didn't get "scared" per se (Well, actually I kind of did, but only because of the paranormal activity that happened occasionally in the abandoned theater that we were in...), but I DID refuse to go in one of our rooms because it was just that damn unnerving.
Last year one of our maze's was Silent Hill themed. Well the second to last room was a roomful of the faceless nurses and it was pitch black with a false flashlight beam that scanned it which was when the actresses would start doing the nurse walk. Well, one and only one time I tried to go through there after closing. I took two steps knowing full well there was noone in the building, and my flashlight caught one of the mannequin nurses and I said "Oh hell no." and turned right back around. I can only imagine how bad they must have gotten the guest when there were actual actresses in there.
I find it hard to become scared now. Though In my early years I was just a decorator and nearly S*** my pants once when I let my guard down at a haunt. Now however I find it hard to become scared but not impossible. Before now starting a haunt of my own or even before I got my chainsaw and just ran people off my lawn I helped a haunt in old town Temecula known as haunted old town when done. I would be there lab rat. When it was done I got complete access and I would pretend to be a victim and put my hood on. I knew every spot and I would go and scare the actors from behind. Now every haunt I go through I anger actors when I say "oh hello there" when they come out to scare. Though one time from behind me I heard a female go “he’s cute”. Then I worked at a home with a huge 20 year old haunt in his back yard. I nearly gave the owner a heart attack when working on it. Fear is something I find it more fascinating than horrifying and I try to study it when going through a haunt.
Anyone else feel the same?
So many different ways it becomes expressed.
Here in Ravens Grin we "Identify" a fear, laugh at it, then go on to something else. Which is incredibly cheap psycho therapy, as pointed out to me many years ago by a former classmate of mine who became a psychiatrist and author/lecturer.
I love lulling them, having many lights "On", and still scaring them! Then watch and listen to them as they realise what scared them was as mundane, common and harmless as say, a garbage bag! (Just a garbage bag, with nothing in it.) (Or my face, no make-up!)
Here is a real study point in fear: I was on one side of a big plexiglass display window, hidden out of sight as the lights blinked slowly off & on. A customer stopped to look in the window with his face very close to the plexiglass as the light blinked on and now I was perfectly lines up across from him eyeball to eyeball, retina to retina!
I was the one doing the scare, yet what felt like some electrical current seemed to pass between us via this plexiglass-insulated connection via the eyes as the light blinked "On"!
"WOW!!!"
It was so incredible!
I also like to create a fearful concept that is not very normal...then give that an unexpected twist. It really gets people thinking (unless they just can't think at all anyway.)
So the unusual occurs, they begin to anticipate what will befall them next, then something totally unexpected happens.
My Brother and I worked some customers back and forth between us , it was classic and hysterical!
I would be on one side of them first and scare them by just being there, then I would look passed them and get a look of fear on my face, they would turn to see what I was looking at, as my Brother came up on the other side with a white sheet over him, then he would take off the sheet , look back my way, they would turn their head and I would be gone! (Waiting to appear after they turned their head again toward my Brother! And of course scare them again!)
It helped to have a very genuinely scary room wrapped around us all too. (The wine cellar)