Designing for Fright: The Pickel Theory

April 16th, 2011

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by Leonard Pickel

One day, long before computer aided drafting, I was staring at a blank sheet of drafting paper that would eventually become a detailed floor plan of my next Haunted Attraction. Debating over where to begin, I pondered over what it was exactly that I was trying to do with the dark amusement. It is easy to say that I want to scare the living breath out of everyone who goes through it, but just how was I going to accomplish that? What was the process required to elevate my patrons to that level of terror? I had the final goal well defined, but to reach that goal I needed a plan; a road map to keep me focused in the right direction. With a plan, I would be able to make the correct decision. Every time I came to a fork in the road this plan would dictate, without any doubt, which path I should take. I needed a written reasoning behind what I was doing. I needed a “Fright Theory!” With a theory behind what I was doing I could stay on path and get to my goal sooner with no side tracks.

Goal: Scare The Yell Out Of People!

People come to an October seasonal Haunted Attraction for one reason; to get the adrenaline rush that occurs when someone scares the heck out of them. The more scares and the more intense they are the better they like it. But how do we do that? What does it take to scare our target market; the 13 to 30-year-old thrill seeker? One of my favorite quotes is by Stephen King, who defines fear as, “A cold touch in the mitts of the most familiar… applied with a sudden pressure!” It was this statement that I took as the basis for my theory.

The best thing that a Haunted Attraction experience has going for it is control. More than any other entertainment medium, when a patron enters a Haunt they turn over almost total control to the attraction’s designer. We control lighting, setting, mood and flow. Patrons quite literally place their lives in our hands for the time they are in the attraction, and as Haunt designers we take every advantage of that. Losing this control of their environment is frightening in and of itself and is all it takes to scare some people. On the other hand, some people are impossible to scare. So our job as Haunt designers is to make sure our attractions are entertaining enough so even those few enjoy the experience. Watching their friends or dates being frightened provides some entertainment, but the best way to entertain someone is to tell them a story.

Storytelling

Since different things scare different people it can be very tempting to use disjointed scenes pulled from various movies or television shows all in the same attraction. Many of the Haunts I visit each October consist of a hodgepodge of unrelated rooms and scenes that do not fit together in time period, mood or setting, much less a coherent storyline. Now, it is quite possible to develop a storyline wherein it is completely logical for Frankenstein to be next to the Queen from the movie Aliens. But if the storyline does not explain how this is possible, do not put them in the same Haunt. This is another great reason for the multi-element approach to Haunting. If you think Aliens and man-made monsters are scary, now you can have an Aliens-themed attraction and a separate Frankenstein-themed Haunt, but that is another article!

I believe very strongly that a Haunted Attraction experience should be a movie that you walk through. If that is true, then everything begins with the story we are trying to tell. Another Stephen King quote is, “A house cannot be Haunted unless it has a history!” What is the history behind your attractions? Why are they Haunted? What are they Haunted by? All of these questions and more should be answered by your storyline.

As you develop your storyline, you will create new and interesting characters of your own. No need to borrow movie characters that are the intellectual property of someone else. Each character should have an in-depth personal history. The interaction of these histories at the same place and time create the structure for your storyline.

Once you have you storyline and character histories completed, be sure to put them on your website in great detail. Get people interested in the story you are trying to tell and make people want to come to your event to see what happens next.

A Cold Touch

With a well thought out storyline, you now have a roadmap on which you will travel, taking your patrons along for the ride. With a storyline you will know whether to buy the really cool animatronic prop of the year, or not. Does the prop fit the theme of the attraction? Does it fit the timeframe? Does it fit the setting? Does it help me tell the story? If the answer is no, then look for something else that will.

With a storyline as our guide, we can focus on how we tell the story. The setting is very important to the story and to the basic pieces of our Fright Theory. A spooky setting is where we get the “cold touch.”. Where does the story take place, and how can we convey that in the real world? We set the mood of a space with lighting and soundscape. In Haunt lighting, less is more and darkness is our friend. Fear of the dark is the most common phobia, but people are not really afraid of the dark. They are afraid of what might be hiding in the dark! Use that to your advantage and control the patron’s attention by lighting only what you want people to focus on. Use darkness, harsh shadows, unnatural lighting and sound effects to make patrons believe there are unimaginable creatures lurking just out of sight.

The best movie soundtrack is one that heightens the experience but is not overbearing. The best movie scores are those that you never notice except at the introduction and credits. Likewise, a Haunted Attraction soundscape should be felt but not really heard, at least not consciously. My personal preference for background sound in a Haunted Attraction is spooking music with a pounding, heart-racing beat. The periodic sound of distant screams from a group of people will heighten the fear factor of the attraction even on slow nights. By placing the speakers near where the scares occur, you can simulate the effect used by movie scores building a crescendo in the music just before the startle. Garish off-key music taps into the patrons’ uneasiness, as does off-speed recordings, like an old record player. Even the sudden stopping of the soundtrack can stop patrons in their tracks, wondering what happened.

In The Midst Of The Most Familiar

In the theatrical world, there is an age-old discussion about the “suspension of disbelief.” When do patrons forget that they are experiencing a “show” and believe that they are in fact living the experience? This suspension of reality is much easier to create in a Haunted Attraction than it is in any other form of entertainment. Rather than sitting a theater, or in their living rooms, our patrons are not only physically walking through the attraction but how they react to the action in the Haunt will alter their experience. To further enhance the belief that patrons are in real-live situations, it is important to make your sets as realistic as possible within the budget. A realistic setting or at least enough detail in the space for patrons to know where they are – a kitchen, a warehouse, an alien spacecraft – places the patron in a familiar place. This familiarity makes the patron more comfortable and easier to frighten, and fulfills the second part of out design statement.

