Extreme Haunted Houses Part 2

Astonishing Legends Network. Disclaimer. This episode includes the usual amount of adult language and graphic discussions you've come to expect around here. But in the event it becomes an unusual amount, expect another call from me. Hey everybody, welcome back to Scare It All the Time. I'm Chris Collari. And I'm Ed Vercola. And today we are tackling part two of our look at Extreme Haunted Houses. In part one, we covered the history of haunted attractions from early experiments with optical illusions through terrible tragedy to a place where haunted houses became big business with rules and insurance and millions upon millions of dollars in revenue. But of course, once something becomes popular, it's not cool anymore. What's cool is the underground. What's cool is the cutting edge of What's really cool is something that you can't necessarily take your children to, or anybody that you care about in this case, because that search for what's cool and what's cutting edge is why some people started going to incredible lengths to make haunted houses scary again. These haunted houses offered a new kind of experience. You could go in alone. You could let the actors touch you. You could spend an entire night somewhere without knowing when the show would start, and once it did, if it would ever end. In part two of our look at the extreme haunted house industry, we are going deep on the sadistic, terrifying, and questionably legal highs and lows of the scare economy. So sit back, relax, and if you wouldn't mind, just sign this waiver before we head inside because we can't be responsible for anything that might happen to you after the show begins. What are we? Scared. When are we? All the time. Join us. Join us. Join us. Now it is time for. Time for. Scared All the Time. Hey everybody, it's Chris here with a quick solo housekeeping for you this episode. Ed and I both sincerely hope you've been enjoying the treats that we've been putting out so far. As of this week, we have released two bonus short stories that I read for Scared After Dark bedtime stories. a new bonus series that we're doing for this, the most sacred of Halloween months. The stories I have read so far are Pickman's Model by H.P. Lovecraft and The Upper Birth by F. Marion Crawford with more coming soon. Those stories are free on your feed. They're available anywhere you're listening to this podcast. Just scroll down and they should be sitting there in your feed. All we ask is that if you like the stories, really if you like the show, Just tell your friends. Turn them on to us. Put them in the car. Put us all in the car. You know, secretly turn the volume down and pump the sweet sounds of Ed and I chatting in through their window at night. You know, whatever you got to do to let people know. Scare all the time. Rules. So yeah, if you like the stories, share them and let us know. Because if you like the stories, we're thinking about continuing the series past the end of October. So we'll see how that goes. As always, our thanks goes out to anyone who is listening, who is a member of the Patreon. You guys are truly the lifeblood of the Scared organization. You keep us afloat, you keep us alive, and we really couldn't thank you enough. If you like the show and you want to support it while getting a lot of cool stuff from early release to live stream links to once a month we do a live show, if you join the top tier of Patreon, you'll join our button of the month club and you'll get a new piece of merch hand-pressed by Ed once a month, usually with some sort of an inside joke from the show, and you can collect buttons for the rest of your life. Obviously, that's how Long Scare All the Time will exist. So if you want to do all that, head over to patreon.com slash scaredallthetime. If you're already doing that, We love you. You rule. Thanks for being a part of the family. I hope you are all having a lovely spooky season with plenty of tricks and treats around every corner and more to come. With that, on to the episode. All right, everybody. Welcome back to Scare It All the Time. I'm back in LA. You are back in LA. We're back in the studio. Things are feeling good. But me being back at this table is not the only thing that has changed at this table. Ed, do you want to tell- the listeners slash show the viewers, which you should be watching this on YouTube if you are subscribed to Scare It All the Time. Do you want to let the people know what is sitting on our table right now? Yeah, we have another edition on the table. It's these, it's also, by the way, another heat wave in LA. Chris cannot avoid it, but- It's. The hottest time of year to come back out here. Yeah. What makes it a little bit more bearable, though, is we now have a sponsor of the good people at Haritos. Haritos, baby. Have sent us- They're Minaragua sparkling water. And mine is crisp and cool. He already opened his. I've been slurping down water all day because it's hot as shit. I don't know how Ed is surviving at this point. Well, they didn't give us enough to do it every five seconds. But yeah, it's so far so good. They're really, really good. And I'm going to crack mine open for the audio as well here. Yeah, let's get that sound. Because they also provided these very sick Minaragua fucking bottle openers. Yeah. Hell yeah. Have you ever heard a more refreshing sound? I don't know how much I have to raise the gain to hear the bubbly fizz, but there's. A lot of bubbles in this. I don't even mean the bubbly fizz. I just mean that crack pop hiss of the lid coming off. That tells you, hey, you're sweltering. Well, guess what, bud? You're about to be feeling a lot better once you guzzle this Minaragua. Yeah, that's what we're going to do. Cheers. We didn't actually choose. There we go. Cheers. So thank you, Jarritos. Thank you, Minaragua. This is an incredible addition to the Scared All the Time family. Yeah, they also sent over some apple drink as well, which I'm excited to open. There's some behind me, actually. You guys will be seated behind us, but that's as much as we'll say about the good people at Haritos. There's plenty of good stuff to say. We could do a whole episode. The problem is we're not scared of them. We're grateful. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we'll get into Extreme. You know, they probably want their name associated with Extreme Haunted Houses, right? Yeah, they said, hey, you know what? We heard you guys are doing episodes about some of the most offensive, immersive performances on planet Earth, and we thought... What else would we want people to associate Mineral Aqua with? Yeah, but how's your thirst? Yeah, yeah. You won't be thirsty, that's for sure, as you scream and scream for hours. Last time, for those of you who listened to part one, and if you haven't, you should go back and listen because I think listening to part one really helps put a lot of part two into context. We ended that episode with the haunted castle fire and the safety changes that followed in the haunted house industry. Safety. Because multiple people died in that fire, safety became a top priority for everyone, which had the knock-on effect of making a lot of haunted houses follow similar layouts and templates in terms of the kinds of structures and scares you could expect. Because, you know, you have the distances that you have to have exits and fire sprinklers. You have to have exits and sprinklers and. How many people can. Alarms that go to places and not just... Alarms that go to places. You know, if a fire alarm... Well, I guess there's a smoke alarm which makes noise. Yes. But if a fire alarm doesn't also alert the fire department... Like basically just cut wires that go out of the side of the building. All these rules and regulations led to a standardization of haunted houses and everything started to follow kind of a similar template of the structure of the house, where the scares would come, how much space there was, how many people could be in there at one time. And so essentially in an effort to keep everyone safe, haunted attractions got seriously defanged in the wake of the haunted castle incident. By 2009, the standardization of these houses, of what was supposed to be a shocking, horrifying experience, started to bum out horror fans who really just wanted to be brought to their knees by fear. We aren't those people. I hear they exist, but, you know, so do people who want to try the hottest hot sauces in the world. Yeah, there's a lot of stuff going on. I don't know who... How dulled is your life? Not saying your life is boring or dull, but I'm saying, like, That stuff, like the, I need to be scared. I need to eat the hottest stuff. Like, what are you searching for? You're missing what you're getting at. You know what I mean? Like, what is it that you feel has been dimmed or dulled down? Well, I think a lot of people just want that hit, that rush of an endorphin or something that just, you know, takes them out of their ordinary life and gives them a horrifying experience. I mean, I. Just get laid off like the rest of us. I enjoy... a scary movie, and like we talked about in the last episode, I even find some enjoyment in some of these haunted attractions, but in small doses. I really can't do the three-hour non-stop adrenaline button getting pushed the whole time. It starts to get just exhausting and uncomfortable, and I don't like it, but a lot of people have tastes for the extreme, and so all of a sudden... a lot of haunted attractions all around the country started trying to cater to the people with these extreme tastes. Before we dive in, I will note that the following is both potentially full of spoilers if you're one of the lunatics who wants to try these extreme haunts. Oh. But most of them also change every year because ultimately. What do you mean by spoilers? Like, is it like an escape room or if you know the way out, it's. No, but we're going to be talking in detail about what happens in some of these Now, I'm saying it's potentially full of spoilers because a lot of these places do change their show every year. So it's unlikely that anything we're talking about in this episode is something that you would experience. Should you go? Because part of the reason they changed their shows is. Even though they ask people not to talk about it. Because they have repeat customers. People come back the next year. Oh, you definitely have repeat customers. And you have people who go online and write up what they experienced, which we're going to lean heavily on in this episode. Because I've never been to one of these things. So you're saying it would be better for me if I drank something a little stronger than Minarago before we started? It might help. All right, because I actually set out a little bit of tequila here. Oh, I thought that was non-alcoholic water. No, no, no. So I decided, you know what? I had a little tequila. I had a little ice cubes. I think I'm going to add the Minaraqua to it and make a little tequila soda, which I think will be helpful for this portion of the episode. You mean the next hour and a half of your life? Well, the thing about editing is I can get up and get 12 more of those. So I don't think we'll be ruining any major surprises for anyone, but fair warning. And also, this is a more relevant fair warning. There is discussion of simulated abuse and assault in this episode because that is something that some of these houses tend to go to as a way to push people's buttons. It is all simulated, but some of it is, the descriptions of some of it is pretty horrible. Simulated meaning that like some of the imagery you'd see is not actually happening. It's not happening to the I almost said contestant. Not a contestant. As far as I know, I mean, maybe. Like it's not happening to the person going through the maze, but they're just witnessing it. Yeah. Or sometimes certain things are threatened to the people. People are threatened with certain things. That could happen to them. Earlier you said, you know, the way you can up the ante on these types of things is the first thing you said was going alone. Yeah. And what's surprising to me is that was kind of enough for me. Like that was like, as soon as you said it, I was like, oh yeah, that really ups the stakes. In a meaningful way. Like, if I was alone in the Halloween Horror Nights thing, it still was probably a lot tamer than anything else around, but I still wouldn't have had to, like, share, like, ahs with people to let it out. Right. To be completely alone would make it worse, for sure. Even alone, though. Yeah. I'm not, like, they, if, like, they want us to sign a waiver, you gotta sign a waiver that... that you are acknowledging I'm bringing a taser in. Like, I'm not going through... If someone's going to be simulated or otherwise threatening and get in my face, they'd be like, you know what? There are consequences for your actions. I cannot wait to go through this episode with you, Ed. Oh, man. We've already been demonetized for me talking about bringing some mace into places. