October 30, 2014 • 47 mins
Ever since the Egyptians, humans have been evolving toward haunted house attractions. The level of sophistication in the scares and gore effects continues to rise over time, but the purpose remains the same: to scare the pants off you.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is
Stuff you should Know, the pre Halloween Spooktacular week of
(00:21):
dark content. Although this isn't super dark. No, this isn't
you know about attractions? Haunted attractions? Right? Dark? Thank? I
don't want to spoil it, but there are some darkness. Now,
is it dark or not? It's dark, okay, but not
all of them, just just the really creepy ones. So
(00:41):
it's mid mid level dark. What a train wreck this is.
So for those of you who tuned in thinking they
were talking about haunted houses, sorry to let you down.
Real haunted houses, uh, of which there may or may
not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, shoot,
this is just about attractions. Yeah, these things are proven
(01:04):
to exist. They are real because you can probably if
you live near any kind of major metropolitan area, you
can probably find one somewhere in your town. I think
you can find them almost anywhere. If you live in
a major metropolitan area, that maybe one of those really
big daddy ones. But chances are your small town has
(01:25):
some form of haunted attraction, even if it's the local Uh,
if it's for charity and they're trying to raise money
for the local j c's and it's set up in
like a school gymnasium, or there's enthusiasts home haunters, um,
and they will they basically set up a haunted house
(01:46):
in their backyard. Yeah, there's some documentary about two guys
that are I don't know if they do haunted houses
or just take their Halloween um decorating two extremes. Well,
I think that's one and the same for a home haunter. Yeah,
I think they're they're competing guys on the same street
that uh someone did a documentary on because they just
keep like ramping it up and ramping it up, have
(02:06):
become obsessed without doing one another. But I don't know
what's called. So it just came to me right now.
Me either, But um, you do make a good point
how haunted houses are everywhere. Apparently in two thousand fourteen,
they expect they being the American Retail Federation who likes
to put out statistics and figures about holidays, Um, they
(02:29):
expect thirty three million people to go into haunted houses
across the United States. Yeah, about four thousand of them,
twelve hundred of which are the pay some money to
go in professionally, uh, about three or in theme parks
like you know, like amusement parks. And then about three
thousand of them are the charity ones that I spoke of, right,
(02:49):
which you'll still pay. But they they're not they're not
going to the fat cat Coke Brothers or whatever. The
profits aren't. They're going to you know, your local community organism. Yeah,
and those are fun, you know, you might get some
light scares, it's not like these, um, the really super
scary ones where you pay good money to um, you know,
(03:10):
to leave your body and wet your pants. Just one more,
one more, um, little bit of of data statistics. You
don't mind some numbers, talk about roll over ifs. Remember
you used to be static guy, And I know I
got so bored it. Um. In two fourteen, again, the
National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend eighty seven dollars
(03:33):
per person on Halloween, for a total of seven point
four billion dollars. Yeah, that's right behind Christmas, right behind Christmas.
People love getting their scare on. They really do. I
don't decorate at all anymore at the house, just because
I think I've talked about this before. We don't have
trick or treaders on my area of the street, so
(03:54):
it just seems kind of pointless. Oh yeah, you know,
I mean, what is the point at that point? There
is no point. Emily thinks we could do it for
people that drive by during the month of October, like,
you know, to see the house, But I don't know. Man,
you gotta you gotta whatever you put up, you gotta
take down that. And plus it's like you get no
(04:14):
satisfaction from somebody driving by. Sound like they hank at
your generations with little kids coming up and trick or treating,
there's some sort of payoff I guess, to your your effort, right,
that's right, scarring him for life? Right. So, um, let's
talk the history of this, because it turns out that
haunted house attractions are relatively new, but they're probably not
(04:36):
as new as trick or treating in the United States?
Did you know that? Not as new? So they predate
trick or treating by a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that
makes sense. And when we look at um at first,
when I read some of this history, the ancient history
else like come on, this is from Fangoria magazine, by
the way, oh us, But then when I started really
getting into us, like you know what, there's actually it
(04:58):
actually did pave the way for what we see today
in like ancient Egypt. To keep people from grave robbing. Basically,
they would uh make little scary things like trap doors
and um snakes and creepy insects and things to keep
people away from robbing their ancestries, their ancestors graves. They
(05:21):
put an old lady in a rocking chair who would
go behold the ravages of aids. What's that from the Simpsons? Uh?
Greeks and Romans? Um. Uh kind of paved the way
as well. They had um mazes and labyrinths set up
with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly,
(05:42):
they started stage effects, yeah, like fake blood and things
like that. Yeah. Um, they they And that's where a
lot of this stuff finds its roots is in early
stage special effects. Yeah. It was, and it's still his
theater when you come down to it. It's just like
an interactive participatory theater, right that you walk through and
(06:03):
then the the dark ages that medieval ages I think
the Dark Ages, the Medieval Ages are part of the
Dark Ages, but they're not one and the same. But
during the Dark Ages, UM, the the introduction of well,
the syncretism between Christianity and Paganism that led to the
(06:23):
adoption of Halloween, UM kind of saw rise to this, uh,
basically a scare show. Yeah, these little plays that would
scare people into remaining pious and remaining on the narrow path, right,
which is still very big today, has made a huge comeback. Um.
But these these scare shows, if you want to call
(06:45):
them that, I'm pretty sure that's not what they call
them during the Dark Ages, but they were. They featured
plenty of gore and fake blood and violence and um,
so that the the people who went to saw see
Him weren't necessarily going for the religious message. They were
going to you know, be grossed out right and get
a kick. Yeah. Uh. During the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous
(07:08):
for um incorporating like demons and ghosts and monsters in
his plays. He loved those. And in the eighteen hundreds,
We've talked about this before, there was a big rise
in spiritualists and conjuring sessions and mediums and fortune telling
and communicating with the dead was like a really popular
thing during the Victorian era, so it was debunking it. Yeah,
(07:30):
that's true. Um. The Victorian era also gave us um
the wax museum, which very quickly went from celebrities to
include scary stuff too. So you could walk through a
waxed museum and while the stuff didn't move or jump
out at you, you would come across like some sort
of tableau of you know, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde
(07:53):
and like kind of a room and it was scary
and lit oddly, and you were meant to The intention
was to scare you. Yeah, even though it wasn't again,
there wasn't an overt scare or startle. It was something
that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted houses to come.
They were to instill dread in the hearts of all. Uh.
(08:13):
John Pepper invented something, um pretty neat in the eighteen hundreds.
It was uh sort of set up where here where
you use mirrors to appear translucent. If you've ever been
to Disney's Haunted Mansion, UM, I think Pepper's ghost is
what they call. It is still a trick they use
to uh, you know, it's when you it's like a
(08:35):
hologram sort of smoking mirrors. Yeah, but using mirrors. It's
not like the Tuopoc hologram. It wouldn't high tech like that,
but it still looks pretty awesome. That's right. The twentieth century, then, Chuck,
is where we really find the progenitors of the modern
haunted house, the dark rides. And there's this really neat
(08:56):
um article on Collector's Weekly. You ever read any of stuff.
They write a lot of really cool long form articles
about like stuff that's come and gone, like dads and things,
and one of them was, um, it's called jeepers, Creepers,
why dark rides scare the pants off of us? But
the Collector's Weekly article, it's an interview with the guy
(09:17):
who collects old dark ride stuff. But dark rides were
like if you went to some rinky dink amusement park
or whatever. They couldn't afford to have a roller coaster,
but they could afford a little dark building with the
walls painted black inside and a little train track or
maybe a little boat or something that rode you through
and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of
(09:37):
the wall or you know this a strobe light went
off or something like that, and these were the direct
progenitors of uh, the haunted house. Yeah, and between that
and the traveling freak shows, um, it really, like you said,
everything was in place. And couple that with the fact
that a lot of these houses from the eight hundreds
(09:59):
are starting to crumble and there was, you know, narry
a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy old vacant house
and to keep their kids out, you know, people would say,
parents would say, you know that place, you don't want
to go in there. It's all on it because you
may not come out, which is that was an interesting
point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah, but if
you think of the modern conception of when you think
(10:20):
of a haunted house, what comes to mind typically is uh,
dilapidated old Victorian mansion with a story around it. You know,
It's never just like, oh, yeah, that was where Mr Johnson,
that he was a farmer and kind of a good guy,
died quietly asleep, no reports of his ghost at all.
That Well, what's probably funny is that was the real story.
(10:40):
But what you heard was that he killed his family
and had their name written on each knife blade. Um,
that's what I heard. The first official recorded haunted attraction.
According to this person who wrote this article in Fangoria,
Beha McKendry. He says that Orton and Spooner, the Orton
(11:01):
and Spooner ghost House in the UK uh and the
Edwardian Fair in nineteen fifteen was the first, uh like
a genuine haunted attraction. Yep, that was the first ghost house.
And in France they had something called the Grand uh
guen All and um that was sort of similar, i think,
and around the same time. So you've got that haunted house,
(11:24):
You've got the dark houses that are coming up in
places like Coney Island and stuff like that, and then
finally you have the first big time permanent haunted house
as we understand today. What you've already mentioned the Haunted
Mansion that that was first built in nineteen sixty nine
at Disneyland, and apparently it was supposed to go up
at Disney oh know, it was so Disneyland, the one
(11:47):
in California and the one in Disney World that came
up in the seventies, right, uh, late seventies, early eighties.
