When fall begins to roll around and leaves fall from chilly breezes, a certain energy floats through the air that is best characterized by the term “spooky season.”
One of the most popular ways to get in the Halloween spirit and feel the spooky energy is by visiting haunted entertainment. Haunted entertainment can be placed on a spectrum, ranging from least to most involved in the order of haunted houses, attractions, and experiences. The further up the scale goes, the more immersive and scary the experience is.
Kings Island amusement park located in Mason, Ohio hosts Halloween Haunt, a haunted attraction open from Sept. 20- Nov. 2. Although intended for mature audiences as indicated on their website, the park still offers many family-friendly opportunities. Glowing necklaces are available for purchase that notify scare actors to stay away from those people.
Throughout the park, Haunt also has haunted houses of various themes that are free with admission into the park. Haunt sits on the low intensity side of the spectrum and is considered an attraction with haunted houses because the scare actors do not physically interact with guests and guests have the option to avoid scare actors at the attraction.
McKamey Manor is on the complete opposite side of this spectrum. McKamey Manor’s founder, Russ McKamey classifies the house as an “immersive haunted experience,” which is its own category of haunted experiences where guests are essentially entered into a real life horror movie and safe words are used to allow guests to leave the experience at any time.
However, McKamey Manor takes this experience to an entirely new level. First founded in the early 2000s by Russ in his backyard in California, McKamey Manor began as a haunted experience that took guests on a tour of his estate with children hired as scare actors. Now based in Tennessee, the event has turned into a 10-hour long filmed torture tour of his estate, where all guests must sign a 40- page contract, pass a physical & mental exam, a phone screen, drug tests, and a background check to be entered.
Any guest who brings in a form of dog food as their entrance fee and can survive 10 hours in the estate is guaranteed to win a $20,000 cash prize. However, signing that 40-page waiver gives the scare actors permission to do anything they want to atendees during that 10-hour period, including, but not limited to getting stomped on, waterboarded, being forced to eat unknown substances, or if you throw up – your own vomit, ingesting pills that cause hallucinations (supposedly), and getting your hair cut or teeth pulled out.
If the tormentors feel artistic, they’ll even give you a tattoo. Perhaps the most twisted part is that Russ records all of the tours and stores those recordings in his home, keeping hundreds of hours of footage where people go through all of the above and more. Despite the lengthly list of torture tactics, 24,000 haunt enthusiasts still join the waitlist each year thinking they might be the exception and withstand 10 hours of torture to win the grand prize.
Little do they know, their fate is not in their own hands because Russ is the one who decides when their tour is over. The Hulu documentary “Monster Inside,” directed by Andrew Renzi, uses footage from McKamey Manor and interviews survivors who all say that Russ was the one who decided they could leave, whether they wanted to or not.
One survivor, Amy Milligan, is found in Russ’ tapes of her tour. Towards the end of the video, Miligan is heard complaining that she can’t breathe while Russ is heard telling her that she has only made it through one of the four zones, and she isn’t done yet.
“I’m telling them I can’t breathe and they’re just laughing and doing it more,” Mulligan told The LAist.
This leads many to wonder if the $20,000 cash prize is legit, or just a ruse to allow Russ to gather more people to torture and keep the experience alive.
Thankfully, no guests have died during the tours, but it is reported that one guest did have a heart attack during their visit. With all of this in mind, it is only appropriate to call McKamey Manor a torture house, not a haunted experience. At this point, legality comes into question, and many people do not understand how it is considered legal.
No legal action has been taken against McKamey Manor, although Russ did get arrested on charges of attempted second- degree murder, rape, and domestic assault against his gilfriend on July 19, 2024. This arrest could possibly be the light at the end of the tunnel, giving justice towards the victims and becoming the demise of the truly haunted McKamey Manor.