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ed, for the record, Ed will not be carrying a taser into any place because... Ed, all these people are there to give you a fun spooky time. And you're there because you want to enjoy a fun spooky time. Two of the people who thought that the haunted house scene needed a big bad upgrade were Josh Randall and Christian Thor. Longtime friends and veterans of New York City's avant-garde theater scene, they decided they wanted to create the kind of haunted house that would scare them. Now, Josh managed a theater on the west side of Manhattan called So they shut that whole place down for four weeks in the summer of 2009 to create Midsummer Nightmare, a horror experience in the middle of the summer. These guys were already very well versed in immersive theater. I found an interview where Josh talks about the first show they put on together well before they ever thought of doing anything scary. He says, quote, the first show that Chris and I did together was on a boat in the middle of the Hudson River in the winter. The audience, we picked them up from a street corner and drove them in a car, and they had an audio experience. And then they were wrapped in these blankets in the bottom of the boat while they watched this show called The Blind, which was actually written in the late 1800s by Maurice Materlanek. Wait, you say wrapped in a blanket as in to stay warm or like rolled up in a blanket so you can't move? I think the idea was that To make them feel like they were in like a freezing ship in the 1800s. I think it was to keep them warm, not to bind them so they couldn't move. So they were wrapped in these blankets in the bottom of the boat while they watched this show called The Blind, which was actually written in the late 1800s by Maurice Maederlinck. And then immediately following the show, there was a massive dinner that was served to the entire audience and the cast in the hold of the ship. So far I'm in. Yeah, well, this is the world that these guys come from, is this, like, very immersive, very creative, odd. Like Mondo Mystery Movie back in the day. Yeah, and I don't think, you know, even an experience like this is not for everyone, but they experienced haunted houses, and they had this sort of flash of inspiration of, like, well, what would it look like if we did a haunted house in the style of these immersive theater experiences that we've already been producing? Those ones they were producing were not fear-based. They were just, like, an immersive way to watch art. They were artsy shit like this. So they sold their first run in 2009 out completely. And I couldn't find a ton of details about what that 20 minute experience entailed in that first year. Josh admits that it leaned a little more what he and other people in this world called boo scary. So it leaned a little more things are jumping out at you. It's a little more traditional haunted house. It was a little more tongue in cheek. He also mentions that the idea of the actors being able to touch the participants was introduced that very first year, though it was with feathers, not hands. So people were having their arms and necks and stuff touched with feathers. Yeah, and then those people would immediately have their arms and necks touched by my hand, slapping them as hard, because sometimes it's just a knee-jerk reaction to like, oh my God, I've been touched, and your hand whips out, you know what I mean? I do find it interesting that so many of these actors haunted experiences involve the ability of the performers to touch the participants, but you have to sign these waivers and papers that say that you will not touch the performers. That's why I brought my own material for them to sign. I was just going to say, I do think it is- Double standard. It's a weird level of self-control that you have to think the whole time, I'm not going to hit this person if I get touched a weird way, because I agree with you. It does seem at a certain point, it's just reflexes. It's reflexes. There's no malice or ill intent when I come out. If somebody started feather, feather, feathering on my elbow, I almost just kind of jut out or whip away. I did at Halloween Horror Nights one year. I saw a guy clock a scare actor. And from my perspective, at least, it didn't seem... The scare actor kind of came... I saw it all out of the corner of my eye, so maybe I didn't see exactly what happened. But to me, it looked like the scare actor jumped at the guy... And then I just saw the guy spin with a book. Well, that's generational trauma. They probably would have had that same reaction to anyone come up to them on the street. Well, probably, yeah. It's like that kid in that high school. It's like a million-year-old video of the kid who comes out of the garbage can and the other kid just like, He comes out of a garbage can with like a scary mask. And the other kid hits him. And immediately gets punched and like knocked out. That's basically. Like physically knocked out. That's basically what happened at Halloween Horror Nights. But anyway, in all of these different events we're going to be talking about, touching the actors is strictly forbidden. Another big difference from traditional haunted houses is that participants in Midsummer Nightmare were made to go through alone, which was the first time that happened. I do not like that at all. And that's, you know, I think it both feels like it raises the stakes and just from a wanting to know what's coming, there's nobody in front of you to see... see them jump, hear them scream. No, that becomes a speed run for me. I just would just start running to where I presume the exit is. Yeah, you turn into me in first grade in Indian Echo Caverns. Or going like, ah! Well, not before something even happens, you understand. I'm just going to be like, all right. I'm going to, I'm also going to, it's going to, I'm going to change my speed. I'm going to do a quick burst and then I'm going to go slow because I don't know where the next thing's going to be. And then quick burst. They can't, they can't get a, they can hold on me. They can't pin me down. They don't know what you're going to do. I don't know what I'm going to do. You're a wild man in there. Yeah. I just know I'm going to be kind of alternating between fast and slow. Maybe making crazy noises and shit. Like scare them before they could scare me. In 2010, they put up Midsummer Nightmare again, but this time they took it out of the theater and put it in a hotel. They started to embrace alternate reality game ideas or ARGs, which we'll reference probably a number of other times in this episode, like giving participants burner phones that would be used to communicate with them. From there, Josh says that things ramped up pretty quickly and the experience that they called blackout exploded in popularity. So this was sort of near the beginning of a lot of social media and fans immediately started finding each other on Facebook and different groups started to form. In 2008, 2009, 2010... really fun, cool things were happening. Like that's, that's that Mondo mystery movie stuff started to really pop off. They already had really awesome art. Yeah. Prior to that, 2008, 2009, that was like a four year, kind of 2008, 2014. Yeah. I would say it was like some of the most fun I've had in like going out into the world and having a good time and weird shit, you know, cine family stuff. Yeah. And that's what really started happening here. So fans of, of the blackout experience started to discover each other on Facebook. Everyone started comparing experiences and, The New York City shows started to get harder to get into, so they expanded into L.A. and a couple other cities. And then, according to Josh, it turned into, quote, a bit of an international thing with people starting to fly in. And then the tattoos started. And then there was like wars between the different Facebook communities in New York versus LA and then you had factions within each faction so basically a lot like the scared all the time community you've got Chris people you've got Ed people you've got factions within factions you've got. Chris people you've got Ed person. You've got Chris and Ed people you've got people who like the monster episodes you've got people who never want to hear about a cryptid ever again and You know, people are out there fighting. And honestly, we encourage it. It helps us. If you guys want to have arguments about the show online. But be cool and be nice. Well, be cool and be nice. I don't think this guy doesn't suggest that anything got too heated. But a little drama, a little adversity kind of gets the blood pumping. Okay. So what was exactly this experience that got the world talking? I found some reports of people discussing what Blackout was like in 2011, and I thought I would read some here so we can decide how fun this sounds. I mean, if the lights are off, I'm already not going. So, Ed, a couple of these show descriptions are really long. I already trimmed a lot out of all of them, but there's just so much stuff that I feel like it's worth going through here, and I believe, Ed... you're going to have a lot to say about what it would be like. These stories are only getting longer then. These stories are going to be great. So this person posted, I arrive at the 39th Street location, check in, and take my place in line. I have three black dots marked on my hand to ensure the most traumatic experience possible. What does that fucking mean? I think it means that they have a three-dot system. So if you get one dot on your hand, it tells people in the event to go kind of easy and versus two and three where they're really trying to make it the most. They just said it's black dots. Black dots. If they turn the lights off, it doesn't matter. No one sees what I have in my hand. I don't look... I need to be like neon glow in the dark. I don't know who's checking the dots, but according to this report, three dots ensured the most traumatic experience possible. Got you. The anxiety hasn't hit yet. I just feel excited. I update my Facebook page one last time. In hindsight, it was probably a bad idea to tell Blackout Haunted House to quote, bring it oh boy before i know it the guy ahead of me disappears behind the black plastic covering the entrance i'm next i push past because you're alone in this yes this is this is alone one person at a time i push past the black plastic to reveal a dark hallway the walls are covered in more black plastic a flashlight is shined in my face i put on the face mask that's handed to me A series of health and safety related questions. All right, so flashlight. A flashlight is shined in this thing. But it's used by a person who works there. So they can probably pop that around and turn it on and off three times so people inside know. Sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm more about the logistics. Yeah, well, you'd be thinking that because you're trying to occupy your brain so you're not scared. So you're thinking logistics. These people want to wring every last thought of anything except fear for your life out of your brain. These people are sick, dude. They should go to jail tonight. They shine a flashlight in this guy's face and a series of