Haunt Actors Horror Storys

[Jim Warfield]

I heard some of these last night and they were not pleasant.
Haunt owners throwing a temper tantrum when a young actor gets severely injured because in large part because of a dangerous, poorly designed scare they put him into.
"We don't like any of that "Medical" Lawsuit" stuff , so you just GO HOME!"
Having an actor armed with a real baseball bat to smack the wall with, then a customer disarming him and breaking the actor's hand as it gets smacked with the bat....
Having a small woman manhandled, slammed up against a wall infront of the customers(this was planned) but an irate upset customer attacked the monster slamming the girl and hurt him!

Anything can happen in the dark in a haunted house...but...if the ticket booth keeps the drunks out and the owner/designer thinks protectively of their helpers when they design the scares, maybe those "little people' that make it all happen could have a happier time of it.
I got upset hearing all of these things..because it all seemed so unnecessary....

[lonewolfmage]

Jim~

I have one to share (plenty more where this came from) ..

At one of the hants I worked at , we had a "lycra tunnel" where actors would push thru/into the lycra and come really close to the patrons. Nice effect for scaring .. bad effect if some one happened to push back..

Mind you this "tunnel" was about 3/4 of the way thru the haunt

One time, someone was already "spooked" from the rest of the haunt, and the actor pushed thru/into the lycra to scare the patron, and the patron punched back, almost hit the actor square in the nose, ALMOST broke the actors nose.

Needless to say, after that we instructed the actors to use a "wig head" to push agaist the lycra to scare the patrons, rather than thier own face.

Justr my bit of a "horror story"
~LoneWolf

[Jim Warfield]

If an actor is to peek around a close corner I always recommend putting a mask on your hand to poke around that blind corner.
Have a light creating an informative shadow so you know where they customer is, how close they are. Of course see them previously to make sure the customer is of average height so the shadow doesn't give you false information.

[Badger]

One thing that I teach actors and every haunted house I work with is to never 'take requests' from patrons. If someone wants you to go after someone, I politely tell them "Sorry, no requests". Sometimes they follow that advice, sometimes not.

I had a friend get asked to scare some guy's girlfriend. When he knelt down where he wanted him to, she came around the corner and kicked him squarely in the head. It was a complete set up. I heard later that he suffered a mild concussion. He had been working the area for 20 minutes on the first night of the 2007 season and never came back.

[Jim Warfield]

can sure come back around.
A story: A customer had already been through the house once so he knew the hidden doors in a hallway opened with the traffic flow allowing the scares to come from behind the customers.
So this A-Hole hung back, waited for the door to open, then he would blindly swing a punch around the door.
One haunt worker saw this happening so he waited around the 90degree corner at the end of the hallway, waited for this guy.
He swung very forcefully, connected and knocked him out!
Then the haunter and his brother carried him outside, put him in the alley and said, "We don't know what happened ?"
I would never sanction such action because you really don't know where or if it all may end once it begins escalating.

[soultrkr]

I worked at one haunt where the drunks were the actors and operators. Before the show most of the cast was downing alchol like crazy. Needless to say I did not stick around to work at that haunt for long and it did not take long for them to get in deep trouble there. I saw way to many things that had bad injury waiting to happen all over that place. Makes me so glad to work at the place I do now.

[Jim Warfield]

Was once mentioned on this forum many years ago, maybe it was true, maybe not?
The drunk was the tractor driver of the haunted hay wagon! This would quickly multiply the potential injurys and even deaths possible from just one person's being drunk.
"I'm gunna see just how FAST this tractor can motate! Hang on everybody!"
Scarier than any ticket-holder ever wanted it to be.