13th Floor continues to scare

I am a self-proclaimed scaredy-cat. I don’t like to sleep in the dark, or with my door closed out of fear of what lurks under my bed. I get spooked at the smallest noises, and convince myself that someone is in my 700 square foot apartment. I don’t even like to close my eyes in the shower, because I know someone, or something, is bound to appear. So as I walked up to the 13th Floor haunted house, one of the top rated in the country, I was shaking.

Days before I nervously filed into the line, I sat down with Marketing Director Kaitlyn Jaffke, to talk about what visitors could expect this year at the haunted, and also what I should be on the look out for as I slinked my way through.

This year, 13th Floor incorporated three new themes.

“One of them is “Hallow House,” which is focused on a sadistic clown who likes to invite children into his house,” Kaitlyn says.

Clowns. I’m not a fan of clowns. It could be the perpetual happiness and their dark arts balloon manipulation, or it could be the scene in It where Tim Curry appears in a sewer drain and says “they all float down here.” So seconds into stepping through the front door, I was already clutching the sides of my friend’s jacket, puling myself closer to him, like an awkward prom photo.

Hallow House was more terrifying than I could have imagined. It wasn’t the jump scares, which had me sorority girl squealing, but the details that were put into the set. As we crept our way through the haunts, the amount of detail put into each room was immaculate and terrifying. At one point, we walked into a room filled with teddy bears. Usually, I would be ecstatic to walk into a room full of bears, but this was not one of those times.

Just typing out these words is turning my stomach, so rather than puking, I’m just going to move on to the second round of 13th Floor.

“The second theme is “Undead What Lies Beneath,” which is a collection of nightmares and fears, and experiments that went wrong,” Kaitlyn says. “Zombies are on the downslope of popularity, so we wanted to bring something new.”

The creative team succeeded. After a long ride “down” on a shaky elevator, ran by a very serious army woman, we walked into a lab overtaken by zombies, and larger than life mutated animals.

Full disclosure, zombies don’t scare me. I accepted a long time ago that in the case of a zombie attack my best bet is to get on a cruise ship and get as far away from land as possible. And if I don’t make it to the coast, I get to come back as the living dead, sissying my walk all over the countryside. So, as I walked through I loosened my grip on the person in front of me and paid attention to the sheer amount of work that goes into 13th Floor.

Almost like walking through a Resident Evil game, “Undead What Lies Beneath” was impressive. Specifically, the animatronic puppets that lurked behind cages and corners. The detail, and movement made them realistic, and scary.

One of the new features this year, are puppet scares. They are very interactive, very well done, and completely operated by manpower,” Kaitlyn says. “We are excited to see how people react to them, and whether or not we want to bring them back in the future.”

The third, and final, theme is “Feral Moon” featuring classic Halloween monsters, like werewolves and vampires, and who doesn’t love a classic?

Like an idiot, I let my guard down after the walk through the zombie filled lab. How scary could Dracula and Teen Wolf really be? The answer is very, very scary. I’m not going to ruin some of the best haunts that I’ve ever been through, but the setting, use of ziplines, and blood curdling screams from the actors put me on edge and back into the prom position with my friend.

There’s a reason 13th Floor is nationally recognized. It’s fun, thought provoking, and petrifying.

“Honestly, if it seems scary, I think I’m doing my job,” Kaitlyn says. “The more fearful I am, the more I know it’s going to be good.”