“The House of Shock Haunted House” meant many different things to many different people over the course of its 25 years in operation. For some, it was a yearly rite of passage, an adolescent signpost of childhood terrors overcome. For others, it was an abomination, an unholy monstrosity hiding its insidious corruption behind a veneer of Halloween fun. But for the owners, creators, artists, and actors who built and stalked the blackened halls of its underbelly, it was so much more.
For them, “The House of Shock” was a community, an outlet for free expression, and a haven for those who might otherwise be misunderstood. It was a family forged through blood, sweat, and fears, spanning multiple generations. Now, nearly 10 years after shuttering its gates, it’s as good a time as any to look back at one of the most infamous and influential haunts of all time and learn how a band of heavy metal misfits turned a haunted house into a haunted home.
IT ALL STARTED IN THE BACKYARD…
“The House of Shock” began its life where most home haunts do, someone’s backyard, though to be fair, most home haunts aren’t partly run by rock stars. Pantera Frontman Phil Anselmo, along with Ross Karpelman, Steve Joseph, and Jay Gracianette, founded what would become “The House of Shock” on a lark to make real the haunted house of their dreams, one based on the schlock monster masterpieces of their childhoods, and inadvertently set the template for what haunt culture would ultimately become.
Jay Gracianette (Co-Founder of “The House of Shock”): I had three haunted houses in my backyard as a kid. My grandfather used to run NORD in City Park, and he had a big haunted house there, so he used to give me all the props and stuff, and we did our own in my backyard. We were fans of the ’60s and ’70s horror movies. We would sit up at Phillip’s house at night, and that’s how we came up with ideas. It’s not like we sat in front of Ouija boards. We’d just watch a movie and dig on it like, “Man, that’s a cool scene right there,” or “The movie wasn’t great, but we could recreate that scene like this.” I think we were one of the first ones to get rid of the classic monsters like Dracula, The Mummy, or Frankenstein and do the stuff we liked, like “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and “The Exorcist”. You know, evil stuff like “Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things.” It was kind of weird how folks took us at first when we were just following the template set by the movies we loved.
WHERE NO HAUNT HAD GONE BEFORE
As the word got out, “The House of Shock” began to garner a following and detractors. Neighborhood complaints led to their first of many expansions; initially from Jay’s backyard to his grandmother’s. The “Shock” crew was following their macabre muse wherever it took them, whether that be to create scenes drenched in unrepentant gore or the utilization of over-the-top satanic imagery, creating anxiety within the larger haunt community.
Jay: We were definitely pushing boundaries, both in public and in the haunt community. It actually took us about four or five years to realize there WAS a haunt community. We were just doing things ourselves until we realized there were conventions like “TransWorld” that sold props. They put us on the cover of their magazine, and we were the biggest-selling issue, even though the conversation surrounding us was whether or not we were going too far because we weren’t doing “Michael Jackson – Thriller” rooms or family-friendly stuff like that. We were doing “evil” stuff, but that was just us. We weren’t making any kind of political statement about religion at all, just putting out there what we thought was scary. But even though the haunt community didn’t really like us much, we kept getting bigger, more elaborate, and more popular. And, you know, we learned more. We started buying props and really stepping up the game when it comes to our distinctive look and style. Dave Carry, a real genius with set design, really elevated us to a new level of scares.
Dwayne Sanburn (Owner, “The 13th Gate Haunted House): They were nationally known for their content and the crazy stuff they would do, but especially their set design. They would create these beautiful sets designed by Dave Carry.
Jay: We were really doing something new. Before us, most haunted houses were “Dracula” type things at the VFW Fire Station. There weren’t so many privately owned and operated haunts like us. The usual suspects were run by charity organizations or church groups. We were a bunch of heavy metal dudes who had no rules, whereas they had to keep things clean. The satanic angle was in the same kind of creative spirit as wrestling, with larger-than-life characters and long-running storylines. We didn’t realize how much attention we would get, good and bad. At first, we were a bit shocked. I mean, c’mon guys, we’re not killing babies out here, we’re just having fun!
