By Bobby Crew
If you’re a screamer like me, get your haunt on at the 13th Floor Denver this year. This attraction has some of the best special effects I have ever experienced in a haunted house.
“The quality here … we have people who have worked on film sets, and they’ve built the haunted house,” says Kaitlyn Jaffke a spokesperson for Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group. “It’s Hollywood-type quality.” And it was. Parts of the haunted house were like walking onto a Hollywood film set. The 13th floor tour takes you through two haunted houses, and the first one, Undead: The Possession, definitely gave off some “Evil Dead” realness, not to mention I have never seen such realistic dangling bodies.
The second haunt, and main attraction, Dwellings of the Dead, takes you to a whole new world of zombies, ghouls, monsters, and mayhem. From shaking elevators to swamps, twirling rooms, and giant moving monsters, this haunted house offers some amazing special effects and is a must see.
The actors inside the haunted house were just that: actors. Professional makeup artists help make them terrifying, and they do a lot more than just jump out and scream. They varied in behavior, and they interacted with you, and some were creepy as hell (see: the twitching possessed girl). The best part? The scares weren’t all focused on the head of the group; folks in the middle and the back got their fair share of the screams as well.
Erica Stackhouse is a secretary for a Catholic church during the day, and chases people with chainsaws at night. She has a theater background and has worked with the haunted house for seven years. She tells Out Front a little about the hiring process for actors: “You come in, we ask a few questions, and then we put you on a set and walk past you. We give you a chance to give us all you’ve got and then offer character ideas, and see what they come up with.” I take it that if you creep them out enough, you are hired.
The 13th Floor has been featured on the Travel Channel, “Making Monsters,” USA Today, MTV, and the Wall Street Journal, and has received recognition from Hauntworld.com, and “America Haunts.”
“We are quite expansive,” Kaitlyn tells Out Front. “We own seven different haunted houses in five markets. We have the resources and the talent to make a kick-ass show and have a larger than life haunted house.”
The 13th Floor also supports the anti-bullying campaign “Don’t Be A Monster,” targeting children aged 4 – 10, encouraging them not to stand by and let bullying happen at their school. The non-profit gives presentations to schools during the month of October which is National Bullying Prevention Month.
Learn more at 13thFloorHauntedHouse.com
