By Laura McCarthy.
Twelve years on from my first job as a scare actor, I can still hear the music that played on loop at the attraction. Eight whining notes seared into my brain forever. Aged sixteen, I spent hours every night in a boiler suit that was too big for me (I’m only five foot tall now, at twenty-eight) and a morph suit mask, screaming my lungs out, spittle dampening the inside of that fabric clinging to my face, which felt like something out of the film Alien. Covered in sweat and spit, you wouldn’t believe how much that thing reeked after hours and hours of screeching in the hall of mirrors. If that grosses you out, brace yourself, because it gets much worse.
I remember pushing my head out of a false mirror frame, hidden within a row of real mirrors, and earning myself a fist to the face by one poor fella whose nerves were not only fried but burnt to a crisp. Whilst I don’t recommend punching any innocent scare actors this Halloween, he was very apologetic and, for me, it was my first badge of honour as a baby creep. It made me realise that I could be good at scaring the bejesus out of people for a living.
Since then, I have also spent a fair few years as an actor for ZED Events, the zombie apocalypse attraction which was based in an abandoned mall in Reading before it was bulldozed. It allowed me various opportunities, including being involved in a Halloween advert for Reading Football Club, a haunted live-stream for LadBible, and some work on the Dave TV show The Joy of Techs. The best thing of all, though? An experience I don’t often have as a woman of small stature: making grown men cry.
It’s not all sunshine and roses, though – in fact, scare acting has very little of either and, instead, has a great deal of blood. Lashings and lashings of blood.
And sometimes, the blood is real. In my first role, I was lucky enough to get away with that one punch to the face but not everyone is so fortunate. A friend told me about another actor they knew, she was a clown performer of about eighteen, who was not just punched but viciously assaulted by an adult man who had been drinking. She had to be taken away in an ambulance.
This is not an outlier. The news is full of incidents such as these, including recent complaints alleging that actors at Universal Studios have been attacked by customers. Across the net, you will find mention of incidents at horror events around the world in which actors have been intentionally harassed by the public; such incidents include alcohol being thrown in the face of performers, verbal aggression, and customers coming for the sole purpose to start fights with horror actors. Actor Peyton McCormick spoke to Business Insider about a 2014 assault at Horror Nights, in which a large fight broke out after a performer was attacked by six men.
Performers are there to give you the best experience they can and the job is hard enough without assaults. To give one tamer example of the trials actors face, I still have a distinct memory of being trapped in a dark room for almost an hour during an event.
I’m still not entirely sure how I got myself in such a situation but I do remember needing a place to hide so that I could leap out and scare a group of customers. I nipped through the first open door I saw and closed it behind me. It was as dark as a grave in there: pitch black. Ear against the wood, I listened for the stag party approaching outside and, when I heard their footfall, I made to open the door… but it didn’t budge.
Had I somehow missed the door? It was complete darkness, after all. I felt my way around the cupboard, pushing on every surface in the hope it would be the exit. If anything, I only made myself more lost in a maze of my own creation. Every second was an eternity. Visions zipped through my mind: being left behind overnight, with nobody realising I was there; an evening becoming a weekend, becoming several days; my rotting corpse finally discovered years later. It took a long time but I did manage to get out (I am certainly not still there now). Not your average part-time job, I guess.
What I’m trying to say is, be nice to your scare-actors this Halloween. We only want you to enjoy your experience and have a little fun ourselves along the way, so try not to punch anyone in the face if you can avoid it.
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