Haunted houses have a long, scream-filled history in KC

There was a fine little 1968 movie called “Targets,” director Peter Bogdanovich’s first film, in which Boris Karloff (the original Frankenstein monster) played a character modeled on the real Karloff — an aging movie star known for horror films.

Karloff, as the Karloff-like actor, observes that in a society filled with random violence, why would anyone be afraid of “painted monsters” anymore?

Nice philosophical point. But the reality appears to be that nobody can get enough of painted monsters — whether they be on a stage, on a movie screen or in a commercial haunted house in the West Bottoms.

This Halloween season, thousands are expected to visit The Edge of Hell and The Beast, two venerable commercial houses near the foot of the 12th Street Viaduct, and more will take in the 13 “Extreme Haunts” at Worlds of Fun. And at least four themed theatrical productions — two of them for laughs — are running through Halloween or beyond in the area.

Exactly when people first paid good money to be scared witless might be known only to a handful of cloistered scholars, but we can be certain that people turned out to see freak attractions as early as the17th century (if not sooner) and that freak shows as a staple of carnivals exploded in popularity in the 1800s.

The Theatre du Grand-Guignol in Paris is remembered for the graphic violence it depicted onstage in the 1930s. And Universal Studios created a horror franchise beginning in the silent era that included such iconic titles as “Dracula,” “Frankenstein” and “The Wolf Man.”

Haunted houses in Kansas City go back to the early 1970s, if not earlier. The Edge of Hell, which began in the River Market in 1975 and moved to the West Bottoms in the ’80s, has lasted longer than any other commercial haunted house in the area — notable competitors, including Main Street Morgue and the Catacombs, fell by the wayside — but it wasn’t the first.

As unlikely as it sounds, the old Foolkiller — a collective founded by lefties dedicated to consciousness-raising, liberal political causes, theater and folk concerts — produced haunted houses for three years beginning in 1972. The nonprofit group raised enough money with the houses to buy a building at 39th and Main streets, which became its permanent home for years.

Bob Suckiel, a folk musician, radio host and original Foolkiller member, recalled that the organization was approached by a couple of out-of-town promoters to try running a haunted house — something the Foolkiller hadn’t done.

“They offered us a flat fee, which as I recall was about $1,500 to do a couple of weeks,” Suckiel recalled. “We would staff the house and we were supposed to get a percentage if we made over $5,500. Now, much to my surprise, the lines were down the street. Every night.”

They used what Suckiel believed was a former boarding house near Fourth and Delaware streets. Somehow, a couple of real carnies attached themselves to the project and entertained people waiting in line by eating broken glass and piercing their lips with needles.

“We were naive enough to think that we could scare each (visitor) 14 or 15 times, which you can, but it takes a lot of work,” Suckiel said. “Gorilla suits are hotter than all bejesus. By the end of the two weeks everyone was sick with colds … bordering on pneumonia.”

Still, it was a success.

“The bathroom was next to the dressing room so when there were young girls in there talking about peeing in their pants, we considered that a job well done,” Suckiel said. “What you want to do is mess with everyone’s senses. You want to make them feel uncomfortable with strobe lights, crooked flooring, macabre scenes. We had a guy hanging in a harness. People would come in and say, ‘Well, this ain’t nothin’ ’ and then he would start twitching.”

The Foolkiller got its flat fee but the promoters skipped town without paying the organization its percentage. But by then everyone involved had learned how to do a haunted house. So they did two more in different locations. Most of the performers had day jobs.

Performing, Suckiel said, consisted of “jumping around for five or six hours. If you want to lose weight, that’s the way to do it. You just sweat your brains out. But we couldn’t believe how many people turned out.”

This year, four area theater companies decided to piggyback on Halloween. Some shows are serious and some aren’t. The lineup includes:

▪ “Chainsaw: The Musical,” running through Saturday at the Living Room, 1818 McGee St. Forrest Attaway wrote the book and Eric Wesley Redding wrote the music and lyrics. No, it’s not a parody of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” but it comes close.

▪ “Poultry-Geist,” running through Nov. 16 at Missie B’s, 805 W. 39th St. This strictly-for-laughs production from Late Night Theatre sends up the 1980s horror flick with a similar title.

▪ “The Turn of the Screw,” onstage at Just Off Broadway, 3051 Penn Valley Drive, through Nov. 1. This is an irony-free adaptation of the classic Henry James ghost story, elegantly staged by Spinning Tree Theatre.

▪ “Midnight Visit to the Grave of Poe: A Grotesque Arabesque,” an original musical written and directed by Ric Averill at the Lawrence Arts Center, 940 New Hampshire St., Lawrence. It runs through Halloween.

But then there’s the real theater — what we might call immersive theater — down in the West Bottoms. That’s where Full Moon Productions this year operates three haunted houses. The two big ones — The Beast and The Edge of Hell — are virtually local institutions. The Edge of Hell, in fact, goes back to 1975 when it opened in the River Market area. Initially it was called Hell.

That, according to Full Moon vice president Amber Arnett-Bequeaith, didn’t sit well with churchgoers who protested the original location at Seventh and Wyandotte streets. Full Moon is a family-owned business and Arnett-Bequeaith is a third-generation vice president of the company. She also belongs to America Haunts, an affiliation of haunted-attraction sites.

The group’s website estimates that more than 1,200 “haunted attractions” sell tickets across the country during September and October. In addition, 300 facilities — such as theme parks — feature some sort of haunted attraction. In the Full Moon houses in the West Bottoms visitors can expect to encounter actors playing ghouls, zombies and mutants as well as animatronic werewolves, pitch-black rooms, mazes and assaults on the senses.

Arnett-Bequeaith said she estimates the houses will attract 100,000 visitors — although the Kansas City Royals have her worried. Last year the playoffs and the World Series put a dent in business. But she is definitely rooting for the Royals.

“If you’re gonna wreck Halloween, you better win,” she said.

Running successful haunted houses is labor- and idea-intensive, according to Arnett-Bequeaith, who said she studies fears and phobias.

“Designing haunted attractions, people think you just throw stuff in there, but that’s not how it works,” she said. “You have to be very detail-oriented. … We touch all five of your senses.”

This story was originally published October 27, 2015 at 9:00 AM with the headline "Haunted houses have a long, scream-filled history in KC."