October 25, 2012 • 38 mins
There's a lot more going on at your local haunted attraction than costumes and chainsaws. In this episode, Robert and Julie venture to Atlanta's Netherworld Haunted House to learn about the science and art behind the ghoulish shenanigans.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
What's your earliest memory of a haunted house? Uh? Not
not a real haunted house where actual ghosts are supposedly
running around. We've talked about that's sort of thing in
(00:25):
the past, But I'm talking about haunted attractions. Place where
you go up, you buy your ticket, you run through
the haunted attraction. Various scary things happen, You encounter tab
blaws that are frightening, people jump out at you, there's smoke,
there's light, their smell, and you leave screaming and giggling.
My childhood home, really you grew up in a haunted No,
(00:46):
but my dad loves Halloween, and so as as a
tenderhearted five year old, I remember going up to my
house and seeing that it had been transformed into a graveyard.
And my dad had because he were to the university,
and so he went to the department there and got
the you know, whole makeup thing and aged himself and
looked like he was like the grave keeper dude. And
(01:08):
then he also projected the pit and the pendulum on
the side of the house. Okay that the old film,
Yeah yeah, with the blade coming down slowly and you know, wow,
he went all out, he did. So that is my
first impression of what haunted house might be like. Okay,
you I think my earliest. I mean, my family always
made a big deal out of Halloween as well, but
(01:30):
I don't think we ever really set up a haunted
house per se. But I do remember when we were
living in rural Tennessee. Uh, my church group would go
every year to see this thing that was called scare Mare,
which we us kids are often referred to as prayer
Mere because the gimmick was you come to this little
rural church out in the middle of nowhere and they
(01:52):
put on this haunted house every year and you go
through it and it's one of these these fundamentalist Christian
haunted houses that that each room shows you that the
perils of a sin uh and you know, this is
what's gonna happen if you if you drink, this is
what's gonna happen if you listen to bad music, and
all the type of stuff you can you can imagine.
And then at the end they empty you out into
(02:13):
a tent where a preacher sermonizes to you for what
felt like an hour or two and that was the
end of it. That was the prayer mayor portion of it.
And it was, you know, it was cheaply done, and
a lot of it was kind of it was very
heavy handed even at that age, but they were still
using some of the elements of haunted houses that everyone
(02:34):
is kind of used to that everybody does a chainless chainsaw,
a dude in a mask, somebody with blood on them,
someone jumping out at you out of the dark, that
kind of thing. It's only really been since i moved
to Atlanta as an adult that I've gotten to really
experience a high grade, professional haunted attraction where they really
throw everything together and just wallop all your senses with
(02:57):
with frightful images, frightful sounds, frightful smell, etcetera. And I'm
talking about the nether World Haunted house right Another World
is I think one of the probably most esteemed haunted
houses in the United States and is a fine, fine example,
and we'll talk a little bit more about that. But
I did want to say that the church, the sort
of Churchill haunted houses. Forgive my punt art for the
(03:19):
genesis of the modern haunted house, because that's actually how
haunted houses start as a charity event. But right now
we have in the US over two thousand haunted attractions
that charge admission, about a thousand charity attractions, and three
hundred amusement parts that have various haunted houses. Um. And
I wanted to point this out because I did not
(03:41):
realize this that the average person will show out about
seventy two dollars on decorations, costumes, and candy for Halloween,
and total Halloween spending was six point eight six billion,
second only to Christmas in Christmas decorations. So Halloween obviously
is a big deal in our psyche, and uh, haunted
houses I think are the catalyst of it all. Yeah,
(04:04):
and and and then always gives me such a it's
such a big deal. It's always a big deal to me.
But it's such a big financial deal. Then why is
Thanksgiving Christmas? Why aren'ty always trying to to wean in
on it and get and show up in October and
steal some of the spotlight from from Halloween because they're like, hey,
as long as you as you are dropping some dime
on decorations. Why don't you pick up a nice little
Santa Claus. Yeah, and I'm also off for let's start
(04:25):
Halween in September. I kind of started in March, so
I was gonna say, like in December. Yeah. Um. But
as you point out, Another World is a great example.
It's been in the business for sixteen years and it's
created by movie professionals Ben Armstrong and Billy Messina. Messina
did ffex on Franken Hooker and I think one of
(04:47):
the basket Case movies. To give you horror fans a
little perspective. Uh, they use original storytelling, so they don't
rely on Hollywood's stereotypes like Freddie or Jason. They have
thousands of effects. They create custom props, makeup masks and monsters.
They have a ton of puppetry as well, uh, animatronics,
(05:07):
and they have more than one hundred nether spawn, which
are their actors, some of whom are stunt actors. And
uh some of these actors are actually professional feeder actors
and some have day jobs. And this year they have
actual Beauty pageant winner Mrs Georgia, who transforms herself into
a ghoul. So you really do see people of all
(05:28):
different stripes joining in on this. So for this episode,
we we thought, all right, we're going to do an
episode on the science of hunted houses, we should both
go to another world and actually check it out for reals,
you know. And uh, and so I went out. I
checked it out, I went through the attraction. I talked
to Ben, one of the owners and operators and the
minds behind all of this. And then you went a
(05:51):
few days later and you checked out the behind the
scenes stuff, So we kind of we kind of double
teamed it. I kind of got the user end of
it and you've got the behind the scenes. Yeah, it
was really cool. Got to see what it looks like
about an hour before the door is open, and it
really is like putting on a large scale theatrical production
every single night. Um, and we'll talk a little bit
more about the different elements, but it was amazing to
(06:11):
see all the actors getting into their costumes and I
think they've got seven different makeup artists. They've got a
room full of masks, which is amazing to see. So
the eight year old in me was extremely excited to
be able to go behind the scenes and go through
the maze and kind of see it in the partial daylight.
Oh nice. We attended to grab a mask and sort
(06:32):
of hang out. I was actually I wasn't. Then I
kind of got that vibe of like, you know what,
that there are actors here doing that. You don't need
to dive in here and try to scare people. Right. Well,
when I was there, I got a few quotes from Ben,
so I thought we'd kick things off here and sprinkle
a few other quotes throughout. But here is Ben's answer
when I asked him, why, as humans do we like
(06:52):
to be afraid? I think when you feel fear, it's
a really up primitive instruct you know, when you're the
hunter or the hunter. It's a huge surge of a
journaline and people really enjoy that feeling of terror when
they know it's safe. I think you're really scared and
you think you're really gonna die. It's a bad, sickening feeling.
But when you get shocked and scared and then you
(07:14):
can laugh about it, it's so you floor feeling everyone phrase.
So that was some fun interview material to get there
because you can hear some of the craziness in the background.
Because it's right outside side another world on a very
busy night. There's their chainsaws, they're screaming, there's laughter. I mean,
it's it's just a pretty awesome place to be. And
I think that what he's talking about and what you
(07:35):
just described to in terms of people really having fun
with it, is directly pointing to the benign violation theory,
which we've talked about before, right when we've talked about,
especially in our episode on laughter and humor and where
that comes from. I believe we call that episode Funny
or Die. We've dragged this idea out a number of times,
you know, the whole Uh, savor tooth tiger jumps out
at you and attacks you. Uh, you're dead right, But
(07:56):
if something else jumps out of you, you're gonna react
like it's a savor tooth and then it's not ha ha,
you laugh. That's the signal that I thought I was
gonna die, but not really. So this was the first
time I'd gone through a haunted attraction and in certainly
another world following that episode that we did. So I
was thinking about benign violation the whole time, and sure enough,
(08:17):
I'm seeing it certainly in everybody around me, but even
in myself. You know, I'm scared, I'm falling on the
floor because something jumped out of me from the side,
and then I'm laughing. Yeah, And I mean it's a
cathartic experience, right, I mean, there's no secret why we
want this and why we seek out this experience because
it really we are sort of built for that safe
tooth tiger, right. So um, it's kind of nice to
(08:39):
be able to exercise that in a safe place. And
also I wanted to say that Ben Armstrong had really
talked about how important safety is and haunted houses, and
this is a fine example. They have, you know, something
like thirty two surveillance cameras. They've thought of every single
safety aspect. When duty cops there on secure, you're ready,
(09:00):
you have to wait in a line before you go in,
and there's a lot of fun stuff going on with
you know, people and costumes kind of scaring you. But
then the the the security is there as well. I
imagine that they can kind of scope out who could
potentially be a troublemaker when they go in, because you know,
you should be there for a good time. If you're
there to start trouble, you're the wrong place. Yeah, if
you just did a couple of shots at Yaga my
start and went through that, that could be trouble um
(09:22):
and they are on the lookout for that. But I
wanted to talk a little bit about the Haunted House
layout itself. Yes, you were not given a map when
you show up, because that's part of it. It's kind
of a labyrinth that you lose yourself in for a
few minutes, right, and they want to disorient you, so
obviously they have um built it so that they can
disordento you to the best of their abilities, and they
(09:44):
use what they call sixty degree walls or six sided
rooms to do this, and also ninety degree walls, and
the ninety degree walls are really try to get you
more through the maze itself. UM, but the sixty degree
walls the six sided rooms are really cool because they
have lots of corners to hide actors in what they
call scares, and it's easier to disorientate or disorient customers
(10:05):
and create mazes, and then it gives a different feeling
um of more familiar construction. And we talked about this
a little bit in our last podcast about maps in
our configuration of neurons and how they really like the
X Y access the horizontal on the vertical not so
much something coming at you diagonally, and they're going diagonal
on all of these rooms. We're not used to dealing
(10:27):
with those rooms. I mean, no matter how crazy the
architecture in your house is, chances are you're still dealing
with square or maybe in some cases rounded structures. Right.
