Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: What's your earliest memory of a haunted house? Uh? Not
Speaker 1: not a real haunted house where actual ghosts are supposedly
Speaker 1: running around. We've talked about that's sort of thing in
Speaker 1: the past, But I'm talking about haunted attractions. Place where
Speaker 1: you go up, you buy your ticket, you run through
Speaker 1: the haunted attraction. Various scary things happen, You encounter tab
Speaker 1: blaws that are frightening, people jump out at you, there's smoke,
Speaker 1: there's light, their smell, and you leave screaming and giggling.
Speaker 1: My childhood home, really you grew up in a haunted No,
Speaker 1: but my dad loves Halloween, and so as as a
Speaker 1: tenderhearted five year old, I remember going up to my
Speaker 1: house and seeing that it had been transformed into a graveyard.
Speaker 1: And my dad had because he were to the university,
Speaker 1: and so he went to the department there and got
Speaker 1: the you know, whole makeup thing and aged himself and
Speaker 1: looked like he was like the grave keeper dude. And
Speaker 1: then he also projected the pit and the pendulum on
Speaker 1: the side of the house. Okay that the old film,
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, with the blade coming down slowly and you know, wow,
Speaker 1: he went all out, he did. So that is my
Speaker 1: first impression of what haunted house might be like. Okay,
Speaker 1: you I think my earliest. I mean, my family always
Speaker 1: made a big deal out of Halloween as well, but
Speaker 1: I don't think we ever really set up a haunted
Speaker 1: house per se. But I do remember when we were
Speaker 1: living in rural Tennessee. Uh, my church group would go
Speaker 1: every year to see this thing that was called scare Mare,
Speaker 1: which we us kids are often referred to as prayer
Speaker 1: Mere because the gimmick was you come to this little
Speaker 1: rural church out in the middle of nowhere and they
Speaker 1: put on this haunted house every year and you go
Speaker 1: through it and it's one of these these fundamentalist Christian
Speaker 1: haunted houses that that each room shows you that the
Speaker 1: perils of a sin uh and you know, this is
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen if you if you drink, this is
Speaker 1: what's gonna happen if you listen to bad music, and
Speaker 1: all the type of stuff you can you can imagine.
Speaker 1: And then at the end they empty you out into
Speaker 1: a tent where a preacher sermonizes to you for what
Speaker 1: felt like an hour or two and that was the
Speaker 1: end of it. That was the prayer mayor portion of it.
Speaker 1: And it was, you know, it was cheaply done, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it was kind of it was very
Speaker 1: heavy handed even at that age, but they were still
Speaker 1: using some of the elements of haunted houses that everyone
Speaker 1: is kind of used to that everybody does a chainless chainsaw,
Speaker 1: a dude in a mask, somebody with blood on them,
Speaker 1: someone jumping out at you out of the dark, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. It's only really been since i moved
Speaker 1: to Atlanta as an adult that I've gotten to really
Speaker 1: experience a high grade, professional haunted attraction where they really
Speaker 1: throw everything together and just wallop all your senses with
Speaker 1: with frightful images, frightful sounds, frightful smell, etcetera. And I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the nether World Haunted house right Another World
Speaker 1: is I think one of the probably most esteemed haunted
Speaker 1: houses in the United States and is a fine, fine example,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit more about that. But
Speaker 1: I did want to say that the church, the sort
Speaker 1: of Churchill haunted houses. Forgive my punt art for the
Speaker 1: genesis of the modern haunted house, because that's actually how
Speaker 1: haunted houses start as a charity event. But right now
Speaker 1: we have in the US over two thousand haunted attractions
Speaker 1: that charge admission, about a thousand charity attractions, and three
Speaker 1: hundred amusement parts that have various haunted houses. Um. And
Speaker 1: I wanted to point this out because I did not
Speaker 1: realize this that the average person will show out about
Speaker 1: seventy two dollars on decorations, costumes, and candy for Halloween,
Speaker 1: and total Halloween spending was six point eight six billion,
Speaker 1: second only to Christmas in Christmas decorations. So Halloween obviously
Speaker 1: is a big deal in our psyche, and uh, haunted
Speaker 1: houses I think are the catalyst of it all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and and then always gives me such a it's
Speaker 1: such a big deal. It's always a big deal to me.
Speaker 1: But it's such a big financial deal. Then why is
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving Christmas? Why aren'ty always trying to to wean in
Speaker 1: on it and get and show up in October and
Speaker 1: steal some of the spotlight from from Halloween because they're like, hey,
Speaker 1: as long as you as you are dropping some dime
Speaker 1: on decorations. Why don't you pick up a nice little
Speaker 1: Santa Claus. Yeah, and I'm also off for let's start
Speaker 1: Halween in September. I kind of started in March, so
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, like in December. Yeah. Um. But
Speaker 1: as you point out, Another World is a great example.
Speaker 1: It's been in the business for sixteen years and it's
Speaker 1: created by movie professionals Ben Armstrong and Billy Messina. Messina
Speaker 1: did ffex on Franken Hooker and I think one of
Speaker 1: the basket Case movies. To give you horror fans a
Speaker 1: little perspective. Uh, they use original storytelling, so they don't
Speaker 1: rely on Hollywood's stereotypes like Freddie or Jason. They have
Speaker 1: thousands of effects. They create custom props, makeup masks and monsters.
