People go to haunted houses for the same reason they go to scary movies and ride roller coasters. They want to suspend their belief for a moment and be scared, but in a safe environment. It's a simulated experience. So much of it is subtly, so for us it was about layering the details to make that simulated experience real enough that it stays with you after you leave.
Haunted Houses
Charlie Bookout is one of the owners and creators of Carpenter's Mortuary Spook House in Gentry. The haunted house attraction is in its second official year of operation and is one of the more than a dozen members of the Northwest Arkansas Hauntours co-op, a group of professional and local haunts, Halloween-themed businesses and event promoters sharing the spirit of Halloween.
"We had a practice space for our band in the part of the building we rented for a long time, and then it hit us that we're in an actual mortuary," Bookout says. "So we were opening for trick-or-treaters and Halloween-night-only shows as early as the '90s. When we were able to buy the whole building a couple years ago, we decided to build a full, permanent installation and do an official haunted house."
What sounds like a simple time-line, made simpler by the fact the people creating the haunt owned the building, came to involve year-round labor and a constant effort toward improvement.
"I have a 'day job,' but when someone asks me what I do, I say I build a haunted house," says Kevin Stell, Bookout's partner in the haunt. "This is our labor of love. We're a group of artists, and we approached this haunted house first and foremost as an art project. Every single bit of it was built by Kevin and Charlie."
Every single bit that wasn't salvaged from abandoned properties, that is.
"We did a lot of research into the time period where the story of the haunt is set, and we've taken special care to make sure there's no element as you're walking through that will take you away from the feeling of going back in time," Bookout says. "The beds are rotten, the wheelchair in the hospital scene is actually 100 years old, the lights are all Edison bulbs with that gross flicker. You can do a haunted house anywhere, so we felt we really owed it to the natural creepiness of the building to keep the theme of the haunt tied to the history."
Fifteen minutes north and east, almost to Bella Vista, the Nightmares Haunted House has a slightly different approach in taking victims through various scenes rather than following one unified theme. The haunt, which occupies more than 10,000 square feet, has been run by the same family for nearly three decades.
"It's like a family thing," says TJ Michaels, whose father, Chris, began the whole thing with a haunted hayride. "I started helping with that when I was old enough, and now my kid and my nephew are working in it, too. It's nice to have something to pass on, in a way."
Nightmares, too, has a dedicated team of volunteers who work throughout the year to keep the attraction new and exciting for visitors. Michaels says they usually devote the summer to renovating an old scene or designing a completely new area like this year's torture room.
Before "showtime" on a recent Saturday evening, Billy Deatherage, a Nightmares actor and volunteer, took guests on a special tour through the haunt while the crew was setting up.
"There's a group of us that built pretty much everything," Deatherage says. "TJ put a lot of work in to the torture room, Jeff works on a lot of the special effects. We're just trying to get better every year. Some of the things we see when we go to Haunt-Con in St. Louis and we'll say 'OK, I think we can build this,' so we come back and build it."
The group of fewer than 10 people, plus some volunteers from the Lions Club of Bentonville -- which sponsors the haunt as an annual fundraiser -- spends time all year making the nightmare bigger, louder, scarier: A stack of barrels on truck-suspension airbags set to look like they're rolling at you; a room built in to the back of a truck that fills with fog too thick to see through; a room with a carpeted ceiling that drops to make you feel like the walls are closing in.
Another key piece of a haunt, some would argue the most important piece, is the actors.
"All of this electronic trickery doesn't amount to a hill of beans without talented actors," Bookout says.
Carpenter's Mortuary and Nightmares are both populated with volunteer actors. Many working at Nightmares are local high school kids from Bentonville, Rogers and Heritage high schools because the Lions Club is able to award them community service hours for participating in the haunt. At Ominous Haunted House at the Benton County Fairgrounds, though, nearly all of the actors were hired through Craigslist.
"If someone is passionate about doing something specific, we'll try to mold what they want to do in to the haunted house," says Tim Moore, who started Ominous. "You think, 'oh, a haunted house, that should be easy to put together. But it took us the whole year to get ramped up to where I thought we could put on a decent show."
Ominous is in its second year as well, but Moore says he is still making changes every night -- anything to make the customers jump more. Moore built the maze for his haunted house from drywall and two-by-fours and filled it with props and rooms to flesh out the "mad scientist" theme.
"We had to make sure it was sturdy because people are bumping into the walls all night. But last year we had two girls run right through the drywall at the end trying to get away, so we had to add some cross beams this year," Moore says laughing.
The dressing rooms for the three haunts are all similar -- masks, water bottles, snacks and fake blood-drenched clothing covering most surfaces. Actors pace here before the "show," chatting and playfully trying to spook their coworkers. The energy rises as lines begin to form outside, and the actors take their places. Those in charge rush here and there for last-minute checks.
"This is where we find out things aren't working," says Jeff Newton as he is told the lights aren't on in the corn maze just before Nightmares is supposed to open.
With the setting sun, the first screams and chainsaw revs of the night begin somewhere inside the haunt. Hand in your ticket and enter, if you dare.
FYI
Ominous Haunted House
Benton County Fairgrounds
$15
ominoushaunt.com
Nightmares Haunted House
Township 7, Bentonville
$15
nightmareshauntedhouse.org
Carpenter's Mortuary
Main St., Gentry
$10
mortuarystudios.com
All open every Friday & Saturday until 11 p.m. through Halloween
General News on 10/28/2015