A man in a white lab coat, his face covered in blood, approached a woman in the front of the Calvert Theater in Lompoc.
“I understand you have the body parts?” he asked, and that’s when my inner chicken went “ba-gok!”
This was supposed to be the preview of the latest Cirque du Mort production, a circus-themed fundraiser for the theater renovation. Body parts? What the heck are body parts doing in a circus?
The woman was Stephanie Burleigh of Lompoc Civic Theatre, part of the group putting on the haunted house. She briefed me on what to expect, as I would be part of the test group previewing the event before it opened on Oct. 15. The briefing was just that— brief—and I got the feeling I wasn’t supposed to know much about it before going in.
I did know this: The storyline behind Cirque du Mort is that a gypsy was hired by the circus to bring in business, but when that failed, they fired her. Jilted, the gypsy cursed the circus, forcing the performers to put on a show for eternity. Then the gypsy died, killing any chance of reversing the curse.
Got it. But were scary monsters going to jump out at me, causing me to scream like a little girl? I grew up in a family totally enthralled and amused by the macabre. Our “family trip” is an annual trek to Universal Studios Horror Nights. Somehow, all these years, I’ve managed to skip out on both. And I absolutely don’t do haunted houses.
I couldn’t believe how scared I felt. Logically, I knew that my anticipation was making it that much scarier. So I rationalized: “I just witnessed all the actors, in costume, walking in and out of the theater during setup. They are the same people who will be inside the haunted house. So why am I scared?”
Then my husband Ron replied, “Because it’s going to be scary as hell.”
When it came time to enter, I somehow ended up at the front of my group. We traveled the dark maze, Ron pushing me forward, bodies dropping on the tarped ceiling above us, clowns harassing us. We turned one corner, and Ron bent toward a sitting clown and uttered a phrase from Stephen King’s movie It: “They all float down here.” He said it in a spooky voice, only to have it echo from the clown who burst out from the blackness behind him, causing him to shout.
Back outside in the lobby, I caught my breath and had a quick chat with the cast.
Rob Hall, of the Penguins Renaissance guild, reassured me behind his evil clown costume that the cast even scares itself.
“Especially being a clown,” he said. “It’s scary in there.”
Then he looked around, put his hand to his mouth, and leaned toward us: “There was this guy in there that was walking by, and he said ‘They all float down here,’ and I jumped out behind him and said, ‘Yeah, they all float down here!’ It was perfect timing.”
Then he broke into hearty laughter.
That’s the upside for the actors. As a performer, it’s pleasing to know you’ve done your job and prompted the reaction you were going for. And no one articulated that pleasure better than Death.
“When people start falling over each other and stumbling, it’s awesome to be scaring them that badly,” Death said matter of factly.
An almost 7-foot pillar of faceless blackness, Death stood in the historic lobby and calmly talked about the satisfaction he gets from a job well done.
“When you get groups of girls, and they are screaming and jumping and grabbing at each other, that’s when you know you’ve got a big scare, and it’s a really good feeling,” he said.
This is the second year the group is putting on the haunted house. With help from members of the 576 Flight Test Squadron at Vandenberg Air Force Base, students from Cabrillo and Lompoc high schools, the Lompoc Housing Development Corporation, and the Renaissance guild, they hope to have learned from last year’s haunted house to make this year’s event even better.
“Last year, we had lines so long there was an hour and a half wait, but people waited,” Burleigh said, “and many came back multiple times.”
Confident that this year will be even better, the cast has been planning since April and actually working on building the set since June. And though everyone involved is having a great time putting the scare into visitors, the production is primarily to raise funds for the renovation of the landmark theater.
But yeah, it’s pretty scary, too.
“This year’s theme plays on phobias,” Hall said. “Snakes, clowns, loud noises, spiders—there’s going to be something that freaks you out.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone hates things that go bump in the night. Say “boo” at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Oct 15-22, 2009.