Surviving Heretic - Haunted House
The answer to this question was in the brilliant mind of Adrian Marcato's Heretic, a haunted house on steroids. This isn't your typical "jump out and scream boo" type of haunt. Heretic is a dark adventure where the inhabitants can grab you, rough you up and wring a scream out of you. So who in the world would want to undergo such an experience? Insert image of me jumping up and down like a little kid wildly waving her arms in the air. What can I say? In the last few months I've developed a give-me-what-you've-got type of attitude. Adrian's crew lives to please.
So what is Heretic? It's actually a series of haunted houses that Adrian has been putting on. One where you can only gain admittance by making a reservation. Once inside, the participants get a chance to develop into the story, discovering with each new addition you attend just how dark the imagination can truly get. This particular episode revolved around a cult obsessed with pain, sex and madness. If you want to get a peak at what devious adventures he is developing for the future follow the link. It's a trip well worth it.
You all know how I tend to be big innocent...yeah yeah I know that sounds strange, but it's the truth. Along with that innocence comes what my friend, Debbie, likes to call an injustice button. If I see a fight happening that seems unfair, you can bet that I'm going to jump in and even the score. Most of the time this is a nice thing, most of the time it's also not a physical fight. This time I almost got my tail handed to me, by the person I was defending.
A couple of hours into the journey, I stopped at a Santa Nella gas station to grab a Coke. I was driving late in the evening and I not only was craving the dastardly beverage, but also needed a jolt of caffeine to keep me awake in the dark warm silence of my car. As I came out of the store I saw a man dragging his crying female companion by the arm over to their truck and I felt my injustice button punch in. He was shaking her like a rag doll and you could see that he intended to show her the worse parts of his character. What the hell? She's crying jerkface and you're throwing her around? I found myself over by the couple as if by magic, where I demanded that he stop. He, being a woman-hitting pig, ignored me. Until I called the size of his manhood into question of course. Loudly and fervently. True to form he backhanded me, like a weak little girl might I add. Note about me, I'm a black belt. What? With as much trouble as I seem to attract that's a necessary skill!
Anyhow after he slapped me, I introduced him to a good old fashioned knee in the groin. This is the point where I intended to give him a lecture about treating a lady with respect....when his girlfriend launched herself at me screaming like a banshee! Apparently beating up her boyfriend for beating her up is on her no-no list. Having no desire to fight the woman who had momentarily before been a damsel in distress, I disengaged from the fight and got the hell out of there. I stopped a little while later to relay the experience to my usual Adventuring team, who are now called the Noisy Bastards (because they keep both Matt and my neighbors up on game nights)....and my buddy Casey reminded me firmly that I should mind my own business. Eh, if someone looks like they need help I'm going to help them end of story.
The first thing I was confronted with was that most of the letters of the sign were burned out, which gave the building a faint Tower of Terror type ambiance. Okey dokey, that's really just a small thing. It happens to the best of places. Except that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did I have to drag my exhausted rear end multiple times to the front desk to get a working key....where the snippy front desk blamed my cell phone for demagnetizing the key. By the way, I did some fact checking on that statement and it's a load of bull. Scratches or bends on the card are what cause the strips on the back on the card not to work. Cell phones are not the culprit. The room I paid over a hundred and twenty dollars a night for was tiny, filthy and in possession of a used freaking condom in the shower. This is not the Great Horror Campout People. YUCK. I think the part that bothered me the most however, was that they were shooting a porn on the other side of my wall. Beyond the fact that I'm a blushing maid at the ripe old age of thirty two, hearing a woman get cut off in the middle of an "orgasm" and then five minutes later pick right back up where she left off is beyond not natural. It's just plain disturbing.
The next morning I made my way down to the breakfast that had come with my stay....something I was worried about but in the end was safe enough. Can't go wrong with a box of dry frosted flakes. I don't put milk in my cereal anyway so that was fine by me. In the ten minutes it took me to walk down to the bottom floor and then back to my room on the fifth floor the darned key decided that it didn't want to work again. Grumbling I made my way back down to the lobby, to get another lecture from the snippy woman, and then back up to room. To discover that the stupid key STILL DIDN'T WORK. Luckily one of the cleaning ladies, who was a real sweetheart, saw me on the verge of a nuclear moment and took pity on me and let me in. Bless you lady, bless you.
Checking out with relish I headed over to the second hotel on my list, the JJ Grand. As soon as I
drove up I took a sigh of relief. It was a large beautiful building nestled between a church and a large synagogue. I parked my car into valet and then spent a few minutes humming "One of These Things is Not Like the Other" to myself. Apparently the JJ Grand is located in Korea Town. Everyone in the building was Korean and needless to say that I am not. Despite the faint feeling of not fitting in, my hotel room was clean, large and well appointed. I would recommend this room any day of the week.
After checking in I made my way over to the secret location of Heretic Haunted House...sorry ladies and gentlemen, if you want to know where it is then you're going to have to make a reservation. Those are the rules.
I was going to be joining them several hours early so I could interview the cast and crew as well as get a feel for what it takes to get this show operational. Upon arriving, I did my usual pep talk of not being shy and headed into the building. Right off the bat I felt right at home. This is a fantastic group of people and they did everything in their power to make me feel like I wasn't a nuisance as I followed them around with my camera and asked them my questions. I have discovered that I have a wholly separate voice for when I do interviews which amuses me to no end.
