Haunted House Workers Expose The Odd And Bizarre Guest Behavior They've Witnessed (66 Stories)

Only been to one haunt. Happened to see the cast member step through the false wall behind our group and said 'Oh hey, what's up?'

Everyone else turned and screamed like crazy.

A haunted house near me uses "fake" chain saws. Once they forgot to replace the chain for the rubber ones they still use. Then they accidentally cut someone with it. Not too badly though.

Oh jeez... I worked at a church haunted house fundraiser a few years back. I was told to just be scary, so I could ad-lib most of it. Well, I decided that the scariest thing I could do was just change positions from time to time, stand stock-still the rest. Well, it worked. I scared a few girls working there. They threw a shoe at me to decide weather or not I was real. They came back later, I took a step towards them, and they took off. It was hilarious. Also I caused a few other people to cry.

I worked in a haunted house last year and had a wonderful time, I always really got into character.

One night I was playing a creepy baby doll type of character and since I'm a really small girl I fit the part really well. This group comes into my room and I start walking toward them slowly while singing 'Ring Around The Rosies'. I'm cocking my head and doing all this creepy stuff and the group is obviously scared like most people are.

But then, this big black guy pops out and starts coming at me with his fist pulled back like he was going to punch me. Meanwhile, 4' 11'' me is looking at him like he's the grim reaper

I back up really fast and try to press my room's panic button (every room has one) but it was TOO HIGH FOR ME TO REACH and this guy just kept coming at me! He was even swinging at this point!

One of his friends grabbed the back of his collar and yanked him back to make him calm down and hurried him into the next room. I'm pretty sure they knew I was trying to get to the button so they got out of there fast.

It took me a while to find anyone to notify (I was new and barely knew the layout of the house) so they got away. I hope he doesn't wind up hitting someone else.

Worked at a place called fright nights in west palm beach when I was in highschool. There was a tram what would ride guests through the haunt and we were allowed to climb and crawl on it as long as we didn't touch them. That was until one of the employees jumped on top of it from a tree and broke his leg and it went through the roof of the tram. Also don't bring your infants/toddlers...seriously? This is common knowledge, no three year old should be subjected to that.

One of my co-workers was wearing a Megatron costume. He jumped out from behind a desk to scare these little kids and one of them, with an Optimus Prime costume on, started kicking and punching his legs. I was laughing so loud it ruined the haunted house for any of the entering guests.

Oh man, the stories I could tell. I got hired by a LARGE company. There were between 20 and 50 actors working at any given time. I literally have over 100 stories. I was originally hired to do the animitronics / pneumatics / set design / prop design / etc. I ended up doing pretty much anything and everything including security during working hours. Long, long, long days, especially on Thursday nights where everything that broke (big) during the week had to be fixed for Friday/Saturday rush.

I've seen people pass out. Flat-out loose consciousness and control of their bladder/intestines from being scared so bad.

I've seen a 6'4 300 pound football player get so scared he picked up his 5' tall girlfriend and used her as a human shield to push the actors out of the way, his face pushed hard into her back so he couldn't see as he rushed them with his girlfriend. That one actually ended without anyone getting hurt, just a few bruises.

I was quite proud, though, in designing a few sets to be ADA compliant, but adjustable, so it was tight for people not needing ADA-compliance to fit through, but could be moved in seconds to give space for those requiring ADA standards.

We had a "squish" wall. Imagine 2 very large baloons. They are 10' tall and 20 feet long, we had 2 lined up so it was 40 long. One on each side of a hallway. When inflated, they push from floor to ceiling, and you have to push and shove your way through the bags for the entire 40 feet. There is no light in this area, not that it would matter as the bags contort themselves to a near air-tight seal around your face. We left a safety area 8" tall at the very bottom.

When we first setup the bag hall, we had them much closer and far less blow-by from the fans, so it was so strong you could put an 8-10 year old kid at the top of the entrance, and he could make it to the end without touching the ground. We eventually had to turn it way down after we had people getting stuck with panic attacks, lost jewelry, broken glasses and phones, etc. I did design quite an ingenious deflation device for both bags in case of emergency, far more than just unplugging the blowers, though.


If you guys want any specific types of stories (gross, funny, sad, traumatic, etc) just let me know, and I'd be happy to oblige.

Edit: Clarity.

I was at a haunted house with my dad and there was an old woman in a rocking chair who would jump up and scream when you came near her. My dad got so scared he lost a sandal and ran into a wall. The actor got really scared and broke character to see if he was ok and return his sandal.