So when they're thinking about the set design of this already,
they've kept this in mind, this sort of natural scare
tactics of coming at you from diagonals and from all
different places. Um. And then they have something called scare
(10:48):
forward and through put. And this is sort of like
more on the business side, because through put is the
rate of people that go through the haunt, and it
helps to keep lines a little bit lower and keeps
multiple groups from crashing into each other. Yeah, I mean,
because not a very straightforward and boring but essential business level.
You need x number of people to go through there
(11:08):
at a certain rate if you're gonna make money, and
if you don't, because if you're not making money doing this,
I mean, all right, it's all fun and games, but
but it's not a business. And really, you know, a
delightfully twisted way. You kind of have to think of
a haunted attraction like a slaughter house. You have a
bunch of cattle and you need to steer them through
the attraction at a certain rate without any hiccups. You
(11:31):
need to keep them moving. You don't except, of course,
you don't want the cows to freak out. You want
the humans to freak out, but to a point. And
then if the freak out goes a little a little
too far, then you need to be able to remove
them so that the flow can keep going. And if
you are someone who is going to go through a
haunted house and you've got a little bit of scarity pants,
here is a tip. You will want to stay at
(11:52):
the front. And I know that sounds counterintuitive. I know
that's that's because this is the thing every year my
wife and I did do this when when we go
to another world, we're like, yes, we're gonna get up
there at the front. Were the brave ones. We love
this stuff. Let's do it. And then we indever, Let mean,
we still get you know, the Jesus scared out of us,
but we'll inevitably find ourselves in the situation where we
arrive a little too early, and then we spot the
(12:13):
monster in the corner, just standing there waiting to get
the people behind us, and we're kind of like, jump
out of me, I want it, man, We'll see. That's
the whole strategy. It's called scare forward. And what they're
doing is that they're they're really going at the sides
of the group and the back of the group because
the idea is again to get that through put out
there and to push the group forward. So if you
(12:35):
are in the front, you're probably not going to get
you know, an actor or a google or a monster
two inches in front of your face like someone in
the sides or the back of the group would. So
they're hurting you. They're essentially you're being herded by monsters
through a slaughterhouse. It's true, you are, and um, you know,
we should mention this is probably obvious, but there are
bunches of scare pockets throughout that maze, so little alcoves
(12:58):
and again that's why the six sided rooms are so helpful,
because this corner's helped to hide people. Uh, and they
have a number of interesting ways to hide people. A
lot of hiding in plain site. Is it a statute
is it a person? I can't tell unless it moves,
or there'll be something that looks like a person and
you're you're watching it like all right, buddy, I'm onto you.
And then bam, werewolf jumps out at you from the corner,
(13:20):
and which is really cool. We'll talk a little bit
more about camouflage and a little bit um, but let's
take a quick break in when we get back, we
will talk about modes of manual manipulation. Hey, you, we're back.
We're talking about the science of haunted houses, of course,
as in haunted attractions. And I'll mention this again but
(13:40):
if you want to check out Another World online and
see their cool website, go to www dot fear world
dot com and you can see all sorts of clips
and images and some wonderful write ups about their attractions. Yeah,
and they are doing an excellent job, I have to
say of manual manipulation. In other words, taking our five
cents is and and of course you could argue that
(14:01):
we have many more than five senses, but there's main
five senses in manipulating them through all sorts of things
like our site in our orientation, yeah, sight orientation. This
is kind of like I guess in a way the
obvious one, but but some of the subtler ways they
do it may surprise you. I mean on a very
basic level. Yes, you're walking through these dimly lit corridors
(14:23):
and things are happening, and a lot of like especially
in other world, a lot of stuff is happening. You're
you're distracted by little details, say like some sort of
a ghastly frame and a picture on the wall that
seems to be watching you, some sort of holographic bit
of art here, actual skeletons just I mean, they do
a wonderful job just on the layout of the place.
(14:43):
So you're looking at that kind of stuff, But then
there there's also other visual things, lights, lasers, moving fog,
moving monsters, and it all creates this chorus of confusion. Yeah,
And of course the lack of light is is the hallmark,
and the reason for that is because if you're plunge
into tote old darkness, then you're not quite sure what's
going on. And so there are different parts of the
(15:04):
Haunt that are that are darker than others. But I
did want to just give a quick overview of our
site that of course we have rods and cones in
our eyes. Cone cells perceive color in bright light, and
rod cells perceived black and white images and work best
and low light. So who has something called rhodopsin And
rhodoption is a chemical that's found in the rods, and
(15:25):
rhodoption is really key to the ability to see during
the night. And it's the chemical that rods used to
absorb photons and perceived light. And when a molecule of
rhodoption absorbs a photon, it splits into a retinal and
an option molecule. This is important because these later recombine
naturally back into redoption at a fixed rate, but the
(15:46):
recombination is very slow. So the reason I'm pointing this
out is because when you expose your your eyes to
bright light, all the roodoption breaks down into this retinal
and option, and then if you turn off the lights
and try to see in the dark, you cannot because
it has to try to recombine line. And that's one
of the disorienting effects of playing with a light in
a haunted house. And here's a fun fact. Okay, the
(16:07):
retinal used in the eye is derived from vitamin A.
So if a person's diet is low in vitamin A,
there's not enough retinal and the rods, and therefore there's
not enough reduction. So people who lack vitamin A often
suffer from night blindness. Okay, so if you you want
to really be on to be prepared for your venture
through the haunted house, you want to bone up on
your vitamin you want to just stuck up on that
(16:29):
vitamin A. But I thought that was interesting. I mean,
that's also like great because I know I'll be driving
at night occasionally when I can't help but drive at night,
and and I feel like I can't see anything. So
maybe next time I need a bone up on the vitamins.
There you go, There you go before you drive, before
you go into a haunted house, and drive into a
haunted house. Yeah, yeah, which is an entirely different attraction
(16:51):
from the future. But there's also different ways that can
manipulate your eyesight. And I saw one um example of
this online from a past another world um year. But
they had a room that was covered in illuminated dots,
So everywhere you look there's just dots, and you could
not see the edges, you could not see anything. And
(17:12):
I thought, well, that's fascinating because that's really like obscuring
your ability to actually pinpoint your orientation, which is so
important and allow you to have sort of a fixed
established place in the room. And it's really frightening to
even watch the clip of someone coming at you with
dots on, of course, because they're they're melding into the background,
you know, I do you know you mentioned this to
(17:33):
me yesterday and I'm like, I don't remember the dots,
but now I do. Think I went through the attraction
the year that they had the dots, because suddenly there's
a person that's covered with dots coming at you as well,
and that kind of course throws you off balance, as
does their use of sound. Yeah, there is a lot
of noise going on in the haunted house, and those
clip and the clips that we played, you could certainly
hear the outdoor noise and on the inside you have
(17:54):
creepy music, you have loud noises coming from elsewhere in
the hunt. A course, you're hearing chainless chainsaws rearing up.
I mean, that's a staple. There's just no getting around
it when it comes to chain saw usage at a
haunted attraction, And it's all just creating this cacophony. But
then there they're also these kind of moments of not
quite silence, because you're not gonna get really silence. It's
(18:16):
not a really sound proof environment, but they'll be like
a calmn, I guess before the noise comes out of
your specifically like an air gun or or an airhorn
going off right next to your head. You know. Thinking
about the sensitivity of our ears, because we talked about
this and the Ignoble podcast, and we talked about how
if you're hearing is delayed, if you hear yourself talking,
(18:36):
it's delayed just a fraction of a second. That can
just change everything in the machinery in the way that
you perceive sound. And um, it made me think about
the fact that your your ear is really important in
actually detecting the gravitational field as well and giving you
a sense of orientation. So when you have all these
different elements of sound coming at you, that can really
(18:57):
disturb um your sense of where you are. And I
was also thinking about something called the butt kicker that
they use. I love the name of it. It actually
vibrates the floor. Oh yes, yes, okay. And also in
the other world, when I was talking to you, Ben.
