Behind-the-Scenes of
Horror Haunts with
Sunshine Marie Smith

We switched gears with Sunshine wanting to dig in deep into smaller pop-up haunts and she brought up Sinister Pointe. Established in 2007 by Jeff Schiefelbein, Sinister Pointe has been working in haunt attractions in the Orange County area. Within the last seven years, Sinister Point has worked with Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights Florida, Queen Mary’s Dark Harbor, Winchester Mystery House, and more creating haunt experiences and also has also been responsible for such as the Official “Saw” and “Silent Hill” mazes.

Sunshine: One of the things that’s really smart about what Sinister Pointe does is they build everything and then at the end of the season they sell everything. So, they don’t use the same stuff every year. They sell everything and then they can start fresh and do different themed things which is obviously something that other places don’t do. They put a lot of money into building something and then using that over and over and making small tweaks or not. (laughter) This year is the only year that is an extreme expectation because of the fact of Covid19. So, a lot of the big haunts aren’t open. So, you are going to see a lot of your people that work at Knott’s, and at Universal, that are going and working at these other haunts. They’re just taking work wherever they can get it. Also, haunts out-of-state are drastically different from how we do stuff here.

MTH: Oh, yeah! I would love to hear about that.

Sunshine: Actually, a lot of out-of-state stuff is very similar to the experience that you get at Reign of Terror.

Reign of Terror is a local haunt in Thousand Oaks, California. Reign of Terror presents 120 custom terrifying rooms full of scare actors, animatronics, and spooky decor all connected in 9 different haunt experiences in over 27,000 square feet of floor space set in a large retail space in an outdoor mall. The entire walk-thru is about 35 minutes and is one of our favorite experiences and due to the indoor nature of the event is unfortunately closed this year. 🙁

MTH: We really love Reign of Terror. I don’t know if you went last year but they started doing a blackout experience on the last day of the year. The enter experience was in total darkness and it was our first time. We went during the last time frame. So literally, there were only three people in there besides us, and we were losing our frickin’ mind. Then we went last year and they let too many people into the maze to the point where we had to stop in the maze and hold. There would just be lines of people and we didn’t get any of the scares. It was not a good experience but outside of that, we love that haunt. Where do you fall in the category of long wait time or long line in the maze?

Sunshine: Well, being someone whos’ been a scare actor, supervisor, manager, and an attendee I have experienced every level of this. I absolutely hate conga lines. It’s terrible for everyone. The guest experience is awful because you’re getting leftover scares. It over-exerts the actors and depending on what time you go in at night you’re dealing with actors that are tired that are literally now doing this (gestures opening a door and closing it) because literally, that’s all they can do. Being a supervisor and having these big long conga lines and trying to control people from not bumping up against each other can be difficult if you don’t have the proper staff in place to be like, “Hey, can we actually just have you hold tight?” because people get really scared and run ahead and people get really scared and are like, “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!” It’s all about pacing and you have to do the pacing correctly and the way to stop that is you open attractions at different times. You know, stagger things out. So, with like, with the Hayride. The Hayride would open an hour before or an hour after the mazes. So, people could get in line for one and then they could do whatever which actually did help with keeping things as paced as possible to prevent that (congestion in the maze) from happening because it’s not a good experience and you know from being a customer, it’s not fun. You limit the number of tickets. You do timed entries. You do things like that as a manager running the event. These are things you do to make the guest experience and the employee experience safe too because it’s not safe for the employees to do this strenuous thing over, and over, and over, and not be able to have a little bit of a break. A little bit of a breather, you know? They have fatigue. I mean it’s crazy. 

MTH: That’s good insight because for us as customers we don’t like it when they are just letting all these people in because we get the scare resets. In your experience, as it gets closer to Halloween is there a decline of actors? 

There’s an extremely high turnover for Halloween events.

Sunshine: When you have smaller things you can cast it almost like you would a play when you have a small thing that’s more like an immersive experience. Like Creep or Into the Black. So, those are very small haunts that take you on a 45 minutes experience but they are rehearsals. It’s very much like a play. People are doing a live, immersive experience where you go and work with a lot of the same people. Those people stick it out. The people that are in those large environments the people that do return you know they’ll stay or they’ll try something else. I mean me, personally working in staffing I replaced over 200 people. Last year we replaced a cast and a half. People were dropping like flies because people were getting other opportunities. The other thing is people don’t realize what a strenuous job this is. So, they don’t realize you’re doing like a cardio class for 6-8 hours. Universal put fitness trackers on their people and they were like, This is like stunt performing. People were exerting more energy doing scare acting than some of their stunt performers are. 