Went to a haunted house one time, they were going in set group sizes, i think it was 6. Anyway I went with my girlfriend, this haunted house was extremely dark, I never really got scared, just heard the actors and stumbled around the place feeling my way out. Girlfriend grabbed my hand after awhile instead of holding onto my shoulder. When we finally got outside we discovered that me and another guy had swapped girlfriends in the dark. We got a good laugh, but that haunted house needed to figure out some lighting.

Story 1: I was volunteering for my haunted hs as a fundraiser, the theme was hospital and my room was the morgue. It was a regular sized classroom and we had the people walk around in a circle. In the middle were boxes we used as coffins and jumped out at people. I played the comic relief of warning of the dangers of hypertension. The last guy was in a box that looked just like a filing cabinet. ANYWAY, two girls came in and they became so scared that as far as they could be from the door they went into shock and couldn't move. They just kept screeming so loudly "MOVE!" "I CAN'T I CAN'T". Eventually they ran right through everything knocking it all over. They didn't even get to me.

Story 2: I was haunting in a cornfield maze. My manager had a 3 foot chainsaw and he was great at sneaking up on people. I wasn't that scary but i was good at leading people into him. So I lead these kids to him and they're screaming and running. Then the chainsaw comes on and they're stuck between us. So they dodge into the corn, off the path. Figuring this won't work, they come back and this one kid trips and falls and, you guessed it, got knighted by the chainsaw. He wouldn't move so eventually my manager had to turn the chainsaw off and tell him to go away.

Story 3: I jumped out at a couple and the girl fell right down into the mud. She got up and said, "oh that's so not funny" and I just responded, "Yeah I think your mask is better anyway" and walked away.

I have a pretty bad story from Halloween Horror Nights at Universal Studios Hollywood:

My friends and I were on the House of 1000 corpses maze, and came up on the scene from the movie where Doctor Satan is carving into someone with a hammer or some similar tool. Anyway, the guys role was to be working on the fake body, then at intervals jump out at the people real quick and scare them. So we're passing him and BOOM he jumps out. But he like, lost grip on the hammer and it just FLEW out of his hand. SMACK right in some big guys head. He looked legitimately dazed for about ten seconds, then blinked and started laughing, while poor Doctor Satan is frantically consoling him and looking more worried than I've ever seen anyone. Close call I guess.

(the guy kind of looked like Huell from breaking bad, so maybe that's why it didn't do any noticeable damage).

I was going through a haunted house at the Iowa fairgrounds and at one point you're going through this corridor that is pitch black and a really tight fit. I'm feeling around with my hands stretched out in front of me. Apparently there was a worker standing in their to scare people and of course I don't see him. I ended up running my hand seductively down his face and feeling the wet of his lips on my fingers. Exchanged an awkward "sorry bro" in the dark and went our separate ways.

In high school I worked at corn maze. During the month of October we had a separate haunted maze that was essentially a quarter mile long path with pneumatic powered manikins, countless props meant to creep people out and actors of all ages (friends and family of the guys that designed it). We had drunk people come in all the time; teens, college students, the occasional group of housewives, etc.

One night a group of couples (mid 40s maybe?) came around 10:00 and it seemed like they had all been out to dinner that night, had a few drinks and decided to keep their babysitters at home waiting another hour or so while they enjoyed the haunted corn maze. While they're walking through the path one of the actors (the designer's 11 year old daughter in a old hockey goalie mask) pops out of a prop coffin and one of the men in the group freaks out and punches the little girl square in the face. The guy said it was a knee-jerk reaction and he thought it was just another prop.

The cops got involved and after an hour or so of apologizing while the guy's wife cried in the background, the little girl finally said something along the lines of "I'm fine. Just go home." Her dad, the designer, opted not to press charges under the condition that the guy never come back again and the cops let him leave.

tl;dr - a grown man punched an 11 year old girl in the face.

My Dad used to do Freddy Krueger at the local fire dept HH. It was always great. Once, he spotted a couple holding hands and walking down this dark hallway. The man sees him and my Dad motions him away. My Dad takes the woman's hand, and amazingly, she is talking and doesn't notice! They come to the end of the hall and as Count Dracula steps out and startles the woman, she turns to her boyfriend, no wait, Freddy! Many screams were had. That HH was the best. :).

Fortunately I did not witness this one, but only heard about it. One of the rooms in the house was a mad scientist room. The "scientist" guy in the room acted crazy and waved around a huge cow tongue at the crowd while talking about what he would do with their organs. They didn't get a fresh tongue every night. It might be a week or 3 old before it starts grossing out the workers and had to get a new one. One night a group of drunk frat guys comes goes through the house. One of them grabbed the around 3 week old tongue and took a bite out of it.