health and safety related questions are shouted at me, he says. I respond appropriately and then I'm shoved through a dark passage. I take two steps and a large piece of plastic is pulled tightly over the front of my face. No, what? Disoriented and gasping for air, I stumble into a dimly lit room. Several folding chairs sit before two stacked television sets. The first shows the graphic birthing of a calf and the second, a surveillance video camera displaying footage of me walking into the room. A woman in a hospital gown sits next to the TVs eating. She approaches me and motions to sit. I sit in the chair and the woman sits next to me. She begins to touch my face and my hair. You think she eats every time or spits into a bucket like takes in a movie? I think she probably spits. I think she probably spits in a bucket. You're not doing that all night for 100 people. I would hope. Swallowing every one of those pieces of chicken. I'd probably not. Yeah. On the surveillance video, I see another woman slowly enter the room behind me. She sits and the two women touch my hair and face. The first woman takes my hand. After a few minutes, the second woman snaps handcuffs around both my wrists and I'm directed to the door. I'm roughly led to the next room where a wet bag is forcefully shoved over my head. They've added wet? They've added wet. No, man, this is. There's a lot of wet. I also am curious what happened to the plastic bag they wrapped around his face. If they reuse it, that's so unnecessary. It's like gross. I assume it must be a somewhat breathable plastic. plastic or something that otherwise seems like a huge safety problem yeah but. They don't care they just they just scream in your face are you fine with this well no they i mean they these people can their businesses they can get sued they do have legal rights and responsibilities they might have just done it so quickly. Anyway a wet bag is forcefully shoved over his head they are now as ed so eloquently said adding wet I am ordered to kneel. Something firm pats my face, and I'm ordered to tilt my head back. Water pours over the bag, forcing the bag to cling to my face. Yeah, so waterboarding. Literal waterboarding. Literal waterboarding. Unable to breathe, I desperately force air out of my mouth. The bag raises and then comes crashing down over my face again and again. This person is then ordered to crawl through a tunnel, and they write, when I finally reach the end of a tunnel, a strange, disturbed woman is waiting for me. She leads me into a dimly lit room with a chair. She tells me to sit and then walks over to stand on my left. She groans and takes my hand. She guides my hand between her legs and tells me to pull the string. I pull and she moans and out pops a bloody tampon. She grabs the hand holding the tampon and tells me to open my mouth. No thanks. I follow her instruction and she squeezes liquid from the tampon into my open mouth. There's a good chance it's just they made that. Then she orders me out of the room. Yeah, there's a good chance they made it, Ed, yes. It's a prosthetic, bro. You know, if you think the woman eating food is having a hard time spitting everything out the whole night, this lady's emptying one bloody tampon after another into a hundred mouths. Because he said that this lady, it sounded like it was the same lady. We'll end with this bit. As my eyes adjust, I see a short, completely naked, bearded man approach me. He's grinning, so I smile back at him. He greets me by name, which is super creepy. He doesn't appear to be feeling well, and this is confirmed when he grabs my hand and makes a run for the nearby bathroom. He leads me inside and then shuts himself in the stall and vomits profusely. When the stall door opens, he's smiling again, and he asks me to come inside. He explains that he needs me to get a key from inside the toilet. Wasting no time, I start to reach in when he grabs my hand and coos, Oh, you're not scared at all now, are you? Well, you know, some people get the key with their mouth, like bobbing for apples. Nope. You want to try that? I politely decline the suggestion, and he slowly guides my hand into the filthy toilet. You have to savor it, he says creepily, as he moves my hand back and forth through the water. Then the creeper asks, isn't this the best sex you've ever had? Well, I think I know what sex is. Yeah, sure, I reply sarcastically as I grab the key from the chunk-filled water. Ugh. They've added wet and chunks. Yeah. You know what? The stall, it's smart to have the stall door closed. Then it's just sound effect or he just makes a gag noise and they already have the chunks in there every time. The bearded man explodes. That wasn't sex. He shouts over and over before telling me to leave and never come back. So what's really crazy. Wait, so that's the end. That's the end of this particular experience. And then you like go out of the, I don't know. You leave the maze. Yeah, you leave the maze. So that's sort of... I guess before we move on, we should briefly discuss, Ed, does anything that you just heard sound funny to you at all? No, I don't even... I leave french fry nubs on... plates because i don't want to put in my mouth the last thing my hand touched and so it's like the idea that i would put anything in my mouth that someone handed me is insane yeah so that's probably the least good and then i would take dry plastic over wet plastic. Well the wet bag i don't know if that was plastic i assume it's cloth yeah waterboarded either way no i didn't there's not one part of that i liked no it sounds completely awful to me but It was a huge hit. It was a huge hit. I will say your description, they put some clever ideas in. I'm looking at the infrastructure of it. At the, like the whole time I'm thinking about like how they're doing the gags. Engineer Ed over here. Yeah. And it's just like, oh, they're really clever ideas. I really like that you add a scare by having like, they show you the security cameras. You can see someone coming in behind you. Yes. Like there's thought that these people put into this. Yeah. Even if it's like, why do this? And I think, I think there's, we'll get to some other things that I think are, are genuinely really smart and effective. I did read somewhere. I forget if I put this in the show or not, but, um, The tampon thing, apparently there was a bit of a kerfuffle because that became a commonly copied thing for these extreme haunted houses. It's like doing magic tricks. Kind of. Yeah, all of a sudden people were like, oh, well, that's really gross and probably cheap and simple and pretty effective, you know, so a lot of people would copy it. I forget if we might get to that a little bit later. We were discussing pieces of shit first, just so you know. We're home with that tampon thing. What's really crazy is that these experiences that I just described to you, and remember, this is 2011, so they've had decades to improve and iterate on all of this stuff. Yeah, but they'll never have that time back where it was peak social media. People weren't monstrous to each other really as much yet. Like, they were able to do a lot of this at A Better America. Well, they were able to do a lot of this, yes, at a different time. But I do think that the events now are probably even more complex and disgusting. Well, now people want to be. People are just like, kill me when I'm in there, please. I haven't worked in four years. Just like, which one of these? How many dots for that? How many dots for my family to get life insurance? Well, what's really crazy is that these experiences described here are what's part of the official Halloween season blackout experience. some particularly dedicated fans, perhaps the four daughters, get the opportunity to participate in even more intense off-season events. Those experiences are even more closely guarded, but Josh gives a sense of how brutal they are. So Josh is still involved for the four off-season one. Yeah, Josh is still running Blackout. I thought it was going to be like, the first time I'd heard of it was the people who said we were doing it and we weren't. And it was just somebody above a bodega who said they were part of our group. Josh gives a sense of how brutal these off-season experiences are in this interview where he says, quote, the off-season shows are where we really are able to dig into genuinely getting into people's heads and creating an experience that lived above and beyond that 45 minutes that they were with us. 45 minutes that they described earlier? Yeah, I told you, I cut a whole lot of it out. Yeah, but in my mind, that was like bag- wetter bag, quick tampon thing, and then we move on. I thought it was like a Halloween Horror Nights where you're in and out of the house in five minutes. No, you're in, you get put in like different dark rooms. You can't see anything. You hear people getting murdered. You get threats in your ears. You get all kinds of, those are just sort of like the ones, those are the moments that play best on a podcast. A lot of the rest of it seem like theoretically gross or scary, but yeah, no, it's a long experience. I don't know if they're still that long or if they've gotten shorter or whatever, but Josh's point here is The off-season shows are really where I think we're able to dig into genuinely getting into people's heads and creating an experience that lives above and beyond that 45 minutes that they're with us. And that is not only a very important part of where Blackout was headed in the sense that it's never over. Once you've gone through it, Once you've said that oath that you are part of Blackout and Blackout is part of you. You agree to let us stalk you for six years. Every time those lights turn off, every time you hear a noise in the dark like that, you know the three dot logo should be the first thing you think of. Oh, so the logo to the company are three dots. I guess it became at some point, the level of trauma became the logo of the company. So they're saying that you're going to carry this home with you in form of PTSD. That seems like, yes. All right. I thought, I genuinely, when I made that joke, I genuinely thought that you were, part of the terms and conditions was like, for a three-year window, we can just follow you home and stand outside your windows. I mean, here's the thing, and we'll get into this with McKamey Manor in just a minute, but I do think that the, What the paperwork that you sign is actually used to fuck with your head. Sometimes I would not be surprised if they put that in one of the waivers, because as somebody points out, just because you put something in a waiver doesn't mean you're going to do it. But you so you can put all kinds of weird fucked up stuff in a waiver and then someone signs it thinking, Jesus Christ, I'm really signing up for this. But they might not actually ever. They asked me what my favorite limb was. Yeah, exactly. And how comfortable I would be with losing it. Josh also says, quote, what I will say 100% is that we tend to be looped into this category of sort of extreme torture porn. Let me looped in. You built the parking lot and it put your name on the spot for that shit. But this should give you a sense of what Blackout spawned because he says, when I look at what we're doing and what is coming up, it's very tame experience compared to several things I've gone through over the past several years. And I think what the extreme horror genre has turned into is not what Blackout started and truly was, never the track that Blackout was on. I will say that's always the case, right? It's just, it all comes down to the end of Dark Knight. Not Dark Knight. I mean, the end of Batman Begins. Yes. Where he's like, I hate this haunted house. I want to go home, Alfred. Like, my parents were killed in a haunted house. And now I'm afraid of bats. I need to fight crime. No, like the, like, Mr. Beverly, the quote, but the, like, you know, we get bulletproof vests, they get armor-piercing rounds. Yes, yes. You know, now we have a man who dresses like a bat, and it was, like, the escalation of it all. And, like, no one had set out to... these guys thought like, no one's