“— Underhill Haunted House cast, reciting the rules of haunting“If you can’t scare them, Make them laugh! If you can’t make them laugh, Gross them out! If you can’t gross them out, make it awkward!””
Spooky season is here and that means haunted houses are opening their doors. For the actors playing the monsters, it’s more than just a night of frights - it’s a haunt family.
“We call this our haunt family,” said Michele “Shell” Galloway, a haunt manager at Underhill Haunted House, located in the basement of Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum in Portland. Outside Halloween season, Galloway is a retired X-ray technician.
Shell Galloway wears one red eye and yellow eye contact to complete her goth vampire costume.
Mia Estrada / OPB
For this month’s installment of the “At Work With” series, we shadow Galloway and see what it’s like to work in a haunted house.
How do you get into doing haunted houses?
“My mom was hugely into Halloween when I was little. Growing up, my house was always decorated, always Halloween parties. So all my friends loved to come to my house in October,” said Galloway.
At 11 years old, Galloway caught haunt-fever when her junior high school had a haunted house. In the 50 years since, she’s worked on many haunted houses in the Portland and Vancouver area.
“I was at TerrorWorld at Jantzen Beach back in the late 90’s, and then Scream at the Beach took over in the 2000’s,” she said. She started haunting at the Memorial Coliseum first with Fright Town around 2010, which turned into the Underhill Haunted House.
Do you ever have to break character?
“Yes. If you scare a customer so bad [that] they’re on the floor, that’s when you break character and you make sure they’re okay. You’re not going to stay in character, when they’re balled up in a corner screaming or crying,” said Galloway.
What time of year do you start prepping for the haunted house?
“We actually started putting the haunted house, building it, at the end of July,” said Galloway.
Are there auditions? Do you have to act?
“During the summer we have get-togethers and we let people know, we advertise that we’re looking for monsters. Or, if they do makeup or maybe electrical, whatever it is they want to do. We have multiple things,” she said.
As customers enter Underhill Haunted House, they are first greeted by a haunted library.
Mia Estrada / OPB
“If somebody doesn’t want to scare, we have other things that they can do. But what we do is we have people come to the haunt. We’re building the sets, they get to go through and see what the sets look like. And then we have monster auditions, and then people just act.” Galloway added that Ira Kortum, one of the directors of Underhill Haunted House, teaches classes on acting.
Who makes a good monster?
“People that don’t get scared, that don’t like haunted houses, make the best scarers because they know what scares them. It’s hard for me to go into a haunted house because I’ve been doing this for so long. I don’t get scared that easily,” Galloway said.
What was your scariest moment when you had to break character?
“I actually had a customer - this was back in Fright Town - he got scared so bad. We had a pipe, had pipes in this room, and he hit his head so hard that he fell backwards and pretty much passed out. So our first thing, my first thing was to make sure he was okay and get the medics in here,” said Galloway.
For the actors playing the monsters, it's more than just a night of frights - it’s a haunt family. "We call this our haunt family,” said Shell Galloway, a haunt manager at Underhill Haunted House.
Mia Estrada / OPB
“There’s been a couple scary moments like that. We’ve also had people, a customer come through that threatened some of our actors. And if that happens here, we have codes for people to yell. I have an earpiece, a few of us have earpieces. We have a light out in the front that if somebody’s being harassed or whatever, they go out and they switch the light. So we know to go to that person,” said Galloway. “There’s also code phrases actors shout out if a customer is being inappropriate.”
Have you ever had someone get scared and accidentally punch you?
“You have to respect people’s boundaries,” said Galloway, “You need to because [those] reactions - people don’t do it on purpose, but if you’re close to somebody and you scare them and they’re all of a sudden you have a fist in your face. So yeah, that definitely has happened.”
How do you gauge whether or not your performance is successful?
Before the haunted house opens, Shell Galloway takes host Lillian Karabaic through the many spooky rooms at Underhill.
Mia Estrada / OPB
“I think that depends on the person that I’m scaring. If they get scared, I think that I did a good job. Some people just don’t scare no matter what,” said Galloway.
“There‘s certain different customers that you get that come in, and it’s funny, you’ll get one that [says something like] ’Oh,I knew you’re there.’ You get that type of person,” said Galloway.
“Then you get somebody that runs, you don’t even get a chance to scare ’em because[..] they go just zipping on by you,” said Galloway.
Do you ever have trouble getting out of your “scary” mode? Do you ever scare your family?