He said, they've experimented with sub sonic frequencies, but they
decided not to use them because they have some odd
(19:18):
effects on people. Okay, change them in the Monster's that
kind of thing exactly, you start to grow hair everywhere.
It's it's it's not pretty. They definitely play with your
balance a lot. They're they're squishy floors. There's their floors
that feel uneven. There's there's kind of a metal bridge
over actual water that's shaky, to say nothing of the
solid bridge that goes through a spinning cylinder. That old
(19:42):
effect is uh that always gets because that just throws
your balance off completely because the surface you're walking around
isn't moving, but visually you're seeing the room spin. So
you react as if the room is spending and you're
reaching out right. And then of course you get another element.
You're trying to feel your way through the room, but
then you're feeling creepy crawley things. The sense of touch
is really important, and I wanted to point out to
(20:03):
that the animatronics Another World spray a lot of air
and water at YouTube. Yes, you're suddenly you're missed by stuff,
and if that's combined with some other sense elements that
we'll get to in a second. Then it can be
really disturbing because you're like, ah, that thing just threw
up on me, what is this leaking? I mean, we
can't have the response anyway if something gets honest it's wet,
because sure, maybe it's raining, but it could be urine. Yeah, exactly.
(20:28):
And actually they do have a bathroom. Uh did you
go through the bathroom area? Oh, yeah, where they have
the toilet plucked from my dreams, from my nightmares. It's
a toilet that is covered an excrement and yeah, and
they've got little bits of rice that come up from
the ceiling from I think it's like a air duct
or something. They rearrange that toilet every year. So one
(20:48):
year in particular, one of the earlier years I went.
You had to crawl through a tunnel and when you
emerge on the other side, you emerge right in front
of that foul toilet. Yes, again, plucked plucked from my nightmares.
But again you're that's the sense of touch that you're feeling,
and we take it for granted, but it's really effective
because it's exciting. The five different types of nerve endings
(21:09):
in your skin that govern sensitivity, heat, cold, pain, and
pressure and itch. So when you are going past those
dangling tentacles, your body is trying to figure out what
exactly it is. Is it a threat? And it's important
to mention on this touch business though, when we're talking
about the reception this touch this, I'm checking my finger here. Um.
(21:30):
One of the big rules of any haunted attraction, professional
or even just semi professional, it's it's kind of the
reverse of a gentleman's club. The monsters do not touch
anyone that works that's coming through the attraction. The monsters
will not touch you. They may come close to you,
they may sort they jump out at you, but they
are not going to grab you. They're not going to
reach out and mess your hair up or anything. Now.
(21:50):
I actually got to get behind one of the animatronics too,
and um, it kind of manipulate it to see to
the point where it goes past someone or or come
forward to someone. It was pretty cool. Like the big
grabbers grabbers. Yeah, now I have been grabbed by those.
But then but then again, it's not a person grabbing you.
It's a large inflatable puppet grabbing you. So it's it's
a different thing and it's soft. Yeah, but even though
(22:14):
the monsters cannot touch you, lots of things touch you
in this particular hunt, right, the actors will not touch you,
but the other things, like tentacles, I feel like they
were baby dolls on strings. There were. They were large,
inflatable black substances. So you're you feel like you're squeezing
your way out of the belly of some humendous leviathan. Yes,
(22:35):
which plays to our fear of small spaces, are in
close spaces and custrophobia. They warn the heck out of
you before you go into it. It's certainly not a
place for the claustrophobic, for someone who is affected by
strobe lights or or anything of that nature. Now, one
of the walls that you kind of have to shimmy
through actually does push back. So if someone were having
a problem with that and they can shut it down
(22:57):
at a moment's notice, Yeah, I think you move that
wall straight act so um and actually I think that
you yourself could do you just push it, But it
looks like as though you know you have to show
me through this little um bit of room here. So
I did want to mention that probably one of the
most grotesque aspects for me, at least when I was
going through the Haunted house was the smells. Yeah, the smell.
(23:22):
I asked Ben if he could give me a couple
of examples of what they use, because of course, this
is a huge mode of manipulation when it comes to
us humans, and it's you and Ben Armstrong. You're in
the middle of nether world prior to it opening. We
go through the back where to this little room where
he shows me where he's got all these sents that
(23:43):
he can spray to freshen up, as he says, place. Um.
He also had some devices that continuously emit orders. But um. Basically,
he showed me a couple of his select odors and
they were swamp, mildew, rotting vegetation, which I said, all
of them. I said, Oh, that's that's not too bad.
(24:03):
That's you know, I can live with that. And then
he kind of went and he sprayed the hospital smell,
and then I went, that's the worst, because it really
does kind of get under your skin a little bit.
And he said, oh, you think that's the worst. And
that is when he doused the entire hall in a
big spray of what is called circus animal and that
(24:23):
sounds lovely, right, great, yeah, and you and you were like,
I used to working at a big deal exactly. I
was like, I can take that. What hit me in
the face smelled like the anal glance of an elephant.
It was probably the worst smell I've ever smelled in
my life. Now, of course he doesn't humigate the place
with that, but he just puts it in certain pockets
and it gets to mellow a little bit. So I
(24:44):
really had the more pungent experience. And it is still
in my car and on my clothes and on my handbage.
You held your handbag up for various co workers to
smell this morning and I didn't wretched. So we I
may need to get a new computer bag, but we'll see.
But that is a huge part of it, because you know,
one of the things I noticed is that when I
(25:06):
smell that, the receptors on my tongue even were activated
because I felt like it was in my mouth. And
we have talked about this before that this is a
huge warning system for our bodies that when we smell
something that's disgusting or we taste it, we automatically recoil
and our bodies tell us that there's something dangerous because
it could be something putrid, something poisonous, something that's going
to harmless in some way. And so the brain is saying,
(25:28):
be wary of this. You can look into it, but
know that it might kill you. And certainly we can
grow accustomed to many foul odors. Is our brain gives
us that chance to all right, check it out, and
if you're comfortable with it, then we'll will allow you
to not register it as much. But certainly you're not
gonna have at that kind of time as you make
your way through hunted attraction to grow accustomed to circus animals. No,
(25:51):
you're not. You're just gonna like quoa. That's that's problematic.
My body is telling me there's a problem here. So
I thought that's kind of cool how they set the
stage there in terms of how are manually manipulating your senses,
but also they are psychologically manipulating. And this begins, uh
at the very moment that you park your car and
you get out of it. For some of us, it
actually begins before you get there. I have to say,
(26:13):
because not everyone goes to the trouble of reading the
text on the website. But they do an awesome job
every year. Just give you a little taste. There too,
haunts each year at another world. This year it's Banshees
and the high on Banshees. The cell is the ancient
evil city of Ys has risen from the ocean off
the coast of Ireland, bringing with it a plague of Banshees.
(26:34):
These foul islets winged monstrosities feed on the darknergery of
dying humans, seeking battlefields and natural disasters where life hangs
in the balance. And then the Hive is really good
because the cell On that is, during the height of
the Cold War in nineteen sixty two, Robert Willington Hughes,
a filthy rich genetics researcher, sealed up his staff and
(26:55):
followers in an underground bunker called the Hive. So so
if you if you do like me, and you go
to the website first you get that in your hand,
you're like, all right, giant insects, irish myths and Banshees.
I can get into that. And then when you get there,
you get your ticket, you get in line, and the
monsters are prowling the parking lot. That's all right, And
(27:15):
so they're beginning to tell that story that you are
in fear or you're in danger, and you should be
fearful of what's about to happen. And what I think
is so interesting about frightening narratives, and we've talked about
this with children too, is that it's it's kind of
playing to this knowledge that at the end of the
day we're all pretty much doomed. Life is fleeting, and
yet you get to go through this exercise and storytelling
(27:37):
and come out on the other end. Now, one of
the things that I think is really great that they
do is misdirection. This has a huge psychological impact. Yes,
And actually I asked Ben I'm strong about misdirection when
I went out to the Haunted Attraction, and this is
what he had to say. Everything in here is very
much like Slide of Man. You want to create a
(27:59):
strong role, a sound effect to draw their attention than
the creature can strike. You have to strike from multiple directions.
We use things like camouflage suits or mirrors or darkness
or special lighting tricks to conceal the actor. Sometimes the
actors who have been in plain slide is the statue.
Sometimes they're invisible in the environment so it's all about
confusing you with visuals, with sounds, with everything anything we
(28:23):
can employ to keep you, you know, unaware of the
environments with the actually strike, that's what we're gonna do.
