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Health & Fitness

Behind-the-scenes: Hudson Haunted House

            So there I am, standing in a Deli with a butcher’s knife in one hand and a squishy eyeball in the other. My face is sticky with makeup. A girl screams down the hall.

            Next victim.

            Oct. 20, I was given the opportunity to work undercover in the Hudson Haunted House as a means of trying to get a better scoop of what goes on behind the scenes. The idea sprang up in September, and I talked to fellow Stow-Munroe Falls High School alum Jesse Ruda about potentially coming to the house one night and giving it a try.

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            “Definitely man!” he texted back. And from there, we set up what turned out to be quite the interesting night.

            When I walk in, Ruda and his organized gang of “Jaycees,” as well as other volunteers, are huddled around a table talking up a storm. Right from the get-go, I can see how this job might be pretty stressful. Ruda picks a nametag from a bowl, holds it up, and announces the name.

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            “Where do you want to go for the first set?” he asks the kid.

The boy ponders for a second, and then makes his selection: deli.

At this point, I look like a kitten in a lion’s cage. These kids are all dressed up and ready to rock, ready to scare somebody’s socks off; I’m standing there with a black polo and a yellow notebook.

This is when I meet Cupcake. I imagine this was not his given name at birth, but I like the nickname. It’s important to note that Cupcake could probably beat the crap out of me, which also makes the nickname even more delightful.

“I think you’ll have fun,” he tells me before he goes off and begins playing DJ for the night, playing music throughout the house while all the volunteers set up.

Now I get to talk to Ruda, who will take me on a grand tour of the house. So that none of the surprises are ruined in the event you go before the house shuts down tonight, I won’t play spoiler here, but I will offer you a couple quotes from the tour:

 

“Holy crap!” I laugh as I try to make my way across a spinning bridge.

“You get used to it,” Ruda says with a snicker. He passes through the dark tunnel with ease, and I’m behind him trying to play catch-up, still holding onto my little yellow notebook for dear life. “Eventually you can walk through it backwards.”

I don’t dare to try.

 

We walk beside a bathroom coated with red; crimson paint splatters the wall and it looks like a body sits in the bathtub.

“This room serves to be a bit of comic relief,” Ruda says. I grimace at the sight of the red.

“How so?”

“Sometimes we let people sit on that toilet there,” he laughs, pointing to the toilet that sits in the back right corner. “Once, we had a kid sit there with a newspaper.”

 

“This room is nice to work in when you’re really pissed off,” Ruda says as we walk into what looks like a deli. I’ll be spending my time in this room later on for the second and final set of the night, but during the tour this is unbeknownst to me.

“Why?”

“Because you get to take this cleaver,” he says as he picks up a rubber knife, “and slam it into the counter as hard as you can.”

I sat there for a minute as the rubber cleaver echoed throughout the entire deli.

 

On this tour, I learn every room is equipped with three things: a fire extinguisher, a flashlight and a panic button.

“If there is any source of light, a broken prop or if a patron gets aggressive, you hit the panic button,” Ruda tells me. He adds, “Not recommended, but if you really need to go to the bathroom, you can hit the button, too. We are trained to get there in six seconds or less.”

Ruda adds that in any given night, the board in the operating office could light up somewhere around 20 times, although the issues are never really severe.

Ruda also informs me that he has been involved with the Hudson Jaycees, a volunteer-based nonprofit organization that gives back to local communities. As a fundraiser, they run the Hudson Haunted House. Moreover, the group donates the finale of the Hudson fireworks every year, as well as improving local parks and schools, running the annual Easter Egg Hunt and July 4 cookout and more.

After the tour concludes, Ruda lets me select what rooms I get to work. First, I select “Catacombs,” which he says is “easy but kids are actually afraid to work it.” He then lets me select one that is “more fun,” and naturally, I chose the Deli.

After my selections, I go to another room to pick out a costume and get makeup done. There is some hurry as the House opens shortly. There is some freedom to select your own costume, but there are a set number of options beneath different labels. I head to “Catacombs” and pick out a long robe and a mask.

“You’re not going to want to wear that,” Ruda suggests. I put it back without even asking, and then I get my makeup done.

Catacombs proves to be easy enough, just like Ruda said. The first customer comes by and I jump out from behind a wall and startle them. They congratulate me, and I continue to stare them down—I’m not going to just give up.

Three customers later, a girl and her father are coming around the bend. I can hear them: She is begging her father to go home, and he keeps insisting they must finish the route. I proceed to do something that I feel horrible about: I make this girl cry.

Well, that’s a confidence booster.

I hold “Mother,” a squishy skull that actually looks pretty intimidating. I show it to people, maybe asking, “Do you like it?” or “What happened to my friend?” Usually, I just stay silent.

One group of kids came by four times. On the fourth time, the one kid who leads their pack has already introduced himself to me and says, “I remember you.” Then he addresses the five kids behind him and says, “On your left, you’ll see a short guy holding a skull.”

Well then.

When the shift ends, a backdoor behind me opens and somebody who supervises flashes his light and tells me to get ready for the second set. To be honest, I’m glad. I was getting a little bored in Catacombs. I take Mother with me by accident, which is when I learn of Ruda’s love for the skull toy. He snatches it from me and smiles, hugging it tightly.

“Mother was an old prop from a past room we called ‘Attic,’” Ruda said in an interview later on.  “Another fellow Jaycee named Devin used her every time he acted the room. Eventually, the name came around and stuck and is always ending up in different places in the haunted house.”

So then I go to the Deli, sans Mother. This, I admit, made the night worthwhile. I get to do some acting with three other kids. We toss around fake eyeballs, hands, legs and we toss each other into a “fridge.” We cut each other’s arms off. We ask people if they want to buy any body parts. I use a Brooklyn accent, for some reason.

“Just always keep acting,” a girl tells me. “You need to act weird.” Then she starts screaming about brains and eyeballs. I shrug, and start hitting the counter hard with my cleaver.

It was a good ending to a good experience.

As I take my costume back, Ruda asks me if I enjoyed it. I smile and nod; the Hudson Haunted House offered me an experience that I might not ever have had otherwise. The really neat thing was realizing that everybody there received the same opportunity: Everybody at one point volunteered.

We talk a bit about next year. After their season ends, they will have a banquet with the Jaycees where they will give out awards such as “Monster of the Year” or “Top Stars.” Ruda also says that they will not discuss plans for the House as far as changes are concerned until January at the earliest.

“It's a great feeling to be involved with the local communities and help out other organizations while running ours,” Ruda said. “I enjoy volunteering at the Hudson Haunted House because it is a great experience being on the other side if the scare,” Ruda said.

I couldn’t agree more.


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