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Star Magazine | These ghouls know how to make you scream

Now that Halloween has become one of the biggest, baddest holidays on the calendar, a simple &#x93;boo&#x94; just doesn&#x92;t cut it anymore.</p><p>So what&#x92;s a ghoul to do?</p><p>We found out from performers known as Screamsters and Street Freaks at Worlds of Fun, where they wrap up the annual Halloween Haunt on Sunday. Underneath the makeup and masks they&#x92;re just everyday folks: stay-at-home mommies, teachers, landscapers, graphic artists, musicians, waitresses.</p><p>But the unreal things they do in the dark? Some of them have literally scared the you-know-what out of people. (Really.) </p><p>&#x93;It&#x92;s an art to go out there and scare people,&#x94; Cassandra Reeder insists.</p><p>The makeup artist/sometime waitress from Gladstone plays Kandi the Tooth Fairy. With a face and ample bosom painted ghostly white, and jagged shark-like teeth growing out of the side of her face, Kandi walks through the park mooching molars.</p><p>&#x93;There&#x92;s all different kinds of ways to scare,&#x94; Mitch Monath of Raytown says. &#x93;You&#x92;ve got your subtle scare. You&#x92;ve got your creepy scare. You&#x92;ve got your loud, banging noise &#x97; a startle scare.&#x94;</p><p>Monath plays Hugo Sticky Foot, a trash can goblin in tattered clothing whose eyes glow devilishly in the dark thanks to a black light he attached to his monster mask.</p><p>&#x93;I like to play the game &#x91;Is It Real?&#x92;&#8201;&#x94; he says. &#x93;When I hear people ask &#x91;Is that real,&#x92; that&#x92;s when I know to jump out and scare them because they&#x92;re in that debating phase.&#x94;</p><p>But even the pros follow certain rules when they&#x92;re scaring up screams.</p><p>They never touch the people they&#x92;re scaring. And they don&#x92;t punk children in strollers.</p><p>Grown men, on the other hand &#x85;</p><p>&#x93;It&#x92;s really fun to scare the gaggle of 13-year-old girls,&#x94; says Reeder, the fetching Tooth Fairy. &#x93;But it&#x92;s even more fun when you make the big, 42-year-old muscle man waiting on his girlfriend &#x85; scream like a little girl.&#x94;</p><p><span class="subhead">Big bang theory</p><p></span>Jordan Bunce of Lenexa is a king of the startle scare.</p><p>&#x93;I&#x92;m loud,&#x94; says the Street Freak known as Crisper, an undead inmate from the insane asylum with a twitchy Gene Simmons tongue and a pervert&#x92;s leer. Crisper&#x92;s electrocution was botched, so his face and hair are faux-bloodied and charred. He looks like he has been barbecued.</p><p>&#x93;I like to make people feel sick in their stomach just by seeing me,&#x94; Bunce says.</p><p>The 19-year-old makes a living as a juggler/clown/jack-of-all-performances around Kansas City. So he&#x92;s in his element when he silently sidles next to someone in the dark and suddenly &#x85; CACKLES AT THEM LIKE GILBERT GOTTFRIED ON CRACK.</p><p>And if that doesn&#x92;t make them jump &#x85;</p><p>WHAM!</p><p>He bangs a metal shovel on the pavement.</p><p>&#x93;It&#x92;s a fun technique, slamming a shovel by someone&#x92;s foot,&#x94; says Bunce, who swears he has never accidentally whacked anyone in the dark. &#x93;Last year I broke more shovels than days I worked here &#x85; if you think about it, this is paid anger management.&#x94;</p><p><span class="subhead">The tag team</p><p></span>Sometimes it takes two to pull off a good scare: One to distract the victims, the other to go in for the thrill.</p><p>In one of their choreographed set-ups, Bunce throws himself on the ground in fake convulsions near where Monath, a.k.a. Hugo Sticky Foot, is hiding behind his garbage can.</p><p>&#x93;When they walk towards me to get away from him, I jump out from behind the trash can,&#x94; Monath says.</p><p>And when their victims are &#x93;screaming and crying, they&#x92;ve forgotten all about me,&#x94; Bunce adds. &#x93;And that&#x92;s when I come back around and slam my shovel down.&#x94;</p><p><span class="subhead">Creep show</p><p></span>By day, Lindsey Farrar teaches music to grade-schoolers. After dark on October weekends, she&#x92;s perched on a giant white rocking chair outside one of the Worlds of Fun haunted houses. With blackened eyes and a wig of dark brown ringlets, she looks like a deranged baby doll.</p><p>Farrar doesn&#x92;t make people scream. She makes them uncomfortable. They don&#x92;t take their eyes off of her as they stand in the long line outside the evil doll factory where dolls are being turned into humans.