Speaker 1: They have a ton of puppetry as well, uh, animatronics,
Speaker 1: and they have more than one hundred nether spawn, which
Speaker 1: are their actors, some of whom are stunt actors. And
Speaker 1: uh some of these actors are actually professional feeder actors
Speaker 1: and some have day jobs. And this year they have
Speaker 1: actual Beauty pageant winner Mrs Georgia, who transforms herself into
Speaker 1: a ghoul. So you really do see people of all
Speaker 1: different stripes joining in on this. So for this episode,
Speaker 1: we we thought, all right, we're going to do an
Speaker 1: episode on the science of hunted houses, we should both
Speaker 1: go to another world and actually check it out for reals,
Speaker 1: you know. And uh, and so I went out. I
Speaker 1: checked it out, I went through the attraction. I talked
Speaker 1: to Ben, one of the owners and operators and the
Speaker 1: minds behind all of this. And then you went a
Speaker 1: few days later and you checked out the behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stuff, So we kind of we kind of double
Speaker 1: teamed it. I kind of got the user end of
Speaker 1: it and you've got the behind the scenes. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was really cool. Got to see what it looks like
Speaker 1: about an hour before the door is open, and it
Speaker 1: really is like putting on a large scale theatrical production
Speaker 1: every single night. Um, and we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about the different elements, but it was amazing to
Speaker 1: see all the actors getting into their costumes and I
Speaker 1: think they've got seven different makeup artists. They've got a
Speaker 1: room full of masks, which is amazing to see. So
Speaker 1: the eight year old in me was extremely excited to
Speaker 1: be able to go behind the scenes and go through
Speaker 1: the maze and kind of see it in the partial daylight.
Speaker 1: Oh nice. We attended to grab a mask and sort
Speaker 1: of hang out. I was actually I wasn't. Then I
Speaker 1: kind of got that vibe of like, you know what,
Speaker 1: that there are actors here doing that. You don't need
Speaker 1: to dive in here and try to scare people. Right. Well,
Speaker 1: when I was there, I got a few quotes from Ben,
Speaker 1: so I thought we'd kick things off here and sprinkle
Speaker 1: a few other quotes throughout. But here is Ben's answer
Speaker 1: when I asked him, why, as humans do we like
Speaker 1: to be afraid? I think when you feel fear, it's
Speaker 1: a really up primitive instruct you know, when you're the
Speaker 1: hunter or the hunter. It's a huge surge of a
Speaker 1: journaline and people really enjoy that feeling of terror when
Speaker 1: they know it's safe. I think you're really scared and
Speaker 1: you think you're really gonna die. It's a bad, sickening feeling.
Speaker 1: But when you get shocked and scared and then you
Speaker 1: can laugh about it, it's so you floor feeling everyone phrase.
Speaker 1: So that was some fun interview material to get there
Speaker 1: because you can hear some of the craziness in the background.
Speaker 1: Because it's right outside side another world on a very
Speaker 1: busy night. There's their chainsaws, they're screaming, there's laughter. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a pretty awesome place to be. And
Speaker 1: I think that what he's talking about and what you
Speaker 1: just described to in terms of people really having fun
Speaker 1: with it, is directly pointing to the benign violation theory,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before, right when we've talked about,
Speaker 1: especially in our episode on laughter and humor and where
Speaker 1: that comes from. I believe we call that episode Funny
Speaker 1: or Die. We've dragged this idea out a number of times,
Speaker 1: you know, the whole Uh, savor tooth tiger jumps out
Speaker 1: at you and attacks you. Uh, you're dead right, But
Speaker 1: if something else jumps out of you, you're gonna react
Speaker 1: like it's a savor tooth and then it's not ha ha,
Speaker 1: you laugh. That's the signal that I thought I was
Speaker 1: gonna die, but not really. So this was the first
Speaker 1: time I'd gone through a haunted attraction and in certainly
Speaker 1: another world following that episode that we did. So I
Speaker 1: was thinking about benign violation the whole time, and sure enough,
Speaker 1: I'm seeing it certainly in everybody around me, but even
Speaker 1: in myself. You know, I'm scared, I'm falling on the
Speaker 1: floor because something jumped out of me from the side,
Speaker 1: and then I'm laughing. Yeah, And I mean it's a
Speaker 1: cathartic experience, right, I mean, there's no secret why we
Speaker 1: want this and why we seek out this experience because
Speaker 1: it really we are sort of built for that safe
Speaker 1: tooth tiger, right. So um, it's kind of nice to
Speaker 1: be able to exercise that in a safe place. And
Speaker 1: also I wanted to say that Ben Armstrong had really
Speaker 1: talked about how important safety is and haunted houses, and
Speaker 1: this is a fine example. They have, you know, something
Speaker 1: like thirty two surveillance cameras. They've thought of every single
Speaker 1: safety aspect. When duty cops there on secure, you're ready,
Speaker 1: you have to wait in a line before you go in,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of fun stuff going on with
Speaker 1: you know, people and costumes kind of scaring you. But
Speaker 1: then the the the security is there as well. I
Speaker 1: imagine that they can kind of scope out who could
Speaker 1: potentially be a troublemaker when they go in, because you know,
Speaker 1: you should be there for a good time. If you're
Speaker 1: there to start trouble, you're the wrong place. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you just did a couple of shots at Yaga my
Speaker 1: start and went through that, that could be trouble um
Speaker 1: and they are on the lookout for that. But I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk a little bit about the Haunted House
Speaker 1: layout itself. Yes, you were not given a map when
Speaker 1: you show up, because that's part of it. It's kind
Speaker 1: of a labyrinth that you lose yourself in for a
Speaker 1: few minutes, right, and they want to disorient you, so
Speaker 1: obviously they have um built it so that they can
Speaker 1: disordento you to the best of their abilities, and they
Speaker 1: use what they call sixty degree walls or six sided
Speaker 1: rooms to do this, and also ninety degree walls, and
Speaker 1: the ninety degree walls are really try to get you
Speaker 1: more through the maze itself. UM, but the sixty degree
Speaker 1: walls the six sided rooms are really cool because they
Speaker 1: have lots of corners to hide actors in what they
Speaker 1: call scares, and it's easier to disorientate or disorient customers
Speaker 1: and create mazes, and then it gives a different feeling
Speaker 1: um of more familiar construction. And we talked about this
Speaker 1: a little bit in our last podcast about maps in
Speaker 1: our configuration of neurons and how they really like the
Speaker 1: X Y access the horizontal on the vertical not so
Speaker 1: much something coming at you diagonally, and they're going diagonal
Speaker 1: on all of these rooms. We're not used to dealing
Speaker 1: with those rooms. I mean, no matter how crazy the
Speaker 1: architecture in your house is, chances are you're still dealing
Speaker 1: with square or maybe in some cases rounded structures. Right.
