By day, Paul McKenna is the happy owner of Starship Restaurant & Catering, 7618 W. Madison in Forest Park, which he opened in 1977. But as the autumn nights grow darker and it gets closer to Halloween, McKenna can’t help but get a little spooked when he thinks about his time as a haunted house designer.
“It’s an immense amount of work to put on a haunted house,” McKenna said, who started designing the scary sites in the early 2000s as a board member trying to raise money for the “incredibly underfunded” nonprofit Village Players Theatre in Oak Park. “But it was really fun to scare the hell out of people nightly.”
These days, a haunted house can mean both spending and making big bucks. There are numerous haunted houses in the Chicago area, including the 30,000 square-foot 13th Floor Haunted House in Melrose Park. It can be a lucrative business, if done right, McKenna said.
“The haunted house industry has taken off so much,” said McKenna, currently a director at the Oak Park River Forest Chamber of Commerce and also a former realtor. “There’s a lot of money.”
Through his catering business, McKenna had become involved with the Village Players Theatre. Before long, he was asked to sit on the board. He knew the nonprofit theater needed to make some cash, and thought, why not do a haunted house? McKenna started doing his homework and even attended a convention for haunted houses.
“I found a lot of cool ideas,” he said. “The prop part is easy, but the safety is the biggest concern.”
His original thought was to bring everybody into the theater’s lobby and dressing rooms — cold and narrow by nature.
“My vision was to let them walk through the whole theater and scare the hell out of them as they go,” recalled McKenna.
That, however, wasn’t so easy, and McKenna soon realized there was a lot more involved in putting a haunted house together than he originally thought to consider. Steps, hanging wires, ramps — “just stuff that’s not safe,” he said.
“The first thing is to get the fire department to sign off,” said McKenna. “It’s even better if you could get somebody from the fire department involved.”
In McKenna’s case, he said the first thing the fire department told him was that the property was considered an amusement building and people could be distracted right — or left — for something. But not to be dissuaded, McKenna built a floating marquee on wheels. He covered it with blood, and put people inside screaming and rode it in a Memorial Day parade.
“It started then,” he said. “I was already pumped up. I didn’t want to take no for an answer.”
He worked it out with the fire department, got himself the 30 to 40 staffers needed nightly to run the place, and McKenna designed a “small and good” haunted house utilizing the theater’s lobby and part of the dressing rooms. The play “Dracula” was held at the same time by the theater group, and to lure patrons, McKenna had people working the street dressed as peasants in Transylvania.
“You want to make it as authentic as possible,” he said.
But how can this be as safe as possible, too?, asked McKenna. What props work better than others? Those are two of the most important things to keep in mind for anyone planning a haunted house, he said.
“You wanna be safe,” McKenna said. “You certainly don’t want any catastrophes to happen.”
For example, he said, the tough guy and his “pee in her pants girlfriend,” come in. “We feast off this girl while the big protector guy punches a ghoul,” McKenna said. “Never touch someone. Be conscious if someone has had a drink or two.”
And making sure props are fire resistant is essential. “Some goofball going through may take out a Bic lighter and set the curtains on fire,” McKenna said.
Then there’s the famed head-on-a-platter prop, which has to be protected with a birdcage around it, so no one comes and pokes the person in the eyes.
“You have to ask yourself, ‘What would people do to screw it up?'” McKenna said.
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I asked how he judged whether he had a hit haunt or not.
“The people’s faces who just exited,” said McKenna. “That’s when you know it’s good. When people come out jumping up and down — filled with adrenaline.”
For those of you who aren’t quite in the spirit or are too scared to hit a haunted house this Halloween season, you can instead head over to McKenna’s Starship Restaurant and have yourself a nice, hot bowl of Resurrection Chicken Soup, which is filled with “tons” of garlic and hot peppers.
“It will resurrect you from the dead,” laughed McKenna.
Think your house is haunted? … “Call Ghostbusters!” recommends Ursula Bielski, founder of Chicago Hauntings, which offers numerous paranormal tours and experiences.
“No, seriously,” added Bielski. “There are many, many self-trained investigators out there that can help you decide if there is truly something paranormal going on, but never ever pay anyone for this.”
A “sincere and ethical investigator” will never charge for their services, Bielski said. Readers can get in touch with her for referrals.
Felicia Dechter is a freelance columnist for Pioneer Press. Got a real estate-related story idea? Email her at [email protected].