Show The science of 0 fear ear Elise Bassett Community Reporter Youve You've been scared by movies books your little brother and maybe even this newspaper occasionally but did you know that there is a science to scaring people Sean Murray owner co-owner and designer of Castle of Chaos and the new haunted house Nightmare Mansion wrote a book called The Laws of FEAR He uses these laws lawsin in designing his haunt and training the actors This science isn't a guarantee Youre always going to have people who who dont don't have fun said Castle of Chaos and Nightmare Mansion founder James Bernard usually those are people who arent aren't fun run or had very bad luck and actors were on break In Nightmare Mansion the designers use actors instead of animatronics or machinery scares This makes the haunts a lot more interactive than most other haunts in the state The designers' designers and actors' actors main goal is just to have fun The best reactions are to scare big guys said Scary Clown Dominic we enjoy putting on the show and everybody puts their heart into it The way the actors are trained I is an important element to creating the desired atmosphere We Ve teach the actors to think on their feet explained Murray so they can build the scare Though the methods dont don't work on everybody there are some people that cant can't handle it We have an award given out said if somebody wets their pants they get a bonus for whoever scared them The main method Sean and his brother Adam Murray t teach ach is called the Decoy and the Gotcha Gotcha Fear Continued on i t Fem I Ir r t 1 I. I R t 1 v t I r I y 7 r ry y v a S X r L. i-L. i it t a I t rOl j h j tW r Photo by David Horne Gerald hunsaker plays the old man on the porch Fear Continued from Al AlSean AlSean Sean Murray explains Its not about what you see Its It's about getting your attention on one thing then scaring in a different way The five laws are 1 Remove the comfort zone 2 Prey on multiple senses 3 Escalate the tension 4 Distinguish between gory and scary 5 Create synergy between your effects In order to follow the first law Murray teaches his actors to basically invade peoples people's personal space In the Murray brothers' brothers video Scare School he talks about how to separate couples to scare an individual on their own The second law uses sounds lights and actors to intensify a scare In I x ft w r f 4 I C Photo By David Horne Home John make up artist paints Mattias Kasparian with a Exoskeleton Yo video Scare Scare- School Sean Scan explains to his actors There are only two natural fears that we are actually born with the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises All others are learned Many haunts will use loud noises to intensify an affect The third law building up the tension is to make people think that something is coming The victim of the coming scare will get ready for what's coming and what the actors are supposed to todo todo todo do is to switch it t up at the thelast thelast thelast last minute and scare them in a different way The fourth law isn't taught to the actors it goes more into designing the haunt The designers designers' will use the gory dynamic to create a certain atmosphere as evidence of bloody body parts on a dinning room table or hanging from the ceiling These are props used as the decoy Throughout we have havea a lot of eye candy Weve We've got things youre you're going to to pay attention to Murray explains but what we want to do is get your attention on something so we can sneak up behind you Creating synergy pulls all the laws together to tomake tomake tomake make an effect work The actors use mind games to foreshadow escalate and resolve a scare Foreshadowing gives people coming through the haunt a taste of what they are going to experience next This creates anticipation and builds the tension I There are actors that will escalate the tension and then there is someone that will make you scream and resolve the scare That is just a taste of what the Murray brothers teach about haunting The effect is good It was really creepy said Nightmare Mansion survivor Jon Vincent the actors did a really good job Nightmare Mansion and Castle of Chaos employees will interview people as they come out of other haunts There has not yet been one one person who's liked any of the other haunts better than ours ours says Murray |