Speaker 1: So when they're thinking about the set design of this already,
Speaker 1: they've kept this in mind, this sort of natural scare
Speaker 1: tactics of coming at you from diagonals and from all
Speaker 1: different places. Um. And then they have something called scare
Speaker 1: forward and through put. And this is sort of like
Speaker 1: more on the business side, because through put is the
Speaker 1: rate of people that go through the haunt, and it
Speaker 1: helps to keep lines a little bit lower and keeps
Speaker 1: multiple groups from crashing into each other. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: because not a very straightforward and boring but essential business level.
Speaker 1: You need x number of people to go through there
Speaker 1: at a certain rate if you're gonna make money, and
Speaker 1: if you don't, because if you're not making money doing this,
Speaker 1: I mean, all right, it's all fun and games, but
Speaker 1: but it's not a business. And really, you know, a
Speaker 1: delightfully twisted way. You kind of have to think of
Speaker 1: a haunted attraction like a slaughter house. You have a
Speaker 1: bunch of cattle and you need to steer them through
Speaker 1: the attraction at a certain rate without any hiccups. You
Speaker 1: need to keep them moving. You don't except, of course,
Speaker 1: you don't want the cows to freak out. You want
Speaker 1: the humans to freak out, but to a point. And
Speaker 1: then if the freak out goes a little a little
Speaker 1: too far, then you need to be able to remove
Speaker 1: them so that the flow can keep going. And if
Speaker 1: you are someone who is going to go through a
Speaker 1: haunted house and you've got a little bit of scarity pants,
Speaker 1: here is a tip. You will want to stay at
Speaker 1: the front. And I know that sounds counterintuitive. I know
Speaker 1: that's that's because this is the thing every year my
Speaker 1: wife and I did do this when when we go
Speaker 1: to another world, we're like, yes, we're gonna get up
Speaker 1: there at the front. Were the brave ones. We love
Speaker 1: this stuff. Let's do it. And then we indever, Let mean,
Speaker 1: we still get you know, the Jesus scared out of us,
Speaker 1: but we'll inevitably find ourselves in the situation where we
Speaker 1: arrive a little too early, and then we spot the
Speaker 1: monster in the corner, just standing there waiting to get
Speaker 1: the people behind us, and we're kind of like, jump
Speaker 1: out of me, I want it, man, We'll see. That's
Speaker 1: the whole strategy. It's called scare forward. And what they're
Speaker 1: doing is that they're they're really going at the sides
Speaker 1: of the group and the back of the group because
Speaker 1: the idea is again to get that through put out
Speaker 1: there and to push the group forward. So if you
Speaker 1: are in the front, you're probably not going to get
Speaker 1: you know, an actor or a google or a monster
Speaker 1: two inches in front of your face like someone in
Speaker 1: the sides or the back of the group would. So
Speaker 1: they're hurting you. They're essentially you're being herded by monsters
Speaker 1: through a slaughterhouse. It's true, you are, and um, you know,
Speaker 1: we should mention this is probably obvious, but there are
Speaker 1: bunches of scare pockets throughout that maze, so little alcoves
Speaker 1: and again that's why the six sided rooms are so helpful,
Speaker 1: because this corner's helped to hide people. Uh, and they
Speaker 1: have a number of interesting ways to hide people. A
Speaker 1: lot of hiding in plain site. Is it a statute
Speaker 1: is it a person? I can't tell unless it moves,
Speaker 1: or there'll be something that looks like a person and
Speaker 1: you're you're watching it like all right, buddy, I'm onto you.
Speaker 1: And then bam, werewolf jumps out at you from the corner,
Speaker 1: and which is really cool. We'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: more about camouflage and a little bit um, but let's
Speaker 1: take a quick break in when we get back, we
Speaker 1: will talk about modes of manual manipulation. Hey, you, we're back.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the science of haunted houses, of course,
Speaker 1: as in haunted attractions. And I'll mention this again but
Speaker 1: if you want to check out Another World online and
Speaker 1: see their cool website, go to www dot fear world
Speaker 1: dot com and you can see all sorts of clips
Speaker 1: and images and some wonderful write ups about their attractions. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they are doing an excellent job, I have to
Speaker 1: say of manual manipulation. In other words, taking our five
Speaker 1: cents is and and of course you could argue that
Speaker 1: we have many more than five senses, but there's main
Speaker 1: five senses in manipulating them through all sorts of things
Speaker 1: like our site in our orientation, yeah, sight orientation. This
Speaker 1: is kind of like I guess in a way the
Speaker 1: obvious one, but but some of the subtler ways they
Speaker 1: do it may surprise you. I mean on a very
Speaker 1: basic level. Yes, you're walking through these dimly lit corridors
Speaker 1: and things are happening, and a lot of like especially
Speaker 1: in other world, a lot of stuff is happening. You're
Speaker 1: you're distracted by little details, say like some sort of
Speaker 1: a ghastly frame and a picture on the wall that
Speaker 1: seems to be watching you, some sort of holographic bit
Speaker 1: of art here, actual skeletons just I mean, they do
Speaker 1: a wonderful job just on the layout of the place.
