The big scare: Video resurfaces of Chris Jones, Chiefs teammates meeting The Beast

A 2017 video showing Kansas City Chiefs defensive players having the bejesus scared out of them inside The Beast has fans howling this Halloween week — and shows that Chris Jones is a good sport.

Kansas City’s famous haunted houses have played host to Chiefs players and their families — and other pro athletes in the city — for years, Amber Arnett-Bequeaith told The Star.

She is vice president of Full Moon Productions, which owns and operates The Beast, Edge of Hell and Macabre Cinema haunted attractions in the West Bottoms.

She’s known as the Queen of Haunts.

Tony Gonzalez visited every Halloween when he was with the Chiefs in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, she said. Sporting KC and Royals players have gone through the houses, too.

“Salvy has come out for years,” she said of Royals catcher Salvador Perez.

“There’s always been football teams, whether it’s the Chiefs or teams that come play them. We’ve had teams from every corner of the United States come through. They want something to do (while they’re here) and Kansas City is the haunted house capital of the world.

“We get requests from the NFL throughout the season. I wish we could show all of that. But we’re very private.”

If a player comes in and says they don’t want to make a public event of their visit, or they don’t want to run into the public, “we are very conscientious and let them experience it the way it’s meant to be,” she said. “They pay for their ticket. Some have signed footballs for the veterans ... who work for us.

“One of my favorite players to work with was Tony Gonzalez. He came every year with his family, with groups. He was a professional. He absolutely loved it.

“But I didn’t record him, I didn’t put that out for any type of benefit for us because they were ... just trying to experience something fun.”

Some athletes don’t want anyone see them screaming and afraid.

Lucky for us, Jones is different. She has shared video of his visit, which happened one year after the Chiefs drafted him, and he’s cool with it. The Chiefs also have a video of the trip posted on their website.

She was reminded of it last week when ESPN came to Kansas City ahead of the “Monday Night Football” broadcast of the Chiefs-Washington Commanders game to film beauty shots around town. As it has done in Halloweens past, the network visited the West Bottoms to film its haunted houses.

She re-posted the Jones video on social media Monday.

“Before the roar of the crowd, there was the echo of their screams,” reads the cheeky Facebook post. “A haunting memory from our hometown champs visit to The Beast.

“Monsters on the field maybe ... but we’re the REAL monsters here.”

The visit shown in the video was coordinated with the Chiefs, she said. The team had The Beast to itself. Outings like that are a treat for players’ families at this time of year, she said, because the team is well into the NFL season and busy by Halloween.

In the video, Arnett-Bequeaith is the costumed woman greeting Jones at the top of the stairs as he enters. As Jones walks past her, a scare actor next to him shakes the lid of a garbage can at him and Jones jumps back..

His teammates roar.

“They already playing,” Jones says, laughing with them.

Fortunately for that scare actor, flight, not flight, kicked in for Jones’ 300 pounds of NFL muscle.

Fans are loving the video. Nearly 4,000 people have left thumbs-up and laughing emojis on the Facebook post. Folks are having fun watching big, burly NFL players yell, grab at each other in fright and use the light from their cell phones as beacons in the dark.

Uh, is that cheating?

“Lmao he is too big to be this scared lol.”

“You can only hang out with Chris Jones if you can double as a human shield.”

“All those giant men. They need a girl scout troop to escort them through!!” (Dear Mr. Jones, their words, not ours.)

“I give Chris Jones a lot of credit,” Arnett-Bequeaith said. “They held the snakes and the rats ... they just had a ball.”

As she walks the lines outside the houses she hears the false bravado of big, beefy men proclaiming they’re not going to be scared.

“But then they get inside and it’s dark and they think people can’t see them,” she said, “and they are absolutely the most scared. Always. Always.”

The reality is there’s no one way to scare everyone, she said.

“Scaring is actually hard, hard work. It’s not an easy job,” she said. “You have to be able to read people’s body language in order to know how to approach or try to scare them. There are things you would not think people would be scared by at all.”

She had never considered, for instance, that some people are nearly deathly afraid of horses. That changed when one football player (who shall remain nameless) ran far, far away after coming face-to-face with her Headless Horseman animatronic: lifelike, pawing at the floor, loudly snorting air.

“It is absolutely gorgeous,” she said. “But he had a fear and when the horse raised up ... gone, gone, couldn’t find him. And he didn’t even go back in.”

In years past there were cameras set up near the scariest animatronics to capture the faces of people in their peak moment of fright, just like on roller-coasters, Arnett-Bequeaith said. People could buy the photos.

“There have been many an NFL player that did not buy the photo. They paid to have it destroyed,” she said. “They did not like that look on their face. And so we did. And those were never seen. They all went to the crypt.”