So yeah, it's kind of like a card trick. It
is a look over here because I'm doing something else
over here. Be distracted by this grand movement because there's
something sneaking up behind you. Uh, and it has the
eyes of a monster something else they use as camouflage.
(28:45):
And we've mentioned that before. And there's a great clip
believe it's the Travel Channel that did a bit Another
World and it shows a row of skeletons and you
can see the people are moving through and they are
perceiving this as one unit of just skeletons on the all.
But of course there's an actor who is called a
bone clone who comes jumping out at the passers by,
(29:06):
and again it's playing with that idea of benign violation,
but also playing with your mind's ability to perceive what
is real and what is not real. Now you know
you mentioned the bone clone jumping out. It's important to
note that another key rule that's been is big on
with his monsters, with the human human actors. Is that
you have the monster jump out at you, certainly, but
(29:26):
then they retreat away. Now part of that is of
course not involved not touching the person, but also you
need to get the once the shock has been made,
you don't need the person analyzing the monster even in
dim light. That's too. You know, less is more retreat,
that's true because then your brain has more time to
think about this. It's the benign part. It can bring
it down and on what was that? What was going
(29:48):
on there? You know, your minds still running with the questions.
And I saw that too with the bungee stunts. The
people whould come out on the bungee cords and return
down at you from above and then retracting back into
the darkness. So you talk about this fear factor, we
should probably review the old a magdala when it comes
to fear, because this is that almond shaped clump of
neurons in your brain located front and center, and it
(30:12):
is really vital for instantaneous emotional processing. So it's not
just for fear too, it's also for love and pleasure.
But when it comes to fear, if you have say
Freddy coming at you, you think Freddy's coming at you,
or you're another world and there's a glual coming at you.
What is happening is that you're a magdala gets juiced.
It unleashes your brain and embody energizing cocktail of hormones,
(30:38):
and of course while this is happening, information is also
traveling to your prefrontal cortex. This is the part of
the brain that's really responsible for a consciously evaluating danger,
and it tells you, hey, it's okay, this is just
a person in a mask. So the problem, though or
not sexually, it's not the problem is the catharsis um.
It's actually the result is that you have all of
(31:01):
these things going on in your body and has to
come off of that fear high. And that's again where
we're experiencing something really important in terms of acting at
our own fears or going through the process. I found
it interesting too that supposedly the whites of the eyes,
the more of the whites of the eyes that is visible,
even if the individuals wearing a mask, the more of
(31:22):
the amigo kicks into action, because it's like, well, someone's
coming out at me, wide eyed and crazy. I need
to respond to it. Whereas if they're you know, their
eyes are shut, then they're probably just gonna bump into you.
And if they have kind of droopy, sleepy eyes and
they're probably not that dangerous. They've actually there's been research
on this before too. I believe there's a researcher who
set up her own haunted house and did this with
(31:44):
her her research students and tract the white of the
eyes and the amount of fear that person perceived from
what her actors, her ghouls were communicating to the people
coming through the haunted house. All right, so here's one
more clip from Ben Armstrong where I was at talking
to him and asking him about the use of the
five senses and whether he's really hitting all five senses,
(32:06):
and he had to hit a pretty finances. Let's see,
you can see it, you can hear it, you can
feel it, you can smell it. We haven't had monsters
you have that you're supposed to lick. That's about it.
But you know what he gave me ideas maybe next year,
So yeah, we'll we'll probably never get lickable monsters in
(32:26):
the the haunted attractions, but it's it's a wonderful idea.
It is a. It's a very interactive idea, and which
kind of brings us to this idea of what the
future of haunted houses might look like one day, especially
if you melded the virtual reality technology. Yeah, to a
certain extent, you see a lot of haunted house elements
(32:47):
in some video games. I mean you have the whole
survival horror um genre or subgenre of games, stuff like
Resident Evil, Silent Hill Um, and then some sort of
hybrid games in recent years like head Space, which is
like a sci fi horror action but also a survival
are kind of product. And these will typically also some
(33:08):
of the Doom games fit into this area. You're inevitably
going through cramped hallways that are dark and dimly lit.
They'll be like a sparking fuse box on one wall,
and then something will jump out of you from the side.
They can't hit you on all the sensors, certainly, but
they can, you know, they can make the controller vibrate
in your hands. They can do stuff with with with
your site, and they can do stuff with sound, and
(33:30):
like I said, do a limited extent, they're experimenting with
the haunted attraction area. Yeah, And when I talked to
Ben Armstrong about this. He said that of course, as
as different technologies come online, they'll be interested in that.
But he said that core to the experience to their
haunted house is the fact that you have actors and
they are really uh sort of underscoring this play between
(33:52):
real and not real, and that having the actors makes
it a much more immersive experience. So even if we
were to get to the point five ten years from now,
putting Google Classes on, Google Vision on and walking through
a haunted house, you would still want to have that
live person element um because without it it's not quite
as immersive. It is interesting that you mentioned the virtual
(34:14):
reality augmented reality goggles and how that could be used
for haunted attraction, because you can imagine a future where
instead of going to a haunted house, you get these goggles,
you put them on, you go through your own house,
and it creates these virtual frights in the area around you. Certainly,
any of the virtual reality, dream augmentation, dream control technology
(34:35):
that we've discussed in previous episodes, pretty much all that
could conceivably get a horror or a haunted house twist
to it. You know, I can imagine some far future
where someone had would have the option of dialing up
a nightmare yeah, or having some sorts of um specter
(34:55):
projected onto contact lenses that they're wearing. So I mean,
really every day could be Halloween. Yeah, all right, So
there you go, Haunted Houses once again. Big thanks to
another World Haunted House and specifically been Armstrong for taking
the time to chat with me, to spray Julie down
with animal sense, and you know, just for sharing his
(35:17):
enthusiasm for Halloween and for haunted attractions with us and
with you guys. And again, if you want to check
out their website, go to www dot fear world dot
com And if you live anywhere in the Atlanta area,
go check it out. It's a great attraction and it's
open generally through all of October but then also into
the first week of November as well to get that
(35:38):
that Halloween hangover crowd. Yeah. I also wanted to mention
to you that Ben is really steeped in mythology and
this is what you can tell. This is an act
of love for him every single year. And I did
ask him what some of his influences are and he
talked about an economicon um as being early influences, an
alien also as a teenager, so you can you really
(35:58):
do see a lot of that, his worldview, his influences
in the attraction. Yeah, you mentioned Pumpkinhead when I talked
to him, he's he's not a guy who's doing it
just to make a buck. Because every year you see
haunted houses pop up in any large metropolitan area. Some
of them last years, some of them last two years.
But it's hard work. It's a year round thing that
these guys engage in. So the mere fact that these
(36:20):
guys have been doing it strong for sixteen years, let
you know that they're they're doing it right, and they're
doing it because they love it indeed. Yeah, alright, so
let's see. Do we have time for a listener mail
or should I send the robot away? All right, robot,
you can come here with a short one, just a
short one, all right. Here we have one from our listener, Emily.
(36:41):
Emily writes in this is high, Robert and Julie. I
was listening to your episode about cats, and when you
mentioned purring, it reminded me that there is a song
by Arteker called gail or d a y L. Who
knows how you pronounced any of their their tracks, which
features a sound that always makes me think of a
purring kitten. Uh So check that out. You can find
(37:01):
that clips of that online. D a E hell, and
it does kind of sound like a purring cat trying
to perhaps manipulate the listeners. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah,
I know I've heard some tracks where people actually throw
in purring noises before, but this isn't one. It's more
of a mechanical thing that sounds like a kitten purring.
And then we also heard from Adam. Adam writs in
and says I wanted to thank you guys through excellent
(37:23):
episode on the Amazing Mind of infants. As a recently
new Father nine twelve twelve, I found this topic to
be thoroughly entertaining and informative. Watching my little dude gaze
about the world won't be the same. I will be
thinking about how he is absorbing all sorts of sensory
information simultaneously wondering why a blurry alien figure keeps snuggling
hovering over him. Thanks for the magnificent episode, Adam. That's awesome. Yeah,
(37:45):
and he's referring to this theory that's out there. It's
a little bit wild, but that the fact that um
infants don't quite have everything sorted out in their eyesight,
that they're seeing a vision of us that would resemble
an alien. Yeah, it's pretty creating over there alright. Well, So,
if you guys would like to check in with us,
especially if you want to share your thoughts on the
(38:07):
science of haunted houses, haunted attractions, let us know which
ones you've really enjoyed, your earliest experience with with with them,
et cetera. Uh, get in touch with us. You can
find us on Tumbling and you can find us on Facebook.
