Sarah yells, “I want out.” She has an unidentified black substance covering her face. A hand reaches out and grips her neck. Her body is slammed against a metal wall. Curran is wrapped around her head and she is submerged under a body of water. After Sarah is forcefully suffocated, she is thrown in a large inoperable deep freezer.
This was just the beginning of a 36-hour long experience. Sarah M. was a willing victim of McKamey Manor in 2016.
McKamey Manor has been named the “most extreme haunted house in the world” by The New York Daily News, Tech Times and The Travel Channel. Although, in an article by AL, Russ McKamey claims it’s just “a lot of smoke and mirrors.”
Russ McKamey, the founder of the manor, describes himself as a square to AL, but he evokes “fear that [adrenaline junkies] can’t find anywhere else.”
DailyMail UK wrote about how “more than 24,000 people are lining up to take on” the horror house, but McKamey says that he is still considered a psychopath.
At first glance, I thought so too, but in all actuality, he is quite sane. In order to enter McKamey Manor, you are obligated to take many different precautions, but this is only once you have reached the top of a very long wait list. First, candidates must participate in pre-event interviews. Then they have to submit a letter from a physician, receive a background check and sign a 40-page waiver. Finally, a drug test is administered the day of the haunt. Throughout this entire process, McKamey continuously tries to convince them not to do it.
But this does not stop participants, even though the imaginary audience is screaming, “Don’t go in there.”
The manor was located at McKamey’s residence in San Diego, Calif., but more recently, it was moved to Tennessee and Alabama. Each part takes place in a different location. According to AL, the first few hours are spent in Summerville, Tenn. engaging in “physical activity.” Then it is off to Nashville for a tour of the haunted attraction, Caedis Siluis or “murder in the woods.” Those who survive the tour go on to the final and undisclosed location in Huntsville, Ala. McKamey becomes the only thing between the participant and the end of their constructed nightmare. People rarely make it this far but, if they defy all of the odds, they’re in for three hours of psychological torture.
It may look and sound completely insane, but he is simply providing a service that people want for free. If McKamey Manor did not exist, I’m sure there would be another haunted house to fill its place. The only difference between us is that he brings his imaginative ideas to life.
There is nothing wrong with McKamey Manor; no harm, no foul. But consider this as a warning.