Spencer Constant (Former “House of Shock” Performer and current Co-General Manager of “New Orleans Nightmare”): It started in a backyard and just got bigger. Then it moved into another backyard and got bigger. Then it moved to a warehouse and got bigger. Finally, they moved into their last location, where New Orleans Nightmare is now. That was thirty-four years ago, when they first started, and the guests were seeing what they were doing with the satanic ritual effect and kept coming back for more. So they kept playing into it.
Jay: We kind of laughed at the reputation we were gaining. I remember one night a man came and said he had heard that if you made it to the second floor of “The House of Shock,” you’d get your money back. I told him that was absolutely true, even though we never had a second story to the haunt. By that time, we had started to get some protestors, but people were starting to notice us, and a lot of that had to do with Phillip being involved. It doesn’t hurt to have one of the biggest rock stars in the world at your event, even though we never pushed his name too much. That wasn’t what he was about. He just loved doing it. And yeah, “The House of Shock” just blossomed into something that I don’t think we’ll ever see again.
FOR LOVE OF THE SCARE
It’s hard to describe the unencumbered joy of haunting until you’ve had a taste of it. For the three hundred or so volunteer ghouls that would stalk their way through “The House of Shock” night after night, chasing that dragon was as much a calling as it was an art.
Spencer: I grew up in New Orleans on the West Bank and always knew “House of Shock.” We’d go to “The ChinChuba Haunted House” and “The Mortuary,” which were all great, but “Shock” was always my favorite, even though it terrified me. You’d see big goat people towering over you in the yard and people swinging from metal hooks stuck in their backs. This wasn’t just people with masks and makeup; this was something different. It felt different.
Sydney Gordon (Former “House of Shock” Performer and current Co-General Manager of “New Orleans Nightmare”): When I was 13, I was a big scaredy cat, terrified of anything and everything. My aunt, Ashley Hill, worked at “Shock” and was friends with Sandy Lindsay, who was the General Manager at the time. Ashley was always trying to get me to visit, and eventually tricked me into going. As soon as I got there, and I realized where we were, I was like “no way, I’m not doing that”. But they took me backstage and showed me how she was dressed up with the bloody face and costume, and I thought, “You look crazy, but not like terribly scary.”
JP Rognvald (Former “House of Shock” Performer): I started with “The House of Shock” in 2009, I think. I was a little black metal kid back then, mostly making music, so the theatrical satanic imagery of “Shock” was a match made in hell.
Jennifer Carter (Former “House of Shock” Performer): I’m actually the daughter of a haunter. My stepfather worked at “ChinChuba” when it was still open, and once that closed, most of the actors, if they continued to haunt, moved over to “Shock.” But before I even acted, I simply loved “The House of Shock” because I’m a local and would go religiously with my parents year after year. Our little Halloween ritual.
Spencer: It’s a high like no other to trigger fear in somebody who wants to experience a real-life horror movie. As the actor, you get to be whatever and whoever you want. That’s a special thing, especially in today’s world. You want to be a purple monster. You can be a purple monster. There is no societal box to fit in. The allure is a mixture of those two factors, but it’s a way of just letting go; of letting go of your job and professional life. It’s an escape to become someone else and scare the crap out of people.
Sydney: The first few times I worked in “The House of Shock,” I wasn’t having fun because I wasn’t scaring anybody. I was like, “No one’s screaming. I think I’m more scared than the people walking through. Yeah, maybe this isn’t for me.” Then the owner walked through and told me that what I was doing was really cool. That helped me gain the confidence to really go after people, and then they started screaming. That’s all it took to trigger an adrenaline pop that I became obsessed with. And eventually, my fear fell away.
Jay: Our cast was next level. There was never a haunt that could compare. They were all volunteers who did what they did because they loved horror and what we were doing. That’s three hundred volunteers coming out and working their butts off in a hot warehouse, not just for the event but even three months before help build. We could never have done what we did without them. Our philosophy, even when we started populating the house with more props, was that a performer was scarier than an inanimate object ever could be. There’s no character in a prop; it just repeats itself again and again. The performer and their creativity, that’s what makes a scare special.