Even now, years later and getting the story second hand I still get grossed out over it.

One time my family went to a haunted trail type of thing (I can't remember what it's called, you ride in a wagon for a bit while being scared every once in a while by zombies, then get out and walk in a field where you get scared by other stuff) and when we went through the walking section there were these guys with chainsaws, but the chainsaws had no blade. My older sister fell behind us a bit and the guys with chainsaws sort of crowded her and pretended to cut her with them. We heard her screaming and she's not one to scream unless something was actually wrong, so we turn back to see her crying on the ground with the guys around her. Apparently the chainsaws touched some of her bare skin and burned her pretty bad (it was still spinning even without blades or something) and the guys didn't realize she was actually hurt rather than scared. Needless to say they got in serious trouble with the organizers of the place, and it kind of ruined the fun for us. It was really scary for me too, cuz I looked up to my sister a lot back then (I was only a kid) and it really freaks me out whenever that cool mask of hers breaks.

TL;DR-some haunted house workers tried to scare my sister with bladeless chainsaws and ended up actually hurting her with them.

When I was in high school, a bunch of us volunteered to work the haunted house that our school put on every year. It was one of those typical maze style haunted houses with interesting things happening in each classroom. People would sign up and if their ideas were approved, they would get assigned a spot and have a part in the haunted house. Most of the time they were pretty lame and not scary but the one year we did it, we made up something awesome. So we managed to get a spot in the lunchroom, to be specific, we got our spot in the kitchen. We had set up one of those white drape sheets hanging from the ceiling. (the type they use in a medical environment to make makeshift rooms when they have no walls) So we hung up this sheet and stood behind it so that no one could see us accept for shadows made by a light shining onto it from behind. We had covered spots of it in fake blood so it looked pretty creepy. We would have our friend (really hot chick in a bloody nurses outfit) hold up the groups for a bit so we could do our "act". We had a table setup and one of our friends lay on it. Another guy was the doctor and there was a surgeon as well. Basically the doctor would say that that limb had to be amputated and then the surgeon would have to operate. We then fired up a chainsaw, and had the patient (girl) scream really loudly as we dumped fake blood on the floor so that the people taking the tour would have blood running down by their feet. Afterwords the doctor said that they would need a donation for the leg they just amputated. Then one of us would reach under the curtain and try to grab people's legs. Had a few people wet themselves when we grabbed them. Lots of crying.

This particular incident involved a celebrity. I wouldnt want to mention names, so lets just call him stohn jamos. Word got through the maze than Mr. Jamos had just entered and our supervisors were offering prizes for anyone who could get the best scare. I was positioned in a narrow hallway that had three doorless rooms on either side. In this hallway, every 45 second, there was an intense high speed strobe light that activated for 5 second. I waited and counted for the perfect moment, skipping perfectly good potential scares in hopes that the timing of the strobe would align with Mr. Jamos' entrance. By the grace of god it did. He entered the hallway with his wife, the beautiful Rebecca Romijn,*cough* I mean Robecca Remijn, wrapped around his arm. At the other end of the hallway I stood with a plexiglass mask drenched in blood. Right then, the strobe went off and I went full speed forward. To him it must have seemed like I was rapidly barreling at him without ever seeing me take a step. And all I could see were snap shots of a man growing relatively in size and panic. Until, POW! I ran head first into poor Robecca knocking us both to the ground. What I thought was a gross miscalculation in proximity by me ended up being Mr. Jamos shamelessly throwing his wife down the hallway at me like some sort of goul repelant. Well, it worked. I did end up getting that prize, also. Food vouche $5.

tl;dr A celebrity used his wife as protection from me. I ran her over.

One time 2 really drunk guys went in and started harassing one of our actresses in a cage. The owner, a cop, and a 6'5" guy with a spiked club went in to get them out.

A few years ago I ran a haunted house at our local rec center. The gym was sort of the grand finale and it was set up like a giant, indoor cemetery. A lot of families went through the haunt and the kids were horrified by the zombies. A lot of kids would just be losing their minds when they got to the exit.

But because I'm a jerk, the "exit" was fake. It was one of those heavy metal doors with the push bar on it. It led to another part of the building but it looked like an exit. So I put a sign on it that said "Thanks for coming! Please exit quietly!"

So the kids would be scared and the same thing would happen over and over. The parents would say "It's ok! It's over, look see....it's the end!" And the kids would be relieved and they would run for the door.

They'd push it open and Leartherface would blast his chainsaw right in their face.