Speaker 1: So you're looking at that kind of stuff, But then
Speaker 1: there there's also other visual things, lights, lasers, moving fog,
Speaker 1: moving monsters, and it all creates this chorus of confusion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And of course the lack of light is is the hallmark,
Speaker 1: and the reason for that is because if you're plunge
Speaker 1: into tote old darkness, then you're not quite sure what's
Speaker 1: going on. And so there are different parts of the
Speaker 1: Haunt that are that are darker than others. But I
Speaker 1: did want to just give a quick overview of our
Speaker 1: site that of course we have rods and cones in
Speaker 1: our eyes. Cone cells perceive color in bright light, and
Speaker 1: rod cells perceived black and white images and work best
Speaker 1: and low light. So who has something called rhodopsin And
Speaker 1: rhodoption is a chemical that's found in the rods, and
Speaker 1: rhodoption is really key to the ability to see during
Speaker 1: the night. And it's the chemical that rods used to
Speaker 1: absorb photons and perceived light. And when a molecule of
Speaker 1: rhodoption absorbs a photon, it splits into a retinal and
Speaker 1: an option molecule. This is important because these later recombine
Speaker 1: naturally back into redoption at a fixed rate, but the
Speaker 1: recombination is very slow. So the reason I'm pointing this
Speaker 1: out is because when you expose your your eyes to
Speaker 1: bright light, all the roodoption breaks down into this retinal
Speaker 1: and option, and then if you turn off the lights
Speaker 1: and try to see in the dark, you cannot because
Speaker 1: it has to try to recombine line. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the disorienting effects of playing with a light in
Speaker 1: a haunted house. And here's a fun fact. Okay, the
Speaker 1: retinal used in the eye is derived from vitamin A.
Speaker 1: So if a person's diet is low in vitamin A,
Speaker 1: there's not enough retinal and the rods, and therefore there's
Speaker 1: not enough reduction. So people who lack vitamin A often
Speaker 1: suffer from night blindness. Okay, so if you you want
Speaker 1: to really be on to be prepared for your venture
Speaker 1: through the haunted house, you want to bone up on
Speaker 1: your vitamin you want to just stuck up on that
Speaker 1: vitamin A. But I thought that was interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's also like great because I know I'll be driving
Speaker 1: at night occasionally when I can't help but drive at night,
Speaker 1: and and I feel like I can't see anything. So
Speaker 1: maybe next time I need a bone up on the vitamins.
Speaker 1: There you go, There you go before you drive, before
Speaker 1: you go into a haunted house, and drive into a
Speaker 1: haunted house. Yeah, yeah, which is an entirely different attraction
Speaker 1: from the future. But there's also different ways that can
Speaker 1: manipulate your eyesight. And I saw one um example of
Speaker 1: this online from a past another world um year. But
Speaker 1: they had a room that was covered in illuminated dots,
Speaker 1: So everywhere you look there's just dots, and you could
Speaker 1: not see the edges, you could not see anything. And
Speaker 1: I thought, well, that's fascinating because that's really like obscuring
Speaker 1: your ability to actually pinpoint your orientation, which is so
Speaker 1: important and allow you to have sort of a fixed
Speaker 1: established place in the room. And it's really frightening to
Speaker 1: even watch the clip of someone coming at you with
Speaker 1: dots on, of course, because they're they're melding into the background,
Speaker 1: you know, I do you know you mentioned this to
Speaker 1: me yesterday and I'm like, I don't remember the dots,
Speaker 1: but now I do. Think I went through the attraction
Speaker 1: the year that they had the dots, because suddenly there's
Speaker 1: a person that's covered with dots coming at you as well,
Speaker 1: and that kind of course throws you off balance, as
Speaker 1: does their use of sound. Yeah, there is a lot
Speaker 1: of noise going on in the haunted house, and those
Speaker 1: clip and the clips that we played, you could certainly
Speaker 1: hear the outdoor noise and on the inside you have
Speaker 1: creepy music, you have loud noises coming from elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the hunt. A course, you're hearing chainless chainsaws rearing up.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a staple. There's just no getting around
Speaker 1: it when it comes to chain saw usage at a
Speaker 1: haunted attraction, And it's all just creating this cacophony. But
Speaker 1: then there they're also these kind of moments of not
Speaker 1: quite silence, because you're not gonna get really silence. It's
Speaker 1: not a really sound proof environment, but they'll be like
Speaker 1: a calmn, I guess before the noise comes out of
Speaker 1: your specifically like an air gun or or an airhorn
Speaker 1: going off right next to your head. You know. Thinking
Speaker 1: about the sensitivity of our ears, because we talked about
Speaker 1: this and the Ignoble podcast, and we talked about how
Speaker 1: if you're hearing is delayed, if you hear yourself talking,
Speaker 1: it's delayed just a fraction of a second. That can
Speaker 1: just change everything in the machinery in the way that
Speaker 1: you perceive sound. And um, it made me think about
Speaker 1: the fact that your your ear is really important in
Speaker 1: actually detecting the gravitational field as well and giving you
Speaker 1: a sense of orientation. So when you have all these
Speaker 1: different elements of sound coming at you, that can really
Speaker 1: disturb um your sense of where you are. And I
Speaker 1: was also thinking about something called the butt kicker that
Speaker 1: they use. I love the name of it. It actually
Speaker 1: vibrates the floor. Oh yes, yes, okay. And also in
Speaker 1: the other world, when I was talking to you, Ben.
