On a recent Sunday evening, I drove over to an eerily empty office park to participate in a medical experiment. When I got to the door of the clinic, I was greeted by an enthusiastic nurse, who told me that I was about to be dosed with a powerful drug called “Aurora.”
“Isn’t that such a wonderful name?!,” Nurse Lillian caclkes. “Oh, it’s my most favorite name of all time! It makes you faster, stronger, and smarter than ever before.”
The nurse’s, um, enthusiasm, was unnerving. But before I could turn back, I found myself being ushered through the door of a tent with my fellow patients.
Right away, we could tell that something wasn’t right. We were surrounded by tables strewn with disembodied limbs. Dissonant sounds and muffled screams reverberated behind the hallway walls. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, wild-haired figures in surgical gowns jumped out at us and shrieks.
“OK, OK,” I say.
After that, my sense of reality began to disintegrate. A woman in a bone mask appeared, urging us to be calm as our souls left our bodies.
“It’s all part of the process, baby!” a bone lady cackles.
Before long, I was face to face with a roaring demon.
Fear not, dear listener. I successfully escaped this hellmouth. I’d love to tell you it was thanks to my courage and bravery, but the actual reason is that none of it was real.
The whole thing was an immersive live performance called “The Mill of Madness.” Creator Ryan Barney refers to as a “haunt.”
I invited Barney to the studio to tell me about the process of pulling off an effective scare — which starts, he told me, with casting.
Full conversation
RYAN BARNEY: The guys that I find, a lot of them are, are theater students in the colleges. Some are just veteran haunters; friends, family, people who just love to scare people.
DINGMAN: Tell me a little bit about that. I'm really fascinated by that formulation you just used, people who love to scare people. What does that kind of person mean to you? Because I could imagine somebody hearing that and imagining like their annoying uncle from when they were a kid who's always like jumping out from behind something and terrifying them or something like that.
BARNEY: That's me. So I look for somebody who's like me. So my, my staff will tell you, if I hear that somebody is in the bathroom, I put my phone on silent. I creep down low, because there's certain ways to do it, right. I'm a tall, big guy. So I come right at the door knob, they open the door knob of the bathroom. I jump out and scare them every time, every single time. They even know it's coming. and I scare them every time. So those are the kind I look for, somebody just like me who just really gets joy out of seeing everybody scream.
And a short story. I, my sister came in, she, she also works with me. She's on the production staff. She came in on a Saturday, and she was doing some extra work. So no one was supposed to be there, and I happened to have the security camera still on. So I could see that it was only her, she was in a certain area.
So I came in, opened the door, and I made just a little bit of noise for her to go ahead and see if anybody had come in, and I had threw a magazine on the ground, and she heard that and then I came around the corner. I have it on video because the security, security cameras are there. It is the best scare that I have had. And she's like, there was, there was, there was a slight bit of crying, you know, there and before she got composed.
DINGMAN: So what do you like about doing that? What, what, what brings you joy about that?
BARNEY: That's a really good question. I think it's the laughter afterward, you know, it's the shock. But then knowing that it's OK. I've always liked that, you know, get your heart pumping, nobody's hurt, nobody's, you know, there's no real issue. But I don't know, it just brings joy to see people, you know, get entertained.
And then most of the time, you know, the, I very, very rarely do. I have somebody who's like angry with me afterward. So it's a good little moment to like laugh and say, “man, you got me again.”
DINGMAN: You know, as you were telling that story about your sister, I thought about this experience I had in college where my two friends who lived across the hall, these are some of my closest friends. They snuck into, I had a single dorm room, and they snuck into my closet, unbeknownst to me, they snuck into my closet and they hid and they waited until I turned the lights out and climbed into bed. And then they waited and then they opened the door and said, “good night, Sam.”
And I shrieked. But like in the moment of shrieking, I was like, oh, that's Mac, that's Mac's voice. I know Mac's voice. And to your point, I don't even know why I did it because I was so furious at him. I laughed so hard afterwards.
And there was something about it that was like, it was so funny because I thought I was in so much danger and actually I was so safe because he never would do anything to hurt me. I'm just realizing this in real time as you're talking about this.
BARNEY: I think a lot of it is the control dynamic, too, right? As I'm scaring you, I'm in control. But I'm not in a, in a in control, in an awkward way. And then you're submitting to that control for that moment and then we're regaining it in a safe way that makes it kind of fun.
DINGMAN: And of course, somebody is choosing to have this experience, right? So I'm, by coming to one of your experiences, I am, I'm handing you the keys to my trust.
What do you think it is about people that we want this kind of experience, as distinct from, say, you know, I think there's been a lot of discussion about why people like horror movies. But this is different, you know, because you're really there, you're really in the space, even though as we were just saying, you know, you're safe, you are really exposing yourself to something happening in your physical proximity. What do you think draws people to that?
BARNEY: I think that people are looking for something more real and that may seem kind of odd considering it's a haunt and, and everything is fake, right? But it's a real experience. We have Hollywood spending millions of dollars on films that some of them are not doing very well. And I think because visually, we're looking for something more, we, we know that it was all done on a computer and it doesn't, it doesn't get to us.
And I think that people are drawn to this, that want a real experience and to have that real adrenaline rush, still knowing they're gonna be safe, the feelings are real and I think that's what they're looking for.
DINGMAN: So, as a storyteller, how do you think about generating that feeling when you're building and designing the story?
BARNEY: I think it's the emotional ups and downs. So I don't want it just to be scary or jump the entire way. I want you to feel a little uncomfortable here. Then I want you to feel scared here. I want you to feel panic, and then I want to give you relief.
And so our, our first I guess you could call it act, it ends very, very intense as in there's a special effects show with waterworks and, and, and geysers and there's zombies kind of surrounding you. And you feel like this utter panic, and then you're saved by somebody and then it calms down some. And then it will build again and then you start to lose your mind.
So my style is to have you go through that emotional roller coaster and that is what, what keeps you, you know, is it gonna be scary? Am I, is it gonna be emotional? Is it, you know, what is gonna happen? And, and that ups and downs I think is what, what makes it strong.
DINGMAN: You know, it just occurred to me you were talking about the appeal of something like this being, we can tell when something's not real, and we want to have an experience that's real. But the life experience that you're simulating in this is people losing their grip on reality.
And that, that seems like kind of a core in your formulation or framing that seems like kind of a core anxiety that people are walking around with it. Is like, is, is this real like, is this actually happening?
BARNEY: Well, you, you lost your control, right? And I think that's everybody's biggest fear is losing control. And losing control of your mind that what, what's scarier than that? And so you're voluntarily giving up that control to have that experience. And I think that's what, what's, what, what works.
