Oregon haunted houses deliver scares for the Halloween season

With a chill in the air and Halloween around the corner, Oregon is getting ready for spooky season. But for some, Halloween is more than just a time for costumes and candy, it’s a time to test one’s courage and get scared. Oregon has a number of scare attractions across the state. Robin Downward is the production director of The Nightmare Chamber in Medford. Mike Milburn is the owner of Milburn’s Haunted Manor in Hubbard. They both join us to share more on their haunted houses and their approach to scaring.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Halloween is just 10 days away. Some people are happy with costumes and candy, or perhaps some cobweb decorations. But for others, the spooky season is just not complete without some actual screams, ideally followed by laughter. And that is why haunted houses exist. Robin Downward is the production designer and owner of The Nightmare Chamber in Medford. Mike Milburn is the owner of Milburn’s Haunted Manor in Hubbard, about halfway between Portland and Salem. They both join us now to talk about the business of scaring people. Robin and Mike, welcome.

Robin Downward: Thank you.

Mike Milburn: Hello.

Miller: Robin, first – without giving anything away, can you tell us just about one part of your haunted house network this year that you’re particularly proud of?

Downward: Well, this is our 15th season, and in the past we’ve just had just The Nightmare Chamber – our main haunted house. I’ve always wanted to have The Nightmare Chamber be more of an event, rather than just a haunted house. So this year we’ve expanded. There’s a very large basement in the building that we have that we’ve opened up into what we call our “Midway of the Macabre,” which is an open free room area with another haunted house and other activities for people to do. So, we’re pretty proud of that, being able to expand out and give people more options this year rather than just going to the haunt.

Miller: Mike, what about you? What’s a new aspect of what you’re giving visitors this year?

Milburn: Well, first of all, Robin is spot on. One of the things that I’ve always enjoyed about our place is that we have two haunts. We have full concessions that make fresh cut curly fries to order, donuts to order. And then we also have a dining area and a full nighttime pumpkin patch. Being out in the middle of nowhere, it’s really important to have it be a destination, so people can go, and not just go through the haunt and goodbye. They go through the haunt, they hang around, they sit around their curly fries and laugh about who peed their pants. And even buying a picture of you getting scared, kind of like you’d see on a roller coaster. All of those create this destination, this experience, this seasonal activity … not just, you went through a haunt.

Miller: Mike, you’ve come up with a term called “scare-ology.” What is your theory of how to reliably scare people?

Milburn: Well, everybody has these layers of protection about them where they have layers of comfort. So imagine you’ve got circles around you, and each one is about a foot. Well, if I scare you on your eighth layer, if I jump out and I’m 8 feet away, I’m only gonna get the real scaredy cats in the group. But if I can appear, without you seeing me coming, within your innermost layer, that 1 foot, I can get anybody.

And so the whole trick of the game is misdirection, get them to look one way when they look backward there. Just as simple … everyone has seen a portrait-drop panel in a hallway, and that’s fine, but you don’t know if they’re next to the portrait. So what you do is, on the opposite side of the portrait, you put a chain door and make it move just a little bit. So they’ll see the perceived threat, hug up against the wall you want them to hug up to, so when you drop that panel – “scareology,” I’m right in your inner circle.

Miller: Scareology, proven.

Robin, I heard you chuckling there, when Mike was talking about essentially figuring out ways to sneak up on people, right? Is that something you try to do as well?

Downward: Yes, listening to him talk, it’s interesting because, when we talked … when we go through our beginning and advanced acting classes for the actors, I bring up magicians and illusionists, and how they’re able to misdirect people to look at one thing while something else is going on. And it’s the same premise – we’re creating this sort of creepy magic by having things  appear where people don’t think they’re going to appear.

He’s totally correct. It’s not enough anymore, to just have people pop out and go “Boo!” You’ve got to be able to learn that science behind what scares people, because inevitably you will have the macho types come through who, unless they have a gun held up to their head for real, they’re not scared. Well, there are ways to scare these types. And by using misdirection, having more than one thing happening in a space – whether it’s an actor and an animatronic setting up for an actor scare, or vice versa – all of these techniques build together to create this illusion of the lack of safety for patrons going through.

Miller: Mike, Robin talked about the macho types who need to have the threat of actual physical violence to be truly scared. Can you tell ahead of time who’s going to lose their  minds?

Milburn: Oh, yeah. You know, you always joke about, they sound like a group of girls. But nothing sounds more like a group of girls screaming than a group of boys. They all think they’re tough and then they go in.

Well, one thing Robin mentioned was that you get these football player types, and so what you do to try to get them is, you never just always scare the front and the middle. Many of our scares, the light’s gonna go off for like a second-and-a-half, and when the light comes on, somebody is there standing on the bed. Well, because they’re standing on the bed, they’re two feet taller than the tall person. You want to get a tall person to jump, give him something that he’s not used to, and that’s looking up at somebody.

Miller: So do you tailor the experience to the height, or the age, or your understanding of who’s in the audience at any given moment?

