S1: Welcome back. I'm Jade Hindman and you are listening to Kpbs Midday Edition. You know , for many , Halloween is just an evening of trick or treating. But in one LA County neighborhood , there's a two block stretch known as Horror Row. It draws people looking to keep things spine tingling year round from KCR. W Megan Jamison reports.
S2: Even before the Mystic Museum opens at 11 a.m. on a Saturday , there's a crowd of at least a dozen people waiting. Elizabeth Williams is one of them. She has Burgundy red hair and the Bride of Frankenstein tattooed on her forearm.
S3: I mean , I grew up reading Stephen King and Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the dark was on Nickelodeon. And so we kind of grew up , I think , in an era where it was fun to be scared.
S2: At Horror Row , you can buy costumes , decorations , and horror themed cookbooks. Some of these places have been around for decades.
S4: Believe it or not , for a lot of people it is a lifestyle. It is. What they do is what they love and it's what they enjoy.
S2: That's Jaleel Gardner , the store manager at the Mystic Museum. He says these fans are no different than sports or music fanatics. His favorite horror movie is the campy 1983 slasher Sleepaway Camp. Well. Customers come to the Mystic Museum for books on witchcraft , 80s slasher film memorabilia and Victorian oddities. Think taxidermy and real human skeletons. There's also a display of dozens of vintage Ouija boards and a fortune telling machine.
S5: Zoltar speaks. In.
S2: In. Horror can be more than just frivolous fright. Psychologists know that some people feel happier after a scare. Others find horror helped them cope with real life anxieties. For example , researchers at a lab in Denmark who study the fun of fear found that horror fans were better able to cope with the stress of the Covid 19 pandemic. Plus , here's another reason horror deserves our attention.
S6: Horror is a is a great way to express what's going on in society.
S2: Del Housen isn't a sociologist , but he holds a lot of cred in the horror industry. He and his wife , Sue Hewison , opened Burbank's first horror shop , a bookstore called Dark Delicacies , and they can count big names like Academy Award winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro amongst their fans.
S6: Much overlap. Here is all your receipts.
S2: Dawson is making a sale , as he has for almost 30 years. He has long white hair and is wearing a black t shirt with a goat skull and pentagram design. He points to monster movies from the late 50s to show what he means about horror and social anxiety. Anyway , that's the first time he got into the genre. Here he was at the movies as a kid , without his parents watching the 1958 supernatural horror film The Case of the Faceless Man.
S6: Hiding behind your hands but peeking through the. It was fun.
S2: Those monster films were using. The fear of the other American culture at the time was all about conformity , and if you didn't fit the norm , the message was clear , says Howson.
S6: You don't really fit in with us , so there's something wrong with you , and you don't know that you're being indoctrinated into that because it's just everyday life.
S2: Fast forward to his adulthood , and he also sees a connection between the HIV and Aids epidemic and the rise of vampire stories. And after nine over 11 and the news images of survivors of the collapse of the World Trade Center , zombie stories took off.
S6: And now we just had the plague. And you're seeing a lot of plague stories.
S2: When he started the store , he wasn't sure if enough people would be into it. He still remembers the first author signing where they drew a crowd and he thought to himself.
S6: Oh my gosh , there really are other idiots that like this stuff as much as I do. We've been around long enough that I think they kind of have a feel that this is their clubhouse.
S2: A clubhouse for the fun of fear.
S1: That was Kcrw , WS Megan Jimerson reporting from Burbank. And back here in San Diego , a group of local friends and volunteers have been putting on a backyard Halloween hunt for decades. In years past , the outside of a ranch style home has been transformed into Dracula's castle , the execution room of a prison , the site of an alien autopsy and subsequent abduction , a monastery devoted to Catholics , even the cantina from Star Wars. The mastermind behind this endeavor is Kpbs arts reporter Beth Accomando. Here she is , along with haunt script writer Kevin Walsh , talking about what it takes to put on a successful Halloween hunt.
S7: This started a long time ago , when my ex-husband used to love to build tunnels out of two by fours and plastic tarp and duct tape , and that was the foundation of all our early haunts. And this was all fueled by the idea that we loved to scare kids and to have a kid run from your house screaming and preferably dropping their candy bag on the way is the true sign of a successful home haunt. One of my favorite stories is we had these two young teenage girls who came and said , is there any way that we could work at your haunt ? We live down the street and we were doing a demented Santa that year , so that meant we had two buckets , one for naughty , which had body parts , and one for nice , which had the chocolate bars if you were good. So we said , sure , if you want to help , you could be elves. And so they were the screeching elves who just terrified kids who were coming up. And I compliment them at one point and I said , wow , you're doing a really good job. And they said , oh , Miss Beth , we came here when we were like three years old and you scared the crap out of us. And we want we've just been waiting to come back and do it to someone else. So I know that I may have scarred some children , but I think , you know , I mean , the haunt is kind of like Scooby Doo when you were a kid. Like you knew it was safe. You knew that in the end somebody was going to get unmasked and , you know , but on the way there , you would be a little bit scared because you weren't sure what was happening. And I think everybody kind of knows that when you go to a haunt , you may get scared , but it's within certain parameters.
S8: I write the haunt. I write the script. I direct the artistic elements of it , I guess. Regarding the structure of the haunt. It's an interesting exercise because we know we have a particular space that we're working with , with particular dimensions , and it's always structured in a way that people have to enter and exit from the same spot. So within those parameters , we try to build a narrative.
S9: All right. Our negative contacts all clear above the spectrum.
S10: Very well doctor what are we looking at.
S11: Oh well , we've got four organs of indeterminate purpose , sir. This is like no biology I've ever seen. And then from.
