The chains rattle, letting me know that a new group of victims has entered the room next door. Everyone rushes to their places: the possessed woman holding a beheaded baby leaps onto the mattress; a one-eyed priest clutches a bible and stands at the foot of the bed; I crouch near the entrance to the room, holding my knees and rocking back and forth in a blood-splattered nightgown.
“Oh shit,” someone says as they see me slowly lift my head, a bloody, glowing pentagram etched into my face. I start screaming wildly, a woman possessed, as the group of three hurry past me, on the verge of hysterics.
But wait just a second. How did I, a food and beverage journalist, weasel my way into the cast of characters scaring the shit out of people at New York’s infamous haunted house, Blood Manor? Let me start from the beginning.
It’s 6 p.m. on a Friday night, two weeks before Halloween. I have instructions to call Nick when I arrive, who unlocks the front door and leads me into the Tribeca space. I ask him how long it takes to decorate the haunted house each season. “Oh, we have this space year round,” he says. “In the off-season, that’s when we come in and make repairs, refresh everything and create some new scares.”
While you can simply buy a ticket to walk through Blood Manor’s two floors of gory, twisted scenes, you can also pay $350 to have your makeup done professionally, borrow a costume and become part of the cast for the night. As someone who loves haunted houses, scary movies and Halloween in general, I knew I had to try it out. Blood Manor calls it the Scare Actor Academy Experience.
Nick takes me through every room so I can decide where I want to be stationed. The second floor is all black light with 3D paint, so scary clowns and the like pop out at you when you walk through wearing those little paper glasses. But I’m way more interested in the gore floor — by the freezer where gutted animals and corpses hang from the ceiling, and the morgue where rubber organs are the decor du jour. “That autopsy table is real,” Nick says as he points to a blood-splattered metal table. “Real autopsies were actually done on that.”
Although I’m giddy over the idea of this authentic piece of equipment, what really makes me swoon is the possession room. There’s an antique bed set up next to an empty crib. An old radio stands in the corner, strewn with cobwebs and a lifeless baby doll slumped on top. In fact, there are baby dolls all over the room — hanging by their necks from the ceiling, a dirty Raggety Ann with a crazed smile sitting on a side table, a zombie newborn swaddled in an antique pram covered in cobwebs.
“This is my room,” I tell Nick as I start to think of my character.
With my post locked in, Nick takes me downstairs to the makeup and costume area. What a scene! The room is filled with actors, having a bite to eat, bopping to music on their headphones or chatting with other cast members. There’s a guy in blood-splattered overalls nibbling a cookie and checking his phone. An undead woman in a lace dress holding two bloody knives. Opera singers with makeup that’s mimicking slit throats are warming up in the corner.
Nick leads me over to wardrobe. “She’s in possession,” he tells assistant director Janelle Mercado, who hands me a blood-splattered nightgown with a few patches of safety pins that keep small rips in check. I change into it in one of the dressing rooms, but there’s a large hole exposing my backside. Janelle hands me a black and white striped shirt and a pair of boxer shorts. “Wear these while we fix the nightgown,” she says.
She walks over to a woman sitting at a sewing machine who’s splattered in blood and wearing creepy white contacts. “I’ll sew this right up for you!” she says.
While wardrobe is working on my costume, Janelle leads me to makeup, where I meet makeup director Bri Levy. Bri has been working with Blood Manor for nine years. I tell them I’m going to be in possession, and they get to work. “Would you be cool with a pentagram on your face?” they ask. “I know that’s a no-no for some.” I very enthusiastically say that I would love a pentagram on my face.
Bri paints my face white to give me a ghostly appearance then adds red and black accents to make me look bloody and sallow. They also use an airbrush tool to blend the color around my jawline, then use a paintbrush to spatter my neck, chest and hands with fake blood. When the look is complete, we move over to the blacklight makeup room so Bri can add some special paint to the pentagram to make it glow when the strobes go off.
I’m already getting into character, channeling Edgar’s twitch from Men in Black — but instead of an alien controlling me, it’s Satan. Bri wants a video of the final look, so I grip the arms of the makeup chair and rock back and forth, eyes rolled in the back of my head, saying “mommy” over and over again in a guttural voice. “‘Mommy’ is crazy,” Bri laughs as they take a video of their incredibly scary and skillful work.
Finally, it’s time. Janelle takes me into the possession room, where a woman in a white nightgown and white contacts is writhing on the bed, a baby doll head in her hand. Standing at her feet is a priest wearing an eye patch, holding a cross and a bible, praying to God to help this Satanic woman. Before I’m able to introduce myself, those chains rattle, signaling that the next batch of guests will be walking through the room in about 20 seconds. I stand in the corner, writhing and screaming, until I get my bearings and come up with a routine. There’s a small space to hide behind the bed, so I crouch low and run out at people just when they think there’s nothing else in that room that can scare them.
There’s a break in guests, and I meet the two possession-room actors. They’ve both been at Blood Manor for several seasons and “love it.” After a few more rounds of people, Nick comes through, wearing a clown murderer-type mask. “You need to keep people in this room a little longer,” he tells us. “They’re moving too fast, and it’s creating a traffic jam.”
I move to the entrance of the room to slow people down before they hit the bed scene. There’s a small hallway there, so I crouch low every time I hear the chains, rocking back and forth as people first enter the room. About half of the people freak out when they see what my face looks like, while the other half laugh in delight (I am typically in this latter camp when walking through a haunted house). One group of girls is almost in tears when they see me, timidly asking if they can pass. This is probably the most pleasing moment of the whole evening, knowing that my character is likely going to give someone nightmares.
As people walk through the room, the other possessed woman asks them if they’d like to touch her beautiful baby, which is just a severed doll head. The priest stands limp in the corner until people try to exit, when he pops up and yells, “She’s lying! She killed that baby.” At this point I’ve stood up and am silently standing behind the guests moving through the room. They jump when they realize I’m lurking.
If you pay to be a guest actor at Blood Manor, you’re welcome to stay until the doors close. I told Janelle to come and get me after 90 minutes. After seeing a few of my scares before leading me out of the room, she says, “Do you want a job? I’m not actually kidding.”
I feel. So validated.
Back in the actors’ room, Bri hands me a pack of micellar wipes to remove my makeup. I ask what time the makeup artists start getting actors ready. “Around 3:30 p.m.,” they tell me. “And on really busy nights, we have two shifts of actors, so we’re doing double the makeup.”
As I walk out into the cool evening air, one of the owners is sitting out front. “Did you love it?” he asks. “Did you get out some rage?”
“I’ll be honest,” I say. “I woke up a little depressed this morning, and now I feel completely better.” It’s true — I was energized and felt lighter, like the weight of the week had been lifted. Usually all it takes is a cold Martini, but dare I say that scaring the shit out of people just might be the best medicine.
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