ST. RITA'S HAUNTED HOUSE: Haunted Pinball!
While The USS Nightmare has featured floating laser tag as a new event, the game of choice here at St.Rita's on a crisp October evening seems to be haunted pinball. What's that, you ask? It's the experience a customer will get while walking through the graveyard and mausoleum in the final scene of the haunted house. There were fully eight actors in the graveyard, and rather than attack en masse, they staggered their assaults-first coming out on one side, then the other, back to the right, and further ahead on the left. A bit more of this and the HOD!!! felt much like the ball in a pinball machine-being bounced from one side to the other in rapid fire fashion. Eventually you'll be propelled into the 'chute' of the mausoleum, where the slabs containing the bodies open and close of their own accord like flippers on a pinball machine. Memorial statues on the left and right continue the action, and by the time the area's exited, your head might be spinning from looking back and forth so much. Luckily, the HOD!!! didn't seem to set off the 'TILT' sign-although we might have come close when we almost took a shovel in the face from a gravedigger!
Welcome to St. Rita's Haunted House, the annual event now entering its 34th season-32 of which have been held at the old house on the hill. The house this year features yet another new look. Over the years the same path has rarely been used twice, and on at least one occasion the entrance and exit were swapped in the middle of a season. This year, the path through the house is perhaps more labyrinthine than ever. It starts off by going upstairs to the second floor, then back downstairs after completing the circuit. It then goes through a room divided by a chainlink fence with body bags hanging in it-other actors and hauntgoers can be seen through the fence on the other side of the room, but there's no access to it. The path continues to wind its way through the first floor, including a room that's been divided into three. Finally, you emerge into the 'other side' of the chain link room, and then enter a scene that's much the same (except it's a wall of foliage instead of a fence dividing it). Then you're sent outside-but after a short walk, are herded back into the house. After a trip through the vortex tunnel, it's downstairs to the basement and through the cavern that takes up the entire area. Then it's BACK up to the first floor, through the other side of the foliage room, through a couple of more scenes, and then outside again. A swaying bride is crossed over, and then it's to the final scene (the one mentioned in the initial paragraph). By creating such complex paths, varying them from year to year, and changing room content the event has managed to stay fresh despite being in the same location and with fixed rooms. There are at least six entrances/exits to the house available that have helped to give it this flexibility. Why more haunts don't try this is a mystery-simply sending someone through a haunt the opposite way will make it look like a whole new attraction in many cases. And there are a few more tunnels around St. Rita's as well-outside, Tom points out a huge groundhog hole that almost looks like a bomb crater. "We keep filling them in, and he keeps digging them," he says. Consequently, the HOD!!! considered titling this very article "Ground Hog's Day", but hey, we'd already written the opening, and we're way too lazy to rewrite. Whether the burly burrower wants to become a haunt actor or is just trying to get inside the haunt for free is unknown at this point!
Of course, changing the rooms is a far better way of making things look new, and St. Rita's has done a lot of that this year. Tom Flege, longtime co-chairman of the event, pointed out several of these as he accompanied us on our tour. The first of the new rooms shows up at the top of the stairs right after entering-the Funeral Parlor. It features a mourner sitting in front of a casket, which a corpse shoots out of as hauntgoers pass. Tom shows us where the sensor for the triggering effect is located-in years past, it would have been an actor in the coffin, but an animatronic gives a much more startling and violent "jumping" action. A couple of rooms later is the Dungeon-besides a guy locked in a cell and a victim on a table, a tied up teen is in the process of being branded by a torturer with a red-hot branding iron. You can almost smell the burning flesh and feel the heat from the hot coals! Later on is the Executioner's Room, where an inmate sizzles in an electric chair, a guillotine has a basket full of lopped-off heads, and a variety of weapons and tools of pain lay on a nearby table. Downstairs, there's a cobwebbed hallway full of corpses and skeletons that have been stuck to the wall by spider webbing, and there are even more webbed bodies on top of the grate that runs overhead. Finally, there's the Klown Area where a brightly colored ticket booth gives way to Klowns playing with ripped-up stuffed rabbits and a 'Jill-In-The-Box.' This room had a great moment when the gal inside the box came up so forcefully that the lid bounced off the wall and kicked back, whacking her in the back of the head. While this wasn't part of the plan, both her and the HOD!!! got a good laugh out of it!