going to make it worse than this. Berlin's like, this is a Saturday. Yeah. A man who likes to go by Dr. Death overheard what we were doing and decided- Like, hold my beer. Yeah. No, I mean, I hate to bring everything back to wrestling, but this is very much like what happened in the 90s to pro wrestling, where some of the traditionalists, their whole point was, look, you can't have people nearly dying every single night. You'll run out of things to do. Like, you need to focus on The storytelling in the week to week. How tall is this ladder going to get? You're going to jump off of onto a piece of table. Yeah, eventually you're just going to be using a rocket launcher in the ring. Yeah. So despite how grueling and miserable of an experience Blackout seeks to create, they also provide a safe word for participants, giving them the ability to quickly bring an end to the horror should it prove to be too much. But we've only hired deaf scare actors and we blast music because it won't bother them. In the Los Angeles Times, one of the owners put it this way. We want it to be safe. The only way to make this run is keep it as safe as possible. That is not a controversial statement. That is not a hard thing to do. And that was obvious to every haunted event operator in history until a man named Russ McCamey came along. You might have heard of this guy. His haunt is called McCamey Manor, and he's been featured in various documentaries like Haunters, The Art of the Scare, which is a great documentary about people who do home haunts. And more notably, Monster Inside, America's Most Extreme Haunted House. He's also been featured on the news and in court dockets and arrest warrants, but we'll get to those in a little bit. The reason that most people have heard of Russ McCamey is because his extreme haunted house project has pushed every boundary of taste, safety, and the law. An accurate history of McCamey and his Halloween antics is kind of tough to pin down, partially because McCamey talks a big game and He's a fascinating figure if you do ever want to look up either the documentaries that he's in or some of the videos that he's posted online. There are times where he seems genuinely charismatic and happy. And then he bounces back and forth between being this sort of sweet, comforting guy who never curses, which is literally one of the rules at McKamey Manor, no cursing. Okay, sure. He also then in the snap of a finger can become a very menacing, cruel, scary man. It just goes to show that cursing isn't the problem. Yeah. According to a Nashville scene investigation from 2018... He's listed. Down in Nashville, he's in Tennessee. Well, he started in California and eventually moved the whole thing to Tennessee. He sounds like a billionaire. He's not. No, I'm saying same antics. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Get where you are today using California and then go somewhere else for cheaper taxes. Yeah. So according to a Nashville scene investigation from 2018, McKamey repeatedly taunts visitors ahead of their arrival and makes outlandish claims like that he is capable of hypnosis and mind control. But he also admits the manner is safer than it may appear and he's aware of the laws he has to follow. He doesn't want to seriously hurt anyone, he says. He just wants to get enough footage of what the fuck moments to make what he calls an exciting movie. Yeah, my sprained ankle photo album. People twisting and turning and trying to leap over things. Quote, nobody's ever been injured, ever, McCamey says. Nobody's ever had any lawsuits, ever. I mean, there was a heart attack once, but that person's okay now. People can get bumps, bruises, sprains, and cuts, he adds. Those are injuries. But you can die at Disneyland, too. Rarer. Rarer. But it's true. We have covered Disneyland deaths on the show. And as far as we know, Disneyland has had a lot more deaths than there have been at McKamey Manor. A lot more people. Doesn't that be ridiculous? Millions and millions more people have come through. Not super reassuring, though, to hear like, hey, what do you want from me? You could die walking down the street. Yeah. His whole thing, his whole quest to make the most extreme haunted house in the world started simply enough in the early 2000s when he and his wife at the time, Carol. Yeah, yeah. When you tell someone this idea, they should leave you. Well, she didn't leave him right away. She stuck around for a while. They spent $ 30, 000 to make Halloween at their home bigger and better than anyone else's in their quiet San Diego suburbs. People lined up around the block to experience the fake blood, spooky props, and hired teenage actors who were jumping out at them. It was traditional Halloween fun and on a very impressive scale for a home haunt. And that's how he initially got on the news and kind of got his legend started in California. I do a Sunday dinner every Sunday and I also do Halloween there. I've talked about it on this show that I usually hand out candy there on Halloween and like A five-minute walk from their house is like a very elaborate house. I think I maybe talked about it last year. It sounds familiar. I think we did. Yeah, it's like a two-floor house. They build out PVC pipes with big black bags that go down. So there's a full entranceway so you don't see what's going to be inside. There's like people with giant you know axes dragging them outside and like the street outside of the house and like jump scares and stuff like i actually don't think they're handing out candy it's what's kind of fucked up I don't know if they are. I don't think it's fucked up. You can do a home haunt without handing out candy. Just saying the rest of the neighborhood is just like a traditional neighborhood. People are just like, hello, trick or treat. And then like one house is like, do you want to enter hell? I will say two things. First of all, if you're spending $ 30, 000 on turning your house into a home haunt, you shouldn't have to spend any extra money on candy. And second of all, I think that's part of what's cool about a crazy elaborate home haunt in a neighborhood. It's like, yeah, everybody else is handing out candy. And this house really goes above and beyond to like give you a really good haunted house experience that you don't have to go to an amusement park for or, you know, and it's your neighbors. So you probably trust them to some degree. People really shouldn't have trusted Russ McKamey. No. Because the difference between Russ McKamey and this guy is I have a feeling that the couple who puts it on next to my buddy's house don't like, wait for you to leave school a week earlier being like you're coming to my hell house later i heard you're coming your dad said you're coming to my hell house once you're in my hell house he can't help you anymore like i said like russ bothers. You before they even show up according to one history of the attraction that i found quote as the haunt got more popular russ upped the ante making it scarier and more physical the event went from all ages to 18 plus then to 21 plus And it was still technically a haunted house, but it took on a much more physical quality. In Russ's own words, it was a survival horror boot camp experience. He started making participants meet him at a park where he blindfolded them and drove them around before bringing them into his manor. Nope. He hired ex-military people as actors and muscle, and they slapped, pushed, and kicked participants, spraying them with hoses. All the ones who couldn't get jobs for being dishonorably discharged. Yeah. All the ones who did bring some mace into the other haunted houses and were committed manslaughter. These ex-military muscle slap, push, and kick participants, spraying them with hoses and dunking their heads in toilets. He poured fake blood on these people, tied them up, and put spiders on their faces. He also started videotaping the proceedings and posting the videos online. And this is what he was referencing earlier when he says he wants to make an exciting movie. These videos are pretty horrifying. They're still up on YouTube if you want to go look at them at his McKamey Manor YouTube page. They feature people covered in mud, slime, blood, shit, God knows what else, crying and screaming as McKamey berates them and makes them. So he's in the show. Yeah, he's in it. He's not just like, I hired all these people and I just... come up with the maze and I rake in the dough. No, he does a lot of the punishments and everything himself. I believe he also may be ex-military. I can't remember for sure, but I think he may also be ex-military. And he screams at them. A lot of the video clips are of the people just suffering and crying, but then they'll be interspersed with him getting in their face and being like, you're a fucking pussy, you're a fucking pussy. Is the music like... Like, super doesn't make sense. No, although... It's worth noting that McKamey's YouTube channel is still up, as are the videos that made him famous. But for the past year or so, Russ has been posting exclusively videos of himself doing karaoke, which is its own kind of torture. Oh my God. I'm assuming this has something to do with the fact that he's been involved in some legal trouble and either no longer runs the house or has been told he's no longer allowed to post videos. But he clearly is some kind of a narcissist because you can literally scroll down through his YouTube page and it's just, all these videos of him. He like goes out on the downtown Nashville scene and makes little videos and then he does karaoke. And then when you scroll down far enough, all of a sudden you just get right back into his, it's a hard cut from him doing karaoke to his scare videos. It's probably some legal thing, like even just a YouTube monetization thing where it's like, all right, one more video of you spitting blood into a woman's face while she screams. It's like, We can't keep giving you money for this. You need to give us like three months of wholesome material. All Disney covers all the time. And we will consider allowing you to cash the checks again. Exactly 90 days later, you can go back to whipping someone with celery. Whether or not McKamey intended these original videos to act as advertisements, and I think he did. Absolutely did. They spread like wildfire on early YouTube. One McKamey Manor promo video from 2013 said, A supercut filmed at the Manor's original San Diego location features blood-covered horror seekers eating cockroaches, vomiting, and begging to be released. That clip has more than 14 million views. So where you think there's no safe word at this place? We'll get to that in a little bit. Another video with 2 million plus views features a guy named Steve having what looks like a panic attack. Nobody should fucking do this, he stammers. Nobody should do this. I just died. Oh, shit. The best writing on the subject of McKamey Manor is that investigation I mentioned earlier. It's Megan Sealing's piece for Nashville scene, Tennessee's McKamey Manor, Torture on Demand. It's pushing a decade old at this point, but it's very well reported and is still probably the best account of McKamey operating at the absolute height of his attractions. The reason, as we discussed a little earlier, that a Nashville paper spilled the beans on this is because McCamey moved his operation from San Diego to Summertown, Tennessee in 2017, about an hour away from Nashville. You won't believe what just showed up in town. Yeah, it's like the something wicked this way comes carnival. Yeah, yeah. The scene's story primarily follows a man named Brian Van Over. His life is about to be Van Over. Yeah, yeah. And the townspeople are about to be Van Over this. Yeah. Fucking happening there. He and his wife had driven from Florida and he was interested in the supposed $ 20, 000 prize for finishing McKamey Manor. Oh, so that's a new wrinkle. I didn't know about that. It is a new wrinkle. There's very little evidence that this award ever actually existed. If it existed, there's no way. If I was like, hey, you get 20 grand, there's no way I'm letting anyone finish. Yeah. Before the tour, Ben had