Realizing a horrific dream
Drag icon’s spooky vision brought to life at Old Mint
A little before nightfall, on the first floor of San Francisco’s Old Mint, some 30 people sat along two tables covering their faces in makeup. The room was roughly divided between zombies and zombie clowns, though everybody began with a heavy foundation of gray. This was the first night the group had applied their own grotesque faces. They were following detailed instructions from Dani Spinks, the makeup lead for Terror Vault, a “haunted experience” set to take over the Old Mint for a little more than three weeks starting Wednesday, Oct. 10. There was an announcement not to waste Artex, a powder that turns to paste and then to flesh wounds. It’s different from latex, which is sometimes a bit better for peeling skin, but Spinks explained it would work for their purposes. Occasionally, Spinks recommended a little more definition along the cheekbones or the nose. But, for zombie first-timers, things were going well, she said. The fluorescent lights hanging overhead had sucked most of the menace out of the room. But everything would look different in the basement — the intentionally tattered clothing, the crowbar, baseball bat and meat cleaver (presumably all fake), the facial prostheses and the vampire teeth.
When you’re talking about a “haunt,” you have to plan for the dark.
All of this had been in the works for about a year. Maybe longer if you consider the fact that Joshua Grannell, better known as drag icon Peaches Christ, has been thinking about doing something like it for at least a decade — or longer if you consider this sort of thing was Grannell’s “first love and passion as a kid.”
Grannell used to create haunted-house-like experiences every year. First at home, then other venues. His mom would sell tickets; his dad would wield the chainsaw; he would audition (and sometimes fire) the neighborhood kids. It all put him on the path to becoming Peaches Christ.
For years, Grannell had tried to do a haunted something or other in San Francisco, something big and truly creepy, something that got back to his roots.
"We could never get our foot in the door anywhere in San Francisco,” he said, “so I kind of stuck to turning my shows into haunted productions.”
Then last year, he met David Flower in Provincetown, Mass. The two had more than a little in common. “I also really love to scare people,” Flower said. He had created haunts as a kid and now ran David Flower Productions, a company that was known, in part, for Ghost Town, a haunted attraction in Provincetown.
Flower had also tried (and failed) to make something happen in San Francisco.
But together, they thought, maybe it could work this time around. Flower could handle the art direction, the production, the design. Grannell had, he put modestly, “a little bit of a name,” plus he could write a script, find actors and direct. Between the two of them, they had the full package. Almost. They still needed a place to haunt. Enter, Ryan Melchiano, a childhood friend of Grannell’s who manages and rents out spaces like the Old Mint with the company Non Plus Ultra. The threesome created a new production company, Into the Dark, and got to planning.
Which brings us to the “experience,” the word the group uses to describe what they dreamed up. Guests aren’t paying $60 for a 15-minute haunted maze in the basement of an old building. (Although there are some maze-like sections.) Instead, The Terror Vault is more like an immersive theater experience. There’s a narrative to work through that lasts, on average, 40 minutes. There are puzzles to solve and actors — including Peaches Christ —might get handsy if guests signal they don’t mind by wearing a neon necklace.
Oh, and before it all begins, there’s a Bullion Bar with original, artisanal cocktails, like the gin-based Zombie Puss.
As they talk about it all, an entire world begins to reveal itself. There’s a vocabulary that includes “Haunt,” which stands in for “Haunted House.” A haunt isn’t necessarily in a house, of course. It could be on a ship parked in the bay, hidden in a cornfield or in the basement of a federal building. The people who make the guest scream, they’re “scare actors,” and their job is a demanding one; they audition and rehearse. The three of them even traveled to St. Louis to visit the largest haunt trade show.
Most of this was a world the scare actors putting on their makeup knew pretty well when they auditioned, a process that involved animalistic improv and zombie walks. It certainly wasn’t new to Scott Free, who was peeling dried latex away from his face, leaving it dangling just so, with the deftness of a pro.
He’s been doing this sort of thing for 15 years, which is long enough to know that sometimes a jump scare isn’t as effective as just staring somebody down or stalking them slowly. It’s also long enough to know whom to target. “I can see who is gonna be a good scare and who is gonna be cocky,” he said.
A lot of the scare came down to the sets, to the makeup and to the mystique, Free said, still peeling away at the latex, which was starting to look like actual skin sloughing off his cheeks.
“Fake horror is better than the real thing.”