Milburn: No, but you tailor your scares to hit every cylinder. I’m gonna be able to scare high. I’m gonna be able to scare low. Even tall people are afraid of something coming low at their legs. So you just can’t always scare the front center. You gotta scare high, low, front, back. You always have the people that think it’s safe to huddle up in the back. Well, if you never goose them on the way out, figuratively speaking, you’re never gonna get them. So you gotta scare all surfaces.

Miller: You say figuratively speaking, which is an important one, because my understanding is that both of your haunted houses are no contact, meaning your actors are not literally grabbing people. That’s a choice you made, and some other businesses have made the opposite choice. And my understanding is that their patrons have to sign even more waivers, I guess, than yours do, because they’re being touched. Robin, how did you decide not to go that route?

Downward: Liability. I think that’s a big, big word. You know, even if someone gives permission to be touched, one person’s touch is another person’s grope, and to avoid any type of litigation, out of necessity for that. I personally think that you don’t have to touch people in order to scare them. We have our actors that have been with us for a number of years, that know how to read a crowd and read a group of patrons going through, and to know, just by body language, or their eyes, how close they can get to people. And we always talk to our newer actors in training about, until you get a feeling of being able to read a group, or read a crowd, or read a person, stay at least an arm’s length away when you’re scaring.

Miller: Is that for their own safety – for the actors’ safety?

Downward: Yes, that’s for the actors’ safety.

Miller: Do people lash out?

Downward: They do. People will, most of the time out of fear, react, and potentially can do damage to an actor. There are some people that will go through that … from the outside, we have what we call our safety staff, who watches our crowd outside to look and see if there’s any of these potential types of people, who say things like, “Well, if anybody scares me, I’m gonna punch ‘em.” OK, right there, that’s an indication that this person may need to be, not followed through, but watched.

Miller: And maybe they should choose a different pastime for that evening?

Downward:  You know, it’s interesting, yes. But for those types of people, all of our actors are on radios as well, and they are given rules right from the beginning, of what they can and cannot do, both on signage and verbal, before they enter.

Miller: Mike, you want to jump in on this, because you, too, have chosen to have a no-contact policy. Why?

Milburn: Touching is cheating. I love Hitchcock-style horror. I love how you can build suspense, and build suspense, and build suspense … and then you really get them scared. I’m not into Friday the 13th – here’s 41 ways of disemboweling the human body. That’s cheating. I look at scaring the same way. You build suspense, you build suspense, and I don’t have to touch you to scare you.

Plus, I’ve done this for 22 years and I’ve had hundreds, and hundreds, and hundreds of actors that I’ve dealt with. And the last thing I want to do is be manhandled by some 18-year-old senior high schooler. I just don’t find that scary. And again, it blurs the lines, because, you’re scaring every minute for four hours and it’s physical and it’s aggressive, and you just don’t know what … like Robin said, one person’s touching is another person’s groping.

Miller: Mike, what scares you?

Milburn: Oh, gosh. Yeah, I’m a coward when it comes to scary movies – “The Ring” messed me up. But again, Hitchcock style movies like “What Lies Beneath.”' I just love the suspense building, the suspense building, I love the artistry of building suspense and then misdirection. Oh, that wasn’t it? Love that stuff. And you really try to put that in your haunts. I go into this room and I tell my actors, “OK, I don’t want you to attack him here, this is a suspense builder room.”  If you just do nothing but attack, attack, attack, it’s like a movie that does that … you get tired, you get exhausted.

What you gotta do is you got to build suspense and don’t hit them, build suspense, don’t hit them. Then on the third time, when you hit them, you get more bang for your buck.

Miller: Robin, if you go through somebody else’s haunted house, do you ever get scared? Or are you just looking for the magic tricks?

Downward: It takes a lot to scare me through a haunted house, because unfortunately, when I go through, I either go “Ooh,” and “Ahh,” or I critique – and unfortunately sometimes that taints my experience.

Miller: Then what does scare you?.

Downward: It’s not necessarily a scare as much as it is a startle. Drop panels always get me, air cannons hitting into my legs always get me. But, as you said, it helps when the haunted house has a story that builds, and as the haunt goes, the tension builds as the haunt goes through. A haunted house, if it’s at “11″ the whole entire time, I personally think it’s better when there’s action, and then there’s a little bit of a lull, and then there’s action, and another little bit of a lull. And each time there’s action it builds, just like a good, suspenseful horror movie.

Miller: Robin Downward and Mike Milburn, thanks so much.

Downward: Thank you.

Milburn: Oh, my pleasure. And Robin, I see you’re open after Halloween. I might have to come down and check you out.

Downward: That would be great.

Miller: I’ll let you guys talk, but I’ve got to say goodbye to both of you. Robin Downward is the production director and owner of The Nightmare Chamber in Medford. Mike Milburn is the owner of Milburn’s Haunted Manor in Hubbard, halfway between Portland and Salem.

Contact “Think Out Loud®”

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983. The call-in phone number during the noon hour is 888-665-5865.