I'm not sure. Actually, I've been to that one though,
if you want to know more about that stuff. Though,
I think, um, Stuff you missed in History Class did
like a whole episode on the Haunted Mansion Ride. Oh,
Holly from Stuff You miss in History Class is an
(12:08):
absolute Haunted Mansion fanatic, right, I think they have a
whole episode on. She knows more about it than anyone,
more than Walt Disney himself knew, I think. But here's
a little known fact besides what you just said about Holly,
she knows more about it than Walt Disney. Um. Originally,
the the Haunted Mansion Ride was a walkthrough ride like
(12:29):
today's Haunted Houses. UM. But instead they found that the
I guess the people the ushers couldn't get people on
a pace easily enough and so there'd be traffic jams
and backups and everything. So they said, we'll turn it
into a dark ride. That's what they did. Yeah, which
we'll get to this later, but that's a big part
of running your own haunted houses is the flow. Yeah. Also,
(12:53):
the Haunted House and the Haunted Mansion in Disney was
based on the Winchester Mystery House. As far as the look,
they didn't want to have UM credit Old dilapidated psycho
house in the middle of their lovely park. So they says, well,
we can make it creepy on the inside, and let's
just make it like a really lovely Victorian on the outside.
And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the
Winchester Mystery, also recommend it's pretty neat. The Son of Ours. Yeah, yeah, man,
(13:16):
that was a good one. Not the Disney podcast. Um
So then you mentioned the j c's, Chuck, and I
didn't realize this, but the idea of a semi permanent
so not not located in like an amusement park or
something like that, but um, they an annual attraction that
(13:36):
just comes up around Halloween and then comes down in November.
November one. Um, as far as haunted houses go in
the United States, was created by the j c's, which
is the United States Junior Chamber, which is like a
community organization with chapters across the country. And in the seventies,
the j c's hit upon this idea of well, why
(13:59):
don't you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers,
and it just took off like a rocket, and the
j CS became synonymous in the seventies and eighties and
up to the nineties with haunted houses. Like if you
went to a haunted house in your town, it was
probably put on by the local chapter of the j c's. Yeah.
I remember specifically going to some of those as a kid,
(14:20):
as well as my church would have their own haunted houses,
not hell houses. Yeah, just very like kid oriented minor
uh spooks and goblins. Um, we'll get into hell houses later.
But even though I did go to Baptist Church, it
wasn't anything like that surprising. Yeah, I mean that was
before the concept of the hell house. Um. Yeah, it
(14:43):
was just like we would have like a Halloween carnival,
you know, Bob rapples and did that little fishing game
where you get something clipped to your fishing pole behind
the curtain. It's so funny. Do you remember when you
were a kid just being like, God, this Halloween carnival
is really well done. Ye. Man, if you go to
one as an adult, you're like this is really junkie,
(15:06):
Like are these kids really falling for all this stuff?
And they are. It's wonderful. Yeah. My elementary school had
a pretty rock and Halloween carnival every year too. The
Catholic school I went to had a good one. It
was one of the highlights of my year. But um, yeah,
you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples,
there's no way I would put my face in that
disgusting water, no, you know, yeah. Um. Anyway, out of
(15:30):
the j CS in there were a couple of guys
from a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois named Jim Goulden Tom Hillagas,
and they says, you know what, let's just create our
own Haunted House book basically like a yeah, I don't
know if it was a book. Yeah, I guess it
was a book, and let's teach people how to open
these up and sell it. And they distributed about twenty
(15:54):
copies and it was they formed the Haunted House Company,
and it was the first real UH group of outfit
to kind of just sell the plan and the stuff
that you needed, the props, right, like details like how
to do special effects. Um. And because of the success
of the j C s UH in the seventies and eighties,
(16:16):
private companies finally were like, we can make some cast
off of this. Starting in the nineties, and so the
haunted houses that we think of today, the sure profit
ones like Another World in Atlanta or thirteen Story of
New Orleans is another big one. Um that that they
came out of the nineties. Do you go to those?
No no interest? Yeah? Do you now? Emily and I
(16:41):
we still may go. She she has a hanker in
this year to go to another world just because we
haven't been to. I think we went to one in
l A that was pretty decent. Um. I'll go, I
guess if she wants to. But it's not my favorite thing.
I mean, I don't I like. I like scary movies
and stuff. I'm not. I don't avoid that up. I
am depressed. Chuck on Twitter the other day, I said,
(17:04):
the best scary movie or the best horror movie I
haven't seen go and I have heard of Vampire Brooklyn,
Eddie Murphy, every single every single suggestion, and there are
a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back. So I realized,
I'm really running low on good horror movies. But there
they aren't around much anymore. Like the ones that are
(17:26):
to me, the ones that are genuinely scary are the
ones that get into your head. Um, and I'll take
a fair amount of jump scares because that's a part
of it, if it's got the tension ratcheted up. But um,
the ones these days, man, just that the disgusting torture
porn thing. I'm just not into that. I'm not either.
It's just such an easy, cheap Yeah, they don't scare me,
(17:49):
just repulse me exactly, which is a totally different sensation.
You know. That's fine if you like to be repulsed
in whatever like that's it's great for that, But that's
not true fear. It's not um being scared necessarily. It's different. Yeah,
I do have a recommendation for you though. It's called
either The Lady in Black or Woman in Black, and
(18:11):
it's starts a growing up Harry Potter, So it's fairly new.
I think it's that came out in the last couple
of years. Daniel Recliff, and he does a great job.
It's almost exclusively just him in the movie Lady and Black.
He does double duty. And there are some like um
like Conjuring esque style like c g I ghost graphics,
(18:35):
but it's not overdone and it's not overblown, and it
is a genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay, it
was Okay, that's way I would say this one might
be better. And and that guy is it I don't
know if it's Tie or t West tis his name.
He's a director that did Um The Innkeepers and oh, yeah,
that was a good one too. Yeah, and then I
(18:56):
can't remember the did he do House with the Devil?
Those are pretty good because he is a little more
old school. He's not just trying to outgore you or
shock you. It's um. He tries to build genuine suspense
and dread. The same guy to both of those movies.
Uh not The Conjuring, No, No, The Innkeepers and The
House of the Devil. I think so, because both of
those were good movies. They seem totally different. Though, Yeah,
(19:19):
I may be wrong in that Innkeepers. That was a
slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took
a long time to build. That was a little slow,
Like you didn't even try to start the scares until
like thirty minutes in. Yeah, you know the lady that's
in that is uh Kelly McGillis, did you realize that? Yeah?
I didn't know till the end of the movie. It
(19:40):
said Kelly McGillis was like, oh, she's got the same
name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, but then
it's really her. She looks so different now, So that's
our Josh and Chuck's for a movie corner. We'll get
back to the actual podcast right after this message. You know,
we should we should have done a Maybe next year
(20:01):
we'll just do one of those, like a total horror movie. Uh,
talk fest sounds good. Those are fun. But back to
the more boring subject of haunted house attraction. Um, the
industry is huge, Like you said, there's a lot of
money to be made, and uh no too. Haunted houses
are going to be alike. Sometimes these folks that open
(20:23):
them by an old home or something and own it
and do this every year. Sometimes they rent out of space.
The ones I've been to haven't been in the actual space.
Wasn't some like cool old house or like a penitentiary
or yeah, apparently Eastern State Penitentiary is converted ye here,
and that is a scary, scary place, just normally. Yeah,
(20:45):
the only ones I've been to are the ones that
is it's like it's in a big open like a
shopping center where there used to be a like a
sales jewelry closed and right the Ghost of Capitalism. Um.
And then the you have themes, some of them. I
think the better haunted houses have themes because when you
talk about scares, you can be all over the map.
(21:07):
Um from doing something like with a movie theme, where
you have classic horror movies or serial killers or gray scientists,
or like vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Yes,
those are two very different kind of themes. Apparently, Um,
Rob Zombies got his own jam going and she called
his house yeah pretty much. Um, it's called Rob Zombies
(21:31):
Great American Nightmare. I think it's supposed to be a
play on the American Dream. But one of the rooms
is the John Wayne Gayzy Room, and it's like a
guy dressed up like John Wayne Gacy's Bubbles the clown.
I think that was the name of his clown, wasn't it.
Uh that sounds right. Um, just kind of hanging out
in like a recline or whatever. And this is Chicago,
(21:52):
and that's where John Wayne Gacy killed his victims, and
a lot of the victims families are still around, so
everybody's up in arms, and Rob Zombies like could not
less thank you for the free press, right exactly. Well,
clowns are posted something on our Facebook page a day
because that new clown and um American Horror story. Have
you seen this clown yet? Twisty the Clown, The guy
(22:14):
that made that show is like, just wait, Like, I
know clowns can be scary, but I have got the
scariest clown ever. And it's pretty scary, dude. Yeah, Like
I'm not bothered by it by things like that much,
but I saw this clown and I'm not into that show,
but I did watch the scenes that that clown was
in just to see what it was. Like, Yeah, it's
pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And
(22:35):
and there's a broad daylight killing, which are always super
scary to me. Oh yeah, like they don't care about
there's no hiding it or any Yeah. That like a
beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field, and those
kind of creep me out more. Yeah, because the whole
idea of like, oh, it's a good day to die,
to me, that doesn't mean it's beautiful out. It means
(22:56):
like it's like the world's already ending now it's a
good day to die. You know, the earth is opening
up and magma is pouring out that is possibly a
good day to die. Then the serial killer can come along.
Uh So if you're opening one of these hunted houses,
you can count on spending. This is a good idea.
You can make some good dough if you've got the
(23:16):
funds to get it going. Um, fifteen dollars per square
foot for decorating and special effects is what. Just that
alone is what you're gonna and that's not counting the
renting or buying of the structure itself. Right, so you
have five thousand foot scare footage. Okay, that's what I
was going for. That's good. You can be spending up
to grand just in decorations and scares and tricks. Yeah,
(23:42):
and you may be able to reuse a lot of
that from year to year. But you probably shouldn't put
out the same thing every year because if you're in
the same space doing the same thing, you're not going
to get repeat customers. No, So you want to turn
over like that each year. It's a new stuff. And
like you said, themes often change, So just changing the
(24:02):
theme alone is going to require that you change this this. Um, well,
your layout I guess to an extent. Yeah, Like, if
you're doing scary clowns. You're probably gonna have to get
rid of your O R setting or whatever unless you
do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary,
(24:23):
but it just seems a little off. Yeah, clown doing surgery,
that's just um, that'd be pretty scary. The clown hospital. Yeah, yeah,
well don't they have that children's hospital has a clown character.
