Scary Business : Halloween: No longer relegated to neighborhood garages or vacant lots, high-tech haunted houses attract big profits that go to area charities.

By R. DANIEL FOSTER

Oct. 25, 1991 12 AM PT

SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

No childhood is complete without its neighborhood haunted house. Whether an abandoned mansion or a failed condominium project, the decades of neglect surrounding such buildings are enough to bend the imagination in nightmarish directions.

Drawing on such childhood fears, haunted houses staged as fund-raisers have become big business in the San Fernando Valley. No longer makeshift affairs held in a neighbor’s garage, the houses have grown into huge productions requiring blueprints, city permits, thousands of volunteer hours and standby emergency medical care.

The payoff arrives in proceeds that can total $250,000--in the case of the Factory of Nightmares run by the North Hills Jaycees. After a two-year absence, the Factory is back for its 15th year as spook central. This year it is being held at Burbank’s Media City Center mall.

Such houses cost up to $15,000 to operate and construct, using plywood, drywall and assorted costumes and props. Nearly 500 volunteers labored a month to construct the Factory. About 300 of them operate the house each night. Proceeds will be donated to the Jaycees’ favorite charities--the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Muscular Dystrophy Assn. and the March of Dimes--or to the recreation center sponsoring the event.

In past years, the Factory of Nightmares has drawn up to 36,000 people over its three-weekend run. This year, organizers hope at least 30,000 people will enter the six rooms connected by a maze of hallways that snake through 16,000 square feet at a new location, a former Buffums department store.

Other haunted houses in the area include ones run by the Simi Valley Jaycees and the Branford Recreation Center in Arleta.

Scare tactics have evolved considerably through the years. Forget the tired cherry Jell-O that doubles as squishy brains or the cooked spaghetti that runs through one’s fingers like severed intestines. Today’s haunted houses strive for surprise.

“Ninety percent of a successful haunted house is good old-fashioned ‘Boo!’ ” said Matthew Ambrose, 29, who began as a Factory go-fer eight years ago and is now its “head butcher.”

“We’re not the movie studios. We can’t turn people into wolves before their eyes,” he said.

Not that the Factory hasn’t tried. In years past, Jaycee members have donated expensive camera and mirror equipment that transformed onlookers into skeletons and assorted monsters.

The Factory’s butcher shop draws the most screams. “You walk in and see people and body parts hanging up all over the place,” said Barry Eisenman, a North Hills Jaycee board member. “A guy in a white jacket talks about grinding up body parts. Then he grabs someone from the audience, throws them on the gut table and starts to cut them up, yanking out their intestines and stuff.”

Eisenman, 40, said the unfortunate victims are audience plants. But other board members add--with a wink--that the Factory’s history is strewn with tragic mix-ups. “It’s possible we’ll pull the wrong person out of the audience,” Ambrose said, lowering his voice. “But we carry liability insurance.”

The Branford Recreation Center in Arleta stages a similar butcher shop tableau, called the Gore Room, in its haunted house fashioned from wood and plaster. “We have a body cut off from the waist down--and the top half is a real person, alive and talking,” Branford director Doris Kingston said. “A surgeon removes his liver. Last year a Channel 9 anchorman did a live newscast dressed up as the cut-off body. They got some great ratings that night.”

Props for such scenes are usually obtained from local butcher shops. Large cow bones are effective as table decor and wieners easily double as severed fingers or a string of intestines.

“We go to the grocery store for the liver,” said Kingston. “It’s a cow liver--you know, the ones they sell in those blue plastic cups.”

The Branford haunted house, called the Branbitybille Mansion, took 150 volunteers two weeks to construct on the center’s tennis courts. A train resembling a steam engine, on loan from Griffith Park, transports arrivals from the park office to the five-room mansion. Assorted monsters join in the five-minute ride, which enters a swamp inhabited by a swamp creature.

Talking trees surround a graveyard that features a pounding heartbeat resounding through one grave site. “You can bend down and feel it pulsating,” Kingston said, adding that the center has held the event for eight years. The house raised nearly $4,000 last year with total attendance of 1,000 during its four-night run.