to read and sign a waiver on camera. It took six hours for Brian Van Over to sign the waiver. because McKamey kept interrupting him to issue challenges. Fuck, dude, it's like being the co-host with me. Yeah, you wouldn't believe how long the original cuts of these episodes are, guys. You think he interrupts a lot now. Quote, with the help of his 19-year-old assistant, red flag. Red flag, red flag. I don't know McKamey's age. With the help of his 19-year-old assistant, Austin Graham, McKamey jumps onto a Facebook live feed to post videos of Vanover getting covered in viscous fake blood, eating mysterious stinky canned seafood, and singing Elton John's Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me at the top of his lungs. Okay, so he has a karaoke element. Yes, and he actually also has a video of himself performing Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me as one of his karaoke videos. So he has a love for Elton John songs. The waiver, this is sort of what I was mentioning earlier, the waiver listed all kinds of things that might happen. restraints, plastic wrap over the face, hair removal, broken fingers, shocks, drugs, animals. And this is where reality starts to warp in the presence of Russ McKamey, because a document saying he might do some of these things doesn't mean he owns the equipment, has the animal, or has ever done those things to anyone on the tour. When Vanover finally signed his waiver and began the actual tour, the scene reports that he lasted about three seconds. Oh, so there's a way out. No, he just quit. Well, yes, there is a way out. He quit. He, he is all these videos, people begging to be let out. It tells me there's no way out, but. Yes, he, he made it about three seconds. You know, I think the six hours leading up to those three seconds, I would count as part of the horrible experience that he had to endure. And once it actually happened, I think he was just like, we've all been there. I'm done. I'm done. Yeah. And then there is the really insane story of Laura Hertz Brotherton, who went to the San Diego Manor in 2016. And this is where I feel like Russ McCamey really crossed the line and really became a true villain. Because up to this point, I think you can, you know, in many of these cases, maybe not all of them, but in many of these cases, you can make the argument that he was operating within the bounds of an entertainment facility, though. It's extreme. Even beyond that. I mean, it's a very, he'd had the cops call him a couple of times because neighbors would see like a screaming woman being driven by in a car. Or at one point, I think his house was raided because somebody reported seeing a woman being led into his basement and chains. And it got to the point where he actually ended up having to call the police to tell them, Hey, I'm about to start a tour. I don't know how long it's going to last, but just so you know. And that's when he does all the real murder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a great cover. Yeah. Now, this is a San Diego event you're about to talk about, which means it's even pre-Tennessee. So he crossed the line and became a heel before he even trained states. Yes, and this is part of why he went to Tennessee. Got you. So Laura Hertz Brotherton went to the San Diego Manor in 2016. And in the account published by the Nashville Scene, she was a Halloween fan who had stopped finding ordinary haunted houses frightening. McKamey's videos made the manor look interactive in a way that the other attractions aren't. True. Sure. Facts. This is safety. Facts, facts, facts. Safety crash test dummies say. Before going, she spent about a month talking with McKamey and completing assignments to quote, prove her loyalty. He made her buy a onesie, which really wasn't too out of the ordinary. He makes a lot of people buy like a, really embarrassing looking onesie with butterflies or caterpillar, whatever on it, uh, make videos of trips to spirit Halloween and get a McKamey Manor tattoo with her tour date that she already booked. But like a fake one? No, a real one. Not doing that. In advance of the trip. At the same time, she's doing all of this. All my shit should be free. I'm putting all this money to go and also buy a ticket. Well, that's another, that's another thing that I, I forgot to mention, uh, Russ McCamey never charged anyone to come to the manor. Legally, I didn't tell you to do nothing. Like I didn't sell you nothing. Exactly. He requested that you bring a large bag of dog food because he's an animal lover and he would donate the dog food to a local shelter, but you never had to pay. And I think you're exactly right. I think you never had to pay because then it wasn't a business. Yep. But at the same time that Laura Brotherton is doing all of this to prove her dedication to McCamey, She's going through a separation with her husband and starts an online relationship with another guy in the McKamey Manor Facebook fan group. I don't know how many real winners there are in that group, but look, she did what she did. According to the scene investigation, quote, this man who lived on the other side of the country said he was experiencing something similar with his wife. Something he was going through a separation as well, I think is what they mean. Yeah. On the morning of Laura's tour, McKamey found out about her online flame. How? I don't know. I guess it's Chuck at the... fan groups. He's checking the fan groups. I suspect that at this point, Russ was probably texting with Laura, if not this other guy, and asking probing questions about their lives. I think. I don't have no evidence of that, but I suspect that that is how he found out. When he found out, he outed their relationship to everyone, including their families. And while Brotherton's husband, who she was separated from, knew about this relationship, the new guy's wife didn't. the online boyfriend was allegedly lying about them being separated. This new guy stopped talking to her immediately, and her then-separated husband told her he wanted to divorce minutes before she started her McKamey Manor tour. Okay. Which then sounds to me like maybe they weren't super separated. Well, I mean, separation is sometimes a good idea. I just, I think it was like, listen, since you're already spending six hours signing contracts today, I got one more for you. But, yeah. I think what's really gross here is, like, he fucked with someone's life in a way that even. Yeah, this guy's a piece of shit. Even, you know, whatever. This must be on the show, in which case, you're welcome anytime. Whatever context he was doing it in, he interfered in her real life. Oh, you don't think getting a tattoo, a permanent tattoo was already interfering with someone's real life. Well, now you got no husband and no job prospects because you have like a fucking, uh, I went to a guy's house on this date tattoo across your forehead. It's, it's, it's an invasion into someone's privacy that I think you don't talk beyond. Yeah. So she also says though, that not only was this him interfering in her real life, but that her manner experience became something far more sinister than the usual tour. According to the article, quote, Brotherton believes Russ McCamey was personally offended by her online relationship. Her quote then is, all he kept saying was, I don't believe in cheaters. And it caused her to spiral into something awful. What follows is her account reported by the scene. I was waterboarded. I was tased. I was whipped. I still have scars of everything they did to me. I was repeatedly hit in my face over and over and over again, like open-handed as hard as a man could hit a woman in her face. Even through them hitting me, I was so numb by what had happened previous to that, meaning her relationship being outed to her husband. I didn't make a sound, not even a grunt. I didn't cry. I didn't scream. I didn't say ouch. She says she was repeatedly whipped, shocked, and submerged upside down with duct tape over her eyes. She described being made to dig a shallow hole, lie in it, and breathe through a straw while dirt was dumped back onto her face. When dirt got in her throat, she asked for water, and they splashed it on her face instead of giving her something to drink. She also said someone scraped the tattoo she'd gotten for the visit with a metal file. And then later, an actor held that same file to her throat and started scraping at her throat as if he was going to cut her throat with it. And then she began crying and repeated the agreed safe phrase. But according to Brotherton, it still took several minutes for them to stop. And that is one of the huge legal problems McKamey Manor found themselves facing today. Because Russ always likes to point out that everyone who participated in his haunt was told exactly what could happen, and they all signed the waiver, and they were all happy to be there. But, at least in Tennessee, consent can be withdrawn at any time, and as soon as it is, the activity must stop. So, he might not be trying to actually injure anybody, but time and time again, stories have come out that he either rejects the idea of safe words, which some people have blown off as like, oh, he makes a big deal out of how your safe word won't work, but it really does. Or he'll give them, but ignore them because he knows better than the participant. Another article quotes a different McKamey Manor participant saying that, quote, Russ had told me, I'm always going to know when to stop. Don't worry about it. No, terrible. Which that is where he's crossing the line into truly illegal behavior, where not only are you true, like, Him blowing up that girl's life, giant asshole move. Him not stopping when someone uses an agreed upon safe word, even just for a couple minutes, crosses the line into you are now just assaulting somebody. Yeah, 100%. Another article quotes a different McKamey Manor participant saying that Russ had told me I'm always going to know when to stop. Don't worry about it. When this person was placed into a deep hole, McKamey, he says, started shoveling dirt on me over and over again. I start waving my hand while saying I quit. But McKamey didn't stop. He didn't stop immediately. And he, in fact, said that he would continue the tour as long as he, McKamey, is having fun. So you're alone in this tour? Yeah. Okay, so there's no one even. No, you're alone. And there are, I believe there are other people who will do some of the torture and abuse. But there are times where you are also alone with Russ McKamey. No, I meant there's just no other contestant. No, contestant. You do keep thinking of this as a challenge to win. Exactly. It does feel like a challenge. In Laura Brotherton's case, the fun that Russ McCamey had resulted in a post-McCamey Manor trip to the hospital where her various injuries were photographed and treated. Images published with the reporting in Nashville scenes show swelling, cuts, and bruises, including a surgical scar on her knee that reopened during the event. She said x-rays found a hairline fracture in her foot. McCamey disputed the fracture, but acknowledged the actors had pulled at the inside of her mouth and that the San Diego shows had involved what he called, quote, extreme physicality. Even though he claimed to have toned down that extreme physicality after moving to Tennessee, neighbors called the cops so often that Russ was eventually required to call them before the beginning of the tour to make sure everyone knew what was taking place. The Tennessee Attorney General's office raised concerns in 2023 about whether guests could actually stop the tour if it got to be too much, whether they could see the waiver beforehand, which is a legal requirement in Tennessee. You can't just be told a waiver is that you then say you're signing. You said that people read it first so you read it aloud to the camera so. Yeah but i don't know i don't know legally if that counts or if you need to be able to like sit read the whole document like being fed it one line at a time or whatever and saying yes when you're being you know having fake blood dumped on your head is maybe not. Look at it's it's