Jump Scares & Bloody Dresses: The Life of a Haunted House Actor
Step inside a Times Square frightfest to discover a whole new side of Halloween.
They’re also big business. Haunted houses are a massive tourist attraction, capable of luring visitors from all over the world. They’re also places where locals look forward to reliably getting their frights. In New York City’s Times Square, thousands of thrill-seekers pass through the creaky doors of TerrorVision, an immersive haunted house now in its second year. Just past the shining lights of Broadway, it features a 1980s Hollywood slasher film-inspired storyline—peppered with plenty of good old fashioned jump scares.
One of the actors helping the mysterious magic come to life is Amelia Huckel-Bauer, who, when she’s not petrifying strangers as TerrorVision’s macabre fallen starlet, works primarily with school kids. But on the days leading up to Halloween, she trades her usually sunny disposition for ghastly makeup and a tattered corpse bride dress. Thrillist spoke to Huckel-Bauer about life as a haunted house actor and what it's like to be so talented, it’s scary. As told to Vanita Salisbury.
The audition for TerrorVision was an open call. The listing said you'd be with a group of 15 people and asked to go through some movement and voice exercises. But the day I went, I was actually the only one. Actors are used to auditioning by themselves all the time, but it was just funny because you think you know what you're going to, and then it’s a complete 180 in the opposite direction. You can prepare, but you have to be ready for anything.
They asked me about my experience, then yelled out different monsters and had me give an impression of them—like, “Vampire! Zombie! Ghost! Werewolf!” Then I had to become a werewolf, going from human, then slowly, to a complete werewolf.
I don’t think they assigned roles until we had our first rehearsals. It’s a huge building in Times Square, and it was a lot of work to build the house and get the costumes ready. They brought us in at the beginning of September to show us the space and figure out what costumes worked for each of us, and then we based our characters off of the costumes.
I started out as what we called a Hollywood Hopeful. TerrorVision’s concept is that it’s a movie studio, and the director is this terrible, terrifying psychopath. Hollywood Hopefuls are actresses that come to Hollywood hoping to become famous. They audition for him, he kills them, and then they're left in this purgatory zone.
For the first couple of weeks, I was outside talking to people in line and walking by to get interest up. I would improv a lot, saying that I was here to audition and I was really, really excited to meet the director. Were the people in line ready for their audition? Were they excited? Nervous?
Now I'm actually inside the house in a fancy ‘80s gown with blood all over it, so we went with my character being a dead bride in the chapel. Every night we get a different makeup artist. The back of my dress is open, so a couple times one of the makeup artists used a ripped paper towel to make it look like my flesh was ripped open. It’s artwork on our bodies, just amazing. The haunted house would not be what it is without makeup and costumes.
“When someone's just too scared, it's okay to leave them alone—we don't want to traumatize people”
Inside, I play with people. It’s me and another actress, Cherry, who’s a ghost, and she jumps out one of the chapel windows. The guests come from the fortune teller room and open the curtains and I'm just standing there—they don't know if I'm alive or not, but they're focused on me. Sometimes I don’t have to say anything at all, they're so freaked out. But sometimes I just walk with them, and then, when they least expect it, Cherry jumps out and it's a fantastic scare every single time.
A lot of the job is timing, the element of surprise, and the unknown. Having audience members right next to you is very different from traditional theater, for sure. We had training on how to keep ourselves and the guests safe. How to make sure you’re not touching anybody, because when people get scared, they flail. Some get angry. When someone's just too scared, it's okay to leave them alone—we don't want to traumatize people, we want them to have fun.
You can improv as much as you want, but it depends. Some people come in and want to engage and ask you what happened, and that’s really fun. Another actress was telling me that she sings “Happy Birthday” to the dead grandpa in the kitchen with her, and a group once sang along with her. But then sometimes, guests want to prove that they're not afraid of you, like there's nothing you can do to scare them. That’s fun in a different way.
There's been times where there’s a couple and the girl will flat out fall down and go limp in her boyfriend’s arms—that's always fun, because they're screaming but laughing at the same time. And there’s been times when we'll hear that somebody really did pee their pants or something. Of course, that gets cleaned up quickly.
But my absolute favorite thing is overhearing guests talk to each other. There's a little hallway they have to walk down to get to me, and I like listening to their conversations. Just the other night, somebody said something really funny: “Oh shit, she's definitely real.”