S8:
S9:
S8:
S9: They're already here.
S7: The idea is , is it has to be a punch line and a real hit so that you have no option but to run out is the idea. So like , we had Cthulhu coming out of my pool with tentacles built out of , you know , pool noodles. And , you know , I had a friend who's a sound designer , who's worked on Spider-Man movies , who created the sound of the Earth cracking open. And then one of my son's friends was a DJ , and so he bought these massive speakers so you could feel like the earth rumble. It would crack open. We had tentacles that fell on people. And , you know , that was a moment when that suddenly comes out and then you have the haunt , people also screaming , saying , get out , get out. And then you usher them out.
S12: Well , that's going to make some kids cry.
S13: Bringing in the sound.
S7: We hope so. Right.
S14: Right. That's the good to go.
S9: Make children cry.
S7: That is , we.
S15: Do sound like a sick. Are you recording.
S7:
S15:
S9: Oh , what ? She's recording.
S15: This is the third time it's been said , so I don't think there's any secret that that is the main goal here.
S8: That we love to make children cry. We want to make them cry. Run.
S7: Run. Screaming from the house. One of our simplest gags. All we had was we had a mad scientist. And a monster on a monster was in the back of the room and the kids would come to the door. They would be a little hesitant , and the mad scientist would say , don't worry , the monster can't cross this line , and the kids would step right up , take the candy bar , and of course the monster would cross the line and run out. Simplest gag in the world and kids would scream like crazy. And part of that one was we broke a trust. We betrayed them , and they don't expect that they come to the door. They expect the adult who's there to be telling them the truth. And then when you don't , it's scary.
S15: Did you feel bad about that ? No.
S7: Like I said , I mean , I'm sure there's a few kids who's been who have been scarred , but , you know , I do get other feedback. We did a carnival at the school once , and this little kid came through and I was taking a break at the back of the haunt , and he came by because I knew him outside of that. And he was like , Miss Beth Macbeth. And he had this Power Ranger costume on the head , like a little apron in the front. And he lifted it up and he goes , Miss Beth , I peed my pants. I was so scared. And I said , oh , I'm sorry. And he says , it's okay. I went through again. And so like , yeah , he was scared. But obviously he was scared in such a way that it it entertained and made him happy. And he came through again.
S8: It is hard to describe because when you say , I'm going to help someone with a Halloween haunt , you get a whole spectrum of of thoughts to come into people's heads. They imagine a full house where people are going through a house. A lot of people do mazes , you know , with people who just jump out type of thing. And what we do here is just a little bit different. You know , we try to give them kind of a narrative , a story to bring them through. And yet it is very much just like this thing my friend does in her yard , you know , and it's not professional. Everybody's volunteering their time.
S7: So the wall reveals you.
S9: Get them off me. Oh , God. Stop it , get it ? Yeah. Yeah.
S8: Yeah. There's 300 people that line up outside , and we do it 30 times in a night. So I don't know how to describe that , really. It's sort of its own thing.
S7: You know , anybody who wants to perform or put on a show or make a movie , it's the audience reaction that you're doing it for. And so with a haunt , it's a very immediate and clear cut reaction. A haunt that we do is probably like a five minute show. And if you succeed , people run from your house screaming. If you fail , they're just kind of lingering around in your back backyard , looking at you , wondering like.
UU: What just happened ? You know who you are , you know. I know , I know.
S7: Thank you. That made it totally worthwhile.
S8: You know , we definitely try to bring the people into it. Immersive as part of the design delegation.
S9: Let's keep moving. Let's keep moving for this briefing.
S10: Let's get up there. Leave me my security buffer up there by the gurney. I don't want anybody to get any kind of funky alien virus on my watch.
S8: Part of it is because there are absolutely people for whom that in , in and of itself is a fear. And so making them uncomfortable helps all around you. You get a sense of it from year to year. You get a sense of it over the course of a night , you see different people who are performing in the haunt. You just sort of hone in like they know precisely the person to pay attention to , who's going to be the most uncomfortable , to have attention paid to them , and then that just makes it more fun for that whole group. And so we try to design as much stuff like that in the story. I mean , there are things that you discover over the course , like when we did the Color Hunt , just part of this bit I did at the beginning of the greeter bit , I slapped the gate at one point to just make a emphasize a point , and three people jumped and I'm like , okay , well , I'm going to be slapping the gate every time now and then. In subsequent haunts , the greet had kind of a slapped the gate moment in it , because they'll always be someone who jumps at that. And then more people are coming. No , you can't go any further. It's not safe. Do you understand ? It's not safe.
S10: My friend Harley passed through these doors.
S8: Hours ago , and we've had people who just. They just. Nope. They just left right at that moment , so. Which is great. I think I count that as a win , even though they don't see the rest of the haunt. We've achieved our goal.
S7: I would consider myself antisocial and probably a misanthrope. So , you know , just engage. Chit chat is probably the most terrifying thing to me. You know , going into work and having a coworker say , how was your weekend is probably the worst kind of interaction I can imagine.
S15: So you've got oh , that's eyeballs. There's finger fingers and eyeballs.
S14: There's hands. More eyeballs and fingers , various.
S15: States of decay.
S14: Yes , there are also that.
S15: There's loose finger.
S14: Oh , there's a heart. Oh.
S8: We're going to make jealous. I do this because I love horror. You know best a very good friend. We bond a lot over our shared love of movies and horror in particular. This is just a great group of people. And so , you know , there's also the frustrated performer in me from the years ago when I was , you know , would do improv comedy and stuff. And it's like , okay , so I get to do a little acting and scare people , and you just it's fun. I mean , it's such a rush and people appreciate it. They seem to have a good time.
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