Ricki Reid was the first person in line last Friday for the 13th Floor Haunted House.
Spine-tingling tidbits about the northeast Denver warehouse- turned-Halloween attraction were leaked during a party Reid attended last month.
“I heard that there are real rats, snakes and spiders inside,” Reid said, and wondered whether she would make it all the way through without having to leave.
HauntWorld Magazine ranked Denver’s 13th Floor Haunted House No. 25 nationally in its 2009 list of America’s Best Haunted Houses. It follows that this frightful site will be featured this month on the Travel Channel show “America’s Scariest Halloween Attractions.”
Set designers, actors, production crews, wardrobe managers, makeup artists and sculptors spend months preparing to stage haunted houses like this one. Even so, two weeks ago, the 13th Floor was little more than 20,000 square feet of ramps and plywood.
When the doors finally opened, Reid clung to her boyfriend and walked in. Twenty minutes later, the 34-year-old Denver woman ran from the exit door, breathless.
“Now that’s a good haunted house!” she said.
A frightful workload
Providing fans of all things creepy with a few minutes of thrills is hard work. Every night in October, the staff hurries to get actors into makeup, freshen up the scenery and make sure fog machines and animatronic monsters are in working order.
“People think this is just a one-month thing,” says Chris Stafford, co-owner of the Asylum (at Boondocks Fun Center in Northglenn) and the 13th Floor, at 6100 E. 39th Ave. “But we are at this all year long.”
Even actors sometimes think that haunted houses are child’s play. Turnover tends to be high at such attractions, says Ricky Domin guez, the 13th Floor’s actor coordinator.
“Some only last the first weekend,” he says. Dominguez intentionally overstaffs by hiring about 85 actors when he needs only 45 on any given night, because, he says, half the cast may be gone by closing night.
“Every night, you are on your feet hour after hour, from 5 p.m. till 1 a.m.,” Dominguez says. Plus, “Some people don’t like to wear latex or the feel of ‘blood’ dripping down their face all night.”
Often alone in themed rooms, actors have to stay alert. That’s easy during crowded weekend nights. But the excitement tends to wane on slower weekday nights.
Liz Velasquez is a musical-theater actor who never worked at a haunted house before this year. As the “Rat Lady,” she listens for the “cue screams” that let her know when people are coming in her direction. Then, Velasquez plays with rats and sings a twisted version of “Three Blind Mice,” to keep revelers moving along.
“Haunted houses are more challenging (than theater) because even though you can’t touch people, you still have to use your physicality and your voice to scare them,” she says. “Plus, you’ve got about three seconds to get your scare in.”
Within minutes, Velasquez’s sunny face is transformed into a deathly pallor. Her “wound” is tissue paper covered in fake blood and plastered to her head with even more makeup.
Next, she’s off to wardrobe, where film and television costume designer Shannon Cooper dresses the entertainers in clothes you might typically find in a teenager’s closet — jeans, T-shirts and long-sleeved flannel shirts.
“It’s the things we recognize and relate to,” like the “Corpse Bride”-looking wedding dresses purchased at a Goodwill store for $15 a piece, “that can scare us the most,” Cooper says.
Before the doors open, time is of the essence. Makeup artists have less than 2 hours to prepare dozens of actors for the night. That’s about 15 minutes per face to apply bruising, oozing and fake wounds.
The actors have about 30 minutes to get into their masks and foam latex prosthetics. When they’re done, even people who know better sometimes get spooked.
“I’m terrified of haunted houses,” says makeup artist Melissa Saavedra. “Not knowing if something is going to jump out at you really gets to me.”
When working movie and theater crews aren’t in Hollywood or Canada, they hone their skills in haunted houses, says Cameron Guse, a set designer. With just 20 minutes to spare before the doors open, Guse spray-paints more star speckles on the dizzying, spinning walls in the Cosmic Vortex room.
Guse has spent months sculpting masks, brick walls, giant rocks and castles out of foam.
“Working in a haunted house was the only way I could use all of my skills,” he says. “There are so few jobs offered to people who like to create stuff anymore.”
The 13th Floor is the culmination of 20 years of research into the intricacies of fear. Co-owners Stafford and Warren Conard spent years exploring the urban legends and myths associated with unlucky 13th floors, including why so many buildings don’t have one.
And even before starting Screamworks Entertainment nine years ago, they were scaring the heck outta people themselves as teenagers working in haunted houses.
“Put people in the dark, disorient them and take away one of their senses,” Stafford says. “It takes them to the edge every time.”
Sheba R. Wheeler: 303-954-1283 or swheeler@denverpost.com
