The sun sets outside 13th Hour, a haunted attraction in Wharton. Photo, above and below, by Chip O’Chang

I’m in the lair of monsters. Blood covers the walls and the creatures that dwell here, from life-sized dolls with creepy painted smiles to wraiths in gray rags.

This is what draws legions of scare hounds to 13th Hour, a two-story haunted attraction in Wharton that runs through Nov. 4. But I’m not going through the haunt. I’m backstage with the cast and crew, asking them what it’s like to terrify people for a living.

Alanna and Dakota, scare actors for 13th Hour, relax before the night’s work begins.

The unsurprising answer: it’s a fun way to make a paycheck. It’s also more than that. Working a haunt presents a creative outlet, a customer service wish fulfillment fantasy, and an unexpected family bound by (fake) blood.

Steve Bailey is the owner of 13th Hour. A retired law enforcement officer, he hadn’t originally planned to create a multiple award-winning haunted attraction. He just liked carpentry.

The haunt work of 13th Hour makeup artist Juliet Johnson. Photo courtesy of Juliet Johnson

“It started off as a hobby at my house,” he said. “It just became bigger and bigger, but I always liked to be a home builder. So I enjoyed building stuff and becoming creative with haunted house scenes.”

Mike showing his true colors in the Dark Side of the Hayden Family, a segment of the attraction in total darkness. Photo courtesy of Mike

Eventually, he took the leap from building lawn scenes at his house for Halloween to opening a haunted attraction. That was – fittingly enough – 13 years ago.

Since then, 13th Hour has expanded into a triple threat offering of Halloween fun. Guests can go ax-throwing, or test their wits in one of eight internationally recognized escape room games that run year-round. But the largest draw is the haunted attraction itself, called simply “the haunt.”

Haunt patrons begin their expedition with a pre-show that details the narrative tying the attraction together. In August 1971, they hear, Hurricane Doria tore through New Jersey, destroying a farmhouse that belonged to the reclusive Hayden family. After the storm passed, officials investigating the ruins discovered several corpses … none of them belonging to the Haydens. The mission begins with a journey through a time machine to find out what happened that fateful night.

The story has expanded through the years to keep loyal patrons coming. “Every year, we will change a certain number of scenes within the attractions just to keep it fresh,” Bailey said. His carpentry skill blends with environmental design throughout the haunt to create a relentlessly ominous atmosphere, rife with technological wizardry. Rooms spin or move on hidden platforms, so a door that closes on one room opens somewhere else entirely. Immersive sound design and cleverly implemented animatronics add sound and motion, a sense of a living nightmare.

As much as Bailey enjoys building the environments of the haunt, he doesn’t see his role as the most important. At its core, the terror relies on the monsters who spring from the shadows and chase you down.

During the haunt, they’re reapers, killer clowns, psychotic cannibals, gore-splattered zombies. Backstage, they’re called scare actors.

Just as Bailey builds the environments of the haunts, makeup artists design the characters’ looks in a studio speckled with stage blood and airbrush splatters. Juliet’s been here the longest. She’s been doing stage makeup for over a decade, since she was 12 years old. This is either her eighth or ninth year at 13th Hour — at this point, it’s hard to keep track.

“It’s really cool as our collective effort,” Juliet said. “We get this place together every night. And we’re, like, the masterminds behind it.”

Skye, another makeup artist and a specialist in wound SFX, agreed. When she’s finished sculpting gore effects that could rival a Saw movie, she helps with security outside. “I have people asking me, oh, is it scary?” she said. “And I’m like, well, I’m biased, I’m a makeup artist here. But yeah, I put a damn good job in.”

For Skye and Juliet, making monsters isn’t just a job — it’s an artistic opportunity. Both have significant freedom in the visions they create. After Halloween season ends, they practice cosmetic effects on themselves to continue expanding their portfolios and honing their skills. But nothing compares to the thrill of the haunt.

‘Thrill’ is the first word that the scare actors use to describe their jobs. This is 20-year-old Alanna Mendoza’s first year at 13th Hour as a scare actor. In fact, it’s her first job ever.

The haunt work of 13th Hour makeup artist Juliet Johnson. Photo courtesy of Juliet Johnson

Photo by Chip O’Chang

“It’s just really exhilarating,” she said, prop cleaver in the lap of her bloodstained dress, “especially when I give them a really good scare. That’s the best.”

The other night, she scared the hell out of a group of men twice her age.

She grins. “I didn’t even know I could do that.”

A life-sized doll with a cracked porcelain face nods. “You get that same rush of adrenaline,” she added. This scare actor, Cammy, has a much longer history of instilling terror. A theater kid and entertainer at heart, she made her first appearance at a scare house when she was 8 years old and started working at 13th Hour when she was 11.

She loves it all — the screamers, the whimperers, even the people who freak out and then burst into hysterical laughter. “You get the extra experience of people just enjoying themselves and having fun,” she said.

In most performance settings, audiences are expected to sit and passively take in an actor’s performance. In a haunt, interactions are up-close, personal, and instant. The audience isn’t sitting in a chair with a vacant expression — they’re running down the hallway screaming while an actor chases them with an ax.

Many of the haunt staff have worked customer service jobs elsewhere, where they must follow the usual professional etiquette of diplomatic politeness. At a haunt, though, there’s no need to appease the foul-mouthed customer or the rude bystander. Alyx has joined 13th Hour this year, around their other job working at a farm with a corn maze. They’ve had their share of customer rudeness, without the ability to respond in kind. “But here,” they said, “I get to yell back.”

It’s cathartic, said third-year haunter Danny. “All of my pent-up emotions, I can turn into scaring the hell out of people and making them scream and run out of my room … It’s like a free therapy session!”

This earns a grin of recognition from Lucius, a macabre jester with a stitched-shut mouth. “I’ve been saying that for a while.”

Danny nodded. “Haunting is the best thing I’ve ever done.” For him, the haunt gives him the chance to explore the sides of himself that might be constricted: “You get to be who you want to be. You can hide your identity completely and still be you.”

The makeup artists’ blood-spattered studio at 13th Hour. Photo by Chip O’Chang

For Dakota, an ax-wielding cannibal farmer, it’s about transformation: “You’re a whole new person.”

Both the patrons and the crew come here for the same reason — a chance to enter a heightened reality, a game of “what if.” For patrons, the game is: what if monsters and time travel were real? For the crew backstage, the question flips: what if I were the monster? Who or what could I be?

Whether it’s their first haunt, their ninth, or their 13th, the monsters backstage are figuring it out together. In Danny’s first year, he was adopted by Martin, a cue line actor who taught him the ropes of scaring strangers. Newer actors can look to Kim, also called Mama Kimmy, a nine-year veteran of 13th Hour who makes sure everyone gets into costumes and makeup on time. Again and again, the actors use the same word to describe the community they’ve built in their house of horrors: family.

Danny remembers the first time that family became real for him. The 18 stitches on his eyebrow isn’t stage makeup — they’re helping him heal from an accident in the pitch-black section of the haunt. Danny has always had trouble seeing himself as part of a group, he said. “But when my injury happened and I came back … I got cheered as soon as I walked in the room. I just felt the love and I’m like, holy (expletive). I put myself as an outcast and they kept accepting me, kept loving me. You’re truly never alone, especially at the 13th Hour.”

It’s getting harder to talk. Costumes rustle and Gatorade bottles clack down on tables as a line forms at the door. “Let’s go, let’s go!” one of the managers calls.

Time to make nightmares. The monsters pick up their cleavers, axes, and woodsaws and head toward the stairs, toward the home of the Hayden family — and another family all their own.