mastering the MACABRE

It's dark outside, but luckily the path is lit by torches. Ominous music is playing and screams are coming from inside the house. Onlookers watch as people run, frightened, from men with chainsaws. A group is huddled not far from the exit. They are laughing and talking excitedly. They seem to be relieved. \n"My heart is beating a hundred times per second," said McKenzie Carter, an Edgewood High School student.\nJohn Jeffries has been running the Harrodsburg Haunted House for 25 years. He is the creative constructor, "owner, operator and all-around grave-digger" for the attraction. Extensive planning goes into making visitors scream, and Jeffries actually began working on the year's frightful feature in May. \nWhen it comes to scaring people, Jeffries said atmosphere is the most important element. \n"Without good atmosphere you just have a spook house," he said. \nThe attraction is designed to build up visitors' anticipation as they get closer to the entrance. This is vital to the success of the attraction, and Jeffries said it is "like a good movie trailer." The rooms are progressively scarier as you walk through, and Jeffries said the maze at the end is "a whole different level of terror."\nMusic is used to help create that anticipation. Three different soundtracks progress the mood for the different sections of the attraction. When it comes to lighting techniques, Jeffries said "dark is always good." Dark sheets are used to separate the light from one room to the next. The maze at the end of the house is pitch-black, with no light at all, making for an extremely spooky effect. \nJeffries said he uses several painting techniques to make the walls of the building look aged. All the painting is layered. One technique involves a sprayer. He starts with a base color, like gray, and then uses a sprayer to blend black over the gray paint, making it look old. Another technique he uses is dry-brushing. He sprays on a paint, and then uses a dry brush to drag the paint down. This technique produces streaks and is especially effective on outside doors and walls because it produces a weathered effect. He also uses stippling to decorate walls. Stippling is a painting process using sponges or paintbrushes with short touches to produce a textured design. \nPerhaps choosing which place to haunt is a creative decision all in itself. \nWhen haunting a house, however, there might be wallpaper to deal with. Jeffries said decorators can use a pot of strong coffee or tea to age wallpaper. First, scuff the surface of the wallpaper; then by putting the coffee in the sprayer and spraying the wallpaper the walls get what Jeffries called that "yellow, nasty, old-nicotine look." He said you can also spray chair coverings and drapes. Another tip Jeffries gave to make drapes look old is cutting "moth" holes in them with scissors. \nTo age wood Jeffries uses a blowtorch. He burns the wood, sands it and uses wood stain to make the wood look older. He also makes the chains in the haunted house look rusty. To do this, Jeffries puts steel wool in vinegar to produce a rust-colored liquid that he paints on the chains. \nJeffries said decorators can make rooms look dusty by using flesh-toned talcum powder. Puffing the powder into the air and letting it fall on objects, makes the dust look more natural. Jeffries also owns a web-shooter to put webs on the sets. \n"The webs don't last too long, but they look really neat," he said. \nDead bodies are essential to haunted houses. There are a lot of different ways to get corpses, and one way is to construct them. Outside his haunted house, Jeffries has a "corpse" that he made for a criminalistics class at Ivy Tech. The body is made of foam, latex, sheet cotton and parts of a fake skeleton he bought at a store. He acquired the hair from a beauty supply store. Jeffries looked at pictures of dead bodies for inspiration to create his fake corpses. He said you can build a body cheaper than you can buy one.\nMark Goles, director and producer of Nightmare University, said the best way to make fake blood is by mixing Karo syrup and red dye. Nightmare University is a haunted house at 38 Miley Avenue in downtown Indianapolis. Goles said live actors make the best dead bodies, because, at Nightmare University, "our dead come alive." \nGoles said he believes the most essential element of a haunted house is "screaming customers." \n"(It is also important to have) a great creative team that sees ideas through and good actors," he said. \nNightmare University will be open from 6:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. Thursday and Sunday and until 1 a.m. Friday and Saturday.\nCheryl and John Baker chose a train for their plot of terror. The couple owns and operates the Haunted Train at Baker's Junction. \n"We have had the same group of monsters for the past 10 years. They have a blast," Cheryl Baker said. \nThe Haunted Train will be open 7 to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday and is located two miles east of Highway 37 on Fairfax Road. Tickets are $5. \nJeffries said the Harrodsburg Haunted House usually draws in a crowd of over 8,000 people each year, and it is not uncommon for people to come from towns over four hours away. \n"If they like haunted houses, it's a must see," said Thelma Jeffries, John Jeffries' mother, who let him hold the haunted house in her basement when he was a child. Thelma Jeffries said John Jeffries designed his first haunted house when he was 8 years old.\nThe Harrodsburg Haunted House is just off Old State Road 37, and is about 20 minutes south of Bloomington. It will be open 7 to 11 p.m. Thursday through Sunday. \n"We do ours for fun and to support the community. As long as people enjoy it and have fun, we'll continue doing it," John Jeffries said. \nThe admission price for adults is $7, or $6 with a canned food item. The food is donated to the Hoosier Hills Food Bank and the proceeds go to the Indian Creek Township Fire Department, where John Jeffries is a volunteer fighter. Volunteer firefighters from the department help run the attraction. \nPhil Wyatt is a volunteer firefighter who has been helping at the haunted house for seven years. He has had several different positions over the years that he said "people are dying to experience," such as lying in a coffin and staying in a body bag. His current position is to "greet the victims." \n"(My favorite part of the attraction this year is) the satisfaction I get from seeing people get creeped out," Wyatt said.\nJunior Elizabeth Burns recently visited the Harrodsburg Haunted House.\n"It was very creepy. The maze part was especially frightening," Burns said. \nBut just because people are safely outside of the maze, it does not necessarily mean that their frights are over. In fact, John Jeffries said that is not at all his intention. \n"After people leave, my goal is that when they go home and get ready to go to sleep, a tingle goes up their back and they look in the shadows and wonder if something followed them home," he said.\n-- Contact staff writer Amy Hamblen at amnhambl@indiana.edu.