RUNNING SCARED AND THANKFUL
Haunted attraction keeps the frights alive amid real-world pandemic scares
Life during the coronavirus pandemic gets pretty boring for the Klamm sisters — 14-yearold Kyli and 11-year- old Khloe — of Morgan Hill. So it sounded like a spooky good idea to go to the Dead Time Dreams haunted attraction in San Jose during Halloween week with their father, Ken.
“There’s nothing really else to do,” says Kyli, a freshman at Live Oak High School. “We thought it would be fun to do a haunted house.”
They weren’t the only ones with that idea. Well before the open- air fright walk had opened its doors for business on Wednesday night, the parking lot outside was jammed with cars, and there was a sizable amount of people already lined up to buy tickets.
It just goes to show that even during a plague people love surrounding themselves with scenes of death and carnage — the ickier the better. Whether it addresses an existential angst or, more likely, boredom, the public’s desire for a ghoulish good time is as strong or
stronger during a Halloween season unlike any other, when most neighborhood trick-or-treating and Halloween costume parades are out of the question.
So families are getting their fright on at places like Dead Time Dreams and Pleasanton’s Pirates of Emerson. Regular tickets for Pirates of Emerson, a drivethru haunt with live actors at the Alameda County Fairgrounds, are sold out for the run, which continues through Sunday. (There are still some Pirates tickets available for those who wish to drive through without actors on-site.)
And business has also been good at Dead Time Dreams — “a little too good for my liking,” says owner Steve Darrough.
Darrough has run Dead Time Dreams at the corner of Tully Road and Capitol Expressway for 11 years. But he and his team had to draw up a new game plan this year to address seemingly competing demands: scare the bejesus out of people while making them feel safe at the same time.
That meant creating COVID-comfortable buffers between guests and actors, turning the haunt into an open-air experience, implementing temperature checks at the box office and introducing social distancing measures for guests, both in line and on the fright walk itself.
“It’s no joke for me,” Darrough says. “It’s deadly serious.”
He’s even had to turn away potential ticket buyers when the waiting line got too big for comfort.
“We actually chase them off,” he says. “And I will probably pay a price for that this year.”
Alena Gold, of Mountain View, definitely didn’t want to be chased off, so she was in line with her 11-year-old daughter Valerie and 8-yearold son Dominic well before the doors opened for business.
“We got here super early, so we made sure we got in the line,” she says. “They said at a certain point, they would just stop the line.”
Gold says it’s been hard to find things to do with the kids during the pandemic, and that many of the events that are open sell out well in advance, due to limited capacities and high demand.
“We didn’t want to come (to the haunt) and not get in, because we don’t have other options,” she says.
As for Dead Time Dreams employees, work is a difficult balancing act between adhering to COVID-19 safety precautions and giving people a spooky good time.
“I think the biggest challenge is — 6 feet!” says ghoulishly garbed staff member Spyder, unrolling a tape measure to illustrate his point.
Another worker who usually goes by Guzzo, but on this evening is Captain America (although he doesn’t in the slightest resemble the Marvel Comics character), says that most guests seem more than willing to go along with the safety precautions.
“But the jerks really mess you up,” he says. “You just have to stay on it and be diligent.”
Once they start the fright walk, guests see an assortment of horrifying sets and decorations with blood, gore, skulls, chain saws and other sights that seem plucked from nightmares. It’s what people have come to expect from these kinds of adult-oriented haunts.
The biggest difference this year is the distance maintained between actors and guests at all times.
“Most of the actors want to get up close — they want to get in your face,” Darrough says. “But they have to think differently this year.”
Still, the end result is the same as ever: lots of shrieking and screaming from guests during the haunt, followed by big smiles and laughter as they walk out. The smiles may even be a bit bigger in 2020. People are just so glad to have something to do during this COVID-19 Halloween.
“Most people are really grateful that we are running,” Darrough says. “And they say so.”