Tiffany (6:14)

Trick or treat.

Chase (6:17)

I give them the candy for their bravery and making it this far. And I hope this lie, this charade, I hope it works. I hope it convinces them that they are close enough, no further. That you never want to experience a real haunted house. Not because of the haunting. That's just the echo. No, because of what has to happen to make it haunted. Spook. Star. Stop. Okay, so picture this. A cabin in the woods. And inside, there's a lonely man. He's sitting at a desk, frantically writing a list. Step one, check the front gate. Step two, prepare. He starts boarding up the windows and the door. Somebody must be after him. Step three, cut everyone off. Outside his cabin, there's a woman running, screaming, trying to get in, but he refuses her. Eventually, the beating on his door stops, and the man lifts his head, and suddenly, over his shoulder, there's a demon.

Tiffany (8:41)

What?

Chase (8:44)

Fade to black. Hmm. Quite a story, right? Well, this is a story that rookie filmmaker Chase he wanted to tell. The thing is, he has no idea where to begin. But Chase does have some buddies. So he recruits his best friend Tiffany, his old pal David. A few phone calls later, he actually finds his dream location to find film. His very first short film. A place in the deep south where just like in the movies, fiction meets reality. It's called the Ark's Mortis Haunted House. Spooked Sa.

Tiffany (10:31)

So me and Tiffany loaded up the car and drove to Florence, Alabama. We arrived around 4:30 5:00. We are in a more rural part of the town. All we could see is nothing but trees, nothing but trees, nothing but trees. And then boom, there it is, Arx Mortis, bright and shiny, sitting on top of the hill. It looked like an old school Transylvania manor. It had big fake wooden doors. The walls are painted in this gothic like purple. But it's set in the sun so long it's kind of gray. The middle part kind of has that psycho house steeple and it had this circular window in it. For someone with no budget, I was in heaven. I mean, as a horror filmmaker, what better way to do that than going to a made up haunted house for your set design, your costumes, your wardrobe. That was all there for me.

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Tiffany (12:35)

Me and Tiffany meet up with Hal in the parking lot. He was a family friend who kind of managed ARX Mortis and helped build most of it. I'm talking about the shots that I want to get. I'm telling how the story behind it because he hadn't really heard it. And that's when I realized I have no main actor. I knew Hal had acted a little bit, so I turned to him and I said, hey man, instead of just helping me with this thing, do you want to be in this thing? And Hal was gung ho, as Hal always is. He said, yes, David, my producer friend, he showed up with his wife and these two guys I'd never met before that were also just willing to help and we're ready to rock and roll at that point. Walking through ARX Mortis was like walking through a horror film. The hallways were cramped and claustrophobic. There Were opening holes in the walls where the scare actors would jump out at you. There was a body bag room and just had these fake chains and these fake body bags, like hanging and you'd have to walk through to get to the next room. We eventually ended up in this hospital. You had the fake flooring, the curtains, the gurneys. And there were fake bodies there and they were bloody. I'm walking down this bridge and I remember it just being so quiet. And the next thing I hear was this blood curdling scream like someone was being disemboweled next to me. I immediately turned to my left and jump back and I see this animatronic hanging on this fence. It was a guy who had his hands tied up to the top of a chain link fence. He had no legs, his guts were being ripped out and he was gyrating on the fence. I was told by Hal that that would happen. We were warned as we were walking through the house that we may trigger some animatronics and that some were pressure sensored on the floor. It means as you step down, they go off. At that point, I knew we would just have to avoid that guy at all cost. I could not have dreamed for a better place to film a horror film. But Tiffany's getting kind of creeped out. She looks at me and says, I know it's a fake haunted house, but it's still creepy as hell. I reminded her, this is just fake. Don't let that psych you out. There were some makeup designers there that were fixing up the place for the upcoming Halloween season. They saw what we were doing and got kind of interested. So we let them take Tiffany into their wardrobe room and they started working on some makeup for her to turn her into this demon, this entity. We started setting up in the haunted library because it was the only room in the house that we could make look like the inside of a abandoned cabin. There was two bookshelves in the room. It had a desk in there too. And I remember thinking, it needs to look like this guy's boarded himself up inside. So we need some boards. Hal had told me about some rundown cabins located on the top of a hill in almost like the backyard of Arx Mortis. They were being used for storage and that's where we could find plywood, wooden planks, two by fours. So me and David are walking up this hill. It's gotten dark at this point. We're in the middle of the woods. And then I see the two cabins inside. They had just excess plywood that they need to build stuff inside the house. David was shining his flashlight around, looking for the perfect pieces of wood, when all of a sudden I could hear this, like, gravelly noise, like someone walking on gravel. It sounded like somebody was close to us. And as I turn to look at where the noise is, it stop. And was like, you heard that too, right? And David said, yeah, I did. And he had this look of surprise on his face. I'm kind of standing there frozen, wondering if someone from the building is following us. But I know everyone's back there, so this has got to be just an animal. We grabbed the planks that we needed and scurried back down the hill in about five seconds. In our walk down the hill, we could hear the footsteps again following us. We stopped, looked at each other, and turned around. And just like before, the footsteps came to an abrupt stop. David looks at me and we both kind of have this silent agreement that we're going to hurry down the hill. As we get back to the room, I remember dropping the planks down and seeing David's two friends, and they were kind of shaking a little bit. They were a little pale. They were asking us, were you guys in that other room? Were you in that hospital over there? And I was like, no. Me and David were up on the hill. Is Hal in that room? No, Hal's in the styling area with Tiffany. They were like, well, we heard footsteps in that other room, and then we'd hear scratching on the wall. So we thought you guys were playing a prank on us. At first, I look at both of them and I'm telling them the same thing I told Tiffany. All of this is fake. This is a fake haunted house. Don't let it get to you. When we began filming, it was around 10:30 at night. I had a slip of sticky notes in my sweaty back pocket that had all my shots on him. Different takes of Hal writing the list, how he was sweating, looking disheveled. Close ups of the pen moving frantically across the list paper. We were speeding through the shots pretty quickly, but I was getting so many because I was so amateur. Everything was coming out blurry or out of focus. David is. He's in educator mode. He is helping me the whole way through. And Hal was. He just had to look nervous, anxious and depressed and scared. That's all he had to do. And he did that fine. He was okay. At 2am we finally get Tiffany back in. She's in full makeup. They airbrushed her face to make it seem very pale and gray, like she'd been dead for a very long time and they accented her veins with this hint of navy blue. She looked like a tortured demon that was coming back from hell. Everyone else has left at this point, it's just Tiffany, me, Hal, David and his wife. We were all in the room finishing the final shots of the night. I was preparing for the climax of the story. We were setting up the camera to shoot a wide angle shot of Hal with the door in the background. We'll see Tiffany's hand come through the door and slowly open it. I'm about to yell action. When all of a sudden the lights go out.

