Haunted House Accidents
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All right. Well, with that being said, that is the end of the announcements. Now we are going to get into today's episode, which is about haunted houses and accidents that have occurred in them throughout the years over various haunted houses. I guess when we say haunted houses, not actual haunted houses, haunted attractions. Mm hmm.

So to start off this episode today, we're first going to discuss the history of haunted houses, AKA attractions. And then we'll hop into some of the crazy accidents that have happened in those haunted attractions throughout the years. And then, uh, talk about some other interesting things, including McKamey Manor, which we covered on our premium episode today. Aaron wanted to go so bad. No, I did not. No, screw that. Anyway.

Well, with that being said, Dan, do you want to start it off for us and tell us the history of haunted houses, a.k.a. attractions? Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. All right. Welcome back. Of course. So just like I said, we're first going to talk about the history of haunted houses. I know it sounds boring, but it's actually quite interesting when you learn how haunted houses evolved through the centuries. As you know, though, haunted houses are huge attractions during Halloween time.

It reflects the human fascination with the supernatural, fear, and the psychological thrill of the unknown.

Haunted houses started off as ancient tales of ghostly dwellings and creepy folklore that evolved into pretty much a multi-million dollar industry. I wouldn't say billion. You think it's a billion? Fuck yeah, I'd say it's a billion. Actually, bleep that curse word because we got in trouble for cursing. That's only in ads though. Oh, only in ads. Yeah. Fuck. We got spanked for cursing in ads. But they're so good. They love the ads. Yeah. We can't say fuck and make 9-11 references. Fuck.

I told him, I said, people were jumping out of the buildings to hear our ads. They didn't like that. All right. So the earliest known haunted houses date way back thousands of years with roots in many different cultures. And we don't mean haunted house attractions.

This is straight up haunted houses. I mean, ancient civilizations often attributed mysterious occurrences, unexplained sounds, or just scary-ass vibes. Somebody walked in there like, look, I don't like this castle, or I don't like these ruins. I think it's haunted, you know?

Most of the time, the location would be like an abandoned home. And like I said, a castle or castle ruins or a place that had been the center of like a tragic event, like Ground Zero, 9-11. Do you think that's haunted? Oh, it's got to be. A lot of people died there. Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot, George Bush.

Osama bin Laden. All right. So it was an ancient Rome where one of the earliest accounts of a haunted house was written about by our old friend, Pliny the Younger, in the first century AD. And I don't know if you remember, Aaron, but back in our first Ghost Stories Halloween edition. 2020. 2020. We mentioned Pliny in our episode where he talks about the first ever ghost encounter. It was about an old man in chains who haunted a house in Athens, forcing the occupants to abandon the home

Pretty much making it the first, you know, haunted house to ever be documented. Yeah. Which is pretty funny. Old ass ghosts. All right. So from there, we're going to go from ancient Rome and fast forward all the way into the Middle Ages. It was during this time that the belief in haunted houses or haunted places started to get intertwined with religious beliefs. And a lot of people started to...

basically mix it with the idea of death, purgatory, and the afterlife. These haunted places they usually believed were around churches, castles, or houses that were haunted due to sins that people who had lived there committed or violent crimes that have taken place or individuals who supposedly were unholy.

you know because the catholics and the protestants and that whole thing oh yeah they're devil worshipers no they're devil worshipers steal your land yeah also castles were the number one location for hauntings because of their blood-stained history so imagine all the souls just stuck there you know torment and the visitors that come to see this nice castle they're like in war you take over a castle and everything then you're living in this castle

got the ghost of all these people that you murdered pretty much i don't think i i don't think they would haunt you you don't think so no but i guarantee if i die before you do i'm gonna haunt the out of you likewise okay and i'm gonna haunt everybody who listens to the podcast aaron we got ads this week check out my ghost dick

All right. So then from the 18th to 19th century, the Gothic literary movement would also solidify haunted houses as a symbol of mystery and fear through novels like Horace's Waffles, The Castle of Otranto, which was written in 1764, and then Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818. What a classic. Such a classic.

But we also can't forget Edgar Allan Poe's work, The Fall of the House of Usher, in 1839. Usher. Yeah, not the singer. Only the fall of Usher would be in Diddy's house. Yeah, you know, it's so weird. I always go back to that. When people talk about Diddy, I always tell them,

You know, he adopted Usher when Usher was 13 and moved him into his house and would have Usher attend the adult parties that he was attending. He was an Usher. Little John. You think that's what a hell Usher sounded like? Little John, no. No, it's all the songs that he did with little John at the start of it. Usher, Usher, Usher. And then little John would be like, little John. Oh, gosh. Poor Usher.

So yeah, these works, the Castle of Otranto, Frankenstein, that fall of the House of Usher, these works further connected old falling apart houses that had history with violence, you know, events.

to the psychological terrors of the modern-day haunted house attractions. Yep. And then we fast forward to the 19th century, and the interest in spiritualism and the supernatural, it skyrocketed. And this movement, the spiritualism, it aimed to communicate with the dead through mediums. And the mediums would do seances. And it was around this time that people seemed to be obsessed with death and the afterlife.

And this was mainly due to, you know, like World War I and all the other wars that happened or gone on. And then diseases. And diseases and everybody dying. And a lot of people wanting to communicate with their loved ones. So they'd hire these people that would come along and say, yes, look, I can communicate with your loved one that had passed away. Just pay me a few coins. And they would all sit down at the table and they'd shake the table and they'd go, oh, I can talk to your dead one. Yes.

He's gone away. Sorry. And then they'd take, oh, we'll try tomorrow. And they leave and they never come back and they take the money. And it, I mean, that was well, that was so well known that towns would ban people from showing up because certain individuals became notorious for taking people's money saying, oh, we can't contact them today, but tomorrow we can. And then they're just disappearing. Just reminds me of, uh, the old fortune teller at the,

haunted thing that we went to. Miss Cleo. She did a terrible job. Oh, God. Yeah. We'll talk about that at the end of the show. Yeah. She did a very terrible job. Just like, oh, man. So it was also around this time of the 19th century that the most famous hauntings and ghost stories started to circulate through the newspapers and people started to write books about shit like that. So it just pretty much

uh influenced the culture and movement around those beliefs yeah and this led people to beginning to you know host their own ghost tours and places that were deemed haunted old houses mansions castles they really love castles people will join in and suffer the also scary vibes and the chance of you know catching a glimpse of something supernatural or thrilling like oh i'll join you and you know on this tour did you see that the wind blew yeah

Now, a good example of this would be the Borley Rectory House in 1862, which gained the reputation of being the most haunted house in England at the time. All right. Now we head into the early 20th century, and this is when the industrial era started and it began creating new forms of entertainment such as carnivals and amusement parks.

Now, in the early 1900s, ghost houses and dark, spooky rides started to become popular at these amusement parks. And we say spooky, but back then there was like special effects that were not that special. They were pretty primitive. They would use wind machines, hidden speakers, and they would kind of like mess around with the lighting to make the ambiance better.

So it wasn't really special effects, it was basic effects. Now, one of the earliest known haunted house attractions was actually located in Lippook, England in 1915 called the Orton and Spooner's Ghost House. This was part of a carnival's attraction that involved the use of mechanical devices that were meant to pop out and scare unsuspecting visitors while playing eerie music and noises with the occasional mannequin that was all dressed up to

be like a zombie or vampire or whatever the hell they were so then we fast forward to the 1930s and in the united states it was pretty rough for a lot of people because everyone was going through the great depression they're like man i got no money i ain't got no food i ain't got a damn thing to do so during halloween time children and teenagers would run around and they would you know cause havoc pulling pranks on people not even teenagers and children but also adults

They would steal their neighbor's gates off their hinges. And sometimes they would even go about stealing dead bodies as a prank. Real dead bodies. Yeah, they would steal the neighbor's gates off the hinges and they would actually put them high up in trees. Okay. So that was like their prank. Like, I got you. Getting on the gate. I'd beat somebody's ass. I mean, eat somebody's ass. Well...

In 1900, medical students at the University of Michigan decided to steal a headless corpse from the anatomy lab and prop it up against the building's front doors. How's that funny? That's gross. That was their funny prank they pulled on Halloween. So yeah, Halloween, you know, it was a time that where you could do these pranks and the punishment...

Wasn't really that harsh because they're just like, oh, they're just blowing off steam. They're just out there having fun. Because of the Great Depression, everybody was depressed. Nobody had anything to do. And they're like, fuck, might as well go steal some dead bodies and prop them up for entertainment. And usually it didn't really cause anybody any harm. I mean, except the family members of the dead people. Yeah, but they were probably that body was probably donated. Maybe or actually might have been a criminal. Who knows back then?

So then we go to the year 1933, and it was during this time that a lot of parents, and not only parents but individuals, started to become outraged when hundreds of teenage boys decided to start pranking the city by vandalizing shit.

They would go around the city flipping cars over, sawing down telephone poles. And that's just kind of like the surface level of stuff that was happening because acts of vandalism happening all over the United States. Sounded like the purge. Yeah, it did. Well, they didn't call it the purge. They called it something else. This podcast is brought to you by Aura, the most complete online safety toolkit.

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People started to think poorly and badly about Halloween and even began to refer to Halloween as Black Halloween. I know, sounds very bad, but it doesn't mean what you think it means. This was because just like four years earlier, the stock market crashed that led to the depression, which they referred to as Black Tuesday. So they're just like, oh, Halloween's so terrible, kids are breaking shit, hiding my gate in the tree, stealing dead bodies. We should call it Black Halloween.

Yeah. And a lot of people started to get pissed. Yeah. Not only just one specific city, but I'm talking cities all across the United States. It got so bad that people got together and they were like, look, look, we need to hold a meeting to decide whether or not we want to ban Halloween altogether. We can't have these little children run around tearing up shit and spray paint and stuff. Now, people didn't really want to do that. They didn't really want to ban Halloween, take that away from the children.

So they needed to figure out a way to stop the kids from vandalizing shit and organize some fun for them without taking away the spirit of Halloween. I started to hear your Texas accent coming up. Children. Children. Children. This is when they started to organize trick-or-treating, parties, costume parades, and the creation of the haunted houses. There was a party pamphlet that was written in 1937 that talked about the creation of an event called the Trails of Terror.

The description of this trail of terror was pretty interesting, and I'm kind of glad they didn't, like, they don't do this now, which, I mean, I'm pretty sure McKamey Manor might do it. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But, yeah. So the pamphlet states, and we quote, now before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break, and we'll be right back. All right, welcome back. So the pamphlet states, and we quote, an outside entrance leads to a rendezvous with ghosts and witches in the cellar or attic.

Hang old fur. Strips of raw liver on walls where one feels his way to dark steps. You're touching raw liver as you're feeling your way up dark steps. With some old fur. That is... Weird moans and howls come from the dark corners. Oh. Damp sponges and hairnets hung from the ceiling touch his face.

At one place, Tiege, who is a guard dressed as a dog, suddenly jumps out at the person, barking and growling. Doorways are blockaded, so that guest must crawl through a long, dark tunnel. At the end, they hear a small meow, and they see a black cardboard cat outlined in luminous paint. End quote. Okay, look, it was good up until...

The fucking guard dressed as a dog and then you're crawling through the tunnel and you see a cat. Oh my God. Surprise. This is the creation of furries. It doesn't seem that scary at the end. The start was good. The start was good. Then it got to...

Mr. Furry, then... Outside entrance, you're walking up. You walk into the house, up towards the cellar or attic, and on the walls is old fur and raw liver. You're feeling your way, and you're like, ew, what is that? See, and I start to think back, holding that heart thing. Yeah, I didn't touch that. That looked gross. Yeah, I just put it right in the coat pocket. That's where it stayed. And then you got damp sponges hanging from the ceiling, smacking you in your face. Like, oh, God, not again. That's too familiar.

All right. So the pamphlet goes on to talk about other attractions or themes called Ghouls Jail, Madhouse, Tunnel of Terror, or Dead Man's Gulch. One of the attractions, Autopsy, had a chair that was wired up so it would deliver a mild electric shock while you sat there in front of a backlit screen, which a fake surgical procedure would be going on behind it. So I guess to be interactive, when something happened, they would shock you through the chair.

That doesn't seem fun. No, it doesn't. Yeah. Now, back then, most of the haunted houses were staged for charities, and a lot of them were led by Christian groups like the Campus Life, which staged them pretty much all over the United States. And just like we stated earlier, they aren't just for charity. They are for profit as well because it is a multimillion-dollar industry, maybe even a billion with a B. You know, I'm curious now.

Haunted house attractions. Wait. The National Retail Federation conducts an annual Halloween survey and estimates that total Halloween spending will reach about $8.4 billion in 2016. God. And I think that's just people like buying stuff for Halloween customers. No wonder there's a ton of spirit Halloweens around every corner. And you're like, why the hell is this spirit Halloween got this big ass warehouse rented out in the middle of June? We don't have Halloween in June, Betty.

We make a billion dollars, bitch. I didn't even know that Spirit Halloween showed up right down the road from us. Yeah. It just came out of nowhere. It just randomly appears. Then pretty much soon after Halloween, boom, gone. Or it just stays up and you just don't notice it. Cloaking government. Yeah. It's like the mattress places. It's a money laundering scheme.

All right. So there you have it. Some history on where haunted houses started, you know, in history, then how they became an attraction at carnivals and amusement parks or just a solo haunted house event. But to get into today's main portion of the episode, we want to talk about haunted house accidents at these attractions. And then, of course, we'll talk a little bit about Aaron trying to give himself a concussion again. Not trying. I did give myself a concussion.

Yeah, you were pretty out of it. I smoked my head going through one of those attractions. And then I started swinging on the dude. He's like, what are you doing? I'm like, let me out of here. No. Anyway, yeah, we'll have that during free talk. So, yeah, looking up some of these accidents, we found out some of them actually got pretty bad to where there were fatalities, which you don't really hear about. No. I mean, unless it's like an amusement park.

You know, I always hear about Six Flags, some random kid having their legs ripped off or something. Really? You know, I see those articles all the time. But that wasn't during Halloween, though. That was just. Yeah, I'm just talking like amusement parks. Not like Halloween time. Always here. But we did go to Six Flags last Halloween.

Yeah. What a fucking nightmare that was. The parking lot. It took us two hours to get to San Antonio. And then it took us over two hours once we arrived at the parking lot to park. Over two hours to park. What a fucking mess that was. Never go to Fright Fest in San Antonio Six Flags. I heard Dallas was way better. It is. I've been to it multiple times. Yeah, we stood in line for 45 minutes at the Wonder Woman ride.

Just for it. Of course you would. To close. Actually, it wasn't my decision to go there. Okay. It'll be your offspring that decided to go there. Makes sense. Makes sense. Well, yeah. So now we're going to talk about some haunted house attraction accidents. So Aaron, you want to start that off for us? Absolutely. So these accidents that we're going to talk about are in chronological order. Okay. We're going to start off with the oldest and work our way up to modern times. Okay.

Swear to God, the loudest vehicles are released by the CIA whenever we record. I'm going to hook up another microphone right outside the window so y'all can hear this. Because our mics aren't picking up, but we hear it like loud. It is so loud, it's like in the room with us. Yeah. Anyway, I have this friggin', I have the windows barricaded too. Mm-hmm.

All right, so let's get into our first accident that happened in Kansas back in September of 1957 in a small farming town. Now, school officials and parents of the kids in this town were worried about the pranks and hazing that goes on during Halloween, especially the high school seniors hazing the high school freshmen.

And during the annual party the school had held, it proved to them that there was too much roughhousing and hazing going on. And this hazing would go too far most of the time. So it kind of like proved the parents right. They're like, I told you that they did this to our kids or the kids did this to each other. Did you ever see any of that in school? Like seniors pranking or hazing freshmen? I got hazed when I was a freshman. Yeah. Really? Did you not?

And as a sophomore, some fucking asshole thought I was a freshman. I'm like, dude, I'm a sophomore. Fuck off. Oh, Josh Allen. Fuck you. Yeah, Josh Allen. You little five foot two bitch. You little five foot two bitch. What are you? Let's not talk about it. Let's get back onto the subject of Kansas in 1957. You must have had a very intimidating stepladder.

Alright, so the principal of the school, William Hobart Sally, along with some other teachers decided to organize a different event for their students to prevent them from hazing any more freshmen. They ended up finding an old abandoned farmhouse a couple miles outside of town that they were able to rent and then turn into a haunted house attraction for a pre-Halloween party.

The centerpiece for this haunted house would be principal Sally, who would be pretending to be hanging in the middle of a dark room covered in fake blood to simulate that he was tortured and then hung. He would have a rope wrapped around him by the chest.

from the kitchen ceiling with broken bottles and other weird shit on the floor. And they're like, hey, Principal Sally, you sure you want to do this? And he's like, I promise I'm not going to do any audio erotic asphyxiation. Oh, God, Tyler. No, no, no, no, no. He's like, yeah, I'm sure I want to do this.

So one by one, the seniors would lead the freshman students through the dark haunted house, which I thought was very weird. That is very weird. You figured they would want to do the opposite. Like, hey, let's separate them. But I guess it's more of like a bonding. Encouraging the hazing. We're trying to make them bond. They're like, oh, don't haze them. Work together. Trauma bonding. Yeah, trauma bonding. Adults, we're going to haze you. Both of you. Actually, yeah, that's what it seemed like pretty much. So...

The seniors led the freshmen through the haunted houses. They heard grunts, weird moans, rattling of chains, the principal having too much fun. As they made their way through the house and arrived at the kitchen, with just a flashlight, they would see the horrible sight of their principal hanging from the kitchen, moaning with feet dangling and slipping on the broken glass.

All the students agreed that the principal hanging in the kitchen was the scariest part of the haunted house attraction. And one of the teachers decided to go into the kitchen and snap a few pictures for the yearbook. They're like, this is a perfect opportunity. As they walked in, they began calling out for the principal, but they heard nothing. The teacher scanned the room with a flashlight and then spotted the principal.

The teacher scanned the room, not with a flashlight, not with a sex toy, no, with a flashlight and spotted the principal hanging limply from the kitchen ceiling. His whole body was limp. He was just hanging there. He was like, he was resting. Yeah. Well, not really resting. Somehow during the night, the principal had slipped on some of the broken glass. Oh my God. All right. You're horrible. You know that? How dare you? That's a dead person.

Put some respect on his name. It's the fact that so many people walked by. It's like, oh, damn, that's good. Yeah, that's real good. All right. So somehow during the night, the principal had slipped on the broken glass over and over and with the rope moving up from under his arms to around his neck. How the hell does it get from under your arms? I honestly don't know. I think he might have been into some stuff. Hmm.

Well, the moaning and groaning that the students heard was not acting, you know, from the principal. He was actually being strangled by the rope. And by the time the teachers found him, you know, for the pictures, the principal had already died of strangulation. So trying to prevent any, you know, terrible hazing or pranks, the school scarred the kids for life by having, you know, having them actually see their principal being hung. Did they still take the picture, though, for the yearbook? They might have.

You're pretty sure she had the flashlight. Like, oh, there he is. Principal, you ready? You ready to go? Oh, shit. Let's not publish this photo. Oh, let's keep that. Yeah. Yeah. So that's the Kansas 1957 incident. All right. So let's move on to our next one that happened in October of 1990 in Lakewood, New Jersey.

Brian Jewell, a 17-year-old teenager, was working at the Lakewood Haunted Hayride, where he would perform a stunt that he had done multiple times in the years prior. Brian would simulate hanging himself with a fake noose by stepping off a platform which was a foot off of the ground.

So during the hayride, a tractor would pull people along and they would go by, you know, where Brian was stationed. And Brian would give like this elaborate speech before stepping off and pretending to hang himself. The rope was not supposed to tighten at all. It was just made to look like it's supposed to be illusion. But on that final night, something went wrong.

Ride after ride would go through and see Brian hanging there. But halfway through the night, the tractor driver started to wonder, what the hell's wrong with Brian? He's supposed to be doing this performance. And instead, his ass is just hanging there. It's not normally how this goes. You'd figured he'd have done that after like, or during the first time when Brian was just hanging there. Yeah, just like, look, I'm like, are you going to do your little performance? Nope. But nope.

Brian had stopped giving his speech and would just hang there. That concerned the driver, but hey, the customers thought it was a great act. It looked very realistic to them. So the driver just kept on going, didn't question it. Well, afterward, the driver went back after dropping off the customers to see what the hell was up with Brian, why he's not doing his speech and everything. That's when he found out that Brian wasn't really acting. Somehow the noose had tightened and he was no longer breathing.

The police were called and they found him unresponsive and the investigation determined no foul play, just an accidental hanging. Yep. And of course, this accident shut down the haunted hayride for only a few days, but they did decide to dismantle the area that Brian was hung at. And then they reopened. Not just that, but they also staged another hanging. But they were like, well, look, we can't do it in the spot that Brian did it.

We're going to do it a little bit further down. Hey, we got the props and materials, you know, just. Yeah. You have somebody else do it. So I guess it truly makes it haunted with the actual death occurring in that area. And you know, attendance picked up after that. They're like, Hey, this is good publicity. We're going to keep the show going. Yeah, definitely. Probably people took rock cameras, hoping to see something afterwards. Like, Oh, this is where he died. Yeah. Which is sad. It is.

Well, this next one, though, is another hanging. Jesus. Which, this is the last one. In St. Louis of 2011, at the Halloween attraction called Creepy World, Jessica Rue, an 18-year-old woman, was in one of the haunted house's rooms, the bathroom.

Her job was to climb out of a blood-drenched bathtub with a noose around her neck and scare visitors. Pretty much rinse and repeat. That was her job for the night. As Jessica tried to climb out of the bathtub, she ended up slipping and her neck got stuck in the noose. Now, visitors who were going through the attraction thought this was part of the show and they're like, damn, that looked real as fuck.

And they're like, hmm, okay. And they just kept going. It took about 10 minutes before another co-worker walking through checking on things found Jessica, who had stopped breathing from strangulation.

The police were called and luckily the other co-worker had cut her down and they were able to get her breathing again. But she was in a coma for three days. And guess who came along? Big bad OSHA. OSHA. Yep. The day after the accident, OSHA investigated and found three safety violations and they penalized Creepy World $10,500. That's it. Okay.

Now, Jessica ended up waking up from her coma, but not without complications. She suffers from short-term memory loss, headaches, blackouts, and heart palpitations. She got confused really easily, had a hard time navigating the town, and supposedly her personality had changed completely. She was like, I'm not Jessica. That's the only thing. Maybe it's not her no more.

But now maybe a part of her brain that had that personality part died, died, you know, who the McCamey manner. There's a very good theory around the owner and why he acted the way he did. And there is a, or why he acts the way he does now compared to how it was previously when it wasn't the way it is now. And what happened in between. Yeah. Very odd. Very interesting. I thought he was always like that. Nope.

Well, with that being said, though, Jessica surviving, not without complications. With complications. Some complications. Yeah, with some complications. Jessica ended up suing the Halloween production company and its owner, Larry Kirshner, for negligence and dangerous working conditions. The news should have been a breakaway prop, not actually bolted to the ceiling. Jesus. But.

I looked, tried to look it up. Probably settled out of court. They probably settled out of court. Cause yeah, you have to sign an NDA when you say, well, most of the times do you, when you settle, that's probably, that's most of the time, the terms, the company will be like, Hey, let's settle out of court. We'll give you X amount of money. We don't have to go through all this process, but you got to sign an NDA. They probably didn't pay her that much though. I don't know if she got paid. Cause yeah, none of the results were announced at all. And I tried to look it up and couldn't find anything. So yeah.

All right. So let's talk about our next one. Now, before we get into that, we are going to take a quick break. This is our last one. So don't go nowhere. All right. Welcome back. And it happened in Hong Kong in 2017. They had a haunted attraction there called Buried Alive. And just by the name, I bet you can guess what this attraction is like. Oh, yeah.

So on September 16th, 2017, 21-year-old Choing visited Ocean Park in Hong Kong for its annual Halloween fest, specifically to experience the Buried Alive Haunted Maze, a featured attraction designed to immerse visitors in the terrifying sensation of being trapped and escaping from a coffin. You can do that shit in your fucking backyard. Yeah, go buy a coffin. Yeah, just lay in it.

And then have somebody sit on it or not. Just get out of it. Don't actually put it in the ground or anything. Yeah.

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Well, this attraction played on one of the most common fears, claustrophobia, by guiding guests through tight, dark passages while exposing them to eerie soundscapes, spooky props, and actors strategically placed to create jump scares. The maze was crafted to create the illusion of being trapped underground, forcing participants to crawl and navigate through confined spaces as they faced an array of chilling, interactive scenes.

Now, as part of its design, the attraction also incorporated large mechanical elements, including moving props intended to amplify the fear of being buried alive. Guests would encounter scare actors portraying ghost corpses and other unsettling figures, all while navigating through these disorienting tunnels. However, at some point during Chung's journey through the attraction, he inadvertently strayed from the designated path.

Although it's unclear exactly how this occurred, it was speculated that Chung may have mistakenly entered a restricted area due to disorientation or the chaotic nature of the maze. This section was not meant for public access and housed heavy machinery used to operate the attraction's more elaborate effects. Unfortunately, Chung found himself in close proximity to a mechanical coffin, one of the attraction's largest moving set pieces designed to simulate a burial.

This particular prop, while part of the experience for scaring guests, was not intended to be physically accessed by participants due to the dangers posed by its size and function. Tragically, as Chung wandered into the unauthorized area, the moving coffin struck him, inflicting severe injuries. The exact sequence of events remain unclear, but it's believed the impact from the machinery rendered him unconscious almost immediately.

Park staff quickly discovered Chung and immediately called emergency services. He was rushed to the Pamela Yud Nether Soul Eastern Hospital where medical personnel made every effort to revive him.

Despite their attempts, Chung succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at the hospital. This incident sent shockwaves through Hong Kong and raised serious questions about the safety of haunted attractions, particularly those that incorporate heavy moving machinery. They were like, why aren't y'all incorporating any safety barriers or...

stuff like that cameras you figured they'd have cameras here they would have cameras and then people on walkie-talkie like hey we got a we got a wonder go grab them

Or they would block off that area completely. Yeah, I was thinking like fences or something. Yeah. But then I thought about us going to that event. If we didn't have that guide, there were multiple places that we could have just gone through that would have been off limits. I mean, even... We had a guide through most of the time. And at the end, when we didn't have a guide and went through the tunnel and I fucking got concussed. It might have just been because I was concussed. Do we go through the...

saloon do we go around the fence area and walk around which we ended up doing and then going underneath the fence area to get to the parking lot yeah there was no no signs or anything telling us how to get out of there and i thought the saloon but they had that blocked off yeah imagine if we didn't have the guide through the experience we would have been lost oh i know i would have went into the wrong areas because i started to go into one he's like no this way yeah so i was like imagine how long it took us to get to the guide himself

We stopped in that first room where all those books were at. And that fucking swamp thing, dude, was like, there's nothing in here. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

We were stuck inside there for walks. We would look around the books. He kept walking towards us like this. And then finally he just stopped. He's like, hey guys, there's nothing in here. Just move on. Oh, okay. Yeah. We're supposed to look for stuff and it's a library looking thing. Yeah. And it's like, okay. Anyways, we'll talk more about that during free talk. But following this accident in Hong Kong, Ocean Park expressed deep regret and cooperated fully with the investigations. And it was revealed that Chung had somehow entered an area that was off limit to visitors.

But how that happened remains unclear to this day. The park reassured the public that all attractions were being reviewed to ensure safety protocols were reinforced, that they are going to prevent such a tragedy ever happening again on their watch. So this next one that we have occurred in Ohio in 2021 at the Seven Floors of Hell haunted house at the county fairgrounds. During the event, an actor working at the haunted house was tasked with scaring guests using a prop knife.

However, for some reason unclear, he decided not to use the fake prop knife and brought a real Bowie knife instead of a fake one. Freaking idiot. Yeah. What is he, Rambo? So in an attempt to make the scene more intense, the actor tried to scare a group of visitors that included an 11-year-old boy and his family. As part of his performance, the actor dramatically struck the ground with his big old Bowie knife and accidentally stabbed the boy's foot.

Oh my God. The knife pierced the child's shoe, causing a minor injury. Thankfully, the wound wasn't serious and the boy's mother quickly administered first aid. She's like, damn, this shit's real. Hold on, Bobby. Although shaken, the boy's mother declined further medical attention. Wait, hold the fuck on. Hold on. How is he not badly? You were going to say her son wasn't badly hurt. How? A big ass Bowie knife through the fucking shoe. Was he just wearing shoes that were too big? That's what I'm going to assume.

Or got lucky and probably went right between the toes. Super lucky. Yeah, God. Because you think about how big a Bowie knife is. An 11-year-old boy in their foots. You know, I don't know. But yeah, the mother declined medical attention, ensuring that her son wasn't badly hurt. And the haunted house staff acted swiftly, removing the actor from the event and treating the boy on site. Remarkably, though, the family decided to continue through the rest of the haunted house.

You know, a sign that the injury wasn't so severe. So they pretty much made the boy like, you got stabbed in the foot. That's okay. We're going to keep going. Walk it off. We paid for this. Yeah, walk it off.

Now, authorities investigated the incident afterwards, and the actor admitted that he had used the real knife for two years to enhance his performance, but insisted that he had no intention of harming anyone. Police concluded that it was a genuine accident and no malicious intent was involved. The management of Seven Floors of Hell expressed deep regret over the incident. They reassured the public that the safety protocols would be reviewed and reinforced to prevent future occurrences, and

emphasizing that actors are strictly prohibited from using real weapons. They made it clear that this was an isolated incident caused by poor judgment on the actor's part. For two years that he worked there, they did not know he was using a real knife. He would stab it on the ground. I mean, if you stab it on the ground, it would leave sparks, I'm assuming. If it was like concrete. How would it? Okay, a prop knife goes, it goes in on itself.

If you see a big-ass knife getting stabbed in the ground, okay, after doing it for two years, you're going to have big marks in the floor. The wooden floor, I'm guessing. Oh, yeah. It's wooden floor. If you're disassembling it or cleaning it up or you're an owner, you had to have walked through that area. You had to have seen the marks on the floor and then questioned it. I think they knew and allowed it to happen. They're just like, if something happens, it's on you.

Pretty much afterwards. That's not the case. You're the fucking owner. It's on you. All right. So let's talk about our next accident, which happened here recently. Very recently. In 2024 in Tennessee, a child was killed in a freak accident at a haunted A-Ride attraction. The Hamilton County Sheriff's Office announced the incident in a press release on

Deputies were called to the Haunted Hilltop, which is a Halloween attraction located in Harrison, Tennessee, at around 10.45 p.m. on October 11th. When they arrived, officials learned that a boy had been run over by a tractor while playing a prank on hayriders. Upon arrival, the deputies spoke with the chaperone for a group of juveniles that had been playing near a hayride tractor route and were behind some bushes trying to scare some hayriders as they arrived.

at the haunted Hilltop Halloween event. Deputies were told that one of the juveniles had attempted to jump onto the trailer and had possibly slipped and fallen underneath the wheels and was found unresponsive. The Hamilton County Medical Examiner's Office told local media that the boy was 12 years old and in its press release, the Sheriff's Office expressed its sympathy for the victim's family. The police department, you know, made a statement that the H-C-S-O family extends our thoughts and sympathy to the family of the deceased juvenile

as well as the others who witnessed the tragic event. We ask the community to also keep this family in their prayers during this difficult time.

As this incident pertains to juveniles, no further information is available. And the haunted hilltop attraction decided to make a Facebook post where they announced that it would be closed the following day and asked for prayers from the community. They stated, due to the tragic accident that occurred tonight, we will not be open tomorrow through Saturday. Our heart and prayers go out to the family affected in this. Please keep us all in your prayers.

And it looks like they, that following Monday, they decided not to open back up yet. Yeah, because I imagine the people commented on it being like, only closed until Saturday? Only? Gotta make their money. Yeah. But the company did say that we have not even thought about reopening yet. This was a horrific accident. Let's see if they're open. Haunted Hilltop. Well, I don't know. Because you go to their...

Website, we are open every Friday and Saturday in October and November 1st and 2nd. We're open from 7 p.m. to at least 1 a.m. through November 2nd. We will be open November 1st and 2nd, but not Halloween night. Saturday, November 2nd is our last night open this year. We will not tolerate any horseplay, loitering, foul language, breaking lines, or fighting. You'll be kicked out without a refund.

We are already the largest haunted attraction anywhere close to Chattanooga, but we decided to go bigger. We just built a new building for 2024 to add on to what we already have, so it'll be longer, bigger, and scarier. We also just recently ran over a child. Hmm. So it is now haunted. They didn't put that. We just recently ran over a child, by the way. But looks like they're open, back open.

I went to their Facebook 22 hours ago they posted. What'd they post 22 hours ago? Who wants to win a free pair of tickets? Oh my God. And a hoodie. We will pick three winners Thursday night. Just like and share this post. What are the comments? Only if I can ride on the tractor. Let's see here. There's 986 comments. Jesus. Like and share. It sounds like this would be a wonderful idea for a date night. Done. We would love to go.

Literally nobody's saying anything about there. I was just saying, yeah, I liked it. I shared it. Hmm. All right. Well, let's get on to the next accident. Why don't you tell us about this, Dan? All right. So this next one actually happened on the 18th and this was posted what day after or something like that. But this one happened in Minnesota where a 13 year old boy suffered nearly the same injury as the haunted hayride one where the kid got ran over.

The initial caller reported that a young male had been injured when he was run over by a trolley wagon being pulled by a tractor. Several local emergency agencies, as well as an off-duty officer and off-duty medic, had attempted to revive the boy, but he too was ultimately pronounced dead at the scene, according to the bulletin. So did he fall off or jump and get ran over? Pretty much the same exact thing. Tried to jump onto the trailer or got too close to it and... Damn, what a coincidence.

Hmm. Pretty much within a week of each other. Like, please give this family and the Hilltop family time to grieve and get through this horrible accident. Because it pretty much the same exact thing happened. What's this link you have right here? That's car accidents, the deadliest Halloween event. So as I was researching this, I was trying to find like Halloween fatalities at attractions and such. And kind of find out that Halloween is one of the dangerous times of the year. And that's mostly car accidents.

People are looking around. Boom. Alcoholic parties. I can't say alcoholic parties. Parties with alcohol. People start driving drunk. Then you got kids running everywhere. People not paying attention. People just getting ran over. And there was actually one case that I found. Wasn't much information on it, but a lady had set up a haunted house at her place. And I guess she was right there on the road fixing up some stuff.

Somebody came by. Hit her? Hit her and drove off. They didn't know that they hit her. You know, that is super common. Do you remember that, I don't know if you ever went there, but near camp in North Pond, there was an individual who lived like a couple miles away near the Smithfield store. Okay. Right down the road from it. There was an individual who had a big

It's like a water tank where he would go in to the nearby lake. It wasn't North Pond, but another one. I think it was like East Pond or whatever. And he would collect like little shad and put them inside there. And you could go there and you could fill up your bucket with it. And he had like a bottle where you could put just however much you could pay. You know, he took donations. Well, he went to go check his mail one day. Boom. Truck came by and smoked him. Why did they even know they hit him?

Oh, they knew. Oh, they knew. He's a pretty big fella. Oh. Yeah. Just killed him. Now we got to get our bait from somewhere. Thanks a lot. I remember when we were there. You talked about that. But yeah, Halloween is one of the deadliest times of the year because of car accidents, people not paying attention or being under the influence and kids running around not being watched crossing the road and accidents happen. And believe it or not, drugs or alcohol

needles or razors in kids' candy is not true. That shit does not happen. If you see a post on Facebook about it, it's probably by an older person or someone wanting to clout or more clicks or likes or shares. And if you do find drugs or you suspect that there are drugs in your child's candy, send it to us and we will confirm it.

I don't know if I want to find some of that stuff in the pew. Actually, do not send drugs in the mail. That is illegal. Okay? Yeah. That, uh, I mean, accidents really aren't that high, but it's mostly car accidents. And what's this knowledge nugget you have about Harry Houdini? We talked about him before. You know, the escape artist, illusionist who escaped. And of course,

He was part of the Mandela Effect episode where we all thought that he died while doing one of his tricks, getting stuck in a box and like drowning or something. Yeah, that's how I thought he died that way, right? No. Oh, what the? Yeah, he actually died in 1926 where he was supposed, I guess he was readying for a trick and he had one of the students punch him in the stomach. But at the time he wasn't ready.

for it so he didn't like tighten up his abs or anything so when the kid punched him actually pretty much ruptured his appendix he ended up getting appendicitis that'll kill you bacteria all up in his stomach and everything he didn't think anything of it he's just like oh god he punched really hard ended up getting a fever and everything and he ended up dying after you know doing some more shows but he died on October 31st in 1926 on Halloween night damn rest in peace yeah

I thought that was a cool knowledge, Nuggie. Didn't know he died on Halloween. Yeah. But yeah, he was a Mandela effect. Yeah, I thought he died being hung upside down and locked in chains and drowning. That's what I thought. Yeah. If you or a loved one believe that's how he died and have thought that way this entire time and you are from our universe, send us an email. We'd like to hear from you. That's right. Now,

I have this video link. I know we can't post YouTube videos. I will link it, but we're going to watch it now. Are we going to mute it? Yeah, we have to mute it. We'll mute it. We'll get a copyright strike on YouTube. I tried to find a video somewhere else. How long is it? That's what she said. It's not really that long. All right. So what this video is, it's scare actor auditions. So, you know, when you go to these haunted house attractions, they have those people running around trying to scare you and stuff. Mm hmm.

I always wondered how do they get that job? Yeah. I end up, there's a bunch of videos on TikTok, YouTube of auditions of these people trying to get these jobs. And it's very odd, very weird that they would run around like at the beginning of this video, they would run around normal clothes and everything in like a parking lot and shit.

doing their scary stuff. And this one, like they would go into a room. Yeah. And they would like, like, all right, do this or like do this. And they would do whatever they thought was scary. And then this one, they would go and ask them personal questions and see how they react. And then I would dress up in a suit.

a full suit, I would look super professional and I would walk up and they're like, where's your costume? This is my costume. They say, well, what's so scary about you? I'd have a briefcase and I'd open it up and say, I'm the IRS and you're being investigated. They're like, oh shit, that is fucking scary. Now, where I have this one at, where I stopped the video, it's them asking like why they want to be like a scare actor or something like that. And this guy named Alex is

I honestly believe he's a serial killer. Oh, God. Okay, we will play the audio of this, but...

If it gets flagged, we're going to have to mute this section. But we will provide the link to this video on our website, theoriesofthe3rdkind.com. Click on today's episode, scroll down, and it will say Scare Actor Auditions, and you can watch it there. Otherwise, you can just listen to it. Or if you're watching on YouTube, which you should be, you can watch our reaction. Ugh, how mesmerizing. All right, we're going to play that right now.

So what specifically brings you to the 17th door? Because I've always been good at like hiding in the dark and scaring people. That was it. You see his, the way he said that in his face, like facial expression. I've always been good at hiding in the dark and scaring people. And then at the very end, like smirks.

I'm like, that guy right there is a serial killer. I'm sorry. But there's some very interesting people that have auditioned for this. But you look on TikTok and everything, they have auditions where like out in the parking lots running around. I've seen ones where they're doing like the run and they'll like scrape their knees and elbows with the, they have those things on it to make sparks. I'm like, it's not very scary. No. There's one I watched and I just like laughed. This one. That's...

That's their audition thing. They have a bunch of people in a parking lot. Like, all right, just go on, act like you're trying to scare people. And they're all trying to scare each other. I'd just be trying to hand people documents. You're now being audited. You've been served. I find it very odd that that's their way of auditioning. But, I mean, I guess it makes sense. Yeah. This last part you have here is a lawsuit, right? Yes.

So the one thing I did find a lot of when I searched up for accidents and stuff is that there are law firms out there that are actively looking for people getting hurt during Halloween. So they specialize in that. Yes. Okay. Now this lawyer failed, but it's very hilarious on what happened. Okay. You want to read it or? Sure. On the night of October 29th, 1999.

Debra Mays entered a dark Louisiana haunted house. The haunted house was operated by the defendant to raise money for local athletic programs. Debra, the plaintiff, testified that someone jumped out at her inside the haunted house and yelled. She was frightened and began to run, unfortunately running directly into a visqueen-covered cinder block wall.

Mays suffered a broken nose from running into the wall and required two surgeries to repair the injury. In the lawsuit, she argued that covering a cinderblock wall with black visqueen in a dark haunted house is an unreasonably dangerous condition. The court ruled as followed. The very nature of a Halloween haunted house is to frighten its patrons.

In order to get the proper effect, haunted houses are dark and contain scary or shocking exhibits. Patrons in a Halloween haunted house are expected to be surprised, startled, and scared by the exhibits, but the operator does not have a duty to guard against patrons reacting in bizarre, frightened, and unpredictable ways. Operators are duty-bound to protect patrons only from unreasonably dangerous conditions, not from every conceivable danger. Makes sense. Yeah, it's like...

We will protect you from our props and everything. Like they didn't protect the people, you know, being hung by their own props. But this person didn't get hurt by the props itself. She got scared, ran and ran into a wall, a brick wall because she couldn't see. And then she tried to sue them for them hurting her and she failed. Yeah. But yeah, if you look up, there's tons of weird Halloween lawsuits out there where,

There's one in New York City right now that some guy sets up a haunted house in his own like house. And there's a he has one part of the house set up called Satan's Slide. And I guess you go upstairs and then you slide down. But at the very end of it, it's very close to a wall. So when you slide down, so when you slide down, you hit the wall a little bit. Many people have broken bones and all that stuff. Last year, it happened. A lady broke her ankles.

sliding down. Then this year, broken ankles, big fucking deal. Oh, she had to have surgery from bum fights. The documentary. Sorry. Oh, and then, uh, uh, this year there's another one, another, uh, lawsuit happening. A guy, uh, I think fractured his back going down this same slide. Damn. And the guy's just like, there are warning signs and everything. And if you're not physically able to do this without getting hurt, you shouldn't do it. But people are just like, Oh, I don't see no signs. I don't see any of this.

Yeah. Slides are dangerous. Yeah. It reminded me, like, I don't know why it didn't, like, remind me of when you hit your head. I remember I went on a haunted hayride and I didn't hit my head, but one of the guys with us, we were being chased down this long, like, pathway. We're going to personal thoughts and theories now and stories? Yes. Okay. All right. Sorry. Sorry. Yeah. No. That was our last thing for, I mean, pretty much kind of like a strange fact, but yeah. Yeah. But now we're in personal thoughts and theories and stories. Yeah.

Which, this story I totally forgot about until now, where we were being chased through this haunted hayride after riding on this tractor for a while. We had dropped off, walking, there was like this long, narrow path of just trees on the side and it was clear in the middle. And all of a sudden, like all you see at the very end is a building and a small like hole in the bottom. And then all of a sudden out from the woods comes this big ass guy with a chainsaw. Oh, nice. And we're just like, okay, cool.

Then he walks back into the woods and we're just like, oh, that's scary. Like, all right. Well, they set it up perfect because there was a second guy who showed up behind us with the chainsaw and pretty much chased us. And we all had to run. And that small hole was a slide to go down. So you had to jump into it. All of us jumped into it, cleared it, except one guy. He jumped in, boop, hit his head and...

stopped from going down, but then he got up and calmed down and he had like a cut across his head. That's what happened to me. Yeah, but yeah, the guy with the chainsaw, of course they didn't have any like actual blades on the saw, the chainsaw, the chain on it, but I mean, still kind of frightening because it was a, it was on and vroom, vroom. You know, when I was 14 years old, I went through a haunted attraction in Elmont, Texas and I went with Jimmy, Anna, Adam,

Jeff, rest in peace, died in Iraq. And Cody, ooh, cranberries. And me. And we all went through the attraction. And at the very end, there was like this stage, right? We approached this stage. And the only way to go around, to get to the other side, which is the exit, is to go around the stage. And it was a very narrow pathway. So we were like right there on the stage. And it was like this high.

We're walking around it. All of a sudden, leather face comes out on top of the stage, chainsaw and starts swinging it at us. We take off running and I'm hugging the wall, which has carpet on it. And I'm running and I can feel the air coming off the chainsaw and he's just swinging it above our heads as we're hauling ass. And it's taken all of the skin off of my arm. So there for like the longest time I had like rug burn on the side of my arm. You sit on your knees, not your elbows. Got it.

Got him. So, yeah, that was that was scary. But at the end, when you bust through the exit, when you bust through it, you you're in front of everybody waiting in line. And they're like, oh, my God. So I was like, fuck my arm. And they actually thought the chainsaw guy got you. Yeah, that's badass. Yeah. So it's always the chainsaw guys. That was the scariest haunted attraction I've ever been to.

And then the one we went to like a couple of weeks ago, I've got a concussion going through the little tunnel and boom, smoke in my head. I mean, that was fun. Yeah. But I don't know. I've only been to three and I guess the last one was probably the most thrilling. Yeah. It was very interactive. Yeah. But the one being chased, I knew wasn't really scared, but supposed to run and take off and slide. So I joined in because then there, before that haunted hayride, there was like a maze one that you had to go through and it was clowns.

So it was dark. You walk around in this maze and then clowns would like pop out and try to scare you. I was this close to a clown in my face and we just like stared each other down. I'm just like, all right, are you going to move so we can continue on or we're just going to stand here? He just stood there, started breathing heavy. I'm just like, oh, like, oh, okay. Speaking of being jumped out at, a long time ago when I was still living with my mama, probably 17 or 18 years old, maybe 16, somewhere around in that timeframe, around 20 years ago.

uh, I'm an old bitch. So I was in my room and I heard my sister yell out towards me, Aaron, Aaron. I didn't think much of it, but came into the living room. And at the time my mother had bought a giant ball pit inflatable one for my nephew to play in. So my sister goes, there's a snake in that like ball pit. Can you go

Try to pull it out. So your nephew doesn't get it. I'm like, fuck that. Look, snakes. No, thank you. Call in the exterminator or somebody else because I'm not about to get it. She's like, just go look. So I'm like, okay. So I cautiously walked up to the ball pit, peeked inside. And I'm like, what the hell is that? My mom jumps out at me. I take a step back and I front kick her right in the fucking face.

It's it was my reaction. I did an Anderson Silva front kick. Boom, right to the face. It felt like Steven Seagal minus the weirdness. And at my big toe, I wasn't wearing socks. My big toe caught her right here, right on the orbital. Boom, hit it. And then she was like, oh, she fell back in the ball pit. Then I realized what I had just done. I was like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. She had a huge black eye. I felt horrible. I actually cried about it. Yeah, I felt really bad.

Sorry, mom. But then afterwards, it's like, that was a good kick. Yeah. Accurate. Honestly, I probably would have done the same thing. It's just that reflex. When you're a trained killer, you have those type of reflexes. Yeah. You get used to rug burn on the knees and elbows and everything. Just on the elbows. From a wall. Because of a haunted attraction. Yeah, that's what they all say.

All right. Well, with that being said, do you have any other stories you would like to share before we tell the listeners to submit their ghost stories for next week? Nope. Because I'm going to save the rest of mine for next week's ghost stories episode. Same. And we have a lot of stuff going on this weekend. We're going to magic on as well as the magic gathering world championships. So we'll be in Vegas this weekend attending that. So if anyone's there and you want to say hi,

Just find us. We'll be in the MagicCon area playing. Do we wear any of our merch to be found or do we just stay conspicuous? I don't know. I'm just going to wear whatever's comfortable. I'm going to blend in. I'm going to wear pajama pants and not put deodorant on. Not wash my hair. Anyways. Grow a neck beard. I shaved mine earlier.

Well, again, everyone, if you want to submit your ghost story, please email it to us. Aaron, A-A-R-O-N at theoriesofthethirdkind.com or you can send it to Dan, D-A-N at theoriesofthethirdkind.com. Put in the subject line, 2024 ghost story. And we will feature it next week on our ghost story episode where we will be in costumes.

We got to celebrate Halloween, man. We got to decorate. Yeah, we will be decorating and in costumes and it'll be a fun episode. Just kind of relax, chill. We're going to have a little fire right there. A real one too. We're going to pass out from carbon monoxide. Oh yeah. It's going to happen. Well, with that being said, do you have anything else you want to add to today's episode before we roll out? No, other than I hope y'all enjoyed the episode. I, I enjoyed it. Yeah. Learning about haunted houses. Didn't know some of that stuff, but hey.

If you're looking for something more dark to listen to. Gory. And not really gory. It's like super dark. Well, gory too, but very, very dark. We did an episode on our premium side today over McKamey Manor where we dive into the history of it, the history of the individual who created it, Russ McKamey, and all of the weird shit that's gone on there as well as the weird shit involving Russ.

A lot of weird shit. Yeah. So if you want to go to theories of the third kind.com, click on the supercast button right there in the middle and sign up and you can listen to it for either $6 and 66 cents or see the video version for $9 99 cents. With that being said, I want to thank you for joining us today. And again, thank you for your support and love. We love you. And without you, there would be no show. Correct. Much love. So with that being said, Dan, you want to roll us out?

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