Chilling twist to laser tag adds off-beat fun
Couple’s idea takes off, adding new shows through the year
Walking through the site of Nightmare Combat on Columbus’ Northeast Side is like being on the set of a horror movie.
Lifeless, bloody bodies are strewn throughout the 40,000-square-foot space on Northland Plaza Drive, most of them missing body parts. A post-apocalyptic world features overturned cars and an abandoned convenience store, diner, asylum and more.
But it’s more than a haunted attraction. It’s an unusual twist on laser tag, where players can roam the “city streets” and battle zombies and other creatures lurking in the shadows.
Despite not taking place during the Halloween season, it’s proven incredibly popular, selling out all 12 sessions in mere minutes since it opened in April.
There are no more sessions currently
scheduled this year, but husband and wife owners Nick and Jess Francis of Hilliard said they plan to add more later this year.
“Quite honestly, we anticipated doing this for one weekend a year, and it just took off like we never imagined,” Nick said. “So, now we’re trying to figure out, `How do we navigate the fact that a bunch of people want to shoot monsters?’ We knew the haunted house was popular, but this is crazy.”
Nick, 29, said creating Nightmare Combat was a way for the couple’s company, Fear Columbus, to be financially viable year-round instead of the few weeks leading up to Halloween like many other haunted attractions.
“We knew we needed to make more money than just open for one month out of the year with how expensive the rent is, and that kind of forced us into getting creative and coming up with stuff we could open several months out of the year,” he said.
That said, the strategy hasn’t worked for all haunted attraction owners.
Larry Kirchner, editor of the haunted attraction website Hauntworld, based in St. Louis, said that horror-themed laser tag businesses actually are dropping in popularity nationwide.
He said activities such as zombie laser tag and zombie paintball may start out being successful, but customers eventually lose interest. Haunted houses continue to be the most popular attraction, Kirchner said.
“I think they were more popular when `The Walking Dead’ was popular,” he said of zombie laser tag businesses. “That’s when it had a little momentum.”
For Nick Francis, haunted houses have been a passion since he was 5 years old.
He enjoyed decorating his parents’ home in Toledo for Halloween, and that eventually grew into operating his own haunted house in the backyard. By the time Nick was 19, he was running a haunted house with his cousin in Cleveland called The Fear Experience Haunted House.
That’s actually where he met Jess, 27,
who eventually worked there.
“I was still in high school and I loved acting, and I was looking for a little job to make some extra money,” she said. “So, I reached out to him and was like, `Hey, I’d love to work here.’
“My first night, I was so scared working there. I was shaking. But once I got into it, I was like, `This is actually really fun.’”
After taking a hiatus from the business in 2015, the Francis’ bought the property on Northland Plaza last year, which previously housed the haunted attraction company 13th Floor.
“We were just waiting for any opportunity to get back into it,” Nick said.
“People come and pay you to get scared,” Jess added, laughing. “So, that’s just fun.”
After working with 13th Floor for the 2020 Halloween season, the Francis’ got to work on building their own sets. The post-apocalyptic city was already created by 13th Floor, but the couple decided to put their own spin on it.
They buy many of the props and scary masks from trade shows and have their operations manager Marco D’andrea and a carpenter assist with creating the sets.
The couple also had to hire staff members and actors to be in the game. Jess said Nightmare Combat features 50 actors playing the parts of monsters and between 15 and 20 staff members who oversee the tickets, the Fear Gear gift shop and cleaning the site.
“People who really love Halloween are usually considered the oddballs or the weirdos, and it’s just a good place to come and be with your people and feel safe. I like having that spot for them to come,” Jess said.
While Nightmare Combat is currently on hold, the couple has been busy planning its next attraction — a haunted house. Called The Summoning, the haunted house will open for the Halloween season Sept. 10.
Nick said the storyline consists of a cult that has taken over a house, and members are summoning monsters from another realm. For the first half of the experience, guests will walk through the house, and then for the second half they “travel” to the other realm.
As with past attractions, Fear Columbus will follow COVID-19 guidelines such as contactless payment with guests purchasing tickets online and sanitizing the building before and after each group.
Nick said he enjoys seeing his customers having fun when they go through one of the attractions.
“I love the excitement that people get and how much fun they have going through a haunt,” he said. mwalker@dispatch.com @micah_walker701