That's what I'm thinking about, Quardrey. Yeah. Um. And by
the way, this is written by Kristen Konger from Stuff
Mom Never Told You, and she actually interviewed a few
(24:45):
owners of haunted houses to get some good inside poop
and um, that's where we're like getting these numbers and
they say to open one up. I was just making mine,
not oh you are Um, they said to open one up.
You're not only obviously it's it's a fun job, but
you've got to have a lot of business acumen too.
It's not just like, oh, this will be a hoot,
Like you've got to be super focused in and have
(25:06):
a good business brain or you're not gonna make any money.
Plus also, um, safety is a big, big deal, especially
after a fateful event in at six Flags Great Adventure
in New Jersey, there was They had a seventeen trailer
interconnected modular haunted house dark ride basically but a walking
(25:30):
dark ride. So it was a haunted house. Um and
it was basically a fire trap and it went up
and eight teenagers got trapped inside and died in the fire.
There were no fire sprinklers, there were no obvious, um
emergency exit signs or anything like that, and um, as
(25:51):
that's what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think like
by the time the eighties rolled around, people would have
figured out, oh, if somebody likes the man each in
here or doesn't put their cigarette out, because again, it's
the eighties, so people smoked everywhere. The whole thing's gonna
go up because it's all plywood and foam, and maybe
we should put fire sprinklers in. But apparently it took
(26:12):
this tragedy to really change the industry, but it did. Yeah,
and safety is, like you said, a huge, huge part
of it. Because you're in the dark. You've got things
flying out and props swooping down and people jumping out
and uh, I mean, anything can happen to go wrong
and someone can get injured. So yeah, and actually, did
(26:33):
you hear about the girl in two eleven. There's an
employee at one of the ones outside of St. Louis
called Creepy World, and um, she worked there and somehow
got caught in a noose and accidentally hung herself. That
sounds like a story that you hear, you would think,
so it is so well documented that it actually did happen.
I'm quite sure. But she survived. Um, she suffered some
(26:57):
brain damage to it to an extent from what I understand,
And um, I don't know if it was extensive or not.
I'm on a roller coaster of emotion, right, but she,
I mean, she did survive. But she she accidentally got
caught in the nuise and hung herself. And it's possible
some patrons passer by thinking that she was like that's
what was supposed to be going on. Yeah, I've I've
heard some story that is not that of someone who
(27:19):
hung themselves on Halloween and everyone thought it was a
just a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you
need to go watch the most recent Don't Be Dumb.
It comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes?
Is that an old well, don't spoil it. Okay, people
should go watch it. Go watch. Don't be dumb about
that man, ask and tell him Josh that you Um, so,
(27:41):
after you've got your safety system worked out, You've got
your fire safety, got your sprinkler system, you've got flame
retardant material, you've got camera set up everywhere, everyone assigned
a lengthy waiver. Even if they do get hurt, um,
they could probably still try and see you, but you're
trying to avoid that at all costs. What you're gonna
have is some sort of amaze like structure where you're
(28:05):
walking around sort of lost but really just getting shuffled
along a path. And there's, like you said earlier, there's
this thing called through put. So there's a lot of
thought put into it because apparently the worst thing you
can do in a haunted house, and this makes sense,
is to let the group behind catch up to the
(28:26):
group ahead. Yeah, that ruins the whole thing, ruins everything
because you're in a group. It depends, but I don't
know six or right people. But and you don't want
the scare that already happened to be apparent to the
group that hasn't gotten there yet. Like you see the
chainsaw guy crawling back into his little tree, right exactly.
So UM this throughput is basically a calculation of how
(28:47):
many people you can push through at what intervals to say,
meet your nightly ticket quota. So the numbers that Conger
gives UM is to to get five people through in
a night you and put a group of six. You
can set them out every thirty seconds and they shouldn't
bump into one another. And then one of the ways
(29:07):
that that UM employees make sure that these groups don't
bump into one another is the way that they scare people. Yeah,
it's called scaring forward, which makes sense. It does. It's
kind of interesting, boring term UM. But what they're doing
is usually jumping behind you as you walk through the
(29:28):
group to make you go in a forward They don't
want to jump out in front of you and have
you move in the in the direction you just came
from backward. Yeah, so they want to scare you forward.
And that is a little tip. If you are not
into being the the lead person being scared, then you
should be in the lead because it's probably gonna come
from behind you. It's pretty counterintuitive, but I think I'm
(29:51):
going to be in the back and I'll be just fine. Yeah,
you're the one that's gonna get grabbed because if they
jump out at the front of the group again, it's
gonna push the group backward, and the group ahead is
going to run into the group behind, and that's very bad. Yeah,
and I say get grabbed, you probably won't get touched. Now,
there apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching.
(30:12):
But you're going to be fully informed. That's so crazy.
He really does light touching. You're gonna be fully informed,
Like it's not gonna you're not gonna not know that
it's coming. Like in line, they're going to be like
signed this an initial here, an initial here, an initial here,
and we're gonna give you a heart attach test first,
just to make sure please step on this treadmill that
(30:34):
kind of thing. See, that's how I would really scare
people to say, you know, none of the actors are
allowed to touch anyone, so if you're getting touched, I
mean something has gone horribly wrong. Right, And then have
people well, well we'll get to in a minute, um,
the new extreme ones where there's not only touching, like
it's beyond anything that you could imagine. But we'll get
(30:57):
to that soon. Uh. And since we mentioned actors hiding. Uh.
Those are called scare pockets. Yeah, where they hide jump
out from. Yeah. So like they're hiding behind that tree,
and they may distract you with a bat swooping down
in the other direction. There's a lot of distraction going
on because what they don't want is you to be
focused on the clearly placed fox tree trunk that has
(31:20):
the smell of a chainsaw. Yeah, but there won't be
any blade on that chainsaw, by the way. No. And
a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yeah. Um.
Because the longer they hang out and they're like yeah, right,
the more you're gonna be like you're just some teenager, yeah,
who doesn't scare me. Yeah. And if you're looking to
save a little money, you might want to double up
(31:42):
and have that scare pocket have a couple of different
ways that it can go. Like I can jump out
on these people on the right who are in this
one part of the hunted house. Now I can scramble
back and then hit these people on the left, not
hit them, jump out and scare them. Um. And that
way you're saying a little dough with your actors. Yeah,
double or tippling your people and then apparently chuck. Lastly, Um,
(32:04):
a lot of the attractions are run on compressed air
that is set off either through motion sensors, which I
think everybody expects, but also through touch pads, which makes
sense because you can control that right well with a
with a motion sensor, every group is going to set
off that effect at right, And what it does is
(32:25):
it opens the valve and all of a sudden, the
skeleton sits up in the coffin or comes out from
the side or something exactly right. Um, that was a
really good impression with a touch pad. Though, if you say,
place the square off to the left or something, not
every group is going to walk over the touch pad,
(32:45):
so not every group is going to get the same
set of scare. So it kind of randomizes the thing,
which in turn makes the whole experience even more frightening,
because if you hear the group ahead at the curve
scream and scream exactly when you get to that, you're
gonna be prepared and if nothing happens, well, then, my friend,
you're just even more keyed up for the next one.
(33:06):
That's right, yeah, and you're keyed up to begin with
walking in there because a good haunted house will put
a little bit of money into getting you all ramped
up in the parking lot in the line that we
might have creeps dressed up roaming around. Uh, they may
have sound effects and spooky music and like an airhorn blast,
which is really uncool, and that's just got you on edge.
(33:27):
By the time you walk in that place, you're ready
to be scared. Um alright, chuck, Yeah, we've teased it enough.
Let's talk about extreme haunted houses, which apparently are so
extreme that people who are haunted house enthusiasts, like people
who are like in the industry, don't even like these
things to be called extreme haunted houses because they're so extreme. Yeah,
(33:51):
that's what I gather. And these are to say these
are interactive, is uh not really putting a fine point
on it. They are. You're basically paying money to be
treated like an assault victim for up to seven hours,
like you might be put in a headlock. You might
(34:11):
where's the one there's one in San Diego? Yeah. Uh.
McCamy manner is renowned as like the worst of the worst.
The video that I saw it was like you are
like covered in blood, dude. It was unbelievable put into
like a coffin, and somebody is like in their writing
on top of you in the dark, and you're trying
to get out and they're pulling you back in and
(34:32):
and just like it's insane, how intense this thing looks. Yeah,
they had a cage that locks your head in that
they're dropping like fake snakes in, which is not as
bad as life snakes, but it's still pretty bad. And
apparently the the the catchphrase of everybody who goes through
these things is let me out of here. Is that
(34:54):
they shout or cry it. Well, yeah, but apparently supposedly
McCamy manner, it's open year round and they only take
four people a day through this thing, but like you said,
it's up to seven hours long in some cases, right, yeah,
so they'll take in I think, just one at a time.
