Fresh Meat

"Is it scary?" the group of teens ask!

The only response they get from the man in solid black biker attire is a deep throat laugh.

Then a few seconds later he grabs his mag lite and bangs on the metal door making a sound that ha made grown men jump. He opens the door and simply says "Fresh Meat".

The chills run down your spine - for the first 4 years of our haunted house this was the man that greeted our guest. I simply call him the man as oppose to actor because there was no part of his look or his voice which was acting. This was who Tom was... the type of man you did not want to make mad and then meet in a back ally.

So as the 2009 haunted house season is about to begin, the words Fresh Meat play in my head. Tomorrow night I will host actor training for community members that want to act inside our haunted house.

Dr. Haunt's has been around for 7 years and during that time we have won more awards then any other haunted house in Texas or Oklahoma but each year as we grew from 12 actors a night to 50 actors a night we saw the need for quality control - thus actor training was born.

So in less than 24-hours I will have fresh meat before me to learn the scare tactics that we use inside the haunted house and to ensure we always stay true to our first review "the Most Hardcore Haunted House in North Texas". This is a badge of honor that we wear - I mean no other haunted house in Texas allows their actors the freedom that we do and thus creativity is born in the moment.

Dallas Scariest Haunted House

Fear & Scares

Fear a four letter word that can mean anything. So knowing that an amazing haunted house has to have fear and knowing that fear can be anything and is different to each person, how can I go about creating an environment that allows for Fear after Fear????

Dr. Haunt's Chamber of Fear Highest Fear Rating in all Dallas Fort Worth for Haunted Houses

So the first thing I do is think about the Fears that people have. I like to focus on our adult population and although a crazy spouse or mortage payment could give some people a real life scream - we try to avoid that. Fear of creatures, the dark, tight spaces, being trapped, crawling, unknowns touching you... these are all the things that makes An Award Winning Haunted House in Texas and Oklahoma

Then after you have a list of fears thenj you begin putting them in an order which makes sense and usually you build them up. Nothing is worse then a haunted house that climaxs in scene one. The customers want to be built up for a scare just like a great movie but don't get me wrong - we'll get you early too!

The scares are the fun part for the actor. You have an amazing design to work with and then you add your personality into the scenario. So in a dark room do you get beakens of light - through your voice, portray many voices, or just produce sounds. In a tight hallway do you allow a little water to drip - although we know this torture to be inhumane - no governments are after us and the UN has not caught on!

Texas & Oklahoma's Scariest Haunted House

Creating a Scary Haunted House

Creating a scene that sets the mood for the entire haunted house is very important but there are lots of factors to consider when creating a scary haunted house. At Dr. Haunt's we think we have it down and that's why we been named Top 31 Scariest Haunted Houses in America


First and foremost, you think about the actors and the actors scare because eye candy is important but a room that any level actor can work is a most. To do this we ensure in every scene we have at least four possible ways for an actor to scare the customers. During our first season we learned this lesson. A single scare for a great actor in a room gets kinda of boring after you've done that same scare 40 times in one night let alone 100 times every night for the entire season. So by having a scene with multiple areas/ways for an actor to scare we guarantee our actors have more fun and freedom as well as our repeat customers never get the same scare during the same season. The other reason to have multiple scares is you provide 'boo' scares for rookie actors and allow for scene acting for veteran actors. Our actors is why Dr. Haunt's is the Most Hardcore Haunted House in Dallas Fort Worth

Then after thinking about how the actor will scare in a room then we go about thinking from the customers perspective what do they see, how will lighting play into that, and how can we trick them. Our attention to detail ensures that no one person can take it all in during one visit to our haunted house and this also adds to why so many people come back multiple times during one season. Dr. Haunts Chamber of Fears is the Most Frightening Haunted House for Oklahoma!

Over the years we constantly redesign every room every year so that our customers get something new weget rid of scenes that were not our favorite and expand scenes that rocked. In 2002 our clown room was on fire. In 2003 we expanded it by 400% to really make our customers scream. Then in 2008 we gave the clowns 6,000 sqaure feet of their very own to call home in the attraction Bloody Fun. For the last 7 months we have been working on redesiging Bloody Fun. We have built new walls, worked on new tricks, and most importantly brought in a lot of eye candy for our customers to enjoy!