Jennifer: Haunting inherently draws in Halloween fanatics, but once you’re in there and performing, you realize you like that aspect even more. That primal reaction that you get from scaring someone, making them turn and run, makes you want to lean in and go deeper. It truly became a therapeutic outlet for me. I would often become some inhuman looking character, the more grotesque the better. So much so that you couldn’t tell if I was a kid or an adult, and I really leaned into that to bring out the primal fear in people, that fear of the unknown. They know they’re not really in danger, but they’re so absorbed in the moment that they get lost in it. And so do I.
JP: I liked being able to scare and yell at people and liked channeling that rebellious spirit. Seeing people’s reactions to fear is illuminating. It was certainly cathartic. The community was passionate haunters, bored metal heads looking for friends and family. It was a close-knit group and had all the drama, romances, and head-butting that comes with any subgroup collective of like-minded individuals. Room versus room rivalries existed, as did the in-crowd politics that exist everywhere.
Spencer: My first year at “The House of Shock” was actually the last year it was open. I was cast in the Wax Museum as a character called “Vincent” who made wax figures out of living people. It was one of the first rooms you went through, and very gory, very “House of Shock” and in your face. So as I’m stalking you throughout the show, you know, I’m sneaking up on you, smelling your hair to make sure your hair is going to be the perfect match for my next figure, you know, looking into your eyes, seeing if your eye is just exactly what I need. Your smell, your skin, you know, I had this fake skin I would carry around, and I would just put it next to your arm and try to match the skin, make sure it’s the right texture, right everything. I came up with some crazy lines working in that scene, and it was pretty cool to set the tone for the rest of the house.
Sydney: I was a zombie in a “Sewer” section. I remember having a big old rusty barrel that I would move side to side to make a lot of noise. And eventually, we added an animatronic named “Schnookums,” like this big alien-looking thing with his arms out. It was huge and would move up and down like crazy. Eventually, they convinced me to get under it and just scream my head off at people. Even still, when I started working, I would have to have somebody walk me to my spot in the house. I never walked through it alone until the end of the season that first year. I was a big baby.
Jennifer: I was initially in a room called “Cattle Run,” with long winding hallways and wood everywhere, very “The Hills Have Eyes.” We had a very grungy redneck, violent vibe going on, and it was very intense, very intimate. So I just kind of dressed in overalls, a very ragtag country bumpkin, and found a nice spot to pop out that guests walking through couldn’t see. That first night, I blew my throat out from screaming, but I shook off that nervous energy as soon as I got that first scare. I remember I popped out, and this woman held her arms out on either side of the hall and leaned back so far she fell back against the people behind her, like dominoes. I remember the wide-eyed look on her face. I was only inches from it. And then at that moment, that nervousness was immediately gone.
JP: My first night wasn’t very fun. I didn’t really know anybody and was just stuck in a hiding hole to pop out. Kinda just did my own thing until the results spoke for themselves, and I was accepted by the cast. Eventually, I became the preacher in the “church room”, mainly yelling satanic nonsense in Latin, which were largely different album names, usually.
Eleanora (Former “House of Shock” Performer): It was the creativity that set “The House of Shock” apart. My sister would perform in a bathroom sequence, and to freak people out, would melt candy corn into chocolate and eat it in front of guests as if it were poop. There were fart bombs in there and all kinds of stuff. It was so funny, we loved it.
Jennifer: In 2016, I won “Best Female Costume” because I finally found my character. Most actors will make a character, they’ll give it a name, they have a personality, and a little bit of a backstory. And I never thought I was that kind of actor until my second-to-last year. My seamstress, who made my costume by hand, also worked at “The House of Shock” as an actress and made me a doll dress, like an old school porcelain doll with the floral pattern, the lace trim, the puffy sleeves, lace on the end, and even a silk apron, like a satin apron with ruffles on the edges. Then, any skin that was exposed I covered with black tights, black flat shoes, and painted my face charcoal black, covering it with a half mask with the mouth cut out. Finally, I would stain my mouth with black icing dye. And since my mouth couldn’t close, I would just continuously drool this dye on the front of my white satin apron, and then it would change colors over the night. I named this character, Beatrice The Chimney Goblin, and I didn’t just horrify people; I absolutely disgusted them.