You have to come through by yourself, and they only
(35:14):
do four people to day. It's only open on the weekends,
and I don't know if this is true. Supposedly, the
one rule like you have to apply fill on an
application to go through this thing and be super fit
and super psychologically fit and um, because you're getting a
physically like abused in some cases like nothing you can't
walk away from. But you know they're they're mangling you
(35:37):
without hurting you. Well, yeah, and they held I saw
they held one guy's face in front of a toilet
and it shot up some noxious stuff out of it,
like stuff like that. So on one hand, it is
like physically abusive. On the other it's like almost laughable
that they like, these people really put their minds to
it and they came up with shooting stuff out of
(35:58):
a toilet in your face. Yeah. Um, But supposedly you
can't leave this one at all, like there is no
safe word. I just don't believe that. I don't believe
it either. But it's free. The one in San Diego
is really Yeah, it's free. And the and that's the
one hook is is that you're not allowed to leave
what you You sign a document it says I'm going
(36:18):
to go through this thing from beginning to end. That's
what I say. I would trust me, I would get
out of that place like I would. Yeah, I would
bust through a wall or something. That's what it took
Chuck Murray. But that is McCamy manner, and that is
was constructed by Russ McCamey, who's a terror fanatic. Uh.
They also have one in New York and l A
(36:40):
called Blackout, one called Gates of Hell in Las Vegas.
And the common denominator of all these is you're getting
physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want to
wear again, because you're gonna fake blood and vomit thrown
in your face hopefully fake and be physically assaulted. I
mean they have scenes where, you like, where there's a
(37:00):
rapist after you. It's really dark. So they with haunted
house enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things, it's usually
because they say there's no story to it. There's very
rarely build up. It's all just payoff off, payoff, like
all of it. It's just there's no there's no well,
there's no ratcheting up of tensions. It's like those movies
(37:22):
that we're talking about. It's the haunted attraction version of Uh.
I don't even know what there are. I don't watch
any of them. Like Hostile, Okay, I did see that one. Actually,
what do you think anytime if you're going to pull
out that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me. Yeah,
that is such a trope by now you know you
(37:43):
know who did do it well? Was the first couple
of hell raisers They used medical instruments to in the
day disheartening effect. Yeah, the ones that scare me the most. Again,
to delve back into movies like did you ever see
Wolf Creek and it's setting the Australian Outback, is like, yeah,
it's the kids whose car breaks down and all of
(38:05):
a sudden, the rest of the movie is them getting
traced chased by this homicidal maniac. Okay, that to me
is what's called the psychological thriller. Yeah, that's not I mean, yes,
I understand it is horror Friday the thirteenth, that's like
Hallmark Court, but it's the slasher movie different. Yeah, the
slasher movie is just it's just different. I mean, there's
not enough true, genuine horror movies in my opinion, which
(38:29):
amount to basically supernatural horror. I guess that's how you
put it. That's what I meant to You should check
out Wolf Creek. It's the the will. I have no
problem with it. It's just as far as horror goes,
I'm not scared by that. I want to be scared
you might be scared. Okay, I'll check it out. The
murderous guy is is a really like kind of a
great character, and I think he falls into the pantheon
(38:50):
of classic like Michael Myers characters like yeah, one of
the good Slashers, um, which brings us to the hell houses, yeah,
which um, like we said, was sort of started back
in the dark ages of Christianity. Uh, they they do
this today. The most famous wasn't is in uh Cedar Hill, Texas.
(39:12):
And there's a documentary called hell House on these things,
I think from like two thousand to camp and Uh.
The idea of these is uh run by churches usually
and they are too just like in the old days,
scare you into walking the straight and narrow, And actually
they were. They were originated by Jerry Folwell back in
(39:35):
the seventies. Yeah, those are the first ones, I think. Yeah,
and then in the nineties that church in Texas you
mentioned took over Abundant Life Christian Center, um, and they
took over and they started actually packaging it. They started
selling hell houses for like bucks and it was kind
of like do you remember those j C's in the
(39:56):
seventies that came up with the Haunted House package. These
are the same things but for hell houses. And then
there's modules that you can buy that cost additional amounts
of money so you can add rooms to it. And
so like a room you might buy as the abortion room.
And in the abortion room, Um, you're taught how to
use raw meat that's like a stand in for a
(40:18):
fetus that you throw into a glass bowl. You've got
to make sure it's a glass bowl so everybody can
see through into it. Did the quote literally from the
manual that they distribute on how to run these says, quote,
purchase a meat product that closely resembles pieces of a
baby to be placed in a glass bowl, so that
their suggestion that's a room from hell house. Yeah, and
this is to keep you from having premarital sex exactly. Obviously,
(40:40):
subtlety is not a hallmark of the hell house. Um.
So for example, like if you there's there's one from
New Destiny Christian Center. Um, it's called the Rave scene
and basically it's about um club drugs and death. Teenage death.
Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their own life,
(41:03):
um as a result of of sin, yes, of their sin. Yeah,
like the lesbian suicide room where uh, you know, a
young lady succumbs to lesbianism and uh is so mistreated
and um, she she goes to she's she's not a lesbian,
she's just saving herself and is mistaken for a lesbian
(41:27):
and then uh it then kills herself because her best
friend rejects her and calls her a lesbian when she
went to go hugger. That was that was from the
Vice article you sign at least, yeah, that's a great article. Um,
but it's all repercussions of sins. So there's the lesbian
suicide room. There is the AIDS room, the abortion room,
(41:47):
the domestic violence room, the d u I room, and
they're all just enacting these horrific scenes. And until you
get finally to Hell, is it the end of the
very end? Um In Hell is where they're you know,
displaying what hell looks like with ghuls and demons and uh,
and then finally you get to go to heaven. Well,
(42:07):
this is what makes the hell house the hell house.
Like you through these different types of sin into Hell
and then when you come out, you emerge through Hell
and then the real life preachers there saying, hey, how
about you repent and for those of you who aren't saved,
why don't you come on over to our church and
(42:28):
we'll save you. Yeah, they call it. In the Vice article,
they call it the h It's a really cool pastor
who jumps out and is the good cop to hell
house is bad cop, and he's like, you can avoid
all this scary stuff if you, uh, you know, take
the Lord Jesus as your savior. And sometimes they'll do
that right in the room and have you signed something? Oh,
I can imagine, and uh, that's the hell house. And
(42:51):
then that Vice article, it's crazy. Um. The author mentions
that a little boy goes off in vomits during the
hell house, So apparently the very effective well, if the
object is to make you sick and vomit, yea, so
vomit from fear for your soul. And they're still around.
It seems like something that um might have gone by
(43:11):
the wayside. But yeah, you can still go to hell
houses in one of places. I have one more thing
for your chuck. What you got. Go to BuzzFeed dot com.
You may have heard of that website, uh, and search
for forty four best picks of scared brows at Haunted. Yeah,
I can't remember where the Haunted House is, but it's
all the same background, but very much like roller coasters.
(43:33):
They take a photo of this one spot and it's
like the scariest spot and um, the people are they're wonderful,
hilarious photo and like it's been around. I think they
first started publishing them in two thousand eleven, so they've
been around for years and they're still just as funny
as ever. It's great that the scared face is just
(43:54):
so pure to me because it's just pure reaction, like
the toughest dude in the world, like trying to climb
over his girlfriend or push her toward whatever he's afraid of.
It's whatever is happening in that two seconds. It's pretty great.
So that's Haunted House Attractions everybody I know. Uh, you
(44:15):
want to know more about them, type those words in
the switch part how stuff works dot com. And since
I said that, it's time for the listener mail, I'm
gonna call this Karate Kid an email Awesome, which was
the scariest movie I've ever seen. Uh, if you listen
to our Karate episode, we wax philosophical about Karate Kid
movie and we got a lot of emails of UM
(44:35):
people feeling great ways of nostalgia UH and talking about it. UM.
So here we go. I imagine as will get dozens
of versions of this similar email. Just listen to Karate
and Uh. I have not finished it yet, but I'm
writing about the first seven to eight minutes. Specifically, Your
ode to the Karate Kid was beautiful. I got goose
(44:56):
bumps along with Chuck. I may have also had a
tear in my eye when Need described that magical moment
in the film where it all comes together and we realize,
along with Daniel Son, that Mr Miyagi is truly a genius. UM.
By the way, Ralph Maccio named his son Daniel after himself, Yeah,
I guess so, after the best version of himself. I
(45:17):
recently sent The Karate Kid to my six year old
nephew to ensure that despite what his friends and media
try to tell him, he will know that Ralph Macchio
is the original and only Karate Kid. When I called
him and asked what his favorite part was, he actually
started singing, You're the best around, nothing's ever gone, and
get you down. It was the proudest moment of my
aunthood so far. Now, Chuck I implore you to watch
(45:38):
The Karate Kid too, after all the other films that
attempt to be a part of the franchise or a
Travesty two is incredibly good. It is very good. The
Peter Sta song Josh mentioned, Glory of Love was my
first ever favorite song when I was six because of
the film is a classic, and I think you were
missing out. I'll watch it. I'll check it out anyways.
Thanks for sending me to work this morning with an
(45:59):
extra bout in my step and a song in my
heart that is from Nicole Beal at Jed's barber shop.
It's like City Utah. Go get her to cut your head.
Nice hair, not your head. It's doing a terrible job.
She's cutting your head. Thanks a lot, Nicole. Um. Did
you know her friend Van Nostrin. Uh, does his band
The Bangalore's do a cover of your The Best Around?
(46:22):
I knew he loved that song. I don't know if
I knew they actually covered It's good. You can go
to SoundCloud search Bangalore's and You're the Best Around. It's
on there. I'm gonna do that right after this. Uh.
If you want to let us know that we nailed something,
we want to hear about it. You can tweet to
us at s y s K Podcast. You can join
(46:42):
us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff works dot com, and, as always, joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
Doc Come. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com. MMM
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant and Jerry and this is
Stuff you should Know, the pre Halloween Spooktacular week of
(00:21):
dark content. Although this isn't super dark. No, this isn't
you know about attractions? Haunted attractions? Right? Dark? Thank? I
don't want to spoil it, but there are some darkness. Now,
is it dark or not? It's dark, okay, but not
all of them, just just the really creepy ones. So
(00:41):
it's mid mid level dark. What a train wreck this is.