we'll get into my opinion on this later but continue. And the Tennessee Attorney General's Office also investigated whether or not that advertised $ 20, 000 prize actually existed or could be won. Charges were never filed, but a personal altercation led to McCamey's arrest in July 2024 for, wouldn't you know it, domestic violence and the attempted murder and rape of an ex-girlfriend. In September 2024, those charges were also dropped. The website for McKamey Manor claims that it is still open for business now in two locations, but no one seems to be actually able to book a tour. I think this is ultimately going to lead to an eventual resurgence. The sort of rumors that it's still open and very special people can book a tour. I don't think the myth of Russ McKamey is true. going anywhere. And because he's never actually been prosecuted for anything, I don't think he probably feels like he needs to stop. Or Russ McKamey is just going to turn out to be an actual serial killer in real life who, as you suggested, was using those police calls to hide the fact that he was actually chopping people up on his property. And the way he's going to get away with it is he's going to be like, oh my God, I could literally just be a piece of shit to everybody and they still come. So, yeah, of course you can get in that van. I've watched people a million times that I dox and scream at and follow them home and then they still get in my van. Well, I think, yeah, I mean, I think part of what is particularly sinister about what Russ McKamey is doing here is it is sort of like in the last episode, we talked about how I hate horror movies that are like, oh my God, a killer's loose at the haunted attraction because no one believes it. And in a way, McKamey, he's not a killer that we know of, but he is the evil loose at the haunted attraction where everyone who went for the most part even the most disturbing stories that they had been hearing assumed that this was something that at the end of the day, no matter how upsetting, no matter how disturbing, because a lot of these people had also done, you know, especially by 2016, 2017, 2018, they'd. Done all these others. And so there's this expectation of, okay, this guy's really going to push my limits. This is as extreme as it gets. This is the, $ 100, 000 or 100,000. Well, no, this is the 100,000, what's the spice meter for peppers? Yeah, this is the 100,000 Scoville units version of the Extreme Haunted House. But they're still going with the belief that if they use the safe word, they'll be released. And that, you know, if they need it to stop, it will stop. And I think really the place where McKamey crosses the line is that quote of, I know better and I'm going to do, if I'm having fun, I'm going to keep going. Well, yeah, that's unacceptable. It's a, it's completely unacceptable. You reneged on the only social contract you signed. Yeah. We've, we've whittled away every piece of the Ed Vicola social contract in this episode, except for if I say the word that means, please, God, stop, you'll stop. And he just threw that out and said, no, no, no, I know better. Now, is there an argument to be made that in some weird version of, you know, that if you really trusted someone that you could let them, that you could totally be like, okay, fine. I trust you enough to know when to stop, no matter how awful of a time I'm having. Maybe, but that's not what was on offer here. I had a girlfriend who, for my birthday one year, literally... I put her in a hole. No, no, no. No, it's the opposite. I literally... She organized a really wonderful day for my birthday. It was very, very fun. But it started with her being like, I'm going to blindfold you and walk so that way you don't see the stuff she had set up and the blah, blah, blah. But we had to go from the apartment door to the car, whatever it was. And she did it, and I think I've talked about this in a show before. I got, like, three steps. I was like, you know what? It's off. I don't know what this is. I'm not going anywhere without my eyes. Yeah. Like, this is not intended to be scary. It is coming from a very sweet place. Yeah. But it was at that moment where I go, turns out I have a thing. Yeah. And that thing is no blindfolding. Right, right. And if she had said, too bad, I'm the only one who can take the blindfold off, and it's staying on until we get to the car... it would have been a problem. Well, it would have been a problem for my anxiety, but if there's anyone in your life who could have got away with it, it was probably her at that time. But I'm saying like, it was something where it was like visceral. It was like visceral. Like I, not only did I need it off my face, I wanted my bones to come out of my skin and run away. Well, that's, and that's part of what these shows are designed to do is to, to, to poke at. And the most visceral part of you, the, that you, where you are, quivering in fear, despite knowing it's a show, despite knowing that you're safe, you were just so fucked up by the whole experience that, and if you look at the videos, the McKamey Manor videos, I mean, person after person after person is in just a shaking, screaming, crying mess of a human being. And many of those people, I do think, wanted to get, they wanted to be broken down to that spot, whether it was something that they felt they needed to face or whatever. But yeah, when you're not stopping, when someone says it's time to stop, that's where you've crossed the line. I'm surprised this guy hasn't, they didn't find his body somewhere. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How many times can you really get away with this before that shit comes back and bites you in the ass? I think he seems to have something very wrong with him. He enjoys hurting people and seeing if he can get away with it, and I suspect that Someday, yes. I think he is probably going to get prosecuted for something. He seems like a guy who might shoot you in traffic. No, I don't mean prosecuted. That's the least of his problems. I'm saying someone coming back the next weekend to be like, hey, that didn't go great for me. Now it's not going to go great for you tonight. Yeah. Because that's kind of what we all hope for, right? Like Death Wish, it was six of them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? Well, I should. Scared all the time does not hope for vigilante justice enacted against anyone. No, no, no. No, but if it happens, we would go. What did you expect? Something I don't think I get to in any of these other, because we have a few more shows that we're going to talk about. Oh, my God. I'm already so upset. It sucks at this episode's video. I think the entirety of you telling me the last two stories, I'm just angry looking. This show is the best when you're upset. I'm not drunk enough. A lot of people talk about, or a lot of the show creators or show runners who run these places, do talk about how, you know, people come out the other end of a lot of these shows and they are furious. They want their money back. They want to call the police. They want to whatever, whatever. But they also say that many times those people then follow up a day or two later with an email being like, that was insane. I was all over the place at the end, you know, but you guys pulled it off. Well, you know, whatever. So it's, it's a tough thing where, You are trying to have people come out the other end being like, fuck you. I can't believe you did that to me. Those people got to leave when they wanted, though, at these other places. Yeah, that's the thing. So all of this talk of people wanting their boundaries pushed further than anywhere else brings us to Miasma, an invitation-only horror experience in Chicago. Why do I know that? Is that the name of that movie with the camp right now? Oh, yeah. Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the chances that would ever come up twice in one year for me. I don't think it has anything to do with the show Miasma. What the fuck does Miasma mean then? I think Miasma, like if you're in a Miasma, it's like you're in a pervasive, depressing atmosphere. I'm in a Miasma, yeah. Right now, it's so fucking humid right now. It is humid. We might have to break part two into two parts and film the rest tomorrow, but. Not saying for real, but I'm sweaty a lot. I want to go watch all his Russ videos. This show was created in 2016 by Justin Beck, a frustrated creative who says, quote, Miasma grew out of personal dissatisfaction and a desire to truly connect with an audience. After writing screenplays and short horror stories for nearly a decade, leaving him creatively tapped out, Justin was searching for a feeling he thought he'd lost. Quote, the reality set in that I was never going to reach the audience I wanted to satisfy the most. Me. I didn't have the resources or experience to produce my film or the desire to keep going as a writer. I needed something that challenged me, was conducive to the type of horror I wanted to create, and allowed me to see how the audience reacted. I discovered that I missed the instant reaction of an audience at live performances in my punk and metal band past. That's something you simply can't see unless you watch them reading your story or viewing your film. And I do understand that as I wasn't in a very successful band at all and it wasn't for very long. But when I was, I do think back to that for as much as I've been able to do in my chosen art form. There is you don't get that immediate reaction and feedback from an audience the same way. Much like Blackout the first year. You know what you do get that though? Immediate reaction? What? Being a greeter at Walmart, you immediately get to say hello to someone and hear their response. So I don't know why Russ, our last hero in this story, wasn't fulfilled enough from that to then not feel the need to go make a house. Actually, that is very funny to me. The term hero is what the remake, the reboot of Queer Eye on Netflix called their person of the week was their hero. And I just had a very funny flash of them going to Russ McCamey's house and and being like. Do they do everything just do they do house too or only clothes they. Do house they do clothes they do house they give you like grooming tips they take you. That is really funny to have like the clear eye guys go to a like russ is haunted yeah and he's. Like oh you guys here to get in the fucking box and they're like. Russ russ that box could be better that box is. So dirty we got to take you down to the store and find you a fresher looking box man. Yeah yeah yeah it's really funny just completely unscare it. And at the end, he's just so much happier. He's like, thanks, guys. Yeah, I actually don't need to torture people anymore now. Turns out it was vertical stripes on my shirts. I wasn't... All I needed was a good French tuck. Much like Blackout, the first year of Miasma was a more standard jump out and scare you haunted maze. But in 2017, Justin started to push things further. Do you think they all start that way? Because they all start with no money. So you got like ass friends or... And it's like, what could you do in the scare department? And it was like, well, for this price, I can jump. I'm not doing anything more. The menu is kind of like, you've got say boo, you've got pull back the curtain, come out from under the table, and turn the lights off. Yeah, you're going to have to raise the rates if you want me to do anything beyond that. As far as I can tell, Miasma is still operating, but it is invite only, and you have to register through their website to even get on the wait list. I do like an invite only night. I've been to some very cool food experiences in la that are like invite only wait list like just six to ten people at a place it's not a restaurant yeah i guess that's my horror house i mean that's. Kind of what these people are doing it's like it's not in a horror house it's a few number of people who get to do it The most updated warning list that I found for Miasma includes electricity restraints, aggressive physical contact, and having your clothes removed or destroyed. But their rules also say you get a safe word. My body's already doing that, bro. The number of buttons that have flown past Chris tonight to close this shirt. That is Ed's version of Miasma that he is very much experiencing right now. Mm-hmm. So you do get a safe word in this experience and you can end the experience for any reason with it. Much like Blackout, Miasma is as interested in telling a story as it is humiliating and debasing you. You're given a role. You're given things you're supposed to do and other characters to deal with. And I found one account of a Miasma show from 2018 discussing an event called Into Great Silence. Before arriving, this person completed questionnaires, phone interviews, and tasks. Every step reinforced the same instruction. Do what you are told. So this guy goes out for the night. He reaches an unmarked door beneath Chicago's elevated train tracks, and he is expecting he's going to open it and be attacked or something. Instead, he opens it and finds a perfectly ordinary looking Justin Brink, creator of the show, standing in this room and announces that tonight Webb is going to help him make some money. It's like, was Chris Hansen waiting for him? Like, it's like it's getting to. Webb gets or is given a ski mask, an unloaded gun, and a partner. They enter a warehouse and stage a robbery. Ah! Following the other man's instructions, Webb threatens the people inside, takes their money, and helps humiliate them. Then. This is the way I'm going to start actually doing crime. It's just... It's Ender's game. Like, you didn't realize, but we actually just robbed those people. