Haunted House

Every year around Halloween, we do an interactive "Haunted House" event, that the public is invited to attend and walk through. Students choose the theme, write, direct, design the sets/props/makeup effects/etc., and perform in the piece. Some of our haunted houses have scared nearly 100 people per night! Each one is different -- look below for some examples:

We created a dungeon where prisoners were strapped into horrible torture devices, pulled apart, decapitated and otherwise injured for your entertainment! Students who created the Chamber of Horrors had an opportunity to research historical methods of torture, and then learn carpentry techniques to recreate full-size torture devices (including a working guillotine and rack), costuming techniques to create medieval robes and tunics, and makeup effects techniques to simulate body parts and organs. It was all handled with a lighthearted tone that made all the gore less horrific and more tongue-in-cheek -- most audience members left with smiles on their faces (and occasionally, blood on their shoes).

Inspired by George Orwell's novel 1984, DYSTOPIA took its audience into a dark future filled with television screens on which the evil dictator known as "Big Brother" brainwashed the citizens to follow the rules and never ask questions. This was interrupted repeatedly by pirate video from the Resistance instructing the audience not to listen. Citizens who talked back had their mouths sewn shut. Citizens who refused to watch had their eyes pinned open. Citizens who refused to do state-mandated exercises received electrical shocks. The tour ended with a trip to the notorious torture chamber Room 101, where rats could be seen gnawing off an innocent man's arm under the supervision of an insane scientist. Soldiers of the Resistance appeared at the end of the tour to save the audience from a similar fate.

This is not the kind of place you want to visit for surgery! The Haunted Hospital was a showcase for cool special effects (we combined live video projection and the old "Pepper's Ghost" magic trick to create a transparent, floating ghost girl that could actually interact with audiences in the operating room) and insane makeup illusions (including a
full-sized latex "dead guy" that had a live "demon" actor emerge from it).
Want to see how we made our "dead guy"? Click the link below:
How to Build Your Body!
(WARNING: Some images contain simulated gore -- but don't worry, it's all fake!)

This was the first attraction to move fully outside of Levels -- it took place throughout the entire basement level of the Great Neck Library. Students chose works of horror literature, by such authors as Stephen King, Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, and adapted them into short horror plays that the audience would encounter as they moved from room to room, as though the library were haunted by the horrifying stories lurking in the book stacks. Bringing us into contemporary times, the big finale was a "Zombie Music Video" inspired by Beyoncé and Michael Jackson. You can see it at the link below:
Click here to see The Zombie Music Video on YouTube!

The audience was led through a crumbling, decaying fairground haunted by the spirit of the evil clown Boo-Hee. They played carnival games that sprang to life with monstrous faces, gruesomely dunked the evil clown into a vat of acid, watched a silent film with characters that leapt off the screen at them, and were finally menaced by an enormous puppet of Boo-Hee that appeared to stand 15 feet tall! While they were waiting to enter, audience members were entertained by a "freak show" of tattooed ladies, two-headed men and animal people portrayed by the Levels Improv Troupe. This was considered one of our scariest haunted attractions, possibly because a lot of people get REALLY freaked out by clowns.

Levels was transformed into the Harwell Asylum for Disturbed Children, a condemned institution inhabited by the ghosts of its mistreated inmates. This attraction spilled out around the outside of the library, so that ghosts would appear in the bushes and on the walking paths leading into the building. FUN FACT: The straitjacketed ghost spewing bile on her glass enclosure was none other than future Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky!

This event transported the audience back to 16th Century Massachusetts, where they wandered through stylized fields, down streets and through houses as superstitious locals hunted supposed "witches" and burned them at the stake (with the help of some really cool lighting effects and sleight-of-hand staging). It turned out that the town elder in charge of the burnings was the one actually in league with dark forces, represented by grotesque Levels Puppetry Workshop creations flown from the ceiling as marionettes.