So for those of you who tuned in thinking they
were talking about haunted houses, sorry to let you down.
Real haunted houses, uh, of which there may or may
not be a thing. All the skeptics were like, shoot,
this is just about attractions. Yeah, these things are proven
(01:04):
to exist. They are real because you can probably if
you live near any kind of major metropolitan area, you
can probably find one somewhere in your town. I think
you can find them almost anywhere. If you live in
a major metropolitan area, that maybe one of those really
big daddy ones. But chances are your small town has
(01:25):
some form of haunted attraction, even if it's the local Uh,
if it's for charity and they're trying to raise money
for the local j c's and it's set up in
like a school gymnasium, or there's enthusiasts home haunters, um,
and they will they basically set up a haunted house
(01:46):
in their backyard. Yeah, there's some documentary about two guys
that are I don't know if they do haunted houses
or just take their Halloween um decorating two extremes. Well,
I think that's one and the same for a home haunter. Yeah,
I think they're they're competing guys on the same street
that uh someone did a documentary on because they just
keep like ramping it up and ramping it up, have
(02:06):
become obsessed without doing one another. But I don't know
what's called. So it just came to me right now.
Me either, But um, you do make a good point
how haunted houses are everywhere. Apparently in two thousand fourteen,
they expect they being the American Retail Federation who likes
to put out statistics and figures about holidays, Um, they
(02:29):
expect thirty three million people to go into haunted houses
across the United States. Yeah, about four thousand of them,
twelve hundred of which are the pay some money to
go in professionally, uh, about three or in theme parks
like you know, like amusement parks. And then about three
thousand of them are the charity ones that I spoke of, right,
(02:49):
which you'll still pay. But they they're not they're not
going to the fat cat Coke Brothers or whatever. The
profits aren't. They're going to you know, your local community organism. Yeah,
and those are fun, you know, you might get some
light scares, it's not like these, um, the really super
scary ones where you pay good money to um, you know,
(03:10):
to leave your body and wet your pants. Just one more,
one more, um, little bit of of data statistics. You
don't mind some numbers, talk about roll over ifs. Remember
you used to be static guy, And I know I
got so bored it. Um. In two fourteen, again, the
National Retail Federation expects Americans to spend eighty seven dollars
(03:33):
per person on Halloween, for a total of seven point
four billion dollars. Yeah, that's right behind Christmas, right behind Christmas.
People love getting their scare on. They really do. I
don't decorate at all anymore at the house, just because
I think I've talked about this before. We don't have
trick or treaders on my area of the street, so
(03:54):
it just seems kind of pointless. Oh yeah, you know,
I mean, what is the point at that point? There
is no point. Emily thinks we could do it for
people that drive by during the month of October, like,
you know, to see the house, But I don't know. Man,
you gotta you gotta whatever you put up, you gotta
take down that. And plus it's like you get no
(04:14):
satisfaction from somebody driving by. Sound like they hank at
your generations with little kids coming up and trick or treating,
there's some sort of payoff I guess, to your your effort, right,
that's right, scarring him for life? Right. So, um, let's
talk the history of this, because it turns out that
haunted house attractions are relatively new, but they're probably not
(04:36):
as new as trick or treating in the United States?
Did you know that? Not as new? So they predate
trick or treating by a little bit. Yeah, yeah, that
makes sense. And when we look at um at first,
when I read some of this history, the ancient history
else like come on, this is from Fangoria magazine, by
the way, oh us, But then when I started really
getting into us, like you know what, there's actually it
(04:58):
actually did pave the way for what we see today
in like ancient Egypt. To keep people from grave robbing. Basically,
they would uh make little scary things like trap doors
and um snakes and creepy insects and things to keep
people away from robbing their ancestries, their ancestors graves. They
(05:21):
put an old lady in a rocking chair who would
go behold the ravages of aids. What's that from the Simpsons? Uh?
Greeks and Romans? Um. Uh kind of paved the way
as well. They had um mazes and labyrinths set up
with monsters and things. Even more than that, even more directly,
(05:42):
they started stage effects, yeah, like fake blood and things
like that. Yeah. Um, they they And that's where a
lot of this stuff finds its roots is in early
stage special effects. Yeah. It was, and it's still his
theater when you come down to it. It's just like
an interactive participatory theater, right that you walk through and
(06:03):
then the the dark ages that medieval ages I think
the Dark Ages, the Medieval Ages are part of the
Dark Ages, but they're not one and the same. But
during the Dark Ages, UM, the the introduction of well,
the syncretism between Christianity and Paganism that led to the
(06:23):
adoption of Halloween, UM kind of saw rise to this, uh,
basically a scare show. Yeah, these little plays that would
scare people into remaining pious and remaining on the narrow path, right,
which is still very big today, has made a huge comeback. Um.
But these these scare shows, if you want to call
(06:45):
them that, I'm pretty sure that's not what they call
them during the Dark Ages, but they were. They featured
plenty of gore and fake blood and violence and um,
so that the the people who went to saw see
Him weren't necessarily going for the religious message. They were
going to you know, be grossed out right and get
a kick. Yeah. Uh. During the Renaissance, Shakespeare was famous
(07:08):
for um incorporating like demons and ghosts and monsters in
his plays. He loved those. And in the eighteen hundreds,
We've talked about this before, there was a big rise
in spiritualists and conjuring sessions and mediums and fortune telling
and communicating with the dead was like a really popular
thing during the Victorian era, so it was debunking it. Yeah,
(07:30):
that's true. Um. The Victorian era also gave us um
the wax museum, which very quickly went from celebrities to
include scary stuff too. So you could walk through a
waxed museum and while the stuff didn't move or jump
out at you, you would come across like some sort
of tableau of you know, Dr Jekyl and Mr Hyde
(07:53):
and like kind of a room and it was scary
and lit oddly, and you were meant to The intention
was to scare you. Yeah, even though it wasn't again,
there wasn't an overt scare or startle. It was something
that definitely laid the groundwork for haunted houses to come.
They were to instill dread in the hearts of all. Uh.
(08:13):
John Pepper invented something, um pretty neat in the eighteen hundreds.
It was uh sort of set up where here where
you use mirrors to appear translucent. If you've ever been
to Disney's Haunted Mansion, UM, I think Pepper's ghost is
what they call. It is still a trick they use
to uh, you know, it's when you it's like a
(08:35):
hologram sort of smoking mirrors. Yeah, but using mirrors. It's
not like the Tuopoc hologram. It wouldn't high tech like that,
but it still looks pretty awesome. That's right. The twentieth century, then, Chuck,
is where we really find the progenitors of the modern
haunted house, the dark rides. And there's this really neat
(08:56):
um article on Collector's Weekly. You ever read any of stuff.
They write a lot of really cool long form articles
about like stuff that's come and gone, like dads and things,
and one of them was, um, it's called jeepers, Creepers,
why dark rides scare the pants off of us? But
the Collector's Weekly article, it's an interview with the guy
(09:17):
who collects old dark ride stuff. But dark rides were
like if you went to some rinky dink amusement park
or whatever. They couldn't afford to have a roller coaster,
but they could afford a little dark building with the
walls painted black inside and a little train track or
maybe a little boat or something that rode you through
and all of a sudden a skeleton popped out of
(09:37):
the wall or you know this a strobe light went
off or something like that, and these were the direct
progenitors of uh, the haunted house. Yeah, and between that
and the traveling freak shows, um, it really, like you said,
everything was in place. And couple that with the fact
that a lot of these houses from the eight hundreds
(09:59):
are starting to crumble and there was, you know, narry
a neighborhood that didn't have some creepy old vacant house
and to keep their kids out, you know, people would say,
parents would say, you know that place, you don't want
to go in there. It's all on it because you
may not come out, which is that was an interesting
point that I definitely wasn't aware of. Yeah, but if
you think of the modern conception of when you think
(10:20):
of a haunted house, what comes to mind typically is uh,
dilapidated old Victorian mansion with a story around it. You know,
It's never just like, oh, yeah, that was where Mr Johnson,
that he was a farmer and kind of a good guy,
died quietly asleep, no reports of his ghost at all.
That Well, what's probably funny is that was the real story.
(10:40):
But what you heard was that he killed his family
and had their name written on each knife blade. Um,
that's what I heard. The first official recorded haunted attraction.
According to this person who wrote this article in Fangoria,
Beha McKendry. He says that Orton and Spooner, the Orton
(11:01):
and Spooner ghost House in the UK uh and the
Edwardian Fair in nineteen fifteen was the first, uh like
a genuine haunted attraction. Yep, that was the first ghost house.
And in France they had something called the Grand uh
guen All and um that was sort of similar, i think,
and around the same time. So you've got that haunted house,
(11:24):
You've got the dark houses that are coming up in
places like Coney Island and stuff like that, and then
finally you have the first big time permanent haunted house
as we understand today. What you've already mentioned the Haunted
Mansion that that was first built in nineteen sixty nine
at Disneyland, and apparently it was supposed to go up
at Disney oh know, it was so Disneyland, the one
(11:47):
in California and the one in Disney World that came
up in the seventies, right, uh, late seventies, early eighties.
I'm not sure. Actually, I've been to that one though,
if you want to know more about that stuff. Though,
I think, um, Stuff you missed in History Class did
like a whole episode on the Haunted Mansion Ride. Oh,
Holly from Stuff You miss in History Class is an
(12:08):
absolute Haunted Mansion fanatic, right, I think they have a
whole episode on. She knows more about it than anyone,
more than Walt Disney himself knew, I think. But here's
a little known fact besides what you just said about Holly,
she knows more about it than Walt Disney. Um. Originally,
the the Haunted Mansion Ride was a walkthrough ride like
(12:29):
today's Haunted Houses. UM. But instead they found that the
I guess the people the ushers couldn't get people on
a pace easily enough and so there'd be traffic jams
and backups and everything. So they said, we'll turn it
into a dark ride. That's what they did. Yeah, which
we'll get to this later, but that's a big part
of running your own haunted houses is the flow. Yeah. Also,
(12:53):
the Haunted House and the Haunted Mansion in Disney was
based on the Winchester Mystery House. As far as the look,
they didn't want to have UM credit Old dilapidated psycho
house in the middle of their lovely park. So they says, well,
we can make it creepy on the inside, and let's
just make it like a really lovely Victorian on the outside.
