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It’s 8 p.m. and I’m standing in the Boondock’s Fun Center parking lot at 120th and I-25. My lead editors, Arianna and Laura, are huddling together, partly for warmth and partly because they are utterly terrified. Laura has never been to a haunted house before.
The one we’ve chosen, the Asylum, is allegedly one of the scariest in the country and consistently rated top among Denver’s haunted houses.
The Asylum is just one of several haunted houses run by Screamworks Entertainment LLC. Screamworks was founded in 2002 by haunted house veterans Chris Stafford and Warren Conard.
As former actors and designers of haunted houses, the two have more than 40 years of combined experience.
And while the collection of smoky tents sitting in the middle of a parking lot doesn’t look like much from the outside, the muffled screams coming from within are full of promise.
Our group numbers five strong. Laura and Arianna are here, as are Connie, the lifestyles editor, and Michael, the photo editor. Admission is free tonight for media vultures like us.
The Asylum gets some free publicity and we, hopefully, get to unleash some terrified squeals at a first-class haunted house.
The creepiness starts early. The entrance sports a charmingly bedraggled man in a strait jacket, loping about the parking lot, snarling and spitting.
Even armed with the knowledge that he is just an actor, the effect is creepy, as he never breaks character.
Laura and Arianna quickly parley with one another and decide that they should wait in the car.
We have to strong arm them into coming inside with us.
A man in bloody scrubs is there to greet us at the door. He wastes no time in getting directly in our faces and telling us that we should avoid touching his “patients.”
Already, my fearless editors are emitting a low whine.
Connie and Michael seem unimpressed, but that won’t last long.
The first attribute one notices about the Asylum is that it’s very dark and very smoky.
Abandoned wheelchairs and bloodstained gurneys litter the narrow pathways that are so cramped that only one person at a time can move forward. Bloody handprints can be seen often on the walls.
The corners are frequently occupied by actors who scream at inopportune moments. Their mad ranting ranges from the mundane (“I want to make you my experiments! Bwahaha!”) to the genuinely disquieting (“Please! They took my baby! I just want my baby back!”).
What’s more is that they can and will follow you as you navigate the maze of hallways. Oftentimes, whoever is bringing up the rear will glance back to see a grinning lunatic leering over his or her shoulder.
Some elements of the haunted house don’t quite work. One room in particular featured a strobe light that only flickered every three seconds or so.
While initially frightening, the ultimate effect is making it very difficult to find one’s way out of and putting a great deal of stress on the actor’s voice, as he had to keep screaming the whole time we were there.
Eventually, he gets so tired of us that he starts hoarsely screaming the direction we need to escape the strobe room.
After navigating more than a dozen rooms, a long hallway filled with low-hanging decapitated heads, and finally being chased back to the car by a maniac with a chainsaw, we are out. Back in the safety of the car, Laura and Arianna begin talking about how they’d never really been that scared, just startled in spots. Connie and Michael launch into a conversation about how unrealistic it was, asserting that they too were never truly frightened at any point.
But I was there. I heard their screams, their trembling voices as they wondered aloud how much longer it would be before we were out.
Their fear was real, if only for the time we were actually inside the Asylum. Mine was too.
If you’re looking for some decent chills and thrills come Halloween weekend, then you could certainly do worse than paying a visit to the Asylum.