I asked Adrian how this idea came into fruition and he explained to me that he began working as a monster in haunts after attending them for years. The first to be added to his credits was Knott's Scary Farm, where he worked for four years in various positions and monster roles. After that, special effects make-up began to take over most of his time and his first feature was as key make-up artist for the Black Dahlia Haunting. From there he worked film after film, including titles like Hatchet 3 and VHS 3. The idea for Heretic came from a tragic true story from his past. A friend of his was murdered and mutilated with strange symbols carved into the body. After that he began writing scenes and developing his ideas. He even experimented on himself by having three friends abuse him psychically to make sure that his ideas could provoke the right response.
Sharing the helm of creating Adrian's darkest dreams are his creating partner Jess and right-hand-man
In 2005, he attended the film course at the New York Film Academy, leaving with his first short movie titled Safety Net. In 2009, Matt graduated Full Sail University with a Bachelors Degree. After graduation, Matt worked as an intern for Producer Frida Torresblanco of Pan’s Labyrinth notoriety. In 2010, Matt shot the award winning short documentary, Manhattan’s Monster, about New York horror performance artist Sammy Mena. Shortly afterward, Matt moved to Hollywood, where he has set up shop for his Production Company, Sepulture Productions. Under the Sepulture Productions banner, he has produced the award winning web series Horror Show Theater and co-produced the underground horror simulation Heretic. Season one of Horror Show Theater can be watched in full on the Sepulture Productions YouTube Page, Sepulture Productions, which I have included the link for.
I had a blast following around the actors and actresses who were involved in this haunt, my favorite being Mel Turner who allowed me to follow her from the moment she sat in the make up chair until she was deep in character. For the record, her make up artist is none other than the extremely talented Naomi Mua who did Rams incredible make up for the Great Horror Campout. If Mel looks familiar it may be because she played in House of Manson. She's also a world class sweetheart and I loved talking with her.
I wandered around for a few hours and took buckets of pictures, including ones that had me blushing for inexplicable reasons. I even had to text message Colleen at one point and remark that I didn't know where to look. She laughed and told me to look at what was presented and that yes she was challenging me to do so. Damn it. Challenge accepted. It's not that I am ashamed of the human body....it's that I'm a world class dork. I blush, I stammer and then blush some more. You must excuse me for that. But I digress as usual.
Eventually we stopped and I found myself sandwiched between both my guide and the driver as one tried to goad me forward and the other attempted to warn me off from my quest with the ominous warning that they intended to rape and murder me. Scary stuff. I found myself walking away from the pair of them, heading toward the building with the driver's ominous last words following me in the darkness. "I warned you."
Then he dragged me up and sat me down on another chair, where a very muscled figured came out
and stood before me. A muscled figure wearing very little clothing. Despite my best efforts I think I was giggling in a very solid stream by this point. Where the hell do I look? Before I could dwell on this too much he had grabbed my hands and fastened them into a pair of rather strange leather cuffs. I couldn't help but wonder why handcuffs had a belt on the top. My first thought is that if this was a real situation I could just grab the belt with my teeth and unfasten myself. Well at least I could have before he shoved a metal device between my teeth which forced my mouth open. The other Noisy Bastards have since advised me that they call this device a lip spreader, which they all laughed at when I told them about it upon my return home. They have to explain stuff like this all the time. I've gotten to the point that if I have to ask I pretty much know it's sexual in nature.
Anyway, nothing says vulnerable like having said device keep you from closing your mouth as a man inserts objects, that were never meant to be in your mouth, through the hole. Things like a knife and a skinny pair of scissors. When I felt the metal click against my teeth I found myself biting on that damn thing like my life depended on it. Well played Heretic, well played.
Then the strong man picked me up in his arms, which of course had me protesting through the gag that he was going to hurt his back. Leave it to me to worry about my torturer's well being. He carried me towards the back of the room and strapped me onto one of those gravity chairs where they flip you upside down. Oh crud, this doesn't bode well. And of course it doesn't as a young man bearing a baseball bat and another man wearing a skin mask walk in and immediately flip me over. Eep. They began the creepy tasks of cutting my hair and shaving my eyebrows off my face which of course....leaves me giggling. Just as I was left to wonder if I had any hair left on my head, the delightful Mel ran into the room and demanded that they let me go. She unstrapped me from the chair and led me out into an alley. She also released me from the dreadful metal contraption that was making me blush for no reason what so ever. Bless you Mel. Bless you.
Suddenly I felt myself being grabbed again and hauled back into a dark room which was full to bursting with fog. The man hauled me roughly toward the back of
the room where he eventually threw me to the ground. He was covered in blood and I found myself confronting a man wearing a terrifying dog like mask through the haze. The mist was full of other people as well, most of them scantily dressed and drenched in blood. They began to crowd my space and I found myself bounced around from person to person. Eventually a woman wearing only the briefest of lingerie separated herself from the group and leapt upon me to knock me to the floor, straddle me and hold my arms above my head. She shrieked in my face that I couldn't stop what she was going to do to me. I had to wonder what the heck that was going to be when suddenly I was being yanked to my feet and ejected from the room.
I was met back in the ally by Matt....and the journey was over. I had survived! Of course I giggled my way madly through the entire event but it was certainly unnerving. Especially the fog. There is something about only just being able to see your attacker through a curtain of gloom that really sets in the nightmare. Now that was a blast.
I will say that my giggling through the attraction was an anomaly. Throughout the night, I witnessed one woman have to use the safe word because she became too frightened, one man pee his pants, and most people gasp their way through the experience in living terror.
You know, I think I'm going to have to initiate a challenge to the haunt world to find a way to scare me to where I stop giggling. Hmmmm....challenge issued!
I have been invited to one of their next extreme attractions, Midnight Killer, in November and I look forward to seeing the terrifying product of Adrian's dark mind.
On to the next Adventure.