And if you haven't listened to that podcast on the
Winchester Mystery, also recommend it's pretty neat. The Son of Ours. Yeah, yeah, man,
(13:16):
that was a good one. Not the Disney podcast. Um
So then you mentioned the j c's, Chuck, and I
didn't realize this, but the idea of a semi permanent
so not not located in like an amusement park or
something like that, but um, they an annual attraction that
(13:36):
just comes up around Halloween and then comes down in November.
November one. Um, as far as haunted houses go in
the United States, was created by the j c's, which
is the United States Junior Chamber, which is like a
community organization with chapters across the country. And in the seventies,
the j c's hit upon this idea of well, why
(13:59):
don't you guys create haunted houses in your town as fundraisers,
and it just took off like a rocket, and the
j CS became synonymous in the seventies and eighties and
up to the nineties with haunted houses. Like if you
went to a haunted house in your town, it was
probably put on by the local chapter of the j c's. Yeah.
I remember specifically going to some of those as a kid,
(14:20):
as well as my church would have their own haunted houses,
not hell houses. Yeah, just very like kid oriented minor
uh spooks and goblins. Um, we'll get into hell houses later.
But even though I did go to Baptist Church, it
wasn't anything like that surprising. Yeah, I mean that was
before the concept of the hell house. Um. Yeah, it
(14:43):
was just like we would have like a Halloween carnival,
you know, Bob rapples and did that little fishing game
where you get something clipped to your fishing pole behind
the curtain. It's so funny. Do you remember when you
were a kid just being like, God, this Halloween carnival
is really well done. Ye. Man, if you go to
one as an adult, you're like this is really junkie,
(15:06):
Like are these kids really falling for all this stuff?
And they are. It's wonderful. Yeah. My elementary school had
a pretty rock and Halloween carnival every year too. The
Catholic school I went to had a good one. It
was one of the highlights of my year. But um, yeah,
you're right. And now the concept of bobbing for apples,
there's no way I would put my face in that
disgusting water, no, you know, yeah. Um. Anyway, out of
(15:30):
the j CS in there were a couple of guys
from a chapter in Bloomington, Illinois named Jim Goulden Tom Hillagas,
and they says, you know what, let's just create our
own Haunted House book basically like a yeah, I don't
know if it was a book. Yeah, I guess it
was a book, and let's teach people how to open
these up and sell it. And they distributed about twenty
(15:54):
copies and it was they formed the Haunted House Company,
and it was the first real UH group of outfit
to kind of just sell the plan and the stuff
that you needed, the props, right, like details like how
to do special effects. Um. And because of the success
of the j C s UH in the seventies and eighties,
(16:16):
private companies finally were like, we can make some cast
off of this. Starting in the nineties, and so the
haunted houses that we think of today, the sure profit
ones like Another World in Atlanta or thirteen Story of
New Orleans is another big one. Um that that they
came out of the nineties. Do you go to those?
No no interest? Yeah? Do you now? Emily and I
(16:41):
we still may go. She she has a hanker in
this year to go to another world just because we
haven't been to. I think we went to one in
l A that was pretty decent. Um. I'll go, I
guess if she wants to. But it's not my favorite thing.
I mean, I don't I like. I like scary movies
and stuff. I'm not. I don't avoid that up. I
am depressed. Chuck on Twitter the other day, I said,
(17:04):
the best scary movie or the best horror movie I
haven't seen go and I have heard of Vampire Brooklyn,
Eddie Murphy, every single every single suggestion, and there are
a bunch of suggestions that everybody shot back. So I realized,
I'm really running low on good horror movies. But there
they aren't around much anymore. Like the ones that are
(17:26):
to me, the ones that are genuinely scary are the
ones that get into your head. Um, and I'll take
a fair amount of jump scares because that's a part
of it, if it's got the tension ratcheted up. But um,
the ones these days, man, just that the disgusting torture
porn thing. I'm just not into that. I'm not either.
It's just such an easy, cheap Yeah, they don't scare me,
(17:49):
just repulse me exactly, which is a totally different sensation.
You know. That's fine if you like to be repulsed
in whatever like that's it's great for that, But that's
not true fear. It's not um being scared necessarily. It's different. Yeah,
I do have a recommendation for you though. It's called
either The Lady in Black or Woman in Black, and
(18:11):
it's starts a growing up Harry Potter, So it's fairly new.
I think it's that came out in the last couple
of years. Daniel Recliff, and he does a great job.
It's almost exclusively just him in the movie Lady and Black.
He does double duty. And there are some like um
like Conjuring esque style like c g I ghost graphics,
(18:35):
but it's not overdone and it's not overblown, and it
is a genuinely frightening ghost story. Conjuring was okay, it
was Okay, that's way I would say this one might
be better. And and that guy is it I don't
know if it's Tie or t West tis his name.
He's a director that did Um The Innkeepers and oh, yeah,
that was a good one too. Yeah, and then I
(18:56):
can't remember the did he do House with the Devil?
Those are pretty good because he is a little more
old school. He's not just trying to outgore you or
shock you. It's um. He tries to build genuine suspense
and dread. The same guy to both of those movies.
Uh not The Conjuring, No, No, The Innkeepers and The
House of the Devil. I think so, because both of
those were good movies. They seem totally different. Though, Yeah,
(19:19):
I may be wrong in that Innkeepers. That was a
slow burn that managed to pay off, but it took
a long time to build. That was a little slow,
Like you didn't even try to start the scares until
like thirty minutes in. Yeah, you know the lady that's
in that is uh Kelly McGillis, did you realize that? Yeah?
I didn't know till the end of the movie. It
(19:40):
said Kelly McGillis was like, oh, she's got the same
name as that lady from Top Gun. Yeah, but then
it's really her. She looks so different now, So that's
our Josh and Chuck's for a movie corner. We'll get
back to the actual podcast right after this message. You know,
we should we should have done a Maybe next year
(20:01):
we'll just do one of those, like a total horror movie. Uh,
talk fest sounds good. Those are fun. But back to
the more boring subject of haunted house attraction. Um, the
industry is huge, Like you said, there's a lot of
money to be made, and uh no too. Haunted houses
are going to be alike. Sometimes these folks that open
(20:23):
them by an old home or something and own it
and do this every year. Sometimes they rent out of space.
The ones I've been to haven't been in the actual space.
Wasn't some like cool old house or like a penitentiary
or yeah, apparently Eastern State Penitentiary is converted ye here,
and that is a scary, scary place, just normally. Yeah,
(20:45):
the only ones I've been to are the ones that
is it's like it's in a big open like a
shopping center where there used to be a like a
sales jewelry closed and right the Ghost of Capitalism. Um.
And then the you have themes, some of them. I
think the better haunted houses have themes because when you
talk about scares, you can be all over the map.
(21:07):
Um from doing something like with a movie theme, where
you have classic horror movies or serial killers or gray scientists,
or like vampires and monsters and ghouls and goblins. Yes,
those are two very different kind of themes. Apparently, Um,
Rob Zombies got his own jam going and she called
his house yeah pretty much. Um, it's called Rob Zombies
(21:31):
Great American Nightmare. I think it's supposed to be a
play on the American Dream. But one of the rooms
is the John Wayne Gayzy Room, and it's like a
guy dressed up like John Wayne Gacy's Bubbles the clown.
I think that was the name of his clown, wasn't it.
Uh that sounds right. Um, just kind of hanging out
in like a recline or whatever. And this is Chicago,
(21:52):
and that's where John Wayne Gacy killed his victims, and
a lot of the victims families are still around, so
everybody's up in arms, and Rob Zombies like could not
less thank you for the free press, right exactly. Well,
clowns are posted something on our Facebook page a day
because that new clown and um American Horror story. Have
you seen this clown yet? Twisty the Clown, The guy
(22:14):
that made that show is like, just wait, Like, I
know clowns can be scary, but I have got the
scariest clown ever. And it's pretty scary, dude. Yeah, Like
I'm not bothered by it by things like that much,
but I saw this clown and I'm not into that show,
but I did watch the scenes that that clown was
in just to see what it was. Like, Yeah, it's
pretty frightening. I'll have to check them out. Yeah. And
(22:35):
and there's a broad daylight killing, which are always super
scary to me. Oh yeah, like they don't care about
there's no hiding it or any Yeah. That like a
beautiful blue sky out in a beautiful field, and those
kind of creep me out more. Yeah, because the whole
idea of like, oh, it's a good day to die,
to me, that doesn't mean it's beautiful out. It means
(22:56):
like it's like the world's already ending now it's a
good day to die. You know, the earth is opening
up and magma is pouring out that is possibly a
good day to die. Then the serial killer can come along.
Uh So if you're opening one of these hunted houses,
you can count on spending. This is a good idea.
You can make some good dough if you've got the
(23:16):
funds to get it going. Um, fifteen dollars per square
foot for decorating and special effects is what. Just that
alone is what you're gonna and that's not counting the
renting or buying of the structure itself. Right, so you
have five thousand foot scare footage. Okay, that's what I
was going for. That's good. You can be spending up
to grand just in decorations and scares and tricks. Yeah,
(23:42):
and you may be able to reuse a lot of
that from year to year. But you probably shouldn't put
out the same thing every year because if you're in
the same space doing the same thing, you're not going
to get repeat customers. No, So you want to turn
over like that each year. It's a new stuff. And
like you said, themes often change, So just changing the
(24:02):
theme alone is going to require that you change this this. Um, well,
your layout I guess to an extent. Yeah, Like, if
you're doing scary clowns. You're probably gonna have to get
rid of your O R setting or whatever unless you
do a clown doing surgery, which is kind of scary,
(24:23):
but it just seems a little off. Yeah, clown doing surgery,
that's just um, that'd be pretty scary. The clown hospital. Yeah, yeah,
well don't they have that children's hospital has a clown character.