We are stuff to blow your mind on both of those,
and you can also find us on Twitter, where we
tweet under the handle blow the Mind. And you can
also drop us a line at blew the Mind at
(38:29):
discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
What's your earliest memory of a haunted house? Uh? Not
not a real haunted house where actual ghosts are supposedly
running around. We've talked about that's sort of thing in
(00:25):
the past, But I'm talking about haunted attractions. Place where
you go up, you buy your ticket, you run through
the haunted attraction. Various scary things happen, You encounter tab
blaws that are frightening, people jump out at you, there's smoke,
there's light, their smell, and you leave screaming and giggling.
My childhood home, really you grew up in a haunted No,
(00:46):
but my dad loves Halloween, and so as as a
tenderhearted five year old, I remember going up to my
house and seeing that it had been transformed into a graveyard.
And my dad had because he were to the university,
and so he went to the department there and got
the you know, whole makeup thing and aged himself and
looked like he was like the grave keeper dude. And
(01:08):
then he also projected the pit and the pendulum on
the side of the house. Okay that the old film,
Yeah yeah, with the blade coming down slowly and you know, wow,
he went all out, he did. So that is my
first impression of what haunted house might be like. Okay,
you I think my earliest. I mean, my family always
made a big deal out of Halloween as well, but
(01:30):
I don't think we ever really set up a haunted
house per se. But I do remember when we were
living in rural Tennessee. Uh, my church group would go
every year to see this thing that was called scare Mare,
which we us kids are often referred to as prayer
Mere because the gimmick was you come to this little
rural church out in the middle of nowhere and they
(01:52):
put on this haunted house every year and you go
through it and it's one of these these fundamentalist Christian
haunted houses that that each room shows you that the
perils of a sin uh and you know, this is
what's gonna happen if you if you drink, this is
what's gonna happen if you listen to bad music, and
all the type of stuff you can you can imagine.
And then at the end they empty you out into
(02:13):
a tent where a preacher sermonizes to you for what
felt like an hour or two and that was the
end of it. That was the prayer mayor portion of it.
And it was, you know, it was cheaply done, and
a lot of it was kind of it was very
heavy handed even at that age, but they were still
using some of the elements of haunted houses that everyone
(02:34):
is kind of used to that everybody does a chainless chainsaw,
a dude in a mask, somebody with blood on them,
someone jumping out at you out of the dark, that
kind of thing. It's only really been since i moved
to Atlanta as an adult that I've gotten to really
experience a high grade, professional haunted attraction where they really
throw everything together and just wallop all your senses with
(02:57):
with frightful images, frightful sounds, frightful smell, etcetera. And I'm
talking about the nether World Haunted house right Another World
is I think one of the probably most esteemed haunted
houses in the United States and is a fine, fine example,
and we'll talk a little bit more about that. But
I did want to say that the church, the sort
of Churchill haunted houses. Forgive my punt art for the
(03:19):
genesis of the modern haunted house, because that's actually how
haunted houses start as a charity event. But right now
we have in the US over two thousand haunted attractions
that charge admission, about a thousand charity attractions, and three
hundred amusement parts that have various haunted houses. Um. And
I wanted to point this out because I did not
(03:41):
realize this that the average person will show out about
seventy two dollars on decorations, costumes, and candy for Halloween,
and total Halloween spending was six point eight six billion,
second only to Christmas in Christmas decorations. So Halloween obviously
is a big deal in our psyche, and uh, haunted
houses I think are the catalyst of it all. Yeah,
(04:04):
and and and then always gives me such a it's
such a big deal. It's always a big deal to me.
But it's such a big financial deal. Then why is
Thanksgiving Christmas? Why aren'ty always trying to to wean in
on it and get and show up in October and
steal some of the spotlight from from Halloween because they're like, hey,
as long as you as you are dropping some dime
on decorations. Why don't you pick up a nice little
Santa Claus. Yeah, and I'm also off for let's start
(04:25):
Halween in September. I kind of started in March, so
I was gonna say, like in December. Yeah. Um. But
as you point out, Another World is a great example.
It's been in the business for sixteen years and it's
created by movie professionals Ben Armstrong and Billy Messina. Messina
did ffex on Franken Hooker and I think one of
(04:47):
the basket Case movies. To give you horror fans a
little perspective. Uh, they use original storytelling, so they don't
rely on Hollywood's stereotypes like Freddie or Jason. They have
thousands of effects. They create custom props, makeup masks and monsters.
They have a ton of puppetry as well, uh, animatronics,
(05:07):
and they have more than one hundred nether spawn, which
are their actors, some of whom are stunt actors. And
uh some of these actors are actually professional feeder actors
and some have day jobs. And this year they have
actual Beauty pageant winner Mrs Georgia, who transforms herself into
a ghoul. So you really do see people of all
(05:28):
different stripes joining in on this. So for this episode,
we we thought, all right, we're going to do an
episode on the science of hunted houses, we should both
go to another world and actually check it out for reals,
you know. And uh, and so I went out. I
checked it out, I went through the attraction. I talked
to Ben, one of the owners and operators and the
minds behind all of this. And then you went a
(05:51):
few days later and you checked out the behind the
scenes stuff, So we kind of we kind of double
teamed it. I kind of got the user end of
it and you've got the behind the scenes. Yeah, it
was really cool. Got to see what it looks like
about an hour before the door is open, and it
really is like putting on a large scale theatrical production
every single night. Um, and we'll talk a little bit
more about the different elements, but it was amazing to
(06:11):
see all the actors getting into their costumes and I
think they've got seven different makeup artists. They've got a
room full of masks, which is amazing to see. So
the eight year old in me was extremely excited to
be able to go behind the scenes and go through
the maze and kind of see it in the partial daylight.
Oh nice. We attended to grab a mask and sort
(06:32):
of hang out. I was actually I wasn't. Then I
kind of got that vibe of like, you know what,
that there are actors here doing that. You don't need
to dive in here and try to scare people. Right. Well,
when I was there, I got a few quotes from Ben,
so I thought we'd kick things off here and sprinkle
a few other quotes throughout. But here is Ben's answer
when I asked him, why, as humans do we like
(06:52):
to be afraid? I think when you feel fear, it's
a really up primitive instruct you know, when you're the
hunter or the hunter. It's a huge surge of a
journaline and people really enjoy that feeling of terror when
they know it's safe. I think you're really scared and
you think you're really gonna die. It's a bad, sickening feeling.
But when you get shocked and scared and then you
(07:14):
can laugh about it, it's so you floor feeling everyone phrase.
So that was some fun interview material to get there
because you can hear some of the craziness in the background.
Because it's right outside side another world on a very
busy night. There's their chainsaws, they're screaming, there's laughter. I mean,
it's it's just a pretty awesome place to be. And
I think that what he's talking about and what you
(07:35):
just described to in terms of people really having fun
with it, is directly pointing to the benign violation theory,
which we've talked about before, right when we've talked about,
especially in our episode on laughter and humor and where
that comes from. I believe we call that episode Funny
or Die. We've dragged this idea out a number of times,
you know, the whole Uh, savor tooth tiger jumps out
at you and attacks you. Uh, you're dead right, But
(07:56):
if something else jumps out of you, you're gonna react
like it's a savor tooth and then it's not ha ha,
you laugh. That's the signal that I thought I was
gonna die, but not really. So this was the first
time I'd gone through a haunted attraction and in certainly
another world following that episode that we did. So I
was thinking about benign violation the whole time, and sure enough,
(08:17):
I'm seeing it certainly in everybody around me, but even
in myself. You know, I'm scared, I'm falling on the
floor because something jumped out of me from the side,
and then I'm laughing. Yeah, And I mean it's a
cathartic experience, right, I mean, there's no secret why we
want this and why we seek out this experience because
it really we are sort of built for that safe
tooth tiger, right. So um, it's kind of nice to
(08:39):
be able to exercise that in a safe place. And
also I wanted to say that Ben Armstrong had really
talked about how important safety is and haunted houses, and
this is a fine example. They have, you know, something
like thirty two surveillance cameras. They've thought of every single
safety aspect. When duty cops there on secure, you're ready,
(09:00):
you have to wait in a line before you go in,
and there's a lot of fun stuff going on with
you know, people and costumes kind of scaring you. But
then the the the security is there as well. I
imagine that they can kind of scope out who could
potentially be a troublemaker when they go in, because you know,
you should be there for a good time. If you're
there to start trouble, you're the wrong place. Yeah, if
you just did a couple of shots at Yaga my
start and went through that, that could be trouble um
(09:22):
and they are on the lookout for that. But I
wanted to talk a little bit about the Haunted House
layout itself. Yes, you were not given a map when
you show up, because that's part of it. It's kind
of a labyrinth that you lose yourself in for a
few minutes, right, and they want to disorient you, so
obviously they have um built it so that they can
disordento you to the best of their abilities, and they
(09:44):
use what they call sixty degree walls or six sided
rooms to do this, and also ninety degree walls, and
the ninety degree walls are really try to get you
more through the maze itself. UM, but the sixty degree
walls the six sided rooms are really cool because they
have lots of corners to hide actors in what they
call scares, and it's easier to disorientate or disorient customers
(10:05):
and create mazes, and then it gives a different feeling
um of more familiar construction. And we talked about this
a little bit in our last podcast about maps in
our configuration of neurons and how they really like the
X Y access the horizontal on the vertical not so
much something coming at you diagonally, and they're going diagonal
on all of these rooms. We're not used to dealing
(10:27):
with those rooms. I mean, no matter how crazy the
architecture in your house is, chances are you're still dealing
with square or maybe in some cases rounded structures. Right.