Speaker 1: He said, they've experimented with sub sonic frequencies, but they
Speaker 1: decided not to use them because they have some odd
Speaker 1: effects on people. Okay, change them in the Monster's that
Speaker 1: kind of thing exactly, you start to grow hair everywhere.
Speaker 1: It's it's it's not pretty. They definitely play with your
Speaker 1: balance a lot. They're they're squishy floors. There's their floors
Speaker 1: that feel uneven. There's there's kind of a metal bridge
Speaker 1: over actual water that's shaky, to say nothing of the
Speaker 1: solid bridge that goes through a spinning cylinder. That old
Speaker 1: effect is uh that always gets because that just throws
Speaker 1: your balance off completely because the surface you're walking around
Speaker 1: isn't moving, but visually you're seeing the room spin. So
Speaker 1: you react as if the room is spending and you're
Speaker 1: reaching out right. And then of course you get another element.
Speaker 1: You're trying to feel your way through the room, but
Speaker 1: then you're feeling creepy crawley things. The sense of touch
Speaker 1: is really important, and I wanted to point out to
Speaker 1: that the animatronics Another World spray a lot of air
Speaker 1: and water at YouTube. Yes, you're suddenly you're missed by stuff,
Speaker 1: and if that's combined with some other sense elements that
Speaker 1: we'll get to in a second. Then it can be
Speaker 1: really disturbing because you're like, ah, that thing just threw
Speaker 1: up on me, what is this leaking? I mean, we
Speaker 1: can't have the response anyway if something gets honest it's wet,
Speaker 1: because sure, maybe it's raining, but it could be urine. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And actually they do have a bathroom. Uh did you
Speaker 1: go through the bathroom area? Oh, yeah, where they have
Speaker 1: the toilet plucked from my dreams, from my nightmares. It's
Speaker 1: a toilet that is covered an excrement and yeah, and
Speaker 1: they've got little bits of rice that come up from
Speaker 1: the ceiling from I think it's like a air duct
Speaker 1: or something. They rearrange that toilet every year. So one
Speaker 1: year in particular, one of the earlier years I went.
Speaker 1: You had to crawl through a tunnel and when you
Speaker 1: emerge on the other side, you emerge right in front
Speaker 1: of that foul toilet. Yes, again, plucked plucked from my nightmares.
Speaker 1: But again you're that's the sense of touch that you're feeling,
Speaker 1: and we take it for granted, but it's really effective
Speaker 1: because it's exciting. The five different types of nerve endings
Speaker 1: in your skin that govern sensitivity, heat, cold, pain, and
Speaker 1: pressure and itch. So when you are going past those
Speaker 1: dangling tentacles, your body is trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: exactly it is. Is it a threat? And it's important
Speaker 1: to mention on this touch business though, when we're talking
Speaker 1: about the reception this touch this, I'm checking my finger here. Um.
Speaker 1: One of the big rules of any haunted attraction, professional
Speaker 1: or even just semi professional, it's it's kind of the
Speaker 1: reverse of a gentleman's club. The monsters do not touch
Speaker 1: anyone that works that's coming through the attraction. The monsters
Speaker 1: will not touch you. They may come close to you,
Speaker 1: they may sort they jump out at you, but they
Speaker 1: are not going to grab you. They're not going to
Speaker 1: reach out and mess your hair up or anything. Now.
Speaker 1: I actually got to get behind one of the animatronics too,
Speaker 1: and um, it kind of manipulate it to see to
Speaker 1: the point where it goes past someone or or come
Speaker 1: forward to someone. It was pretty cool. Like the big
Speaker 1: grabbers grabbers. Yeah, now I have been grabbed by those.
Speaker 1: But then but then again, it's not a person grabbing you.
Speaker 1: It's a large inflatable puppet grabbing you. So it's it's
Speaker 1: a different thing and it's soft. Yeah, but even though
Speaker 1: the monsters cannot touch you, lots of things touch you
Speaker 1: in this particular hunt, right, the actors will not touch you,
Speaker 1: but the other things, like tentacles, I feel like they
Speaker 1: were baby dolls on strings. There were. They were large,
Speaker 1: inflatable black substances. So you're you feel like you're squeezing
Speaker 1: your way out of the belly of some humendous leviathan. Yes,
Speaker 1: which plays to our fear of small spaces, are in
Speaker 1: close spaces and custrophobia. They warn the heck out of
Speaker 1: you before you go into it. It's certainly not a
Speaker 1: place for the claustrophobic, for someone who is affected by
Speaker 1: strobe lights or or anything of that nature. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the walls that you kind of have to shimmy
Speaker 1: through actually does push back. So if someone were having
Speaker 1: a problem with that and they can shut it down
Speaker 1: at a moment's notice, Yeah, I think you move that
Speaker 1: wall straight act so um and actually I think that
Speaker 1: you yourself could do you just push it, But it
Speaker 1: looks like as though you know you have to show
Speaker 1: me through this little um bit of room here. So
Speaker 1: I did want to mention that probably one of the
Speaker 1: most grotesque aspects for me, at least when I was
Speaker 1: going through the Haunted house was the smells. Yeah, the smell.
Speaker 1: I asked Ben if he could give me a couple
Speaker 1: of examples of what they use, because of course, this
Speaker 1: is a huge mode of manipulation when it comes to
Speaker 1: us humans, and it's you and Ben Armstrong. You're in
Speaker 1: the middle of nether world prior to it opening. We
Speaker 1: go through the back where to this little room where
Speaker 1: he shows me where he's got all these sents that
Speaker 1: he can spray to freshen up, as he says, place. Um.
Speaker 1: He also had some devices that continuously emit orders. But um. Basically,
Speaker 1: he showed me a couple of his select odors and
Speaker 1: they were swamp, mildew, rotting vegetation, which I said, all
Speaker 1: of them. I said, Oh, that's that's not too bad.