Shell Galloway welcomes customers into the Underhill Haunted House, located in the basement of the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum in Portland on Oct. 25, 2024.
Mia Estrada / OPB
“It takes me a good hour after I leave here to calm down because I‘m so wound up,” said Galloway. Her wife does not like her red and yellow vampire contacts. “She doesn’t like me with contacts or anything ... She likes scary movies, but this is not her thing.”
Could someone who doesn’t like haunted houses still be a haunted house actor?
Absolutely. “We have some people that work here and they won’t go through it. They will not go through a haunted house. They’ll go through this haunted house because they know all of us. They know each person, they know the character,” said Galloway.
“It‘s funny. You take ’em to a different haunt and they won’t want to go through it because they don’t like going through haunted houses. But once you know everything that’s going on behind the scenes, it’s much easier.”
Do you bring your own costume?
Backstage is filled with people half-transformed into creepy little creatures. Shell Galloway has her turn in the chair of professional FX artist Christina Kortum, who spends 20 minutes airbrushing Galloway’s face and hands into a blacklight-activated vampire.
Mia Estrada / OPB
“Some people do their own makeup. I have this at home, so I come here dressed. I already put my [vampire] contacts in,” said Galloway.
Paints and makeup fill an entire table backstage at the Underhill Haunted House on Oct. 25, 2024.
Mia Estrada / OPB
“ A lot of people don’t have their own costumes and don’t know which role they’re playing. We have a board out there that’ll show you [what role you play.] After they get their role assigned, the costume people will get their costume,” said Galloway. “Then they go to makeup and they get their makeup on. That’s usually how it is.”
Shell Galloway, a haunted house actor, transforms into a goth vampire for the Underhill Haunted House on Oct. 25, 2024.
Mia Estrada / OPB
What’s your favorite character that you’ve portrayed in all of your years of haunted houses?
“I mean, if you were to ask to see any of my pictures, I probably have at least a thousand or more of different characters I portrayed. Gosh, what one? I want to say clown,” said Galloway.
“I love being a clown. I can scare you with my clown voice and it’s just fun. A lot of people don’t like clowns.”
Spine-chilling scares aren't the only things you'll experience at a haunted house —there's also the many props like grotesque food.
Mia Estrada / OPB
What’s a ‘code yellow’?
That’s when someone gets so scared they pee their pants. At the final meeting after they’ve closed for the night, they’ll get a tally.
“Tell us how we did, how many people scared, how many people maybe have peed themselves,” Galloway said. “We actually do get people that do that.”
Can families act in the haunted house together?
Yes, there’s many multi-generational haunt families. Galloway’s granddaughter has been helping out. Linda Owens, the bog witch, has been haunting for decades and brought her 13-year-old granddaughter to the haunted house on Friday.
Linda Owens has been haunting for decades and brought her 13-year-old granddaughter with her tonight. She said scaring people isn’t hard, it’s the not laughing after they jump. "When you really have a good scare and it's really a cool scare and you just want to laugh and you can't because you can't break character," she says.
Mia Estrada / OPB
What’s your job as “haunt manager”?
Galloway checks on each actor, making sure everyone has water, snacks and steps in for their room if they need it.
“My job mainly is to make sure my actors are taken care of. So I go through and they give me a thumbs up. If you don’t give me a thumbs up, I’ll come up to you and ask you, do you need anything? Do you want a snack? Do you need a break? Are you thirsty?” said Galloway.
“I also help put out fires ...We always have to watch customers if they get really scared. We have a ‘Scaredy Cat Lounge.’”
Shell Galloway, 61 years old, caught the haunt fever as a pre-tween when her junior high school had a haunted house. Decades later, she’s worked on many haunted houses in the Portland and Vancouver area.
Mia Estrada / OPB
What’s the most rewarding part of this job?
“The people that work here, it’s because we are a haunt family,” said Galloway.
“It is just fun. So when you get a group of people that like to do what you do, it’s fun energy. It’s the people that you work with that makes it, and it’s the customers that come in that we’re able to scare them and make it fun for them.”
Shell Galloway welcomes customers into the Underhill Haunted House, located in the basement of the Veteran’s Memorial Coliseum in Portland on Oct. 25, 2024.
Mia Estrada / OPB
And Galloway said it’s therapeutic to let your dark side out. “For four or five hours, you can let that other side of you emerge,” said Galloway. “Nobody knows who you are in makeup besides your fellow actors.”