From mid-September 1999 to October 28, 1999, I worked at The Asylum Experience, a haunted house in Berwyn (Svengoolie voice “BERRRRWYYYYN!”), Illinois. It was boring. Extremely boring. The haunted house didn’t close on October 28th; it ran until November 1st 

I quit before their busiest weekend of the year because I thought I was losing my mind.

I did not wear a costume or makeup. Or chase people around with a chainsaw.  I ran the lights and sound effects for one room in a haunted house. I sat in a small space, about three feet wide and three feet deep, concealed behind a black sheer curtain, and hit buttons. For four to six hours a shift. It was extremely boring.

I worked at a haunted house because I was 16 and needed money. Compared to the summer, there aren’t a lot of seasonal October jobs, nor are there many jobs that don’t require a car.  I knew someone with a car, and that person already had a job at a haunted house, galvanizing me to follow my destiny

The job training took about five minutes. I still remember it:

• Hit the yellow button when you see people walk in
• Hit the blue button when those people are in front of your station. 
• Hit the red button when those people are about to leave the room. 
• Hit multiple buttons if you’re getting screams. 
• Make sure the smoke machine runs every few minutes. 
• Make sure you flicker the lights every few minutes. 
• Make sure you stay awake. 

It was hard to stay awake.

After an hour of attempting to make people scream, the screams blend into one constant drone in the background. After a few rounds of paying customers made their way through the house, it was difficult to discern where the screams originated. You can’t tell just by looking at someone what they sound like when they scream.

I worked in a transitional room. Cemetery patrons walked through after witnessing a disturbing jump-scare scene in the Haunted Schoolroom and before entering the very cool and effective Buried Alive Room. My button-pushing was supposed to be timed to the screams of the haunted house guests in my cemetery, but after 30 minutes that feel like hours,, you get numb. And tired. And bored.

I wasn’t supposed to listen to music during my shift, but that literally never stopped me once. It was the only way to stay awake. This was before iPods, and I didn’t have the kind of money you’d need to buy a CD player, so I listened to a tape. 

I listened to the first cassette of David Bowie’s Sound + Vision, the Rykodisc boxed-set compilation (I didn’t have the entire boxed set, just the first tape). Then I listened to it again, hundreds of times. Literally hundreds of times. (The only time I didn’t listen to that tape, I was busy being the corpse that slowly crept out of the coffin to grab people’s arms. 

I was fine for the first few shifts. I’ve made it, I thought. I’ve stepped out from behind the curtain to lay down in a coffin. 

 Then I got knocked out by a scared patron who instinctively punched me after I popped my art out of my new forever home (I did a good job!) and allegedly “fell asleep” in the coffin, while wearing a demon mask (Looking back, I was probably knocked out and concussed.)

But that’s another story for another Spooky Issue. Let’s get back to the Bowie tape. 

I owned more than one tape, but I listened to exactly one of them. Let’s do the math.

The tape clocks in at 62 minutes. I worked every single day the haunted house was open. Four hours on Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday evenings Six hours every Friday and Saturday. That’s 24 hours per week I spent sitting behind a black curtain listening to a David Bowie tape. One tape. For nearly six weeks. 

Why did I only listen to one tape? Now, 25+ years later, I still love “Drive-In Saturday,” so I guess my investment paid off.

The haunted house was successful. Very successful. But for one reason or another, possibly Y2K paranoia, the producers decided that 1999 would  be the last year for The Asylum Experience. To thank their staff, the owners threw a pizza party (PIZZA PARTY!!!) the week after Halloween. Though I quit before their busiest weekend of the year, they invited me. I went because they still had my check.

I met the majority of The Asylum Experience staff that early November evening. I learned I was younger than everyone but my friend. Much younger. Most men and women (there was a surprising amount of female workers) were in their mid to late 20s, former theater geeks, current undesirables and future Lucasfilm and Sony Pictures employees. They weren’t undesirable to me. They were nice, polite people who happened to live on the fringes of society. They benefited greatly from graduating high school when they did, years before the Columbine tragedy.

The haunted house workers loved their jobs. Loved them enough that throughout the pizza party, some of them were on the verge of tears. Most had worked multiple Halloweens in the beloved house. Lifelong friendships were forged. 

For some of the staff, it wasn’t just a temp gig; it was a lifestyle. Unlike me, they did more than sit and hit buttons. 

A week after Halloween,the place still reeked of fog machine liquid. The former church (yes, the haunted house was in a former church) looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in years, which might have been intentional.  This was the first time I’d seen the place with the lights on, and as far as I was concerned, it made most corporate offices look like five-star hotels. And yet, for nearly 30 kind souls, it was the most special place in the world.

The one most affected by the haunted house’s closing was the man who played Dr. Frankenstein. 

The Asylum Experience’s finale involved a very large, very scary Frankenstein’s Monster coming to life. The crux of the scare depended entirely on the actor playing Dr. Frankenstein.. 

This guy was good. Scary-good. He wanted to perform one last time for everyone who worked at the haunted house. For a crowd of 29, he donned his lab coat and delivered the performance of a lifetime from behind a steel face. 

It ended in tears. With all their might,  26 of the audience members cheered and whooped. Two girls I hadn’t noticed before laughed. I told them to shut up. 

It’s been decades since I saw this performance, and it’s still with me. This is the scare from working in a haunted house that has stuck. Even in a place explicitly designed by and for the fringes, no one ever went broke selling laughter and catharsis.

I do not know what the people who laughed are up to now. I do know that some of the people who needed and delivered those screams went on to do what they loved at some of the biggest media companies in the world. 

I haven’t been to a haunted house in 27 years. They’re not scary to me now. They’re a place where former high school theater kids get to scare non-theater kids and adults. I’m glad they exist; I just don’t need to participate. 

Besides, I haven’t been able to find that Bowie tape for nearly as many years as that compilation spans, and I don’t do haunted houses without protection.

Photograph by Nicholas Karlin, drawing by Daniel Knox

This piece is in Recommend If You Like The Spooky Issue Fall 2026. You can find physical copies in bars, cafes and stores in Chicago and Washington, D.C. The newspaper is available for purchase here. 

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