Speaker 1: That's you know, I can live with that. And then
Speaker 1: he kind of went and he sprayed the hospital smell,
Speaker 1: and then I went, that's the worst, because it really
Speaker 1: does kind of get under your skin a little bit.
Speaker 1: And he said, oh, you think that's the worst. And
Speaker 1: that is when he doused the entire hall in a
Speaker 1: big spray of what is called circus animal and that
Speaker 1: sounds lovely, right, great, yeah, and you and you were like,
Speaker 1: I used to working at a big deal exactly. I
Speaker 1: was like, I can take that. What hit me in
Speaker 1: the face smelled like the anal glance of an elephant.
Speaker 1: It was probably the worst smell I've ever smelled in
Speaker 1: my life. Now, of course he doesn't humigate the place
Speaker 1: with that, but he just puts it in certain pockets
Speaker 1: and it gets to mellow a little bit. So I
Speaker 1: really had the more pungent experience. And it is still
Speaker 1: in my car and on my clothes and on my handbage.
Speaker 1: You held your handbag up for various co workers to
Speaker 1: smell this morning and I didn't wretched. So we I
Speaker 1: may need to get a new computer bag, but we'll see.
Speaker 1: But that is a huge part of it, because you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things I noticed is that when I
Speaker 1: smell that, the receptors on my tongue even were activated
Speaker 1: because I felt like it was in my mouth. And
Speaker 1: we have talked about this before that this is a
Speaker 1: huge warning system for our bodies that when we smell
Speaker 1: something that's disgusting or we taste it, we automatically recoil
Speaker 1: and our bodies tell us that there's something dangerous because
Speaker 1: it could be something putrid, something poisonous, something that's going
Speaker 1: to harmless in some way. And so the brain is saying,
Speaker 1: be wary of this. You can look into it, but
Speaker 1: know that it might kill you. And certainly we can
Speaker 1: grow accustomed to many foul odors. Is our brain gives
Speaker 1: us that chance to all right, check it out, and
Speaker 1: if you're comfortable with it, then we'll will allow you
Speaker 1: to not register it as much. But certainly you're not
Speaker 1: gonna have at that kind of time as you make
Speaker 1: your way through hunted attraction to grow accustomed to circus animals. No,
Speaker 1: you're not. You're just gonna like quoa. That's that's problematic.
Speaker 1: My body is telling me there's a problem here. So
Speaker 1: I thought that's kind of cool how they set the
Speaker 1: stage there in terms of how are manually manipulating your senses,
Speaker 1: but also they are psychologically manipulating. And this begins, uh
Speaker 1: at the very moment that you park your car and
Speaker 1: you get out of it. For some of us, it
Speaker 1: actually begins before you get there. I have to say,
Speaker 1: because not everyone goes to the trouble of reading the
Speaker 1: text on the website. But they do an awesome job
Speaker 1: every year. Just give you a little taste. There too,
Speaker 1: haunts each year at another world. This year it's Banshees
Speaker 1: and the high on Banshees. The cell is the ancient
Speaker 1: evil city of Ys has risen from the ocean off
Speaker 1: the coast of Ireland, bringing with it a plague of Banshees.
Speaker 1: These foul islets winged monstrosities feed on the darknergery of
Speaker 1: dying humans, seeking battlefields and natural disasters where life hangs
Speaker 1: in the balance. And then the Hive is really good
Speaker 1: because the cell On that is, during the height of
Speaker 1: the Cold War in nineteen sixty two, Robert Willington Hughes,
Speaker 1: a filthy rich genetics researcher, sealed up his staff and
Speaker 1: followers in an underground bunker called the Hive. So so
Speaker 1: if you if you do like me, and you go
Speaker 1: to the website first you get that in your hand,
Speaker 1: you're like, all right, giant insects, irish myths and Banshees.
Speaker 1: I can get into that. And then when you get there,
Speaker 1: you get your ticket, you get in line, and the
Speaker 1: monsters are prowling the parking lot. That's all right, And
Speaker 1: so they're beginning to tell that story that you are
Speaker 1: in fear or you're in danger, and you should be
Speaker 1: fearful of what's about to happen. And what I think
Speaker 1: is so interesting about frightening narratives, and we've talked about
Speaker 1: this with children too, is that it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: playing to this knowledge that at the end of the
Speaker 1: day we're all pretty much doomed. Life is fleeting, and
Speaker 1: yet you get to go through this exercise and storytelling
Speaker 1: and come out on the other end. Now, one of
Speaker 1: the things that I think is really great that they
Speaker 1: do is misdirection. This has a huge psychological impact. Yes,
Speaker 1: And actually I asked Ben I'm strong about misdirection when
Speaker 1: I went out to the Haunted Attraction, and this is
Speaker 1: what he had to say. Everything in here is very
Speaker 1: much like Slide of Man. You want to create a
Speaker 1: strong role, a sound effect to draw their attention than
Speaker 1: the creature can strike. You have to strike from multiple directions.
Speaker 1: We use things like camouflage suits or mirrors or darkness
Speaker 1: or special lighting tricks to conceal the actor. Sometimes the
Speaker 1: actors who have been in plain slide is the statue.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they're invisible in the environment so it's all about
Speaker 1: confusing you with visuals, with sounds, with everything anything we
Speaker 1: can employ to keep you, you know, unaware of the
Speaker 1: environments with the actually strike, that's what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's kind of like a card trick. It
Speaker 1: is a look over here because I'm doing something else
Speaker 1: over here. Be distracted by this grand movement because there's
Speaker 1: something sneaking up behind you. Uh, and it has the
Speaker 1: eyes of a monster something else they use as camouflage.
