The Haunted Basement Serves Up New Scares in a New Location

When asked what motivates the folks who put together the Haunted Basement every year to scare the hell out of people, operations director Walker Friend doesn’t mince words: “There is something to be said about being able to absolutely terrify someone so much that they have to quit the experience. It’s fun. It’s just a blast. You get to play with other actors . . . It’s a lot of fun scaring people.”

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

Daunting as that might make it sound, Friend assures would-be attendees that the fright is all in the name of a good time. It might be satisfying to know you can scare someone into leaving, but it’s not actually the goal. “We want the patrons to have fun. We want them to go through the whole experience. It’s riding that [fine line where] they’re absolutely terrified, but not so terrified they want to quit.”

Now a Twin Cities Halloween institution, the Haunted Basement began as a fundraiser for the Soap Factory art gallery and has been scaring the bejesus out of horror masochists since 2006. A volunteer at the gallery explored the building’s dingy, creepy basement and surfaced with lightning in a bottle: let visitors tour through the space with only a flashlight for light and a rope for guidance. The idea was a hit, and the Soap Factory quickly sold out tickets to scare seekers ready to explore their spooky basement. As its reputation grew over the years, it became a Halloween tradition, and the experience began to incorporate artists to punch up the freaky factor with set design, costumes, and performed characters.

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

The Soap Factory might be gone—after an uncertain few years, the organization announced on September 24 that will officially cease operations at the end of 2019—but the Haunted Basement continues on like the undead and has grown in scope and scale. In 2016, it moved out of its cramped original venue and into the basement of Building No. 9 of the old General Mills Research Facility on the Northeast riverfront. This year, the event will be aboveground for the first time, with twice the amount of space, in the empty former Herberger’s at the Rosedale Mall.

Visitors who have the guts for it and are willing to sign a waiver are immersed in a series of carefully designed rooms, complete with heavily costumed character actors, different themed settings, and details like spooky lighting, music and sound effects, and even professionally crafted odors, from the sweet like cotton candy to the rancid like rotten flesh.

The immersion is ambitious—they don’t allow high heels and recommend wearing clothing you don’t mind getting dirty or wet. You also can’t take anything with you that you’d be afraid to drop or lose, because actors (“creeps”) have a green light to touch you, which is atypical among haunted house attractions but heightens the spine tingle. (That said, the Haunted Basement is introducing a new no-touch option this year; more on that below.)

The sets can be simple spaces inhabited by one or many creeps or make extensive use of props and engineering. Visitors have been shut in coffins, led through decontamination rooms and butcher shops, and shuttered in a bunker built into an indoor sod-covered hill. Past concepts have ranged from those grounded in real-world people and events, like a room based on the Jonestown massacre, to the unsettlingly illusory and entirely phantasmagoric.

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

“There was a room my first year . . . that had a checkerboard floor—it was sort of a Twin Peaks–esque room, and the room only got smaller at the exit and there was a tiny exit door,” says codirector and actor Gail Estelle. The room used optical illusion to play on perspective: it appeared normal at first, but as visitors progressed through, the space constricted, and they would have to crawl through the exit door. “I’m a very tall person, I’m six feet tall, I’m a big ol’ dangle. And I would dance in there forwards and backwards. With the floor perspective and the walls getting smaller, people had no idea how tall I was.”

The scares at the Haunted Basement are less about jumping in your face and startling you with a mask and more about “absurdist psychological horror,” as the website puts it. The experience seeks to build up the disturbing and freaky, and the creators want visitors to notice the details rather than flinch from attackers and sprint out of the room. “A lot of times we pull from our own fears and our own anxieties, and we try to emphasize what those are and create more of an immersive experience,” says set designer and actor Heather Jo Raiter. “We utilize lighting and a lot of physical, visceral, textural things.”

The actors like to think of the tour as visitors intruding into the creeps’ homes. “This is where they are doing their work and hanging out and reading books and chewing on bones,” says Estelle. “So then what is the interaction? We don’t set our actors on a track of ‘Here’s your hidey hole, jump out and say boo when you hear somebody come.’”

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

But that’s not to say the audience is always able to keep it together. For those worried about melting down into a panic attack, there is a safe word—“uncle”—that will trigger the actors to drop character and release you. And the actors are trained to monitor visitors, even while they’re getting their spook on, for those who might be so frozen in fear they forget the safe word and and need to be “uncled” out.

The live nature of the experience means that, like in theater, no two nights run exactly the same. There are side rooms and “bonus experiences” where creeps might lead (un)lucky visitors who happen to be in the right place at the right time. Much of the performance boils down to horror improv, trying to find the fright rather than the joke. The creeps play off the audience, and not everyone reacts the same. Some visitors are horror enthusiasts, all too excited and thrilled to be terrified. Others are tough guys, defiantly maintaining stoicism and detachment. “My favorite are the boyfriends who use their girlfriends as shields,” says Friend.

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

In a one-night-only returning feature on October 30, 2019, the drag performers of Flip Phone (hosts of the frequently sold-out themed Drag Brunch events) will be incorporated into the haunt, which has proven to be a popular mix. “They fit right in,” says Friend. “It’s acting, it’s entertaining, they bring a little different energy than our usual cast. They have a blast, the patrons have a blast. It’s been a lot of fun the last few years.”

“It’s a really high-energy party night,” Estelle adds. “I always work that night. I don’t care if it’s a Wednesday night and I have to go to work in the morning—I am working Flip Phone night.”

Along with the physical growth thanks to its move to the mall, allowing more square footage for more elaborate set designs and creeps, the Haunted Basement is also expanding the scope of what it offers. It has added accessibility accommodations to broaden the audience, striving to be “radically inclusive” not only in its culture but in its physical space. New this year, there will be no-touch tours for folks who’d rather not be touched but still want to see what it’s all about, and tours that turn down the sensory overload for those who might have medical conditions: lower soundtrack, no strobe lights, no smells. The event is 100 percent ADA accessible, so there aren’t many spaces that visitors have to crawl through compared to its early days. While the touch tours are for visitors 18 and up, the no-touch tours lower the age requirement to 15 but require a parent or guardian present to sign the waiver.

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

As for what scares might be new this time around, the staff are pretty tight-lipped (fair, but frustrating). When asked whether they’re going to take advantage of the rich history of malls in horror pop culture, Friend is firm about not spoiling anything, but he hints, “It’s an opportunity you’re not going to pass over. There might be a couple little pieces of mall in there.”

“I will tell you that there are several rooms that I enjoy eating my lunch in,” says Estelle. “I will just sit on the floor and eat my lunch and be just super happy because of how beautiful they are.”

Raiter’s hints were more nuts and bolts: “I am thrilled that we have technicians this year. I’m trying not to give anything away.” The crew is trying to “increase [the] immersive experience more so than just having smells and having the right lighting and the right set—having special elements that we couldn’t have done before without them.”

Courtesy of the Haunted Basement

If you can summon the courage, the Haunted Basement runs every Thursday through Sunday in October and the first weekend of November at the old Herberger’s space in the Rosedale Mall. If it sounds too intimidating, just keep in mind that these are professionals, and they’re trying to entertain you. On the other hand . . .

“I’m going to quietly follow you for awhile,” says Estelle. “I’m going to whisper things to you. I’m going to giggle. I’m going to be the thing that you maybe think is following you after you leave.”