Halloween thrill experiences like a haunted house or a haunted farm are more popular than ever. They range from PTA fundraisers staffed by students to professional productions with their own facilities. The people who work at these attractions have a lot of fun, but it’s a peculiar job with peculiar perks and challenges.
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Getting hit in the face is one of the many occupational hazards of being a haunt actor. If actors are doing their jobs really well and scaring the living daylights out of people, it could trigger a “fight or flight” response in their patrons. The former reaction is when things start to get pretty scary—not just for customers, but for the actors, too. “They forget that they paid to have fun and play along with the show, and that they are not really in any danger,” Lowry says. “I’ve seen some hairy situations with drunk folks showing up and getting rough with actors.”
Jacob Hall, a former haunted house actor in San Antonio, Texas, wrote about his experience with drunk customers for Esquire. “On Friday and Saturday nights, the bar-dwellers came out. So did their inner demons. The first time I was ever punched in the face came courtesy of a frat bro,” he wrote. “The scariest thing in a haunted house is often the people who visit it.”
On the flip side, while the actors never deliberately cause injury, they feel a sense of triumph when a visitor is so scared they fall down -or soil themselves. It happens. Read about the job of a haunted house actor at Mental Floss.
(Image credit: Paul Budd)
Source: neatorama