Speaker 1: And we've mentioned that before. And there's a great clip
Speaker 1: believe it's the Travel Channel that did a bit Another
Speaker 1: World and it shows a row of skeletons and you
Speaker 1: can see the people are moving through and they are
Speaker 1: perceiving this as one unit of just skeletons on the all.
Speaker 1: But of course there's an actor who is called a
Speaker 1: bone clone who comes jumping out at the passers by,
Speaker 1: and again it's playing with that idea of benign violation,
Speaker 1: but also playing with your mind's ability to perceive what
Speaker 1: is real and what is not real. Now you know
Speaker 1: you mentioned the bone clone jumping out. It's important to
Speaker 1: note that another key rule that's been is big on
Speaker 1: with his monsters, with the human human actors. Is that
Speaker 1: you have the monster jump out at you, certainly, but
Speaker 1: then they retreat away. Now part of that is of
Speaker 1: course not involved not touching the person, but also you
Speaker 1: need to get the once the shock has been made,
Speaker 1: you don't need the person analyzing the monster even in
Speaker 1: dim light. That's too. You know, less is more retreat,
Speaker 1: that's true because then your brain has more time to
Speaker 1: think about this. It's the benign part. It can bring
Speaker 1: it down and on what was that? What was going
Speaker 1: on there? You know, your minds still running with the questions.
Speaker 1: And I saw that too with the bungee stunts. The
Speaker 1: people whould come out on the bungee cords and return
Speaker 1: down at you from above and then retracting back into
Speaker 1: the darkness. So you talk about this fear factor, we
Speaker 1: should probably review the old a magdala when it comes
Speaker 1: to fear, because this is that almond shaped clump of
Speaker 1: neurons in your brain located front and center, and it
Speaker 1: is really vital for instantaneous emotional processing. So it's not
Speaker 1: just for fear too, it's also for love and pleasure.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to fear, if you have say
Speaker 1: Freddy coming at you, you think Freddy's coming at you,
Speaker 1: or you're another world and there's a glual coming at you.
Speaker 1: What is happening is that you're a magdala gets juiced.
Speaker 1: It unleashes your brain and embody energizing cocktail of hormones,
Speaker 1: and of course while this is happening, information is also
Speaker 1: traveling to your prefrontal cortex. This is the part of
Speaker 1: the brain that's really responsible for a consciously evaluating danger,
Speaker 1: and it tells you, hey, it's okay, this is just
Speaker 1: a person in a mask. So the problem, though or
Speaker 1: not sexually, it's not the problem is the catharsis um.
Speaker 1: It's actually the result is that you have all of
Speaker 1: these things going on in your body and has to
Speaker 1: come off of that fear high. And that's again where
Speaker 1: we're experiencing something really important in terms of acting at
Speaker 1: our own fears or going through the process. I found
Speaker 1: it interesting too that supposedly the whites of the eyes,
Speaker 1: the more of the whites of the eyes that is visible,
Speaker 1: even if the individuals wearing a mask, the more of
Speaker 1: the amigo kicks into action, because it's like, well, someone's
Speaker 1: coming out at me, wide eyed and crazy. I need
Speaker 1: to respond to it. Whereas if they're you know, their
Speaker 1: eyes are shut, then they're probably just gonna bump into you.
Speaker 1: And if they have kind of droopy, sleepy eyes and
Speaker 1: they're probably not that dangerous. They've actually there's been research
Speaker 1: on this before too. I believe there's a researcher who
Speaker 1: set up her own haunted house and did this with
Speaker 1: her her research students and tract the white of the
Speaker 1: eyes and the amount of fear that person perceived from
Speaker 1: what her actors, her ghouls were communicating to the people
Speaker 1: coming through the haunted house. All right, so here's one
Speaker 1: more clip from Ben Armstrong where I was at talking
Speaker 1: to him and asking him about the use of the
Speaker 1: five senses and whether he's really hitting all five senses,
Speaker 1: and he had to hit a pretty finances. Let's see,
Speaker 1: you can see it, you can hear it, you can
Speaker 1: feel it, you can smell it. We haven't had monsters
Speaker 1: you have that you're supposed to lick. That's about it.
Speaker 1: But you know what he gave me ideas maybe next year,
Speaker 1: So yeah, we'll we'll probably never get lickable monsters in
Speaker 1: the the haunted attractions, but it's it's a wonderful idea.
Speaker 1: It is a. It's a very interactive idea, and which
Speaker 1: kind of brings us to this idea of what the
Speaker 1: future of haunted houses might look like one day, especially
Speaker 1: if you melded the virtual reality technology. Yeah, to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, you see a lot of haunted house elements
Speaker 1: in some video games. I mean you have the whole
Speaker 1: survival horror um genre or subgenre of games, stuff like
Speaker 1: Resident Evil, Silent Hill Um, and then some sort of
Speaker 1: hybrid games in recent years like head Space, which is
Speaker 1: like a sci fi horror action but also a survival
Speaker 1: are kind of product. And these will typically also some
Speaker 1: of the Doom games fit into this area. You're inevitably
Speaker 1: going through cramped hallways that are dark and dimly lit.
Speaker 1: They'll be like a sparking fuse box on one wall,
Speaker 1: and then something will jump out of you from the side.
Speaker 1: They can't hit you on all the sensors, certainly, but
Speaker 1: they can, you know, they can make the controller vibrate
Speaker 1: in your hands. They can do stuff with with with
Speaker 1: your site, and they can do stuff with sound, and
Speaker 1: like I said, do a limited extent, they're experimenting with
Speaker 1: the haunted attraction area. Yeah, And when I talked to
Speaker 1: Ben Armstrong about this. He said that of course, as
Speaker 1: as different technologies come online, they'll be interested in that.