The Simi Valley Jaycees created Terror Manor last year after hearing of other successful houses. The group raised $24,000 with a three-weekend attendance of 11,000. Attendance this year is targeted at 20,000, which should double proceeds to about $50,000.

Terror Manor II: the Halls of Doom is spread among two unrented retail stores totaling 5,700 square feet in Simi Valley’s Mountain Gate Plaza. Malls usually donate space for the events.

A maze of hallways, a cemetery and a mausoleum are featured in the house, which took 40 volunteers three weeks to construct. Perhaps the most frightening aspect of such houses are the dimly lit hallways “where anything can happen,” Simi Valley Jaycees President Randy Greene said.

“Dark, scary corners spook people the most,” said Greene, 24. “When you start out down a hallway and have to get to the end, it’s the anticipation of being scared along the way that’s the most satisfying. It’s like you have screams all bundled up inside of you. All you need is a little ‘Boo!’ and those screams come flying out.”

Eisenman, of the Factory, calls them “hallway scares.” “We have monsters waiting for people in hallways,” Eisenman said. “They come down on them from above, from the right and from the left. But we never touch anybody--that’s our policy. We want people to know that they’re safe.” The Factory also uses a tennis ball machine that lobs balls toward passersby.

Fright and injury caused by flying tennis balls, strobe lights and severed body parts are the stuff lawsuits are made of, but none of the houses have been sued. Each haunted house posts and announces a disclaimer, warning pregnant women, epileptics, those who wear pacemakers and those who are generally squeamish to turn back. All houses carry liability insurance and most discourage children under 7 from entering.

“We sometimes invite parents to go through first if they feel their kids can’t handle it,” said Tom Williams, past president of the North Hills Jaycees. “We haven’t gotten any complaints--the house is really geared for mid-teens and above.”

The Factory reports five injuries through the years, the most severe being a fractured leg, which event insurance covered. Neighbors complained that the event drew gang activity in 1985 and 1986 and that traffic has usually been hard to navigate, although barricades have helped to clear residential streets.

The Factory began in 1975 at the Lemon Tree Bazaar, a strip of shops in San Fernando. Alice Cooper put in an appearance the first year, pushing his new record, “Welcome to My Nightmare.” Cooper drew 8,000 fans, but the largest single-night attendance occurred in 1986 when Halloween fell on a Friday night, luring 10,000 people.

In 1976, the Factory moved to an empty building in Devonshire Downs on Cal State Northridge’s north campus. Because of impending development here, the event moved to Pierce College in 1987. It was last held in Lake View Terrace near Hansen Dam in 1988.

The real nightmares behind haunted houses are often logistic in nature. “The behind-the-scenes planning with this type of project is mind-boggling,” Ambrose said. “But everyone ends up learning great lessons in leadership and cooperation.”

In most areas, blueprints must be approved by the city planning office and permits from the fire marshal and police department are required before construction begins. Corporate sponsors, such as A&W; Root Beer, which donated 72 15-second radio spots for the Factory, help advertise the events.

“The Factory of Nightmares has always been operated in a very professional manner,” said Bob Kovac, operations manager for California Emergency Medical Patrol, a mobile first aid unit that donates its time and equipment to staff a van at the Factory site.

The Factory recruits many of its volunteers from Burbank, Kennedy, Granada Hills and Chatsworth high schools. Chairpersons coordinate the troupes of actors needed for each room. Volunteers are shuffled between three trailers for makeup and wardrobe.

A “security hole” is in the center of the Factory’s maze. The 30- by 90-foot space is stocked with fire extinguishers, security personnel and computers that control sound and light displays. Doors from each room of the house feed into the area, should any participant need a reality check.

Traffic flow within the house is constantly monitored. Should bottlenecks occur, the right hallway scare can often clear an area.

“Sometimes we need to get a slow crowd moving,” Eisenman said. “We have someone dressed up in rags who follows behind a group in a hallway. If they’re dawdling, he starts up a chain saw he’s carrying--don’t worry, we’ve removed the chain. People tend to pay attention to that. It empties a hallway like nothing else.”

Foster writes regularly for The Times.