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Tiffany (23:25)

My first instinct was to look into the hallway that goes to the haunted hospital and I see it has power. I think we've blown a fuse. We can't trust this outlet and we need to start looking for another power source. David runs the extension cord down the library hallway. He plugged the extension cord to another outlet, plugged in all the lights, and we begin filming again. We were now moving on to our main shot, the shot where Hal looks up from his paper and the demon is right over his shoulder. I'm peering down my camera, about ready to call action again. And then all of a sudden the lights go out again. I can feel this faint gasp behind me from Tiffany. David looks at me with this peering glare. So I said, I'll go see what's going on. And I walk down the hallway. But as I'm walking, I could feel the air change. I could feel the chills with every step. It almost felt like there were eyes on me. I turned around to see if someone had joined me in the hallway and no one was there. So I kind of made a hurry walk. And that's when I noticed that the plug had been ripped from the wall. It is a commercial grade extension cord. It is a hundred feet long. For that to happen, someone had to use force. Maybe someone kicked it, but there's no way someone kicks a cord 50ft away and it comes straight from the wall. I'm trying to repeat in my head what I've been telling everyone else all night, it's fake, it's fake, it's fake. I remember plugging it back in. I made sure that there was plenty of slack. I moved quickly down the hallway and I just said, let's keep shooting. I grabbed the camera, started rolling. Tiffany puts her chin on Hal's shoulder at the segment where she is supposed to scare him. And as Hal turns to look at her, the lights go out again. At this point, no one's making a noise. We're just kind of looking around in this dumbfounded state. We're running out of explanations. And there's only so many times you can tell yourself it's fake. So we all start walking down the hallway together, and we're walking briskly. We arrived. The extension cord was plugged in. Hal didn't say anything. He was calm, cool and collected. But David looked at me. It was like, what the hell? David plugged in all the lights again, and they were up and running. We got back to the room. We only needed 30 seconds of a shot. We filmed it as quickly as possible. We started packing up the equipment. How was Anani putting his camera in his bag? The girls are standing in the corner wrapping the extension cord. David is to my right, standing in the hallway, when all of a sudden that damn animatronic starts screaming. I felt this massive chill in my bones. I was frozen in that moment because I knew how it was set off. And this time there was no logical explanation on that. Hal looked at me me and said, what the hell set that thing off? Mr. Calm, cool and collected was no longer calm, cool and collected. We packed our stuff up in silence, threw it in the back of the truck as quickly as possible, and got out of there. I woke up late in the day. We still needed to pick up the outdoor shots so we can finish the whole shoot. We get there and we finish filming. As we're wrapping up, some of the makeup artists from the night before were coming back. They were asking us how the shooting went. They asked Tiffany how the makeup worked out. And then Tiffany brought it up. Yeah, we had some weird stuff happen last night. We briefly told a little bit about what happened, and next thing I know, when the makeup artist is like, yeah, that's just Old Joe. I looked at her like a dog trying to understand a human voice and said, what do you mean it's Old Joe? She said, yeah, Old Joe. He's a janitor that used to work at a flea market. When the flea market closed down, he had nowhere to go. So we hired him in Arx Mortis. He was quite the prankster in the day. He would come in and scare the staff. He would wait till the actors were in place and no one was around and knock on the walls. He would yell at the top of his lungs when you thought no one was around. And then he passed away from a heart attack. They claim he's still there pulling his pranks to this day. I don't react. I'm zoning out because I can't believe what I'm hearing and it's tying so much together. I was completely dumbfounded. But all that kind of went by the wayside because my career in filmmaking had just begun and I was super excited about it and also completely wiped from the night before. I think it was the fall of 2022. I finally went back to Arxmortis as a guest. Screams had filled the air, the fog machines were on, the crowd was heavy. We're going through the haunted hospital. Hal was in his dentist costume telling people he's going to rip their tongues out. And we round the corner of the library and as I'm walking down the bridge, that same animatronic got me this time like it did the last time. And I just remember smiling cuz it brought back so many great memories. I hope old Joe is scaring the new guest like he did me. And as for the finished product, I do watch it occasionally if I'm ever in the need of a good laugh. The film itself, it sucks. But hey, at least for now I have a great story to tell.