Speaker 1: But he said that core to the experience to their
Speaker 1: haunted house is the fact that you have actors and
Speaker 1: they are really uh sort of underscoring this play between
Speaker 1: real and not real, and that having the actors makes
Speaker 1: it a much more immersive experience. So even if we
Speaker 1: were to get to the point five ten years from now,
Speaker 1: putting Google Classes on, Google Vision on and walking through
Speaker 1: a haunted house, you would still want to have that
Speaker 1: live person element um because without it it's not quite
Speaker 1: as immersive. It is interesting that you mentioned the virtual
Speaker 1: reality augmented reality goggles and how that could be used
Speaker 1: for haunted attraction, because you can imagine a future where
Speaker 1: instead of going to a haunted house, you get these goggles,
Speaker 1: you put them on, you go through your own house,
Speaker 1: and it creates these virtual frights in the area around you. Certainly,
Speaker 1: any of the virtual reality, dream augmentation, dream control technology
Speaker 1: that we've discussed in previous episodes, pretty much all that
Speaker 1: could conceivably get a horror or a haunted house twist
Speaker 1: to it. You know, I can imagine some far future
Speaker 1: where someone had would have the option of dialing up
Speaker 1: a nightmare yeah, or having some sorts of um specter
Speaker 1: projected onto contact lenses that they're wearing. So I mean,
Speaker 1: really every day could be Halloween. Yeah, all right, So
Speaker 1: there you go, Haunted Houses once again. Big thanks to
Speaker 1: another World Haunted House and specifically been Armstrong for taking
Speaker 1: the time to chat with me, to spray Julie down
Speaker 1: with animal sense, and you know, just for sharing his
Speaker 1: enthusiasm for Halloween and for haunted attractions with us and
Speaker 1: with you guys. And again, if you want to check
Speaker 1: out their website, go to www dot fear world dot
Speaker 1: com And if you live anywhere in the Atlanta area,
Speaker 1: go check it out. It's a great attraction and it's
Speaker 1: open generally through all of October but then also into
Speaker 1: the first week of November as well to get that
Speaker 1: that Halloween hangover crowd. Yeah. I also wanted to mention
Speaker 1: to you that Ben is really steeped in mythology and
Speaker 1: this is what you can tell. This is an act
Speaker 1: of love for him every single year. And I did
Speaker 1: ask him what some of his influences are and he
Speaker 1: talked about an economicon um as being early influences, an
Speaker 1: alien also as a teenager, so you can you really
Speaker 1: do see a lot of that, his worldview, his influences
Speaker 1: in the attraction. Yeah, you mentioned Pumpkinhead when I talked
Speaker 1: to him, he's he's not a guy who's doing it
Speaker 1: just to make a buck. Because every year you see
Speaker 1: haunted houses pop up in any large metropolitan area. Some
Speaker 1: of them last years, some of them last two years.
Speaker 1: But it's hard work. It's a year round thing that
Speaker 1: these guys engage in. So the mere fact that these
Speaker 1: guys have been doing it strong for sixteen years, let
Speaker 1: you know that they're they're doing it right, and they're
Speaker 1: doing it because they love it indeed. Yeah, alright, so
Speaker 1: let's see. Do we have time for a listener mail
Speaker 1: or should I send the robot away? All right, robot,
Speaker 1: you can come here with a short one, just a
Speaker 1: short one, all right. Here we have one from our listener, Emily.
Speaker 1: Emily writes in this is high, Robert and Julie. I
Speaker 1: was listening to your episode about cats, and when you
Speaker 1: mentioned purring, it reminded me that there is a song
Speaker 1: by Arteker called gail or d a y L. Who
Speaker 1: knows how you pronounced any of their their tracks, which
Speaker 1: features a sound that always makes me think of a
Speaker 1: purring kitten. Uh So check that out. You can find
Speaker 1: that clips of that online. D a E hell, and
Speaker 1: it does kind of sound like a purring cat trying
Speaker 1: to perhaps manipulate the listeners. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know I've heard some tracks where people actually throw
Speaker 1: in purring noises before, but this isn't one. It's more
Speaker 1: of a mechanical thing that sounds like a kitten purring.
Speaker 1: And then we also heard from Adam. Adam writs in
Speaker 1: and says I wanted to thank you guys through excellent
Speaker 1: episode on the Amazing Mind of infants. As a recently
Speaker 1: new Father nine twelve twelve, I found this topic to
Speaker 1: be thoroughly entertaining and informative. Watching my little dude gaze
Speaker 1: about the world won't be the same. I will be
Speaker 1: thinking about how he is absorbing all sorts of sensory
Speaker 1: information simultaneously wondering why a blurry alien figure keeps snuggling
Speaker 1: hovering over him. Thanks for the magnificent episode, Adam. That's awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he's referring to this theory that's out there. It's
Speaker 1: a little bit wild, but that the fact that um
Speaker 1: infants don't quite have everything sorted out in their eyesight,
Speaker 1: that they're seeing a vision of us that would resemble
Speaker 1: an alien. Yeah, it's pretty creating over there alright. Well, So,
Speaker 1: if you guys would like to check in with us,
Speaker 1: especially if you want to share your thoughts on the
Speaker 1: science of haunted houses, haunted attractions, let us know which
Speaker 1: ones you've really enjoyed, your earliest experience with with with them,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Uh, get in touch with us. You can
Speaker 1: find us on Tumbling and you can find us on Facebook.
Speaker 1: We are stuff to blow your mind on both of those,
Speaker 1: and you can also find us on Twitter, where we
Speaker 1: tweet under the handle blow the Mind. And you can
Speaker 1: also drop us a line at blew the Mind at
Speaker 1: discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of
Speaker 1: other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com