I daresay that October is the favorite month of the year for most horror fans out there. The Halloween items start showing up in the supermarket, cable channels are playing horror movie marathons; all of the sudden, it’s appropriate to dress up in a scary costume; and there’s always the knowledge that you will soon be treated to all of the free candy that you can handle. However, here in Utah, October is when the haunted attractions open their doors with the sole mission of scaring its visitors. As I’ve said, Utah has a tradition of supplying the best haunted attractions in the nation. I had the pleasure of visiting one such haunted attraction earlier this week.
On the corner of 3rd west and 13th south, one such destination is lighting up the night sky with a spotlight with the intention of attracting all within its view to come and be scared. The Nightmare on 13th definitely has an ominous look to it. It has the façade of an ancient castle featuring an animatronic headless-horseman at the entrance as if to greet all of its guests. The sounds of Halloween are all around and there are a number of monsters creeping around entertaining those waiting in line.
I had the pleasure of meeting with Troy Barber, one of the owners of The Nightmare on 13th, and he was kind enough to answer some questions for me:
Mike: What do you do here at The Nightmare on 13th?
Troy: I’m one of the owners; I and a partner have done this for 20 years.
Mike: Yeah, I know that this attraction has been here for quite a long time. Have you been one of the owners from the beginning?
Troy: Yep, my friend and I graduated from college in 1990 and he took a job that he didn’t like. He called me up and said to find something for us to do because he quit his job. I opened the newspaper and saw in the classifieds that someone was selling some haunted house props and I thought that we could do this for a month. Well, 20 years later, we’re still here.
Mike: So, you didn’t intend for this to be a permanent deal?
Troy: No!
Mike: You have been around for how long?
Troy: This is our 20th season, so we’ve been around for 19 years and we’ve been in this building for 19 of those seasons. Seems like forever!
Mike: I’ve been here myself over the years what seems like 100 times but was really probably around 30 times.
Troy: That’s cool! I appreciate the business!
Mike: How has it changed over the years?
Troy: Generally speaking when we first began, it was about actors, costumes, darkness, that kind of thing. It’s just gotten much more technical. You know, from animatronics to just every kind of new products. We go to conventions every year check them out, test them, and then buy them. We also make a lot of our own items.
Mike: So, there are actually conventions for this kind of thing?
Troy: Oh yeah… So, we’re always on the cutting edge. It has really changed enormously over the years. The thing is that you still need actors, good scary people. So, that will never change, but yeah… it’s a lot different.
Mike: What kind of construction has there been? Has there been a lot?
Troy: What happened here, three seasons ago, we used to rent a large portion of this building to someone, but we took it back so that we could handle bigger crowds. We built this whole addition. So now we sell tickets in a different place. We have a whole new area to hold people. The haunted attraction is all on the east side of the building. But, there is a lot of heavy duty construction that is done every year. We are committed to changing 1/3 of this place every year. So, our customers know that if they come every year, they will see big changes. If they only make it every 3 years, they’ll see a whole new attraction!
Mike: So, how do you guys find your actors?
Troy: The actors aren’t hard to find. This year, I interviewed over 300 people for 30 positions. So, they’re not hard to find, but finding good actors can be hard.
Mike: What are some of the things you look for when trying to pick out a good actor?
Troy: It’s more of an art than a science really. You’re looking for someone who obviously has the time, whose day job won’t interfere. You’re also looking for creative; kind of wacky people… you know, just the right mix. Having done this for 20 years, you just can tell. They have to be kind of tough too. We can see soft people coming. They really want to do it, but they can only take it for a couple of days.
Mike: Why do you think that is?
Troy: It’s just a hard job. You’re on your feet for 3-5 hours a night, it’s not temperature controlled in there. It can get very cold or even very hot.
Mike: As I was looking online and doing some research on your attraction, I saw many pictures of your actors in make-up. They were all very scary. It seemed like you have a great make-up department. How do you guys handle the make-up?
Troy: We’ve got a guy right now that we’ve had for a couple of years. We actually brought him over from Rocky Point Haunted House when it closed. He does a great job for us. We’re always trying to make it better. We’ve built individual make-up stations and dressing rooms.
Mike: Do you have all of the costumes here?
Troy: Yeah, we have everything for the actors here. Upstairs is our make-up area. Everybody checks their costumes out and checks them in at the end of the night. We’ve got 5 or 6 make-up artists that take care of our actors.