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Then he's left alone with a hostage who discovers that the gun that he's been using isn't loaded. And suddenly... Webb is the one on his knees, and the people that he's been terrorizing take their revenge on him. That's what I'm saying. That's what you should be doing over in Tennessee, fucking the other guy's place, but not because we said don't do it. His account includes electric shocks, confinement in a body bag, and eventually lying in a bathtub looking up at this person that he'd helped humiliate. who is now holding the gun in his face. Got your ass. The thing that I do think is brilliant about this particular production. It is cool that they've flipped the script. Yeah, it's almost like they swindled you into doing like a Stanford prison experiment where it puts you in the shoes of the bad guy. You expect to show up and be put through the ringer as the victim, but dishing out the humiliation and the pain is scary enough because you're like, Jesus Christ, I know this is part of the show, but I feel uncomfortable doing this. It's lowering your guard the whole time. You're doing what you're told. Because you're in power. You're in charge. Yeah, but you have the control. And then to flip that on you and be like, no, there's a whole other part to this show. I think that... I mean, I'm into that. Not in the sense that I would ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever do it. But I like that there seemed to have been a little bit of thought that went into the evening and... And it's, I don't know what we were watching, but it's one of those things where, oh, it's kind of like jury duty or, or the company retreat where it's really easy to manipulate people. Yeah. Like genuinely, as long as everyone else is in on something, which everyone knows is like my top fear. Yeah. Uh, it doesn't, you actually have to address the script that much. People essentially go into where you want them to be and do the things you want them to do. So it's cool that this person decided to do that with this. Yeah, I actually, the closest thing I've ever had to one of these experiences was probably like a decade ago for one of my friends, girlfriends at the time for her birthday, we did like a sort of semi-immersive mystery show along Hollywood Boulevard where you- You went in and out of different businesses and you had to like write down clues. It wasn't scary. It was like, uh, you were trying to figure out, I don't even remember what the crime was. I think it was something got stolen. And so you were talking to Hollywood Boulevard and they were, the people were planted, you know, actors were in different stores and on the street and you would talk to them and find clues, whatever. And then at the end, you kind of think the show's come to an end and they're like, okay, now everybody, we're going to go meet upstairs at this bar and we're going to have a drink and whatever the show's over. we go up there and as we're talking about what we experienced and, and there must've, I don't remember now, there must've been some kind of loose thread that we weren't sure who we were looking for or thought we'd missed them or whatever. As we're talking about that, this drunk woman comes over to the table and starts giving everyone a really fucking hard time to the point where we're like, do we have to leave? Like, and then I think a waiter came over and she like, shoves him or pulled a gun mate. Like it wasn't, she didn't pull a gun, but there was something happened where you're like, Oh, this is part of the show. But for a few minutes I was like, what the fuck? And it was, it took no, it was so easy to get us to go up the stairs into this room and, and have no idea that the show was still going on. So I'm sure if you, if this is all you do, yeah, very good at tricking people. And miasma offers, if you want something even more personal, they have a page for private experiences and, that starts to sound a lot just like the movie, the game. They advertise a story built specifically for you with your input. Their regular experiences are $ 300 a person. They won't even consider a private inquiry for one person under $ 3, 000. You gotta, you gotta have high standards. And before that you have to pay them a non-refundable thousand dollar fee just for a one hour exploratory conversation. I mean, that's, If you know what you're worth. Great way to make money. The page says, we will not waste your time. Please do not waste ours. God, I got to start putting that atop my invoices. Yeah. So the last thing I want to touch on here in an attempt to give listeners a sense of the absolute scariest, most nerve shattering, extreme horror experience I could find. I took a visit to a website called haunting.net, which features a ranking of haunted houses ranked by extremity. We'll discuss the numbers later. Extremity? Is that the real word? By how extreme they are? Yeah, I feel like extremities, I always think about my skin or something. We'll discuss the numbers later, but their ranking of the absolute worst, most frightening experience is something called the victim experience put on by Freakling Brothers. In Las Vegas. So it's like a Ringling Brothers pun? I guess, yeah. I mean, it's not much of a pun, but yeah, the Freakling Brothers. According to the listing for the victim experience on Haunting... The victim experience by Freakling Bros is the most realistic, traumatic, and horrifying test of psychological fortitude currently being offered in the United States. This is Vegas, you said? Yeah. Of fucking course it is. You're not the voyeur. They can just bury you in the desert when it's done. Like, whatever that shit goes wrong, ain't no one gonna know where you were. You're not the voyeur. You're a mind freak, if anyone asks. You're not the voyeur. You're the victim. This show simulates death in very realistic and visceral manners. It's listed as an individual experience, so you do it alone, with full physical contact, electricity, drowning, and suffocation. The two people have ever done it? I guess, yeah. This is how the event is described. Ed, tell me if this sounds like a fun way to spend your Halloween. I'm getting ready to clench my jaw. Or.... Get a ticket for Gates of Hell. That's separate? That's the traditional Freakling Brothers maze. And if you get a ticket for Gates of Hell during its normal hours, walk through its dark maze with its electric shocks and actors who jump out and make contact with you yelling terrible things. Now, imagine how any given room could be made 10 times worse. You'll still be missing some critical details, but you'll be on the right track. If you think of Gates of Hell as an R-rated movie, Victim Experience is the NC-17 version. No matter what your fears or taboos, you will find something to shock, offend, or trigger you. I'll tell you right now, almost every NC-17 movie is better after a few cuts. Like, it didn't need to be. It's like when we were kids, there'd be DVDs that came out that was like, unrated edition. It was like, there's a reason that the one that came out in theaters, it's a stronger film in every way. Well, according to the Freakling Bros, being shocked, offended, or triggered is a design feature. The victim experience is not only physically brutal, but like any good rite of passage, it will test your mind, body, and soul and leave its marks on all of them as well. It is not fun, not one second of it. They say this in the, like, literature? This is in their ad copy. Oh, my God. What makes this, for at least a few, an experience to seek out rather than flee from is that the event is run by some of the most caring and hospitable people you will ever meet. The love is readily apparent in the pre-show briefing and in the post-show decompression. It is still- I do think that this should require like some kind of post-show decompression for a lot of these. Some sort of like intimacy coordinator of like- I. Suspect, especially these days, many of them probably do have that just to avoid having the cops called If nothing else, this love is still there, possibly in greater measure during the show, which was built with incredible attention to safety. That's just the one sentence they keep repeating is doing a lot of heavy lifting. I'm doing this because I love you. But you will not feel that love during the show. You will just have to accept it is there and that despite what any of your senses are screaming, the people around you want you to succeed. Again, I'm doing this because I love you. Yeah. And there's no $ 20, 000 at the end of this. So we actually encourage people finishing. Yeah. It sounds absolutely miserable. I would never go to this. It sounds like something I would never go to. The only reason I would go to it is to see just as a personal best, you know, like what's my best time on how fast I could turn around. Yeah. Just to be like, you know what? This is not the room I thought it was. Can you. can you get your body to make the sound of a whip cracking through the air with how quickly you turn around on your heels? What are these walls made of? And can, can there be an edge shaped hole in them soon when I jump out? I know you were kidding, but I really, I don't like that. This is in Las Vegas. It feels so skeevy already. And it is such a shit hole in Vegas is just like, God, man, I don't know. I mean, I don't think they would actually kill you, but I don't trust people looking for work at the fucking fear factory or whatever in Las Vegas. I've seen enough documentaries about the sheer number of people who live in the sewers of Las Vegas that it's like, yeah, every once in a while they probably have to come up with an application to this place. Yeah. It was like, oh, you're looking for someone who can handle themselves in the dark? I live in the dark. By the end of my research, it was clear that there is a booming underground business for horror movies. Underground! There you go. Sewer people. I mean, honestly, I would not be surprised if they have a deal with the sewer people in Vegas and that this is like an employment program or something. Hey, will you. Let these guys into your home, sewer people? They need to be scared. Yeah. It was clear that there is a booming underground business for horror events that go to the game-like extremes to pull you into their worlds and scare the absolute ever-loving shit out of you. Can I get a version of this where it's like, how come no one's the gaming you to success? You know, it was just like, I'm going to pay $ 4, 000 to like have people pick me up at