So when they're thinking about the set design of this already,
they've kept this in mind, this sort of natural scare
tactics of coming at you from diagonals and from all
different places. Um. And then they have something called scare
(10:48):
forward and through put. And this is sort of like
more on the business side, because through put is the
rate of people that go through the haunt, and it
helps to keep lines a little bit lower and keeps
multiple groups from crashing into each other. Yeah, I mean,
because not a very straightforward and boring but essential business level.
You need x number of people to go through there
(11:08):
at a certain rate if you're gonna make money, and
if you don't, because if you're not making money doing this,
I mean, all right, it's all fun and games, but
but it's not a business. And really, you know, a
delightfully twisted way. You kind of have to think of
a haunted attraction like a slaughter house. You have a
bunch of cattle and you need to steer them through
the attraction at a certain rate without any hiccups. You
(11:31):
need to keep them moving. You don't except, of course,
you don't want the cows to freak out. You want
the humans to freak out, but to a point. And
then if the freak out goes a little a little
too far, then you need to be able to remove
them so that the flow can keep going. And if
you are someone who is going to go through a
haunted house and you've got a little bit of scarity pants,
here is a tip. You will want to stay at
(11:52):
the front. And I know that sounds counterintuitive. I know
that's that's because this is the thing every year my
wife and I did do this when when we go
to another world, we're like, yes, we're gonna get up
there at the front. Were the brave ones. We love
this stuff. Let's do it. And then we indever, Let mean,
we still get you know, the Jesus scared out of us,
but we'll inevitably find ourselves in the situation where we
arrive a little too early, and then we spot the
(12:13):
monster in the corner, just standing there waiting to get
the people behind us, and we're kind of like, jump
out of me, I want it, man, We'll see. That's
the whole strategy. It's called scare forward. And what they're
doing is that they're they're really going at the sides
of the group and the back of the group because
the idea is again to get that through put out
there and to push the group forward. So if you
(12:35):
are in the front, you're probably not going to get
you know, an actor or a google or a monster
two inches in front of your face like someone in
the sides or the back of the group would. So
they're hurting you. They're essentially you're being herded by monsters
through a slaughterhouse. It's true, you are, and um, you know,
we should mention this is probably obvious, but there are
bunches of scare pockets throughout that maze, so little alcoves
(12:58):
and again that's why the six sided rooms are so helpful,
because this corner's helped to hide people. Uh, and they
have a number of interesting ways to hide people. A
lot of hiding in plain site. Is it a statute
is it a person? I can't tell unless it moves,
or there'll be something that looks like a person and
you're you're watching it like all right, buddy, I'm onto you.
And then bam, werewolf jumps out at you from the corner,
(13:20):
and which is really cool. We'll talk a little bit
more about camouflage and a little bit um, but let's
take a quick break in when we get back, we
will talk about modes of manual manipulation. Hey, you, we're back.
We're talking about the science of haunted houses, of course,
as in haunted attractions. And I'll mention this again but
(13:40):
if you want to check out Another World online and
see their cool website, go to www dot fear world
dot com and you can see all sorts of clips
and images and some wonderful write ups about their attractions. Yeah,
and they are doing an excellent job, I have to
say of manual manipulation. In other words, taking our five
cents is and and of course you could argue that
(14:01):
we have many more than five senses, but there's main
five senses in manipulating them through all sorts of things
like our site in our orientation, yeah, sight orientation. This
is kind of like I guess in a way the
obvious one, but but some of the subtler ways they
do it may surprise you. I mean on a very
basic level. Yes, you're walking through these dimly lit corridors
(14:23):
and things are happening, and a lot of like especially
in other world, a lot of stuff is happening. You're
you're distracted by little details, say like some sort of
a ghastly frame and a picture on the wall that
seems to be watching you, some sort of holographic bit
of art here, actual skeletons just I mean, they do
a wonderful job just on the layout of the place.
(14:43):
So you're looking at that kind of stuff, But then
there there's also other visual things, lights, lasers, moving fog,
moving monsters, and it all creates this chorus of confusion. Yeah,
And of course the lack of light is is the hallmark,
and the reason for that is because if you're plunge
into tote old darkness, then you're not quite sure what's
going on. And so there are different parts of the
(15:04):
Haunt that are that are darker than others. But I
did want to just give a quick overview of our
site that of course we have rods and cones in
our eyes. Cone cells perceive color in bright light, and
rod cells perceived black and white images and work best
and low light. So who has something called rhodopsin And
rhodoption is a chemical that's found in the rods, and
(15:25):
rhodoption is really key to the ability to see during
the night. And it's the chemical that rods used to
absorb photons and perceived light. And when a molecule of
rhodoption absorbs a photon, it splits into a retinal and
an option molecule. This is important because these later recombine
naturally back into redoption at a fixed rate, but the
(15:46):
recombination is very slow. So the reason I'm pointing this
out is because when you expose your your eyes to
bright light, all the roodoption breaks down into this retinal
and option, and then if you turn off the lights
and try to see in the dark, you cannot because
it has to try to recombine line. And that's one
of the disorienting effects of playing with a light in
a haunted house. And here's a fun fact. Okay, the
(16:07):
retinal used in the eye is derived from vitamin A.
So if a person's diet is low in vitamin A,
there's not enough retinal and the rods, and therefore there's
not enough reduction. So people who lack vitamin A often
suffer from night blindness. Okay, so if you you want
to really be on to be prepared for your venture
through the haunted house, you want to bone up on
your vitamin you want to just stuck up on that
(16:29):
vitamin A. But I thought that was interesting. I mean,
that's also like great because I know I'll be driving
at night occasionally when I can't help but drive at night,
and and I feel like I can't see anything. So
maybe next time I need a bone up on the vitamins.
There you go, There you go before you drive, before
you go into a haunted house, and drive into a
haunted house. Yeah, yeah, which is an entirely different attraction
(16:51):
from the future. But there's also different ways that can
manipulate your eyesight. And I saw one um example of
this online from a past another world um year. But
they had a room that was covered in illuminated dots,
So everywhere you look there's just dots, and you could
not see the edges, you could not see anything. And
(17:12):
I thought, well, that's fascinating because that's really like obscuring
your ability to actually pinpoint your orientation, which is so
important and allow you to have sort of a fixed
established place in the room. And it's really frightening to
even watch the clip of someone coming at you with
dots on, of course, because they're they're melding into the background,
you know, I do you know you mentioned this to
(17:33):
me yesterday and I'm like, I don't remember the dots,
but now I do. Think I went through the attraction
the year that they had the dots, because suddenly there's
a person that's covered with dots coming at you as well,
and that kind of course throws you off balance, as
does their use of sound. Yeah, there is a lot
of noise going on in the haunted house, and those
clip and the clips that we played, you could certainly
hear the outdoor noise and on the inside you have
(17:54):
creepy music, you have loud noises coming from elsewhere in
the hunt. A course, you're hearing chainless chainsaws rearing up.
I mean, that's a staple. There's just no getting around
it when it comes to chain saw usage at a
haunted attraction, And it's all just creating this cacophony. But
then there they're also these kind of moments of not
quite silence, because you're not gonna get really silence. It's
(18:16):
not a really sound proof environment, but they'll be like
a calmn, I guess before the noise comes out of
your specifically like an air gun or or an airhorn
going off right next to your head. You know. Thinking
about the sensitivity of our ears, because we talked about
this and the Ignoble podcast, and we talked about how
if you're hearing is delayed, if you hear yourself talking,
(18:36):
it's delayed just a fraction of a second. That can
just change everything in the machinery in the way that
you perceive sound. And um, it made me think about
the fact that your your ear is really important in
actually detecting the gravitational field as well and giving you
a sense of orientation. So when you have all these
different elements of sound coming at you, that can really
(18:57):
disturb um your sense of where you are. And I
was also thinking about something called the butt kicker that
they use. I love the name of it. It actually
vibrates the floor. Oh yes, yes, okay. And also in
the other world, when I was talking to you, Ben.
