A Hollywood fan visited KC’s newest haunted experience. You know her famous zip code
Tori Spelling fans know that she prefers her holidays on the spooky side.
“Halloween season is my fave season,” the former “Beverly Hills 90210” star told her Instagram followers a few years ago after visiting an immersive theater experience in Los Angeles. “Got my heart racing in a good way!”
So after she unceremoniously got booted last month from the new season of “Dancing With the Stars,” she kicked off her Halloween season in Kansas, out in the woods of Leavenworth County.
There, two of her Hollywood pals have created Exiled: Crooked Rose Woods, a scary hike through the woods where visitors become characters in the story. The attraction is open through Nov. 3 at 12829 Loring Road in Bonner Springs, the site of Zip KC, a zip line course and adventure park.
(The Star’s Ilana Arougheti recently visited and experienced the haunting.)
Kansas City’s newest Halloween attraction is the creation of horror movie director Darren Lynn Bousman and British musician Morgan Rooms, who happens to be Spelling’s social media manager.
Bousman is a Kansas guy, a Shawnee Mission North High School and University of Kansas alum who visited KC’s haunted houses as a kid and grew up to direct Hollywood horror films, including four “Saw” installments.
“I was so excited to be able to visit the amazing city of Kansas City and support my friends Darren and Morgan in the creation this incredibly intense, unique and terrifying immersive experience,” Spelling says in a post on the attraction’s Facebook page and Instagram.
“It’s truly one-of-a-kind and I can’t wait to go back to see how my story and outcome might change the next time. It was a great way to kick off the Halloween season!”
Spelling told her fans back in June that she planned to visit Kansas.
“To all my Midwest friends, 2 of my favorite humans @darrenbousman, @rkdm111 are creating Halloween awesomeness and you must go support and follow,” she wrote on Instagram. “I don’t give orders but it’s said with a cute giggle and a please :) . I’ll see you there! @exiledkc
The Kansas City haunt reflects a career shift for Bousman, who since 2016 has created similar and wildly popular immersive experiences in Los Angeles and plans more in what he calls the future of entertainment.
Spelling, Bousman and Morgan described how they bonded over scary stuff in an episode of Spelling’s iHeart podcast, “MISSPELLING.”
“When I don’t do movies ... I do these weird, crazy theater shows. and Tori has been to a few of them,” Bousman said during their conversation.
The actress, a fan of the “Saw” franchise, called Bousman “one of her favorite humans.”
Spelling said she’s watched horror films since she was 4, thanks to her mother, Candy Spelling. She passed along the interest to her own children. “It makes very creative, talented people,” Spelling said.
Bousman began creating immersive theater experiences as a way to pull people directly into the action of intricate narratives. They are paired with ARGs — alternate reality games — that over weeks, even months, turn participants into story characters with secret websites and live events long before they get to the actual haunt itself.
This is the answer to his search for a way to “let people live inside a horror movie instead of just watching it on a screen, which is passive,” he told Spelling on the podcast.
In immersive experiences, he said, “it’s a guttural, big reaction. You see people have these transformative experiences. ... It’s like therapy, it’s like psychology in a fast, brash, guerrilla-style way that you get to experience and do things in a safe environment.”
“It’s pulling people out of their comfort zones ... putting them in situations they would never be in. I think I want to ... continue to do these insane things,” Bousman added.
Neil Patrick Harris is “such a huge fan” Bousman said, that Harris’ partner hired him and Rooms to create an experience for the actor’s 45th birthday. He created one for Spelling’s 50th birthday, too.
The first one Spelling experienced in L.A. was Bousman’s “The Lust Experience” based on Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 erotic psychological drama “Eyes Wide Shut” starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
Full-on nudity? Nondisclosure agreements? “Lust” had both.
Bousman and Morgan did not expect it to be as popular as it was, attracting many Hollywood celebrities like Spelling.
“What I think that’s crazy, Tori, you became addicted after that,” Bousman told her on the podcast. “You came right to the next thing we did and became one of the biggest participants in ARG.”
As he left Kansas City a few days ago to begin work on a new movie, Bousman bid farewell to his hometown and gave a shoutout to the local talent working their creepy hearts out.
“My hands and arms are stained with blood. Heavy bags under both eyes. In my career, thanks to the @saw franchise I have been able to realize my passion projects. Repo, Tension, and now @exiledkc,” he wrote on Instagram.
“Even now, the last few months have felt like a fever dream. Cults, alchemy and arcane gods…I truly am in awe at the artists and creatives behind this insane undertaking.”
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