A nightmare on Blossom Hill Road.
Father-son duo creates interactive haunted house
SAN JOSE — Thumbs are pricking on Blossom Hill Road, where something wicked this way has come to Westfield Oakridge mall.
The Bernal Scream, a 4,000square-foot haunted house enclosed in a white tent just outside Target, is the macabre creation of San Jose father-son duo Abe and Mike Barrera, who have spent the past few years turning the backyard of their Bernal Road home into a “prolevel haunt,” attracting upward of 2,000 people last Halloween.
“There was just no way we could’ve contained it one more year there,” said Abe Barrera, 43. “It was just too many people.”
Faced with the decision this year of shutting down the show or turning it into a commercial enterprise, the Barreras
opted for the latter. The Bernal Scream is more than twice as big as anything they’ve built before, and it’s chock-full of chills from start to finish.
“Each and every room we have is an actual experience in itself,” the elder Barrera said.
“And it’s interactive,” added Mike Barrera, 24. “You’re not walking by it; you’re a part of it.”
For example, deep in the heart of the haunt, an actor playing Freddy Krueger from “A Nightmare on Elm Street” leaps from the shadows of a boiler room as theme music from the film blares and lights strobe.
The move to the mall, however, has not been cheap, and for the first time, the Barreras are charging admission: $20 a pop. They estimate they’ll have to sell 5,000 tickets just to break even.
The Bernal Scream is open daily from 7 p.m. to midnight through Oct. 31.
“We pushed the tickets down as far as we could and we’ve still got to hit so many thousands of people just to even think about breaking even,” Mike Barrera said. “It’s going to take a lot. But that was a risk that we took on because of the passion and the love.”
The Barreras said they believe attendees are getting their money’s worth, and they’ve had repeat visitors.
“Some haunts are really cool and theatrical. Some haunts are scary but not theatrical,” the younger Barrera said.
“When you come to The Bernal Scream, you’re getting the best of both worlds; you’re getting a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Rather than a consistent theme, we have everything. You don’t just have to be scared of clowns, you don’t just have to be scared of Freddy Krueger. I don’t know if it breaks the mold, but it’s definitely different.”
Abe Barrera said he feels as though they’ve already succeeded.
“We did this,” he said. “Last year, it was in a backyard. Now we’re here and we did it together.”
The father-son duo started down the path to The Bernal Scream when Mike Barrera was 4 years old and they created a scene from “Halloween” on the balcony of a condominium they lived in on Tradewinds Drive.
The younger Barrera went on to work at other commercial haunts but returned to building home haunts with his father a few years ago.
The Barreras insist The Bernal Scream is for all ages.
“The kids do so much better than their parents,” Mike Barrera said. “You get parents that are crying. You see their faces — it’s priceless.”
But on a recent Tuesday night, Liem Nguyen, 11, of San Jose, only managed to make it halfway through before making a beeline for one of the haunt’s socalled “chicken doors.” The ominous sound of a meat cleaver thudding into a chopping block in the next room, a farmhouse ripped straight out of “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” was too much to bear.
“I’m never going to another haunted house,” Liem said, his face still damp with tears. “They did a good job of scaring me.”
Liem’s mom, Kim Phan, pushed past her fear and made it through to the end, where Abe Barrera, wearing a clown mask and wielding a chainsaw, chased her across a falling floor.
“It was really good,” said Phan, 42. “It seemed real. I liked the part at the end. It’s stuff you don’t expect.”
Alejandro Velazquez, 22, of San Jose, and Kalyssia Pena Gomez, 20, of Hanford in the Central Valley, also gave The Bernal Scream their stamp of approval. The couple, who were familiar with the father-son duo’s earlier work, deemed the haunt at Oakridge the most frightening one yet.
“It scared the crap out of me,” said Gomez, holding a hand over her racing heart. “It’s worth your money.”