At The Opposite end of that spectrum..
Of the last post "We thought they were props, I chitt myself!'
A helper of mine totally missed "the Picture" when I told him to put on a big lion mask, sit in the middle of the maze and to pretend he was not a real person. As a girl began kicking him in the shins he sat there unflinching taking all the abuse she could muster out and never moved or scared her at all!?
Then he later complained about it, of course! "Scare the girl! What's with adding another prop to the show by flawlessly pretending to be one?"(til closing time)
Then there are Those Rare Times.
That you just happened to be in a place they never will expect you, so one of them decides to scare their friends. Ferreted away in a dark corner or whatever, they are all nervous (maybe because they know they are not supposed to be doing it?)
And of course at the back of that dark corner they backed into ..you wait!
Perfectly timed you scare them a half- a heartbeat before they scare their friends or maybe better yet you scare him a second after he scares them so you are in essence enacting their need for payback! You just became their personal instant "Hero"!
And you have also just once again proved that you are better, smarter, possibly more commited to a scare than they could be (or maybe it's that "Experience"-Thing?)
I feel scaring the scarer reinforces good predictable behavior from the patrons since now they are surrounded by Ninjas they will be devoted to looking very closely for you in your next hiding place.
I Really Like Some of those
Fairly elaborate, time-consuming set-ups.
It was summer about midnight, nothing happening here. An old truck rolled to a stop infront of my house.
A ragged-looking guy got out, walked toward me,
"I got something you want!"
"?"
"A real coffin, found it in an old farmhouse."
"Is it "New" or "Used?"
"Don't know, I think some JCs left it when they didn't come back to use the farmhouse again for their haunted house."
(Didn't really answer the question though.)
So I now had a real coffin upstairs in my house.
A customer showed up a few nights later who Always was bringing a new girlfriend here. Just the two of them were going through the house. The old exit was getting puked out from the big steel skull's mouth at the front corner of the house. I was standing there waiting for them, holding the big jaw open with my foot. He could see my legs and feet but then, who knows why or how, he got scared of me when he slid out and looked up!
"Dammit! I Almost Made It All the Way Through your House Without You Scaring ME!"
(I had no inkling that there was this contest going on ?)
We all had a god laugh, including his new girlfriend.
Then a strange car drove passed us (we are on a dead end street, it had to turn around to leave)
Suddenly the new girlfriend screamed and ran toward the car full of people screaming "Let me in! Let Me In!" Trying to grab their doorhandles! Which of course made the driver leave much faster!
I thought she was kidding , having fun?
No, she suddenly became very scared because as the three of us were standing there talking , she turned looked sort of behind me and saw :"A LAdy in a Black Dress, with no face, behind a picket fence I had installed next to the big skull. The "Lady" had her hands resting on the fence, wearing white gloves? And "She Had Ten Fingers On Each Hand!!"
This young woman-(new Girlfriend) could not be calmed down! She was hysterical (in the bad way) I had no clue what was going on . Maybe this girl had just flipped out? I had seen nothing, knew nothing about any such person or thing.
They left. It was very late now. I went inside, and sat quietly writing a letter.. then I heard a slight little knock on my door just a few feet away..?
2 OClock in the morning?
I put my hand on the knob, yanked it quickly open ,no idea what or who I might be looking at? (Probably some punk knocked then ran away)
There she stood in the moonlight!
Black, full length dress, black veil, white gloves!... only a total of ten fingers on 2 hands...
She worked next door for her Father during the day, she was also a classmate of my oldest son. I had once suggested to her to come down some night to scare people, "Have some fun!"
She had chosen that night! She never returned ? ("Been there, did that?")
I asked her if she would lay in my real coffin for a photo-op?
She did, wearing that dress, looking pretty spooky, black dress in a white lined coffin, looking bug-eyed/strange! Arms crossed.
Maybe a month later I had to really talk to convince some High school girls to take the tour, some of them were scared !
At the end of their tour I told them about getting the real coffin (of questionable ancestory!)
"Sometimes a camera can "see" ghostly things our eyes cannot see... so I took this picture of the old empty coffin.. (I was holding the photograph close so they couldn't see it yet....) But IF you look at this and use just alittle imagination... it almost looks... as if there might be a woman's body in it."
I then turned it toward them! Some screams followed. It was VERY Easy to see what I described of course.
Maybe she thought her imagination was working abit too well?