my house, make sure I'm at the interview on time. Yeah. Help me with an earwig of like the right way to answer the questions. Yeah. Like there's no, yeah, the opposite of a haunted, like whatever this experience is. There's no like pick people up and help them. I mean, I think you're kind of maybe just thinking of a therapist. Fuck you, man. We're not. Until they pay us. Until they send us product. I'm not going to one. What I find really interesting and where I want to bring this episode to a close is that just like everything that gets cool on the fringes of society, major corporations have to jump in and ruin it. Private equity ruin these. And they have done just that to the idea of the immersive horror experience. In 2025, Universal opened Horror Unleashed in. Las Vegas. Las Vegas. Okay. It's a year-round attraction with four haunted houses, including Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Okay, so IP-based. And Universal Monsters. It's billed as an immersive event that puts you in the middle of scenes from these films, and they're just themed around you. There's no version where Universal can be like, and when you're there, we're going to waterboard you and put a taser up your ass. Probably not. Yeah. But hold on. So the Freaking Brothers are not shaking in their boots. I don't think so. But Universal, this makes me wonder how successful Miasma in Chicago is because Universal announced a second location in Chicago that's taking over the entire former Tribune Distribution Center, which is a huge building. I mean, you could, there's a lot of, all over the country, a lot of vacant real estate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're promising immersive horror and themed cocktails and food. So I think these two examples are on the lower end of the insanity spectrum. I think it's like the way I enjoyed Universal. They were like, have you ever wanted to do something for Halloween but not wake up dead? Universal can get you there and not leave you with trauma. There is one more thing, though, that Universal is opening up. That I think is an even more direct example of how successful these extreme haunts are. Certainly not with a movie studio. No, no. They are launching Universal Studios Japan in 2026. So this year's Halloween Horror Nights lineup introduced an attraction called Lights Out Nightmare Isolation. And its official page says that it is the first R18 attraction, which I assume is like the Japanese version of NC-17. Yeah. In Halloween Horror Nights history, waiver required. You have to be at least 18. It costs extra. You have to sign the waiver on the. Day of your visit. What's it called? It was something lights out. Nightmare isolation. I mean, all three of those words, you're describing prison. Yeah. Like, why would you do this? And part of their big announcement of this is that the rules of the event prohibit sharing details of the attraction's contents or interior online, on social media, or... even in conversation. Yeah, but I bet you one, well, this isn't America, but Japan probably has this too. I bet you they are right now. inviting influencers to be the. First ones probably probably regardless of any of that like they'll be able to tell you about it yeah yeah um i think that is all part of the just like putting fake things in the waivers i think saying that you you know you dare not discuss a word of what you experience yeah because the. First the first example where someone was imprisoned for breaking that That, like, then just no one would come again. Yeah, but I think, I mean, look, Universal has, I'm sure, a great team of international lawyers, and I'm sure that they have found lots of ways that they can really push things to the extremes without building a McKamey Manor in Japan. Oh, no, I'm talking about the imprisoned of, like, breaching the contract of the. of the oh if they break their own rules and then you they go to prison no. No when i said i wasn't talking about how scary they were going to be i'm saying that like uh the first time that they imprisoned someone for saying what was inside oh if that was in the contract then people just simply wouldn't go yeah yeah yeah so they can't actually be serious. About that yeah no i'm i'm sure that that's kind of part of the marketing. But also universal do something like with how you started like what make some good movies do some interest they actually have just really good movies this year. We sound like such old friends make them make them good you ever think how much you make a good fucking movie you. Made movies so that you can now make scare warehouses in the scare houses scare house in the desert like get back to making a good wolfman movie. Scared all the time presents the scare house incredible immersive horror spin-off We just got to find a place. Maybe Lancaster has some abandoned buildings we can set up shop in. It's just going to be me outside urging people to not go in. It's going to be you outside urging people to not go in. And whoever does go in has to listen to, as we mentioned earlier, the full uncut versions of the episodes where you are interrupting me the entire time. And they come out just shaking and quivering. Well, I don't know if people are going to go to it. Before we do the fear tier, I do want to go back to haunting.net for a second to give us a sense of how scary some of these places are in relation to each other. They don't rank McKamey Manor, I'm sure, for legal reasons. But to give you an idea of where these other events land, they rank Halloween Horror Nights and Not Scary Farm at a three of scary. I'm told Not's is scarier than Horror Nights. I think it is. But they rank them at about the same level. Blackout is ranked at an eight. So the inventors of this immersive. So the very next thing is like a five point jump? No, no, no. I'm just talking about things we've discussed. There's dozens and dozens of these. But so most people have done Halloween Horror Nights or Not Scary Farm or something. So they consider that a three. I'm gonna do it a second time. On the scale. Just this month. Blackout's an eight. Miasma's a nine. And the victim experience is the top of the list at a 10 or 100% intensity. Okay. But now, is it like, hey, we've read a bunch of Reddits, and so we know what it is, or do they have to send someone to be like, hi, I'm a correspondent for Horror Magazine? I think they have people go and do these. I think they also take trip reports, basically, from people who go and do the events. But I think a lot of these places don't want you publicly putting out what it is, so I would imagine that whoever's running Haunting.net is putting themselves through these and then ranking them gotcha so after everything that we've talked about would you ever do something between i assume you wouldn't do an. Eight i wouldn't do i didn't do a three for a decade okay and then i did a three and i didn't hate it but with the people i was with were like oh if you go to not scary farm you'll hate it gotcha so like I can't even handle a 3.5 or whatever. Per the people I was with. I think the Queen Mary experience might be like a four or something on there. What are we doing as a society? As you guys know, I'm not a Halloween guy. I'll clearly go through the month too many treats. I understand people like about it. I personally don't like dressing up. I don't see the appeal of being scared. As you guys know, it's one of the reasons we started the show is that you're a horror guy. You live and breathe it, and I'm a person who's just not interested even a little bit. I love it. we do, and I love all the history I learned. But, man, oh, man, do I not want to join a lot of you guys on field trips. I'll tell you that. So where would you place– I guess this is a hard question for the fear tier. Because it's an easy– it's easy. It's a problem we always run into with the fear tier, which is, like, it's a zero because I'm not going. Yeah. But like if I'm forced to go. Look, I would put, and it's also a tricky one because in this case, these are things designed to be extremely scary, but also designed to not kill you, which most of the fears that we- Designed, yeah. Designed, yeah. We don't know for sure if a few people have slipped through them cracks. Yeah. I would put, since this two-parter is technically the extreme haunted house two-part episode, I would put extreme haunted houses at an eight. I would go a four or five for part one. Yeah. And like a nine for part two. Yeah. Yeah. I would, I guess I would go through almost any of the part one houses. Yeah. You know, someone paid me. Yeah. or like people who I like a lot were also going. Yoritos, if you're listening. Don't you dare, Yoritos. Ed is into going through some of these. No, don't. Just keep sending. He'll drink his water the whole way through. Yeah, I'm sure they'll let me bring that in, food and drink from outside. Or if I see that they're– maybe if they're waterboarding me with Minaragua. Ooh. Now, there is something they haven't tried over at the Cami's Minaragua farms or whatever. Nope. Uh, yeah, I, I don't, I don't, I would go with nine. Like a nine is high, obviously, but the idea of me walking through the threshold of any of these, I can't imagine it would be less than a nine for me. Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, that's why I put it at an extreme one at an eight because I probably be a little bit less scared than you, but in terms of the pure fear that it would create, despite the fact that it wouldn't kill me necessarily. It would be at like an eight or even possibly a nine, depending on how, I don't even know how intense some of these places are. I certainly don't want to do the victim experience where they apparently make you experience different kinds of being killed. Yeah, no. I mean, I literally, with each passing year on this planet, get more and more mad at purposely loud cars. Yep. I don't know what I'm going to do if they're blasting music. You know what I mean? Like torture. Because it's an audio experience. They're going to be flashing lights. It's like they're taking all of your senses and purposely taking years off your life. Yeah. And so, yeah, I just know myself that I'm asking you to turn the TV down now. I don't think I'm going to be comfortable with just even like loud chainsaw. Like that was my least favorite part of, of Halloween Horror Nights. It was not even, it was just how loud the chainsaws were. Not that I thought they were going to kill me with them. I'm like, calm down. Yeah. Like I'm trying to have a conversation. Yeah. It was, that's the, that's the, it's the anxiety. It's the on edge, even though, you know, they're not going to kill you. It's loud. It's aggressive. It's never having a moment to yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it can be very brutal. Well, Guys, thank you for joining us on our trip through extreme haunted houses for a two-parter. We have so many more Halloween tricks and treats coming for you this month. Hopefully the rest don't piss me off. This one has made me so mad. Stay tuned to the main feed and sign up for the Patreon if you haven't. We've got lots of good stuff coming your way. Until next time, I'm Chris Colari. And I'm Ed Ficola. And we're both pissed off at the idea of having to do any of these. The show is scared all the time, and we'll talk to you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Scared All the Time is co-produced by Chris Killary and Ed Ficola. Written by Chris Killary. Edited by Ed Ficola. Additional support and keeper of sanity is Tess Feifel. Our theme song is the track Scared by Perpetual Stew. And Mr. Disclaimer is. And just a reminder, you can now support the podcast on Patreon and get all kinds of cool shit in return. Depending on the tier you choose, we'll be offering everything from ad-free episodes, producer credits, exclusive access, and exclusive merch. So go sign up for a Patreon at scaredallthetimepodcast.com. Don't worry, all scaredy cats welcome. No part of this show can be reproduced anywhere without permission. Copyright Astonishing Legends Productions. Good night. We are in this together. Together. Together.