Terrified and satisfied customers at Milburn's Haunted Manor.
Courtesy of Mike Milburn
With a chill in the air and Halloween around the corner, many Oregonians are embracing the spooky season.
But for some, Halloween is more than just a time for costumes and candy. It’s a time for the brave to test their courage at one of the state’s many scare attractions.
Mike Milburn, owner of Milburn’s Haunted Manor in Hubbard, OR, says scaring boils down to a science he has coined as “scareology.” A key part of that science is misdirection.
“Everybody has these layers of protection about them where they have layers of comfort,” he said. “But if I can appear, without you seeing me coming, within your innermost layer, I can get anybody.”
Milburn says his favorite style of scares is Hitchcock-like, building multiple feints and diversions rather than using shock and gore.
“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, you know — here’s 41 ways of disemboweling the human body. That’s cheating,” Milburn said.
The staff of Milburn's Haunted Manor after the 2023 season. Milburn and his team do not use physical touch or gore to get scares, but rely more on suspense and buildup.
Courtesy of Mike Milburn
Milburn’s Haunted Manor isn’t the only one following this practice. Robin Downward is the production designer and owner of the Nightmare Chamber in Medford. He says that today’s audiences are different than those in the past.
“It’s not enough anymore to just have people pop out and, and go ‘Boo,’” he said. “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.”
However, that perceived lack of safety for visitors can sometimes come at a cost to staff, when the innate fight-or-flight response kicks in. Donward says he has a team on hand to keep an eye out for the safety of not only his visitors, but his actors as well.
“People will, most of the time out of fear, react, and potentially can do damage to an actor,” he said. “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”
Milburn's Haunted Manor offers more than just scares, but a nighttime pumpkin patch and dining area for guests to unwind after a night of scares and screams.
Courtesy of Mike Milburn
This year marks the Nightmare Chamber’s 15th season, and to celebrate, they have added the “Midway of Macabre,” which includes more scares as well as food, beer and craft vendors.
Milburn’s Manor has been delivering scares since 2002 and also offers a dining area and a nighttime pumpkin patch.
While there is no shortage of screams at these scare attractions, both Milburn and Downward agree that offering places to relax and decompress from a walkthrough of horror and haunts is just as important as the scares themself.
“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,” Milburn said.
Mike Milburn and Robin Downward joined OPB’s “Think Out Loud” with host Dave Miller. You can listen to the full conversation here: