The graveyard shift

Surviving the horrors of Fright Nights

By Adam Tatelman, Staff Writer

While I wouldn’t call myself a professional, I have been known to do a little acting from time to time. On the whole, it’s a fun way to make money, even if you do have to constantly go looking for a new job every time you finish a show. That’s why the idea of scaring patrons at Fright Nights was attractive to the amateur actor in me—it’s rare to find an acting gig that pays by the hour for an entire month to the tune of about $1,200. At first, I was enticed at the thought of getting paid to scare the crap out of people. But by the end of the first day I wanted to quit.

So what could turn a broke actor off of such a sweet deal? The working conditions are safe, the supervisors are fair-minded, and the rules are simple. You get your 15- and 30-minute breaks just like any other wage worker. No, the problem lies with the difference between what you’re told you’ll be doing and what you actually get to do. That’s the real reason the first day was so disappointing to me. I am a house scarer. I wear a pig suit, hide in a tiny room, and jump out from behind a curtain about 300 times a night. That’s the extent of my job. As far as acting gigs go I’ve had worse—playing an extra is really just a bunch of standing around, and you don’t even get a pig suit—but I discarded everything the training pamphlet told me about my “exciting job” pretty quickly. What the recruiters call “improv” amounts to changing the pitch and tone of my pig squeals—riveting stuff.

Having to wear a monster mask is a real pain. If you’re going to work as a scarer, you better hope you get makeup instead of a mask, because those things are the worst combination of latex and rubber you’re likely to find. Aside from the six straight hours of sweat and itch (with no way to relieve it due to my pig-suit hooves), some actors wind up with a bad rash from wearing the masks.

The customers usually come through the house at two speeds: “are we open yet” and “bend over and insert roaring crowd.” Basically, you’re either sitting in the dark waiting or desperately trying to explain the meaning of “single file” to a wall-busting, drunken horde of rowdy teenagers. It’s pretty hard to get scares on a big crowd—strength in numbers, you know—and it’s even harder if there’s no one there to scare. Happy mediums are rare.

Some customers’ reactions break the monotony and supply the satisfaction I need to continue. Drunk teenage girls are the best targets because they either freak out and scare each other when I pounce, or laugh and hit on me despite the pig suit. Some people burst into tears or fall down and hurt themselves, in which case I lead them to the emergency exit. Others roar back in my face or grope my costume. That’s grounds for expulsion, but they make me laugh, so I let it slide. Besides, there’s nothing more satisfying than pulling a perfect scare on someone who’s been manhandling the props.

After the first week or so, I hit on a method. I stood just-so to avoid being seen while scouting for incoming patrons. I determined those patrons’ positions by listening for their voices. I perfected my posture to prevent morning soreness. I got the costume change down to a science to avoid spending half my break getting into and out of the pig suit. The job became a Zen experience. I learned to focus on the moment of the scare instead of the sweaty suit and the constant noise.

So, is Fright Nights an awful job? No. It’s just monotonous in the extreme. Every employee, through experience, has to learn to cope with being a human prop in an elaborate infinitely looping play. There’s a steep learning curve, and I wouldn’t recommend this job to the easily bored—ironically, most actors. But as long as you’ve got some throat lozenges at the end of the day, surviving Fright Nights is a lot like working in customer service: mind-numbing, but doable.