Mike: What do you think sets you apart from other haunted attractions?
Troy: Well, we have our Nightmare Theater that introduces our attraction. We also travel the nation to compare ourselves to other haunted houses. We’ve probably been to 35-40 haunted houses. We don’t just go to any haunted house; we only go to the best ones.
Mike: How do you feel you stack up to those guys?
Troy: Obviously we like our place, but I’ve only seen two haunted houses that compare to ours: one in Atlanta Georgia and one in St. Louis.
Mike: I remember that before Rocky Point Haunted House shut down, we would go to that one and Nightmare on 13th on the same night. Were we just spoiled to get to two great haunted houses right in a row?
Troy: You were spoiled! To go to this haunted house and Rocky Point in the same night is the equivalent to seeing the Eiffel Tower and another wonder of the world in the same night! What happened was that we drove each other to what we became. We both started in the early nineties and really drove each other to get better. We were in it to make the product better. Nightmare and Rocky Point were like Coke vs. Pepsi for many years. As we went to other places in the country we just thought to ourselves that the people in Utah just didn’t know how good they had it! They’re seeing probably the two best haunted houses in the world and they’re in the same town!
Mike: So, do you enjoying doing what you do?
Troy: Yeah, it’s pretty tough not to love this. For six weeks a year, I’m the most popular guy in town.
Mike: What do you do with the building in the off-season?
Troy: We’re working on this year-round, always focusing on making it better. It’s kind of a dream-come-true in a lot of ways because we get to do something that we enjoy and have fun with. There is probably more work to this than most people realize, but it is fun work.
Troy also pointed out the fact that they have been featured on the Travel Channel, USA Today, and Haunted Attraction Magazine.
I then had the opportunity to actually experience the attraction itself. It began by a visit to the Nightmare Theater where some notable horror characters entertained the folks waiting in the line. It was much more than just that actually. We were treated to a short story enacted by animatronic characters. As the program was playing, I noticed that everyone in the room was paying close attention. I found this notable since it had been my experience in most of the haunted houses that you’re going to have people in line, there to act “cool” and not get into what was going on around them. This was not the case in this room. There was a stage with props that played into the story. It was easy to see, to spite the fact that everybody was standing in a winding line, because each wind of the line was on a different level granting everybody an easy view of the stage.
When the show was finished (it plays in a looping fashion intended to give everybody that comes through the line one full viewing), I found myself at the beginning of the line ready to enter the dark attraction. I didn’t realize it at this point, but I was in for quite a scary experience.
The first observation that I made was of the high-quality scenarios that were presented. As one walks through the attraction, they are treated to many different areas with different themes. Some of these themes were vampire dens, the lair of spiders, wolves in the chicken coop, the psycho ward, and the crazy clown trip. This is a small list of areas and themes that were presented on my walk through the attraction. It was obvious that there was a lot of work and planning that went into each area that I visited. Like in a well-crafted horror movie, each area did a great job of heightening the suspense before delivering the scares. I found myself constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure that I wasn’t being followed. The animatronics were great (not to give too much away, but there was a particular werewolf that made me scream, which, in turn, garnered me a few strange looks from other customers). The costumes and make-up effects were also of very high quality.
The haunted house did a great job of setting a mood and atmosphere that was very enjoyable. The only criticism that I have would be the fact that every once in a while, I would catch an actor out of character. There was also my experience with an actor, dressed like a clown who actually belched and blew it in my face… which I wasn’t very happy with. However, it could be argued that in a world of crazy clowns, that would be considered normal behavior!
All in all, it was a great experience and I definitely had a great time. So great, in fact, that I’m going to make sure to bring my wife and friends later in the month so they can experience this for themselves.
Let’s review:
The Good:
-Awesome atmosphere from beginning until the end.
-The Nightmare Theater treats the audience to a very interesting and creepy show even before they enter the haunted house itself.
-Top-Notch effects, animatronics, make-up, costumes, and scene dressings.
-Atmosphere can’t be beat. From areas of pure darkness, to scenes dressed up to the hilt, it was like being part of a horror film.
The Bad
-There is really nothing to complain about apart from a few actors being caught out of character.
I wanted to make sure to thank Troy and his hospitality during my visit to The Nightmare on 13th. All in all, this was a great experience for me all the way around. Everything from going to the Nightmare Theater, to walking through the attraction, to visiting with Troy was top-notch.
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