That's what I'm thinking about, Quardrey. Yeah. Um. And by
the way, this is written by Kristen Konger from Stuff
Mom Never Told You, and she actually interviewed a few
(24:45):
owners of haunted houses to get some good inside poop
and um, that's where we're like getting these numbers and
they say to open one up. I was just making mine,
not oh you are Um, they said to open one up.
You're not only obviously it's it's a fun job, but
you've got to have a lot of business acumen too.
It's not just like, oh, this will be a hoot,
Like you've got to be super focused in and have
(25:06):
a good business brain or you're not gonna make any money.
Plus also, um, safety is a big, big deal, especially
after a fateful event in at six Flags Great Adventure
in New Jersey, there was They had a seventeen trailer
interconnected modular haunted house dark ride basically but a walking
(25:30):
dark ride. So it was a haunted house. Um and
it was basically a fire trap and it went up
and eight teenagers got trapped inside and died in the fire.
There were no fire sprinklers, there were no obvious, um
emergency exit signs or anything like that, and um, as
(25:51):
that's what happened back then. Yeah, but you'd think like
by the time the eighties rolled around, people would have
figured out, oh, if somebody likes the man each in
here or doesn't put their cigarette out, because again, it's
the eighties, so people smoked everywhere. The whole thing's gonna
go up because it's all plywood and foam, and maybe
we should put fire sprinklers in. But apparently it took
(26:12):
this tragedy to really change the industry, but it did. Yeah,
and safety is, like you said, a huge, huge part
of it. Because you're in the dark. You've got things
flying out and props swooping down and people jumping out
and uh, I mean, anything can happen to go wrong
and someone can get injured. So yeah, and actually, did
(26:33):
you hear about the girl in two eleven. There's an
employee at one of the ones outside of St. Louis
called Creepy World, and um, she worked there and somehow
got caught in a noose and accidentally hung herself. That
sounds like a story that you hear, you would think,
so it is so well documented that it actually did happen.
I'm quite sure. But she survived. Um, she suffered some
(26:57):
brain damage to it to an extent from what I understand,
And um, I don't know if it was extensive or not.
I'm on a roller coaster of emotion, right, but she,
I mean, she did survive. But she she accidentally got
caught in the nuise and hung herself. And it's possible
some patrons passer by thinking that she was like that's
what was supposed to be going on. Yeah, I've I've
heard some story that is not that of someone who
(27:19):
hung themselves on Halloween and everyone thought it was a
just a decoration in the front yard. My friend, you
need to go watch the most recent Don't Be Dumb.
It comes out this week. Is it about that? Yes?
Is that an old well, don't spoil it. Okay, people
should go watch it. Go watch. Don't be dumb about
that man, ask and tell him Josh that you Um, so,
(27:41):
after you've got your safety system worked out, You've got
your fire safety, got your sprinkler system, you've got flame
retardant material, you've got camera set up everywhere, everyone assigned
a lengthy waiver. Even if they do get hurt, um,
they could probably still try and see you, but you're
trying to avoid that at all costs. What you're gonna
have is some sort of amaze like structure where you're
(28:05):
walking around sort of lost but really just getting shuffled
along a path. And there's, like you said earlier, there's
this thing called through put. So there's a lot of
thought put into it because apparently the worst thing you
can do in a haunted house, and this makes sense,
is to let the group behind catch up to the
(28:26):
group ahead. Yeah, that ruins the whole thing, ruins everything
because you're in a group. It depends, but I don't
know six or right people. But and you don't want
the scare that already happened to be apparent to the
group that hasn't gotten there yet. Like you see the
chainsaw guy crawling back into his little tree, right exactly.
So UM this throughput is basically a calculation of how
(28:47):
many people you can push through at what intervals to say,
meet your nightly ticket quota. So the numbers that Conger
gives UM is to to get five people through in
a night you and put a group of six. You
can set them out every thirty seconds and they shouldn't
bump into one another. And then one of the ways
(29:07):
that that UM employees make sure that these groups don't
bump into one another is the way that they scare people. Yeah,
it's called scaring forward, which makes sense. It does. It's
kind of interesting, boring term UM. But what they're doing
is usually jumping behind you as you walk through the
(29:28):
group to make you go in a forward They don't
want to jump out in front of you and have
you move in the in the direction you just came
from backward. Yeah, so they want to scare you forward.
And that is a little tip. If you are not
into being the the lead person being scared, then you
should be in the lead because it's probably gonna come
from behind you. It's pretty counterintuitive, but I think I'm
(29:51):
going to be in the back and I'll be just fine. Yeah,
you're the one that's gonna get grabbed because if they
jump out at the front of the group again, it's
gonna push the group backward, and the group ahead is
going to run into the group behind, and that's very bad. Yeah,
and I say get grabbed, you probably won't get touched. Now,
there apparently are some haunted house attractions that do light touching.
(30:12):
But you're going to be fully informed. That's so crazy.
He really does light touching. You're gonna be fully informed,
Like it's not gonna you're not gonna not know that
it's coming. Like in line, they're going to be like
signed this an initial here, an initial here, an initial here,
and we're gonna give you a heart attach test first,
just to make sure please step on this treadmill that
(30:34):
kind of thing. See, that's how I would really scare
people to say, you know, none of the actors are
allowed to touch anyone, so if you're getting touched, I
mean something has gone horribly wrong. Right, And then have
people well, well we'll get to in a minute, um,
the new extreme ones where there's not only touching, like
it's beyond anything that you could imagine. But we'll get
(30:57):
to that soon. Uh. And since we mentioned actors hiding. Uh.
Those are called scare pockets. Yeah, where they hide jump
out from. Yeah. So like they're hiding behind that tree,
and they may distract you with a bat swooping down
in the other direction. There's a lot of distraction going
on because what they don't want is you to be
focused on the clearly placed fox tree trunk that has
(31:20):
the smell of a chainsaw. Yeah, but there won't be
any blade on that chainsaw, by the way. No. And
a good actor also will scramble back into place very quickly. Yeah. Um.
Because the longer they hang out and they're like yeah, right,
the more you're gonna be like you're just some teenager, yeah,
who doesn't scare me. Yeah. And if you're looking to
save a little money, you might want to double up
(31:42):
and have that scare pocket have a couple of different
ways that it can go. Like I can jump out
on these people on the right who are in this
one part of the hunted house. Now I can scramble
back and then hit these people on the left, not
hit them, jump out and scare them. Um. And that
way you're saying a little dough with your actors. Yeah,
double or tippling your people and then apparently chuck. Lastly, Um,
(32:04):
a lot of the attractions are run on compressed air
that is set off either through motion sensors, which I
think everybody expects, but also through touch pads, which makes
sense because you can control that right well with a
with a motion sensor, every group is going to set
off that effect at right, And what it does is
(32:25):
it opens the valve and all of a sudden, the
skeleton sits up in the coffin or comes out from
the side or something exactly right. Um, that was a
really good impression with a touch pad. Though, if you say,
place the square off to the left or something, not
every group is going to walk over the touch pad,
(32:45):
so not every group is going to get the same
set of scare. So it kind of randomizes the thing,
which in turn makes the whole experience even more frightening,
because if you hear the group ahead at the curve
scream and scream exactly when you get to that, you're
gonna be prepared and if nothing happens, well, then, my friend,
you're just even more keyed up for the next one.
(33:06):
That's right, yeah, and you're keyed up to begin with
walking in there because a good haunted house will put
a little bit of money into getting you all ramped
up in the parking lot in the line that we
might have creeps dressed up roaming around. Uh, they may
have sound effects and spooky music and like an airhorn blast,
which is really uncool, and that's just got you on edge.
(33:27):
By the time you walk in that place, you're ready
to be scared. Um alright, chuck, Yeah, we've teased it enough.
Let's talk about extreme haunted houses, which apparently are so
extreme that people who are haunted house enthusiasts, like people
who are like in the industry, don't even like these
things to be called extreme haunted houses because they're so extreme. Yeah,
(33:51):
that's what I gather. And these are to say these
are interactive, is uh not really putting a fine point
on it. They are. You're basically paying money to be
treated like an assault victim for up to seven hours,
like you might be put in a headlock. You might
(34:11):
where's the one there's one in San Diego? Yeah. Uh.
McCamy manner is renowned as like the worst of the worst.
The video that I saw it was like you are
like covered in blood, dude. It was unbelievable put into
like a coffin, and somebody is like in their writing
on top of you in the dark, and you're trying
to get out and they're pulling you back in and
(34:32):
and just like it's insane, how intense this thing looks. Yeah,
they had a cage that locks your head in that
they're dropping like fake snakes in, which is not as
bad as life snakes, but it's still pretty bad. And
apparently the the the catchphrase of everybody who goes through
these things is let me out of here. Is that
(34:54):
they shout or cry it. Well, yeah, but apparently supposedly
McCamy manner, it's open year round and they only take
four people a day through this thing, but like you said,
it's up to seven hours long in some cases, right, yeah,
so they'll take in I think, just one at a time.