He said, they've experimented with sub sonic frequencies, but they
decided not to use them because they have some odd
(19:18):
effects on people. Okay, change them in the Monster's that
kind of thing exactly, you start to grow hair everywhere.
It's it's it's not pretty. They definitely play with your
balance a lot. They're they're squishy floors. There's their floors
that feel uneven. There's there's kind of a metal bridge
over actual water that's shaky, to say nothing of the
solid bridge that goes through a spinning cylinder. That old
(19:42):
effect is uh that always gets because that just throws
your balance off completely because the surface you're walking around
isn't moving, but visually you're seeing the room spin. So
you react as if the room is spending and you're
reaching out right. And then of course you get another element.
You're trying to feel your way through the room, but
then you're feeling creepy crawley things. The sense of touch
is really important, and I wanted to point out to
(20:03):
that the animatronics Another World spray a lot of air
and water at YouTube. Yes, you're suddenly you're missed by stuff,
and if that's combined with some other sense elements that
we'll get to in a second. Then it can be
really disturbing because you're like, ah, that thing just threw
up on me, what is this leaking? I mean, we
can't have the response anyway if something gets honest it's wet,
because sure, maybe it's raining, but it could be urine. Yeah, exactly.
(20:28):
And actually they do have a bathroom. Uh did you
go through the bathroom area? Oh, yeah, where they have
the toilet plucked from my dreams, from my nightmares. It's
a toilet that is covered an excrement and yeah, and
they've got little bits of rice that come up from
the ceiling from I think it's like a air duct
or something. They rearrange that toilet every year. So one
(20:48):
year in particular, one of the earlier years I went.
You had to crawl through a tunnel and when you
emerge on the other side, you emerge right in front
of that foul toilet. Yes, again, plucked plucked from my nightmares.
But again you're that's the sense of touch that you're feeling,
and we take it for granted, but it's really effective
because it's exciting. The five different types of nerve endings
(21:09):
in your skin that govern sensitivity, heat, cold, pain, and
pressure and itch. So when you are going past those
dangling tentacles, your body is trying to figure out what
exactly it is. Is it a threat? And it's important
to mention on this touch business though, when we're talking
about the reception this touch this, I'm checking my finger here. Um.
(21:30):
One of the big rules of any haunted attraction, professional
or even just semi professional, it's it's kind of the
reverse of a gentleman's club. The monsters do not touch
anyone that works that's coming through the attraction. The monsters
will not touch you. They may come close to you,
they may sort they jump out at you, but they
are not going to grab you. They're not going to
reach out and mess your hair up or anything. Now.
(21:50):
I actually got to get behind one of the animatronics too,
and um, it kind of manipulate it to see to
the point where it goes past someone or or come
forward to someone. It was pretty cool. Like the big
grabbers grabbers. Yeah, now I have been grabbed by those.
But then but then again, it's not a person grabbing you.
It's a large inflatable puppet grabbing you. So it's it's
a different thing and it's soft. Yeah, but even though
(22:14):
the monsters cannot touch you, lots of things touch you
in this particular hunt, right, the actors will not touch you,
but the other things, like tentacles, I feel like they
were baby dolls on strings. There were. They were large,
inflatable black substances. So you're you feel like you're squeezing
your way out of the belly of some humendous leviathan. Yes,
(22:35):
which plays to our fear of small spaces, are in
close spaces and custrophobia. They warn the heck out of
you before you go into it. It's certainly not a
place for the claustrophobic, for someone who is affected by
strobe lights or or anything of that nature. Now, one
of the walls that you kind of have to shimmy
through actually does push back. So if someone were having
a problem with that and they can shut it down
(22:57):
at a moment's notice, Yeah, I think you move that
wall straight act so um and actually I think that
you yourself could do you just push it, But it
looks like as though you know you have to show
me through this little um bit of room here. So
I did want to mention that probably one of the
most grotesque aspects for me, at least when I was
going through the Haunted house was the smells. Yeah, the smell.
(23:22):
I asked Ben if he could give me a couple
of examples of what they use, because of course, this
is a huge mode of manipulation when it comes to
us humans, and it's you and Ben Armstrong. You're in
the middle of nether world prior to it opening. We
go through the back where to this little room where
he shows me where he's got all these sents that
(23:43):
he can spray to freshen up, as he says, place. Um.
He also had some devices that continuously emit orders. But um. Basically,
he showed me a couple of his select odors and
they were swamp, mildew, rotting vegetation, which I said, all
of them. I said, Oh, that's that's not too bad.
(24:03):
That's you know, I can live with that. And then
he kind of went and he sprayed the hospital smell,
and then I went, that's the worst, because it really
does kind of get under your skin a little bit.
And he said, oh, you think that's the worst. And
that is when he doused the entire hall in a
big spray of what is called circus animal and that
(24:23):
sounds lovely, right, great, yeah, and you and you were like,
I used to working at a big deal exactly. I
was like, I can take that. What hit me in
the face smelled like the anal glance of an elephant.
It was probably the worst smell I've ever smelled in
my life. Now, of course he doesn't humigate the place
with that, but he just puts it in certain pockets
and it gets to mellow a little bit. So I
(24:44):
really had the more pungent experience. And it is still
in my car and on my clothes and on my handbage.
You held your handbag up for various co workers to
smell this morning and I didn't wretched. So we I
may need to get a new computer bag, but we'll see.
But that is a huge part of it, because you know,
one of the things I noticed is that when I
(25:06):
smell that, the receptors on my tongue even were activated
because I felt like it was in my mouth. And
we have talked about this before that this is a
huge warning system for our bodies that when we smell
something that's disgusting or we taste it, we automatically recoil
and our bodies tell us that there's something dangerous because
it could be something putrid, something poisonous, something that's going
to harmless in some way. And so the brain is saying,
(25:28):
be wary of this. You can look into it, but
know that it might kill you. And certainly we can
grow accustomed to many foul odors. Is our brain gives
us that chance to all right, check it out, and
if you're comfortable with it, then we'll will allow you
to not register it as much. But certainly you're not
gonna have at that kind of time as you make
your way through hunted attraction to grow accustomed to circus animals. No,
(25:51):
you're not. You're just gonna like quoa. That's that's problematic.
My body is telling me there's a problem here. So
I thought that's kind of cool how they set the
stage there in terms of how are manually manipulating your senses,
but also they are psychologically manipulating. And this begins, uh
at the very moment that you park your car and
you get out of it. For some of us, it
actually begins before you get there. I have to say,
(26:13):
because not everyone goes to the trouble of reading the
text on the website. But they do an awesome job
every year. Just give you a little taste. There too,
haunts each year at another world. This year it's Banshees
and the high on Banshees. The cell is the ancient
evil city of Ys has risen from the ocean off
the coast of Ireland, bringing with it a plague of Banshees.
(26:34):
These foul islets winged monstrosities feed on the darknergery of
dying humans, seeking battlefields and natural disasters where life hangs
in the balance. And then the Hive is really good
because the cell On that is, during the height of
the Cold War in nineteen sixty two, Robert Willington Hughes,
a filthy rich genetics researcher, sealed up his staff and
(26:55):
followers in an underground bunker called the Hive. So so
if you if you do like me, and you go
to the website first you get that in your hand,
you're like, all right, giant insects, irish myths and Banshees.
I can get into that. And then when you get there,
you get your ticket, you get in line, and the
monsters are prowling the parking lot. That's all right, And
(27:15):
so they're beginning to tell that story that you are
in fear or you're in danger, and you should be
fearful of what's about to happen. And what I think
is so interesting about frightening narratives, and we've talked about
this with children too, is that it's it's kind of
playing to this knowledge that at the end of the
day we're all pretty much doomed. Life is fleeting, and
yet you get to go through this exercise and storytelling
(27:37):
and come out on the other end. Now, one of
the things that I think is really great that they
do is misdirection. This has a huge psychological impact. Yes,
And actually I asked Ben I'm strong about misdirection when
I went out to the Haunted Attraction, and this is
what he had to say. Everything in here is very
much like Slide of Man. You want to create a
(27:59):
strong role, a sound effect to draw their attention than
the creature can strike. You have to strike from multiple directions.
We use things like camouflage suits or mirrors or darkness
or special lighting tricks to conceal the actor. Sometimes the
actors who have been in plain slide is the statue.
Sometimes they're invisible in the environment so it's all about
confusing you with visuals, with sounds, with everything anything we
(28:23):
can employ to keep you, you know, unaware of the
environments with the actually strike, that's what we're gonna do.