Chase (33:13)

Thank you Chase, for sharing your story with the Spook. Be sure to check out Chase's podcast Hold Up a show where Chase and his friends review movies from the 80s, 90s and beyond to see if they still hold up. You'll find a link to the show in this episode's description. The original score was by Nicholas Marks. It was produced by Eric Yanez. 1982, a 10 year old boy sits in a dentist's office reading a comic book. Then, according to witnesses, the book suddenly bursts into flames. And over the course of the next few days, this boy sets several objects ablaze, apparently with nothing more than the power of his mind. He ends up in the hospital with burns on his body, fearful, where he confesses that I don't want to keep setting things on fire, but what should I do? The doctors, the nurses, no one knows how to give him aid. He's entirely on his own. But eventually, after many struggles, he gains control over this power and he recedes back into Anonymity. And that's the story. This is what's in the books. You can Google it yourself. But of course, I gotta wonder if some kid in Italy has power over fire, why, like, he's the only one? Why not someone else? And if you know someone else, or if you yourself are someone else, we sure love to know about it. Spook@snapjudgment.org spooked@snapjudgment.org spooked is brought to you by the team that, when approaching the spirit world, would gladly take no for an answer. Except for Mark Ristich. It's not good enough for Mark to simply play with the Ouija board. No, you gotta argue with it. There's David Kim, Zoe Ferrigno, Ann Ford, Eric Yanez, Teo Dakot, Marissa Dodge, Miles Lassie, Doug Stewart, Elliot Lightfoot, Paulina Creeke, Juan Diego Beltran, Sasha Wilson, Dan Yashinsky. The Spook theme song is by Pat Mercedy Miller. My name is Glenn Washington. Exploring questions of shadow, the formulation, as often, is the other way a reflection of us? Are we a reflection of it? Or are there two distinct landscapes that have little to do with each other? I guess I'm a practitioner of the unified whole theory. Now, we don't know what's going on over there. But we don't have any idea what's happening here either. Because maybe, maybe there is no here and know there, no one understands where they are on this map. We're all lost. So instead of trying to figure out what's going on out there, perhaps our time is better spent delving into what's going on inside us. What's happening with the person we're sitting next to. Who is the last loved one we looked in the eye when they spoke to us? Maybe consider that instead and leave the shadow to work itself out truly as a public service. When I hear the icy breath begging me to come to provide companionship to the darkness, I tell it, no, no, I'm busy. Know the best I can do for you. Dark Spectre. Devil Wrath. Murky Malefactor. All I have for you today is to never, never ever, not ever. Not never, never ever turn out the lights.