You have to come through by yourself, and they only
(35:14):
do four people to day. It's only open on the weekends,
and I don't know if this is true. Supposedly, the
one rule like you have to apply fill on an
application to go through this thing and be super fit
and super psychologically fit and um, because you're getting a
physically like abused in some cases like nothing you can't
walk away from. But you know they're they're mangling you
(35:37):
without hurting you. Well, yeah, and they held I saw
they held one guy's face in front of a toilet
and it shot up some noxious stuff out of it,
like stuff like that. So on one hand, it is
like physically abusive. On the other it's like almost laughable
that they like, these people really put their minds to
it and they came up with shooting stuff out of
(35:58):
a toilet in your face. Yeah. Um, But supposedly you
can't leave this one at all, like there is no
safe word. I just don't believe that. I don't believe
it either. But it's free. The one in San Diego
is really Yeah, it's free. And the and that's the
one hook is is that you're not allowed to leave
what you You sign a document it says I'm going
(36:18):
to go through this thing from beginning to end. That's
what I say. I would trust me, I would get
out of that place like I would. Yeah, I would
bust through a wall or something. That's what it took
Chuck Murray. But that is McCamy manner, and that is
was constructed by Russ McCamey, who's a terror fanatic. Uh.
They also have one in New York and l A
(36:40):
called Blackout, one called Gates of Hell in Las Vegas.
And the common denominator of all these is you're getting
physically like you don't wear clothes you ever want to
wear again, because you're gonna fake blood and vomit thrown
in your face hopefully fake and be physically assaulted. I
mean they have scenes where, you like, where there's a
(37:00):
rapist after you. It's really dark. So they with haunted
house enthusiasts who criticize these kind of things, it's usually
because they say there's no story to it. There's very
rarely build up. It's all just payoff off, payoff, like
all of it. It's just there's no there's no well,
there's no ratcheting up of tensions. It's like those movies
(37:22):
that we're talking about. It's the haunted attraction version of Uh.
I don't even know what there are. I don't watch
any of them. Like Hostile, Okay, I did see that one. Actually,
what do you think anytime if you're going to pull
out that rusty tray of medical instruments, you've lost me. Yeah,
that is such a trope by now you know you
(37:43):
know who did do it well? Was the first couple
of hell raisers They used medical instruments to in the
day disheartening effect. Yeah, the ones that scare me the most. Again,
to delve back into movies like did you ever see
Wolf Creek and it's setting the Australian Outback, is like, yeah,
it's the kids whose car breaks down and all of
(38:05):
a sudden, the rest of the movie is them getting
traced chased by this homicidal maniac. Okay, that to me
is what's called the psychological thriller. Yeah, that's not I mean, yes,
I understand it is horror Friday the thirteenth, that's like
Hallmark Court, but it's the slasher movie different. Yeah, the
slasher movie is just it's just different. I mean, there's
not enough true, genuine horror movies in my opinion, which
(38:29):
amount to basically supernatural horror. I guess that's how you
put it. That's what I meant to You should check
out Wolf Creek. It's the the will. I have no
problem with it. It's just as far as horror goes,
I'm not scared by that. I want to be scared
you might be scared. Okay, I'll check it out. The
murderous guy is is a really like kind of a
great character, and I think he falls into the pantheon
(38:50):
of classic like Michael Myers characters like yeah, one of
the good Slashers, um, which brings us to the hell houses, yeah,
which um, like we said, was sort of started back
in the dark ages of Christianity. Uh, they they do
this today. The most famous wasn't is in uh Cedar Hill, Texas.
(39:12):
And there's a documentary called hell House on these things,
I think from like two thousand to camp and Uh.
The idea of these is uh run by churches usually
and they are too just like in the old days,
scare you into walking the straight and narrow, And actually
they were. They were originated by Jerry Folwell back in
(39:35):
the seventies. Yeah, those are the first ones, I think. Yeah,
and then in the nineties that church in Texas you
mentioned took over Abundant Life Christian Center, um, and they
took over and they started actually packaging it. They started
selling hell houses for like bucks and it was kind
of like do you remember those j C's in the
(39:56):
seventies that came up with the Haunted House package. These
are the same things but for hell houses. And then
there's modules that you can buy that cost additional amounts
of money so you can add rooms to it. And
so like a room you might buy as the abortion room.
And in the abortion room, Um, you're taught how to
use raw meat that's like a stand in for a
(40:18):
fetus that you throw into a glass bowl. You've got
to make sure it's a glass bowl so everybody can
see through into it. Did the quote literally from the
manual that they distribute on how to run these says, quote,
purchase a meat product that closely resembles pieces of a
baby to be placed in a glass bowl, so that
their suggestion that's a room from hell house. Yeah, and
this is to keep you from having premarital sex exactly. Obviously,
(40:40):
subtlety is not a hallmark of the hell house. Um.
So for example, like if you there's there's one from
New Destiny Christian Center. Um, it's called the Rave scene
and basically it's about um club drugs and death. Teenage death.
Like pretty much everybody dies or takes their own life,
(41:03):
um as a result of of sin, yes, of their sin. Yeah,
like the lesbian suicide room where uh, you know, a
young lady succumbs to lesbianism and uh is so mistreated
and um, she she goes to she's she's not a lesbian,
she's just saving herself and is mistaken for a lesbian
(41:27):
and then uh it then kills herself because her best
friend rejects her and calls her a lesbian when she
went to go hugger. That was that was from the
Vice article you sign at least, yeah, that's a great article. Um,
but it's all repercussions of sins. So there's the lesbian
suicide room. There is the AIDS room, the abortion room,
(41:47):
the domestic violence room, the d u I room, and
they're all just enacting these horrific scenes. And until you
get finally to Hell, is it the end of the
very end? Um In Hell is where they're you know,
displaying what hell looks like with ghuls and demons and uh,
and then finally you get to go to heaven. Well,
(42:07):
this is what makes the hell house the hell house.
Like you through these different types of sin into Hell
and then when you come out, you emerge through Hell
and then the real life preachers there saying, hey, how
about you repent and for those of you who aren't saved,
why don't you come on over to our church and
(42:28):
we'll save you. Yeah, they call it. In the Vice article,
they call it the h It's a really cool pastor
who jumps out and is the good cop to hell
house is bad cop, and he's like, you can avoid
all this scary stuff if you, uh, you know, take
the Lord Jesus as your savior. And sometimes they'll do
that right in the room and have you signed something? Oh,
I can imagine, and uh, that's the hell house. And
(42:51):
then that Vice article, it's crazy. Um. The author mentions
that a little boy goes off in vomits during the
hell house, So apparently the very effective well, if the
object is to make you sick and vomit, yea, so
vomit from fear for your soul. And they're still around.
It seems like something that um might have gone by
(43:11):
the wayside. But yeah, you can still go to hell
houses in one of places. I have one more thing
for your chuck. What you got. Go to BuzzFeed dot com.
You may have heard of that website, uh, and search
for forty four best picks of scared brows at Haunted. Yeah,
I can't remember where the Haunted House is, but it's
all the same background, but very much like roller coasters.
(43:33):
They take a photo of this one spot and it's
like the scariest spot and um, the people are they're wonderful,
hilarious photo and like it's been around. I think they
first started publishing them in two thousand eleven, so they've
been around for years and they're still just as funny
as ever. It's great that the scared face is just
(43:54):
so pure to me because it's just pure reaction, like
the toughest dude in the world, like trying to climb
over his girlfriend or push her toward whatever he's afraid of.
It's whatever is happening in that two seconds. It's pretty great.
So that's Haunted House Attractions everybody I know. Uh, you
(44:15):
want to know more about them, type those words in
the switch part how stuff works dot com. And since
I said that, it's time for the listener mail, I'm
gonna call this Karate Kid an email Awesome, which was
the scariest movie I've ever seen. Uh, if you listen
to our Karate episode, we wax philosophical about Karate Kid
movie and we got a lot of emails of UM
(44:35):
people feeling great ways of nostalgia UH and talking about it. UM.
So here we go. I imagine as will get dozens
of versions of this similar email. Just listen to Karate
and Uh. I have not finished it yet, but I'm
writing about the first seven to eight minutes. Specifically, Your
ode to the Karate Kid was beautiful. I got goose
(44:56):
bumps along with Chuck. I may have also had a
tear in my eye when Need described that magical moment
in the film where it all comes together and we realize,
along with Daniel Son, that Mr Miyagi is truly a genius. UM.
By the way, Ralph Maccio named his son Daniel after himself, Yeah,
I guess so, after the best version of himself. I
(45:17):
recently sent The Karate Kid to my six year old
nephew to ensure that despite what his friends and media
try to tell him, he will know that Ralph Macchio
is the original and only Karate Kid. When I called
him and asked what his favorite part was, he actually
started singing, You're the best around, nothing's ever gone, and
get you down. It was the proudest moment of my
aunthood so far. Now, Chuck I implore you to watch
(45:38):
The Karate Kid too, after all the other films that
attempt to be a part of the franchise or a
Travesty two is incredibly good. It is very good. The
Peter Sta song Josh mentioned, Glory of Love was my
first ever favorite song when I was six because of
the film is a classic, and I think you were
missing out. I'll watch it. I'll check it out anyways.
Thanks for sending me to work this morning with an
(45:59):
extra bout in my step and a song in my
heart that is from Nicole Beal at Jed's barber shop.
It's like City Utah. Go get her to cut your head.
Nice hair, not your head. It's doing a terrible job.
She's cutting your head. Thanks a lot, Nicole. Um. Did
you know her friend Van Nostrin. Uh, does his band
The Bangalore's do a cover of your The Best Around?
(46:22):
I knew he loved that song. I don't know if
I knew they actually covered It's good. You can go
to SoundCloud search Bangalore's and You're the Best Around. It's
on there. I'm gonna do that right after this. Uh.
If you want to let us know that we nailed something,
we want to hear about it. You can tweet to
us at s y s K Podcast. You can join
(46:42):
us on Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know.
You can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at
how stuff works dot com, and, as always, joined us
at our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know
Doc Come. For more on this and thousands of other topics,
visit how stuff works dot com. MMM
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