FOCUSPAGE 6Omaha Bryan High School

THE ORATOROctober 9, 2015

Scary Acres brings surprises, lacks terrorEMILY PEMBLEEditor-in-Chief

One of the best parts of the Halloween season is visiting haunted houses in hopes to be scared into a state of near cardiac arrest. Scary Acres, located on 17272 Giles Rd., is not for haunted house frequent-ers, but can still give a fun night nevertheless. Scary Acres is com-posed of three different haunted attractions, each a little more intricate than the last. Each house; the Haunted Woods, the House on the Hill and the Master’s Castle, have their own price or customers can pay $25 to go through all three. First time goers will probably get their money’s worth out of it, but it’s easy for spook house veterans

to find it a bit overpriced. Opening night was ex-tremely busy consisting of hour long lines and a shut-down Master’s Castle. The worst part was that no one directly told the customers it was closed and let them figure it out on their own. With a few glitches here and there it was smooth sailing after that. It’s best to go to Scary Acres when they’re less busy because it’s not worth the crowd. The houses aren’t hair raising enough to wait that long. When the customer turn out is normal, lines move at a much smoother pace, thus making the attractions much more enjoyable. Even if lines are lengthy, there’s a variety of charac-ters to bring entertainment to the wait and sometimes chase people around the park.

Scary Acres won’t elicit any psychological dam-age from anyone, but the light-hearted scares are entertaining enough. Actors wield chain saws and aren’t afraid to get in your face and offer to saw off a limb free of charge, or even smell you. Other employees that are chain saw free are very courteous and polite to their customers. Regardless of what someone’s job is, it’s clear to see that every person working there wants to give people the best experience possible. Each attraction’s setup is done very well giving patrons the feeling like they’re walking through a horror movie set. With the use of witty actors, well executed jump scares and even optical illusions every room is dif-

ferent than the last giving it a lot of diversity. Since they change some of their set up every year, people won’t have to worry about experiencing the same house every year. Whether customers get scared or not while walking through the attractions, Scary Acres is still enter-taining. Scary Acres easily caters to all ages, but will be best enjoyed by a younger audi-ence. There’s a reason it’s overpopulated by 12-year-olds. It’s a place people can go to with their family and not just their friends. Scary Acres isn’t the best haunted house there is, but it’s noteworthy enough to not be overlooked. The fainthearted can expect a good dose of fear, yet the experienced can still have a good time.

Mystery Manor celebrates 32 years of fears, tears

During the season of fall, haunted houses pop up and fanatics line up to get their yearly doses of fear. To create a specific experience there has to be people to do the work inside the haunted houses. The volunteers are the ones that spend days at a time creating a haunted house that lives up to owner Wayne Sealy’s expectations. Mystery Manor, located on 716 N 18th St, Omaha, Neb, is one of the few haunted houses in Omaha that has had con-

secu-

teers at the manor. The mummy that resides in the Egyptian themed room was created by Jo Racstraw, who plays the witch that can be seen outside of the house, roam-ing around the premises. All the actors agree that while they are working together, they are like a family. Through all of their days spent on a common goal that they all share, they have created a bond that separates them from typical co-workers. Sealy takes immense pride in his actors because he’s never once had to teach them how to play their part. Their talent is completely natural. Once the actors enter into costume Sealy wants them to completely disre-gard who they really are and become their charac-ter. “When our guys get into costume, they’re not who they were,” Sealy said. According to Sealy, his volunteers are dedicated

and have the passion that has kept them

coming back to the manor for up to 30 years. Raven Kulkerson, a second year volunteer, has struggled with keeping her dedication to the manor due to outside forces. She was an actor her first year and enjoyed it, but this year she will record video promos for the manor. “It’s a lot of hard work, but you need to be committed and have

a lot of passion for it,” Kulkerson said. Even though she vol-unteered, she didn’t leave empty-handed. She gained many op-portunities while vol-unteering and uses her interest in videography for them. Kulkerson even com-peted at a haunted house convention for her work as her character Scribbles in the Asylum part of the manor. The team practices every night before opening to hit their marks and scare their victims as much as they can. There isn’t just constant jump scares and screams at the manor, but also actors that follow closely and illusions that mess with heads. Their goal is to bring out the fears that are deeply hidden, because it’s what doesn’t seem scary to many that actu-ally scares people. “If you can curl up in a ball in the corner and twitch every once in a while, you’ll scare them,” Sealy said. Most haunted houses have a mix of animatron-ics and actors throughout the experience. Other haunted houses tend to lean more towards animatronics while Mys-tery Manor focuses more heavily on human interac-tion. This

quality alone makes the haunted house far more successful than most. This allows for actors to bring out their personal touch and to test their own limits. “The secret is, I got scary people that are not locked into this house that will crawl under places I wouldn’t put my dog and crawl out from under it,” Sealy said. Sealy said his secret to his successful business is not anything big. He believes that his success comes from his volunteers, their commitment and their talent. His volunteers don’t

tive years of success with 32 seasons under its belt. The manor itself hasn’t had any original rooms taken away from it; they’ve only added onto the manor’s already creepy atmosphere. The time it takes to complete a room varies on how long it takes to set up depending on how elabo-rate the theme is. Their props are usually all handmade or the team uses simple items such as masks that anyone can buy almost anywhere. The masks that they do buy are eventually redone so that they are original pieces. The end result is some-thing very well put to-

gether and thought out while still being very

gory and scary. Everything from spiders crawl-ing around or a mannequin that watches the vic-

tim’s every move are made by the volun-

need to be big shot actors who have gone through ex-tensive training to actually be good at what they do; they can just be average people with the love of scaring others. “The secret to success is surrounding yourself with good people,” Sealy said.

-Review-

Photo by: Emily Pemble

Applying special effects makeup onto Josh Bellous, Sarah Knapp prepares ac-tors for a practice run at the manor.

Photo by: Jasmin Jimenez

Being lead to their fate, customers at Scary Acres prepare to walk through the Master’s Castle. Scary Acres is composed of 3 different attractions.

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