MTH: Also, I’m sure a lot of people lose their voices and stuff because you’re screaming for hours and hours.

Sunshine: This is something that’s really scary this year specifically. Everyone gets what’s called Hauntitis. Everyone gets sick. The entire cast will be sick and everyone will be coughing. Everyone will lose their voice. People will look lethargic. It’s just the pure exhaustion of what is it you’re doing. You’re screaming, you’re yelling, you’re doing all these things and it’s not normal activities for you because this is a seasonal job, you know? You do this for a month and then you don’t do anything like this again for the rest of the year. Depending on where you are, you could be sweating, sweating, sweating because you’re so hot and then have to go outside if you’re somewhere cold and then you’re in these wet clothes and you cannot take them off and then you have to go back in and do it. So, then you’re just like in this perpetual kind of sucky situation.

Hauntitis is going to affect a lot of the haunts that are going to be open because of the Covid symptoms. Have you been coughing? Do you have a sore throat? Are you feeling achy? Are you experiencing these symptoms? And the answer is yes! And that’s just exhaustion. 

MTH: A lot of the haunts now are drive-thru experiences that have come about due to the situation from Covid are longer happening. Even Reign of Terror, they were going to have just animatronics but the whole thing got shut down.

Sunshine: I just went through the whole Covid compliance training so I could go work on sets as a Covid compliance officer. There is a PDF document that was released on September 17th (Recently updated version here) I do know of a couple of haunts that do have permanent locations now and they felt if they can’t open for October they’re fine to have everything set up and move forward with something in December. Something later down the line so things don’t go to waste.

MTH: I think people would be more than happy to still go to a Halloween event in December if that’s what needs to happen to be safe. Do you know any updates about the Midsummer Scream event? Are they trying to move forward with the Summer of next year?

Sunshine: As far as I know they are planning to move forward with July of 2021. I know that they’re doing their newsletter, and they’re trying to put out as much Halloween content as they can and trying to help with putting virtual panels together and stuff like that to kind of bridge the gap. I think there’s a 60 days of Halloween podcasts. The haunts that are all opening they’ve all done promo of like, “This is what you can expect. This is what we’re planning on doing.” and then you know any kind of home haunts or any spooky things you can do they are promoting through their email list.

MTH: That’s great! That’s been such a fun event. We’ve gone four years in a row. I remember it was just a little con and then it just grew and grew and last year we went and we thought, “Wow, this is really becoming something.” Is there anything you would say to somebody who’s never been a scare actor but wants to be?

Sunshine: Honestly, I just hope people have a good time and stay safe. Being a scare actor it’s a physically strenuous job. If scare acting is something that you’re interested in doing, go to the gym and take two cardio classes back-to-back and if you feel like you can do cardio classes back-to-back you’re going to be fine and you’re going to have a great time. Just know that not every night is going to be great and you need to scare safe. There is a possibility that you will get hit. You will be injured and that’s something that people need to be prepared for. If at any point you’re feeling scared, you’re feeling unsafe, you’re feeling that this is not the job for you to communicate that to management and we will get you home but you need to be aware that these are the things that happen. You could scare someone so good and people do have a fight or flight response. So, you do need to understand that getting into this job. You are getting in people’s faces. So, that is a risk that you are willing to take but it is a great job. There is nothing funnier or more rewarding than making someone pee their pants or scream.

MTH: This will always be our last question. What is your favorite scary movie? 

My favorite scary movie is Scream!

MTH: I love that! Are you dressing up for Halloween this year and if you are what will that be? 

Sunshine: Of course! I usually dress up for the entire month of October. This year I will be Elvira.

MTH: Yasss queen! This was so great Sunshine. Thank you so much! 

Sunshine: I’m so excited that I was able to do this with you guys. It was awesome. 

MTH: Thanks Sunshine! Take care!

Follow Sunshine on Instagram @Mssuniver!

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More from Married to Horror

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