</p><p>&#x93;I am just very creepy, and it scares people a lot,&#x94; Farrar, of Lee&#x92;s Summit, says.</p><p> As she rocks back and forth, back and forth, killer-staring at people, she holds in her arms an ashen-skinned baby doll with horns. Her other &#x93;baby,&#x94; her favorite prop, broke. Darn the luck.</p><p>&#x93;His head spun around and his eyes lit up &#x85; one of those demon dolls,&#x94; she says. &#x93;I&#x92;m really sad about it.&#x94;</p><p><span class="subhead">Silence is ghoulish</p><p></span>Lindsey Farrar&#x92;s husband, Mark Farrar, also works at Worlds of Fun during the Halloween season. He roams the grounds in full monster get-up as Krampus, named after the guy who worked alongside Santa Claus in Austria handing out coal to bad little boys and girls.</p><p>At 6 foot 4 inches, Mark is a mountain of a monster when he pulls his horned mask over his face. Mark is a mechanic for the Missouri Air National Guard, but it&#x92;s his soldier training in the Air Force he employs when scaring people. He can stand perfectly still and silent, like a soldier at attention.</p><p>&#x93;I stand like a statue most of the time, and I see people just watching me,&#x94; he says.</p><p>When people get up close and decide that he&#x92;s fake, he starts walking behind them, big as a wall.</p><p>Gotcha!</p><p>&#x93;I know it&#x92;s sick. But I like making people scream,&#x94; says Farrar, a preacher&#x92;s son. &#x93;It&#x92;s fun.&#x94;</p><p><span class="subhead">Shed your skin &#x97; so to speak</p><p></span>Todd Hoover-Holthus understands why some people would think it&#x92;s a little weird (or wrong?) for a special education teacher to portray a ghoul named the Kid Catcher.</p><p>But to be really good at scaring people you have to be willing to be someone you&#x92;re not, sayeth he and his fellow freaks.</p><p>(Of course, it probably helps to have a theater degree, as he has. And gallons of fake blood help, too.)</p><p>&#x93;I am totally a nurturer. I can&#x92;t pass up a good hug,&#x94; says the Kansas City teacher. &#x93;My class is 3-year-olds. So I&#x92;m spending my day with 3-year-olds, coloring and playing and doing the alphabet.</p><p>&#x93;Then I come here and I catch them.&#x94; </p><p>In costume he&#x92;s a 3-year-old&#x92;s nightmare, wearing black pants, black shirt, black vest and heavy black topcoat with devilishly curled tails. His face is darkened and shadowy.</p><p>&#x93;I&#x92;m a starer,&#x94; he says. &#x93;I can spot people from a few yards away who are going &#x91;Oh, that guy is creepy.&#x92; So I just stop, stare at them a bit, take a couple more steps and stop, look back at them and then just keep going. Just gives them a little creep.&#x94;</p><p>When he skulks around the park he seems shorter than his 6-foot-1-inch frame because he walks hunched over, the better to stalk his low-to-the-ground prey. He carries a big black net, and if people ask nicely, he&#x92;ll slide it over their heads for a holiday photo op.</p><p>&#x93;I&#x92;ve always felt this, in any show I&#x92;ve been in, it&#x92;s always nice to play someone completely opposite yourself, just to venture into somebody else&#x92;s world,&#x94; he says. &#x93;It&#x92;s an escape, too.&#x94;</p><p><span class="subhead">They don&#x92;t bite</p><p></span>Wendi Cloud, a.k.a. The Rat Lady, walks around the park with three male rodents &#x97; Emerson, Hagrid and Mickey &#x97; clinging to her shoulder. The rats live with her in Leavenworth, where she is a stay-at-home mom home-schooling the youngest of her three children.</p><p>Employing live rats as props means she needn&#x92;t say a word to make people scream.</p><p>&#x93;My thing is subtle scares, because with them I can&#x92;t make a lot of loud noises or a lot of movement because they sleep on my shoulders,&#x94; she says.</p><p>When someone asks if they can pet her rats, she silently nods her head.</p><p>They come closer.</p><p> <span class="italic">Chomp!</span></p><p>She snaps at them with her blackened teeth.</p><p>&#x93;That&#x92;s enough to get people running away,&#x94; she laughs. &#x93;The rats don&#x92;t bite. But I might.&#x94;</p><p>She might also give chase.</p><p>&#x93;I&#x92;ll wait for a group of people walking by and the first time I hear somebody say &#x91;Oh, get those away from me,&#x92; I pick one up, put it in my hand and start chasing.&#x94;</p><p>The only hazard of working with rats? The scary laundry bill.</p><p>For Cloud&#x92;s rats don&#x92;t bite, but they do pee on the job.

Source: Kansas City Star

My Boarding School Blog » Blog Archive » A QUALITY REVIEW OF ...

by mbs01

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