The house incorporates many classic rooms that have been used in the event in one form or another for years. The cavern in the basement was first seen in the house in the late 70's (when it was located on the second floor, in the room now occupied by the vampire's dining room). It had a different look and feel (being lit with black lights, giving it a purple glow), but the basic layout of the rock formations acting as natural rails remains intact. Likewise, the swaying bridge outside the event was an early 80's staple in the room now housing the Mad Scientist's lab on the first floor. It normally was used to span a running water effect or as a sort of 'troll bridge', but was also used as a desert scene one year to walk over a sand pit full of rattlesnakes! The Funeral Parlor we previously mentioned was also first used in the early 80's, usually in the room on the second floor now holding the Judge's Chambers. St. Rita's signature effect, the collapsing floor, has also been around since the late 70's in several different spots, most noticeably being used in a pitch black 'hanging' room (where it simulated a scaffold dropping) or in an upside down room with all the furniture on the ceiling. The Judge's Chambers and its lead-in to the next scene, The Executioner, are interestingly enough straight out of the classic Phillip Morris (of Morris Costuming fame, not the cigarette company!) book, "How To Operate A Financially Successful Haunted House." Now, before you think all rooms used in the 70's-80's were classic, let's be thankful St. Rita's hasn't resurrected its Star Wars room-Star Wars rooms were popular in haunts during the late 70's-early 80's, and the HOD!!! always cringed when we saw them. Other long time St. Rita's scenes such as the Bedroom have new twists-this year, you'll still see the corpse fly out of the bed, but there's a surprise when it turns out there's a living gal in there too-as well as a certain dream stalker approaching from behind while your attention is occupied…
The soundtrack used is the best that the haunted house has had in years. It's loud, much clearer than before, and more varied in content. It adds tremendously to the overall ambiance of the event and in intensifying the effect of individual scenes.
As always, the house is…err…crawling with actors and creatures. Most of them are local high schoolers earning community credit hours. St. Rita's sees to it that they are properly made up, get great costuming, and are taken well care of while they're working inside. Sometimes they lack the finesse one might see in a pro haunt or the intimidation factor an adult brings, but they certainly have plenty of enthusiasm and heart-and no one can scream as loud as a teenage girl! They also learn quickly about varying their approach to each group-St. Rita's offers the option of a 'flashlight tour' to a group, and when the actors see the light they change from being frenzied, drooling creatures of chaos into friendly monsters. It's no exaggeration to say that many of the best actors and haunt designers in Cincinnati got their start at St. Rita's or lurked within its walls at one point. Watching Tom and his co-chairman, Steve Haverkos, interact with the kids is always fascinating to watch as they impart their practical haunt wisdom learned over the years to yet another group of newbie ghouls. The spirit shown by the actors and organizers is what has kept the event going through the good times and the lean years.
St. Rita's has been active in the haunting world at large the last couple of years. In 2008 they were the second stop on the Midwest Haunter's Convention Bus Tour. This year, a group of their actors joined the crew on board the USS Nightmare for their special Labor Day haunt. Allen Rizzo, the Captain of the Nightmare, says that "…the people from St. Rita's were great and did a fantastic job for us. They were as professional as we could have hoped for. It was a pleasure having them on board with us and watching the fireworks from the best seat in the house afterwards." St. Rita's and the Nightmare are also working together in the Dark Combo (last year the Dark Triangle), a website where you can purchase a discounted combo deal for admission to both haunts (see the link below).
After the tour and back in the building next door used as an actor's area and office, there's more to see backstage for true haunt connoisseurs-the floorplans for the house and the list of rooms and their actors, for example. "Well, we've changed the list several times, as you can see," laughed Tom. "There's always something coming up that changes the plan." Right across from this are a series of plaques from each season of the house-taking up the better part of one wall of the hallway. Most every 'Chairman' plaque has Steve Haverkos's name on it, underlining what he's meant to the event all these years. There are also plaques honoring actors and event staff. There's also St. Rita's room full of props-looking a bit emptier this year, but still loaded enough to construct another haunt, or maybe a battleship or dance club-there's a preponderance of special lighting, hydraulics, tools, effects chainsaws, obscure mechanical devices, fog machines, and all kinds of metal fittings and parts. A huge tome nearby, thicker than a phone book, turns out to be the catalog that St. Rita's uses to procure their hydraulics. And of course, there's the Wall Of History-a poster and T-shirt from virtually every year the event has been open. It stretches around the room on all four walls. Tom jokes after pulling aside a panel to expose the last remaining blank spot that "I guess next year we'll have to retire-there won't be any room left!"
Well, thankfully, that's not really the case. While hauntgoers are out doing their annual haunt crawls, bouncing from haunt to haunt they'll be doing themselves a favor by including St. Rita's on the list. It's a traditional haunt that has remained true to its roots, is a living history lesson in haunting, and a great time as well. Making it to 50 seems like a good bet at this point-and that would give the St. Rita's Haunted House the 'high score' in the game of haunted pinball!
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