So yeah, it's kind of like a card trick. It
is a look over here because I'm doing something else
over here. Be distracted by this grand movement because there's
something sneaking up behind you. Uh, and it has the
eyes of a monster something else they use as camouflage.
(28:45):
And we've mentioned that before. And there's a great clip
believe it's the Travel Channel that did a bit Another
World and it shows a row of skeletons and you
can see the people are moving through and they are
perceiving this as one unit of just skeletons on the all.
But of course there's an actor who is called a
bone clone who comes jumping out at the passers by,
(29:06):
and again it's playing with that idea of benign violation,
but also playing with your mind's ability to perceive what
is real and what is not real. Now you know
you mentioned the bone clone jumping out. It's important to
note that another key rule that's been is big on
with his monsters, with the human human actors. Is that
you have the monster jump out at you, certainly, but
(29:26):
then they retreat away. Now part of that is of
course not involved not touching the person, but also you
need to get the once the shock has been made,
you don't need the person analyzing the monster even in
dim light. That's too. You know, less is more retreat,
that's true because then your brain has more time to
think about this. It's the benign part. It can bring
it down and on what was that? What was going
(29:48):
on there? You know, your minds still running with the questions.
And I saw that too with the bungee stunts. The
people whould come out on the bungee cords and return
down at you from above and then retracting back into
the darkness. So you talk about this fear factor, we
should probably review the old a magdala when it comes
to fear, because this is that almond shaped clump of
neurons in your brain located front and center, and it
(30:12):
is really vital for instantaneous emotional processing. So it's not
just for fear too, it's also for love and pleasure.
But when it comes to fear, if you have say
Freddy coming at you, you think Freddy's coming at you,
or you're another world and there's a glual coming at you.
What is happening is that you're a magdala gets juiced.
It unleashes your brain and embody energizing cocktail of hormones,
(30:38):
and of course while this is happening, information is also
traveling to your prefrontal cortex. This is the part of
the brain that's really responsible for a consciously evaluating danger,
and it tells you, hey, it's okay, this is just
a person in a mask. So the problem, though or
not sexually, it's not the problem is the catharsis um.
It's actually the result is that you have all of
(31:01):
these things going on in your body and has to
come off of that fear high. And that's again where
we're experiencing something really important in terms of acting at
our own fears or going through the process. I found
it interesting too that supposedly the whites of the eyes,
the more of the whites of the eyes that is visible,
even if the individuals wearing a mask, the more of
(31:22):
the amigo kicks into action, because it's like, well, someone's
coming out at me, wide eyed and crazy. I need
to respond to it. Whereas if they're you know, their
eyes are shut, then they're probably just gonna bump into you.
And if they have kind of droopy, sleepy eyes and
they're probably not that dangerous. They've actually there's been research
on this before too. I believe there's a researcher who
set up her own haunted house and did this with
(31:44):
her her research students and tract the white of the
eyes and the amount of fear that person perceived from
what her actors, her ghouls were communicating to the people
coming through the haunted house. All right, so here's one
more clip from Ben Armstrong where I was at talking
to him and asking him about the use of the
five senses and whether he's really hitting all five senses,
(32:06):
and he had to hit a pretty finances. Let's see,
you can see it, you can hear it, you can
feel it, you can smell it. We haven't had monsters
you have that you're supposed to lick. That's about it.
But you know what he gave me ideas maybe next year,
So yeah, we'll we'll probably never get lickable monsters in
(32:26):
the the haunted attractions, but it's it's a wonderful idea.
It is a. It's a very interactive idea, and which
kind of brings us to this idea of what the
future of haunted houses might look like one day, especially
if you melded the virtual reality technology. Yeah, to a
certain extent, you see a lot of haunted house elements
(32:47):
in some video games. I mean you have the whole
survival horror um genre or subgenre of games, stuff like
Resident Evil, Silent Hill Um, and then some sort of
hybrid games in recent years like head Space, which is
like a sci fi horror action but also a survival
are kind of product. And these will typically also some
(33:08):
of the Doom games fit into this area. You're inevitably
going through cramped hallways that are dark and dimly lit.
They'll be like a sparking fuse box on one wall,
and then something will jump out of you from the side.
They can't hit you on all the sensors, certainly, but
they can, you know, they can make the controller vibrate
in your hands. They can do stuff with with with
your site, and they can do stuff with sound, and
(33:30):
like I said, do a limited extent, they're experimenting with
the haunted attraction area. Yeah, And when I talked to
Ben Armstrong about this. He said that of course, as
as different technologies come online, they'll be interested in that.
But he said that core to the experience to their
haunted house is the fact that you have actors and
they are really uh sort of underscoring this play between
(33:52):
real and not real, and that having the actors makes
it a much more immersive experience. So even if we
were to get to the point five ten years from now,
putting Google Classes on, Google Vision on and walking through
a haunted house, you would still want to have that
live person element um because without it it's not quite
as immersive. It is interesting that you mentioned the virtual
(34:14):
reality augmented reality goggles and how that could be used
for haunted attraction, because you can imagine a future where
instead of going to a haunted house, you get these goggles,
you put them on, you go through your own house,
and it creates these virtual frights in the area around you. Certainly,
any of the virtual reality, dream augmentation, dream control technology
(34:35):
that we've discussed in previous episodes, pretty much all that
could conceivably get a horror or a haunted house twist
to it. You know, I can imagine some far future
where someone had would have the option of dialing up
a nightmare yeah, or having some sorts of um specter
(34:55):
projected onto contact lenses that they're wearing. So I mean,
really every day could be Halloween. Yeah, all right, So
there you go, Haunted Houses once again. Big thanks to
another World Haunted House and specifically been Armstrong for taking
the time to chat with me, to spray Julie down
with animal sense, and you know, just for sharing his
(35:17):
enthusiasm for Halloween and for haunted attractions with us and
with you guys. And again, if you want to check
out their website, go to www dot fear world dot
com And if you live anywhere in the Atlanta area,
go check it out. It's a great attraction and it's
open generally through all of October but then also into
the first week of November as well to get that
(35:38):
that Halloween hangover crowd. Yeah. I also wanted to mention
to you that Ben is really steeped in mythology and
this is what you can tell. This is an act
of love for him every single year. And I did
ask him what some of his influences are and he
talked about an economicon um as being early influences, an
alien also as a teenager, so you can you really
(35:58):
do see a lot of that, his worldview, his influences
in the attraction. Yeah, you mentioned Pumpkinhead when I talked
to him, he's he's not a guy who's doing it
just to make a buck. Because every year you see
haunted houses pop up in any large metropolitan area. Some
of them last years, some of them last two years.
But it's hard work. It's a year round thing that
these guys engage in. So the mere fact that these
(36:20):
guys have been doing it strong for sixteen years, let
you know that they're they're doing it right, and they're
doing it because they love it indeed. Yeah, alright, so
let's see. Do we have time for a listener mail
or should I send the robot away? All right, robot,
you can come here with a short one, just a
short one, all right. Here we have one from our listener, Emily.
(36:41):
Emily writes in this is high, Robert and Julie. I
was listening to your episode about cats, and when you
mentioned purring, it reminded me that there is a song
by Arteker called gail or d a y L. Who
knows how you pronounced any of their their tracks, which
features a sound that always makes me think of a
purring kitten. Uh So check that out. You can find
(37:01):
that clips of that online. D a E hell, and
it does kind of sound like a purring cat trying
to perhaps manipulate the listeners. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah,
I know I've heard some tracks where people actually throw
in purring noises before, but this isn't one. It's more
of a mechanical thing that sounds like a kitten purring.
And then we also heard from Adam. Adam writs in
and says I wanted to thank you guys through excellent
(37:23):
episode on the Amazing Mind of infants. As a recently
new Father nine twelve twelve, I found this topic to
be thoroughly entertaining and informative. Watching my little dude gaze
about the world won't be the same. I will be
thinking about how he is absorbing all sorts of sensory
information simultaneously wondering why a blurry alien figure keeps snuggling
hovering over him. Thanks for the magnificent episode, Adam. That's awesome. Yeah,
(37:45):
and he's referring to this theory that's out there. It's
a little bit wild, but that the fact that um
infants don't quite have everything sorted out in their eyesight,
that they're seeing a vision of us that would resemble
an alien. Yeah, it's pretty creating over there alright. Well, So,
if you guys would like to check in with us,
especially if you want to share your thoughts on the
(38:07):
science of haunted houses, haunted attractions, let us know which
ones you've really enjoyed, your earliest experience with with with them,
et cetera. Uh, get in touch with us. You can
find us on Tumbling and you can find us on Facebook.
We are stuff to blow your mind on both of those,
and you can also find us on Twitter, where we
tweet under the handle blow the Mind. And you can
also drop us a line at blew the Mind at
(38:29):
discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com
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