For about one month each year, an eclectic group of actors focus on the art of making patrons cry, laugh, scream, pee, have medical emergencies and sometimes even become violent.
“If little Johnny isn’t leaving in tears, we haven’t done our job,” Josh Philpott, 40, says.
Philpott is a scare actor and an owner of Dread Hollow, which is a Chattanooga-based haunted attraction that mostly operates during the Halloween season.
He’s a nurse by day, who speaks in a warm tone and has a welcoming nature. But at night, he’s a blood-covered clown named Rikkets who squeaks his voice and his horn in a purposely unsettling way.
Scare actors tend to have an odd set of special skills, whether that be screaming bloody murder or laughing like a psychopath.
Unlike other forms of acting, scare specialists, or “necrotechs,” repeat the same script hundreds of times each night, Philpott says.
“If you’re screaming, that’s a lot of screaming you have to do,” he says. “Can you do that all night long?”
The audition process is something like “American Idol,” Philpott says with a laugh. Most scare actors have no acting history. They undergo several days of training: Haunt 101, the lore of the maze and occasional homework assignments.
Last year, Dread Hollow was slaughter-house-themed, so the staff studied “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Devil’s Rejects.”
Dread Hollow’s actors get paid above minimum wage. It’s a flat rate per night. There are bonuses, too.
But no amount of training can fully prepare scare actors for what might happen.
“I’ve been kicked, groped, punched. I’ve had rocks thrown at me,” Philpott says. “I’ve had a milkshake thrown in my face.” He explains that one woman dropped down in a corner, terrified, and threw her milkshake after Philpott wouldn’t let up on his scaring practices.
She was utterly destroyed, and an officer had to help her leave.
“To me, that was a victory, as odd as that sounds,” he says. “I enjoy it — not to sound sociopathic.”
It takes an element of sacrifice, he adds. Scare actors lose sleep. They get cuts and bruises on the job.
“But then, once you get that first scare,” Philpott says, “the adrenaline rush you get is addictive. You are going to want to do it for the rest of your life.”
Kasey Patton, 27, has been doing this her entire life. She is a clown named Tootsie at Dread Hollow.
Her dad, Todd Patton, who is an owner of Dread Hollow, has been working haunts since she was two years old.
“I like to say I’m traumatized,” she says.
Patton doesn’t actually love scary movies or horror, but at the same time, there’s something about being a scare actor that’s indescribable. She’s a “slider,” which means she sports plates on her knees to glide across the floor.
“It’s more active then you think it is,” she says. “This is the worst workout.”
She adds that there’s not a lot of down time on the job because it messes with the scene to take a break. When Patton’s playing Tootsie, she only takes a few seconds to recenter, even after someone unintentionally (or intentionally) kicks her. She sometimes feels bad when she scares patrons too much, but she also enjoys chasing them out, screaming, into the parking lot.
It takes a certain commitment to theatrics, she says.
For example, her father played a clown named Kandy. He soaked his costume in a bucket of cotton candy so people could smell Kandy coming.
“It’s like we are writing a book or directing a movie,” Patton says.
People crave entertainment, adds Jeff Chambers, the owner of The Haunted Hilltop in Harrison. The high-quality, high-action show scare actors put on is part of what brings people back each year.
Chambers’ best scare costume cost him $2,000. He employs about 100 scare actors each night.
The Haunted Hilltop’s actors have ranged from teenagers to a chief within the Navy, but no matter the background, it’s the best job they’ve had, he says.
“They get paid to scare people,” Chamber says. “They get paid to make people laugh and cry.”
To learn more about where these scare actors haunt, go to dreadhollow.com or thehauntedhilltop.com.