The gates to Markoff’s Haunted Forest in Dickerson, Maryland, is reminiscent of folk horror classics like “The Wicker Man.”
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Ryan Benk/NPR News
It’s October and that can only mean one thing – the spooky season is in full swing.
Americans are expected to spend more than $13 billion dollars on celebrating this season, whether that’s on horror films, costumes, candy or attractions, according to the National Retail Federation.
As much as $300 – $500 million of that spending comes from attending a haunt, where people willingly give up their hard-earned cash to be frightened. And tens of millions of people take part in this kind of activity every year.
But why do people like getting scared? The search for that answer starts with one of the largest haunted attractions in the country, Markoff’s Haunted Forest in Dickerson, Maryland. Markoff’s has more than a mile of haunted trails and dozens of themed haunted houses. It employs hundreds of engineers, retail attendants, makeup artists and actors.
Open since 1992, the attraction starts with towering skull-emblazoned wooden gates reminiscent of folk horror movies like “The Wicker Man.”
Just inside, director of operations Paul Brubacher stands in between two huge bonfires.
“Some of our designers, including myself, have done some music festivals before. So yeah, that’s the inspiration… from kind-of [a] Van Helsing vampire village aspect of things,” Brubacher says.
There is hardly a thing that happens in this haunt without him knowing.
“This is an emergency radio that we have in each one of our scenes. In case an actor has a problem or somebody falls down and needs to be evacuated,” Brubacher says. Before hitting the trail, he takes us behind the scenes to a barn where scare-actors are getting finishing touches of makeup.
Art director and makeup manager Chris Knowles and his team are using a bevy of pressurized airbrushes to quickly creep-ify all kinds of ghouls, vampires and aliens.
“It’s great because you can get color on really finely or cover areas. [It] swaps colors really quickly as well, which is essential because we’ve only got like about seven minutes to do the makeup because we got like 100 odd people and two hours to do it,” Knowles says.
Robert Doyle (left) sits still as Markoff’s art director and makeup manager Chris Knowles (right) goes to work.
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Ryan Benk/NPR News
Robert Doyle, 38, is in Knowles’ chair at the moment.
“I love Halloween. I love going out and interacting with people, entertaining them, making them laugh. Giving them a good scare, you know, giving them a good dopamine rush,” Doyle says.
Doyle has played all kinds of frightening characters in his five years at Markoff’s. He’s been a killer clown, a demon and tonight he’s a Nosferatu-style vampire with sharp fangs, a bloody mouth and pupils as dark as coal.
Robert Doyle’s finished face of makeup transforms him into a Nosferatu-like vampire.
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Ryan Benk/NPR News
Doyle thinks people keep coming back to places like Markoff’s to face down their fears safely.
“People want to challenge themselves and they can say they accomplished something,” Doyle says.
Another scare-actor, wearing a black top hat and looking like a cross between a straw and hair covered zombie, and hoodoo shaman is ready for his opening night.
His day-walker name is Jermaine Hoes.
“I am something that you see when you wake up at 3 o’clock in the morning,” Hoes says.
Scare-actor Jermaine Hoes (right) in costume scares host Ayesha Rascoe mid-interview.
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Ryan Benk/NPR News.
Hoes has been a scare actor at different haunts around Maryland for years, and he says his reason for moonlighting as a horrific beast is pretty simple.
“I like scaring people. I like to make you run and scream and holler everywhere,” Hoes says.
Leaving the actors so they can get into character, it’s time to take to the trail, which begins with an ominous, steady heartbeat pumping through hidden speakers.
The trail is dark, foggy and winding. It’s constructed in such a way that you can’t escape the scares. Even trying to escape signals to the actors that you’re ripe for a fright.
There are snakes, zombified pumpkin heads, ghosts, vampires, ghouls, aliens and even cannibals.
The trail is barely a mile, but between the terrain and its twists, it can take more than an hour to get through.
Voices cry out in pain and shriek in fear. Many seem menacing.
“You can join us,” one voice in the shadows snickers.
“Don’t you want your face on one of these pumpkins?,” another cackles. “It just takes a little bit of a beating!”
Anything that could scare you is here, and it didn’t take much in this secluded, murky environment.
The science of screams
“Fear is extremely fast,” says Harvard Medical School associate professor of radiology Nouchine Hadjikhani.
For much of her career, Hadjikhani has studied what happens in the brain when someone is afraid. She uses computer screens and brain monitoring equipment to show subjects frightening images and measure their brain’s reaction.
“If I show you very briefly, so for, you know, 30 milliseconds or something, snakes and spiders, I will see that your amygdala gets activated,” Hadjikhani says.
She says it’s this activation that makes a jump scare so effective.
“Your heart goes faster. You go a little further back and you start sweating. Your pupils get high for a stupid image on the screen,” she says.
According to Hadjikhani, we get scared when something – usually visual – sets off the fear center of the brain. And she says she can elicit that same brain reaction in people just by showing them pictures of other folks who are scared. But she says it’s difficult to know why some people derive pleasure from fear.
You have to talk to them.
Fear is fun
For that we need the scientists at the Recreational Fear Lab at Aarhaus University in Denmark.
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Co-directors Matthias Clausen and Marc Andersen have created all kinds of studies into what keeps people coming back for frights.
Over the years, what they’ve found is that there is more than one type of recreational fear.
“We did an early study where we tried to see if we could identify the personality profile of the horror fan and what we found was a god-forsaken mess,” Clausen says.
A rollercoaster enthusiast, for example, may detest horror films. And a scary movie scream queen might lose her lunch at a theme park.
But Clausen says survey after survey at the Fear Lab shows fear-for-fun is surprisingly universal.
“When you engage in recreational activities, you’re essentially administering a fear vaccine,” Clausen says. Seeking out fear is our way of preparing our bodies for the sometimes scary real world.
And this vaccine is actually fun for most people. “It doesn’t hurt,” Clausen says.
The duo has called this a “fear inoculation.”
Co-director Marc Anderssen has also interviewed subjects who say they treat their own psychological disorders using fear.
“We have a ton of anecdotal stories about horror fans that we meet that tell us that they deal with their clinical anxiety by popping in a horror movie,” Andersen says.
“The first time we heard it, we almost fell off of our chairs because it sounds so counterintuitive.”
Playing with fear is also incredibly social, says Matthias Clausen. After going through a haunt for example, groups have told him they’ve experienced a sense of bonding.
“That’s something that characterizes in fact most kinds of recreational experiences,” Clausen says.
Back at Markoff’s Haunted Forest, scare-actor Jermaine Hoes says his coworkers and the people he’s scaring are like a family.
“The people, man. The vibes are great. You know, you meet a lot of people here. They have a ball. You get to mix and mingle with them,” Hoes says.
Nothing brings people together like a good scare. Next week, find out how monsters, ghouls and slashers can also mean big bucks.