The next step is to design into the attraction spaces that are uncomfortable for the patron to be in. Here again we strive to place our audience into a situation they are not used to. Uncomfortable spaces can include places, like a doctor/dentist/vet office or a woman’s restroom (very scary for a man to find himself in), or uncomfortable architecture, like a tall, narrow room, a wide room with a low ceiling, odd-shaped rooms or rooms with tilted walls and oddshaped doors – anything you might find in a nightmare. The smaller the rooms, the more claustrophobic they feel and the fewer props and actors they need to be effective.

Applied With A Sudden Pressure

So what scares people? For years I collected a long list of phobias accepted by medical science for use in designing Haunts. Before long the list got ridiculous. Suffice to say, people are afraid of everything; from the color yellow to belly button lint and everything in between. That should make it easy for the Haunted House designer. If people are afraid of anything, then it stands to reason that we can use anything to scare them.

If you question this concept, Jim Warfield scares patrons at his Raven’s Grin Inn Haunted House, your humble author included, with what amounts to good timing, the unexpected and a large black trash bag. I myself have scared people in my signature Haunt Mayhem Manor by whispering “Pizza, Pizza” to them through a broken plaster crack in a panel. (Before you make fun of me for this, try it some time!)

So if anything is scary then how do we determine what to put in our attractions? In any Haunt looking for maximum throughput, the startle scare is king. Call it a “Boo House” if you like, but to frighten, un-nerve, surprise or get much of a reaction at all from the hardest person to scare, a 21-year-old male patron, you have to surprise them. Remember, this is a patron who is going through the attraction repeating to himself, “this isn’t scary, this isn’t scary” because he cannot afford to “scream like a girl” in front of his buddies or his date.

Startle scares are much more difficult to accomplish if the actor is visible in the room before the scare. To startle our 21-year-old male, you have to do some thing he is not expecting. If he can see what is going to scare him before it happens, he can prepare himself not to be startled. It is much easier to startle patrons with an actor bursting into the room through a hidden door or drop panel, especially if the patron’s attention is misdirected somewhere else. A sudden loud noise, an unexpected whisper or sudden movement is most effective when patrons are focused on something else they think is going to scare them.

In Horror Movies, people tend to be killed when they are most vulnerable. The movie audience screams at the screen, “What are you doing taking a shower when there is a killer in the house!” The best scares in a Haunted Attraction are those that occur when the patron is most insecure and vulnerable as well. When patrons are doing something they are not sure they are supposed to do, or going somewhere that they are not sure they are supposed to be, that is when you should strike!

The setup is the setting, mood and misdirection, and the punch line is the scare itself. And like a creating a joke, designing the scare in a Haunted Attraction must start with what the scare will be. By first deciding on what scares will be in each room, and then designing the rest of the room to facilitate the scares, you have the best chance for an overall effective attraction. Building a great-looking room, decorating it, making a great costume for the actor in the room are all important, but failing to provide the structure for the scare puts a great deal of pressure on your actor to be effective. Designing the room around the scares makes it much easier for the actor to be effective in the room and will drastically increase the scare factor of your attractions.

Take Control

When you think about the scare itself, take control of your patrons and force them to look at what you want them to. This may be the scare itself or away from the scare depending on what the scare may be. Experimentation and experience is needed here. You can control this “attention point” with lighting, noise or movement. When you have them looking where you want them to, you then must decide what part of the group to scare. Try to designate each scare location to be executed at a particular part of the group, front, middle or end. This way everyone in the group will get their fair share during the tour. I cannot tell you how many attractions I have been through at the back of a group and heard lots of scares and activity ahead or around the corner but never actually seen anything. When you design your attraction, don’t forget the end of a group. That is where the people who are easiest to scare usually are anyway. And remember that as the attraction gets busier, the group size increases. Your actors need to know when this happens so they can adjust the scares accordingly.

Recently I developed a scare technique I call “Scaring the Gap.” Rather than an actor focusing the scare directly at one patron, the actor should direct the scare on the space between two patrons. This spreads out the impact of the scare evenly to two people and maximizes the effort of the actor.

Years ago I coined the phrase “Scare Forward” as a way to increase throughput. You can scare a group of patrons from the top, bottom, both sides and back, but never from the front. Scaring from the front or even just being in the way of the group and one actor can decrease the attractions capacity. This decreases the distance between the groups and can cause them to run together into larger groups that are more difficult to scare. One actor standing in a doorway can bottleneck the attraction all the way into the parking lot. Practice the Scare Forward method and drastically increase your throughput, the scare factor and your bottom line. Always give your patrons a show, but give it to them on the run!

So the next time you are starting to design a new attraction or even redesign part of your existing Haunt, stop and ponder just what it is you are trying to do. Develop your own roadmap to terror, your own Fright Theory to help you stay on course. Create a history for your event to focus your creativity, provide enough detail to set the mood, and design the room around the scare for maximum effectiveness. Scare your patrons forward to increase your capacity and Scare the Gap to maximize the scare effectiveness. A Haunted Attraction can affect people like no other entertainment experience. Use that to your advantage!

This article originally appeared in Haunted Attraction Magazine Issue #49.