THE DEVIL YOU KNOW
It’s not surprising that “The House of Shock” garnered its fair share of controversy; everyone breaking down brick walls bloodies themselves in the process. In this case, the “Shock” Team ran headfirst into the inherent contradiction of New Orleans, a city so steeped in the mystique of death and magic yet devoted to the dogma and tradition of Catholicism. With the Satanic Panic of the 1980s barely in the cultural rearview, the backlash came swift and sharp, so “Shock”, in classic metal fashion, simply doubled down and got to work doing what they did best.
Dwayne: The backlash over the years was ridiculous. Now there are haunted houses that go way beyond everything that “The House of Shock” did. But back in the day, they were groundbreaking and edgy, and folks didn’t like that sort of thing.
Sydney: People who knew I performed there would think I worshiped the devil and all those things. Sometimes I’d say that I actually did play into it. But that was my whole high school career, starting at 13 years old, all the way till I graduated, and then they shut down the year I started college. The reactions at my all-girls Catholic School would be either, “You worship the devil?”, or they’d be like, “How’d you get that job? That’s amazing. Oh my gosh, I want to do that.” But I never wore my “House of Shock” shirt because I didn’t want to be disrespectful until I saw another girl wearing a shirt one day. I was like, “Who is that? I want to do that.” So after that, I just started repping.
JP: I never had negative experiences with guests outside the haunt; most negativity was from the inner circle drama that comes with any subgroup, be it school, work, or a haunt. Drunk patrons trying to touch the girls in the church would get beaten up, though. Allegedly.
Eleanora: I think a lot of the negative feelings were from people who just didn’t understand. They thought that everybody was a Satanist or something, which wasn’t true. There may have been a few, but they weren’t exactly sacrificing anybody. They’re actually really nice people when it comes down to it. Other than that, the worst controversy was when people were too scared. One time in my sister’s room, she actually made somebody throw up. But I don’t really care about what negative people say about it, because it was just pure fun for us.
Jay: Funny story on that. A few years in, a friend of ours gave us a deer trophy, just a head for the wall. So we made a fake body, we made fake ribs and fur, and put a fishing string on the antler so the head would move, and somebody was actually on the ground eating it. So three nights later, we were about to open up when “Wildlife and Fisheries” came storming in to shut us down. They had gotten word that we had a real, live, dead deer in the house. So I showed them the deer, and they left us alone. But the next year, I called every taxidermy shop in town to buy anything somebody hadn’t picked up. If one deer made somebody mad, we were going to give them the motherload: monkeys, pigs, everything.
Jennifer: One year, when I was dressed up as a weird porcelain doll, I was in a little wire dog kennel, acting like a kid and screaming. This lady came through and put a paper cross on my cage. She must have had a thousand that she was placing throughout the house. They were everywhere. She tried to pass me one through the bars, and I ate it out of her hands. Actually chewed and swallowed it. She was horrified. Later, I learned that she was the holy roller mother of another one of our actresses. We had picketers protest and show up on the news. So many people can’t really separate entertainment from reality. I mean, sure, we did have some people who were Satanists and Luciferians that worked with us, but even they didn’t take it that seriously. We just came here to spook people on Halloween.
JP: “The House of Shock’s” legacy is brutality and satanism. Period. All the zombies and chainsaws and other generic haunt dumb stuff you see anywhere else is irrelevant. What made “Shock” truly special was the savagery. We weren’t paid; it was a labor of love for those who put in 110%. Unfortunately, the satanic panic of the 90s gave way to a social ambivalence to the topic, which made keeping the heavy metal satanic origins of “Shock” as an act of homage to its own past, rather than the pivotal effect it once was.
THE DARK RIDE
Over 25, the creative team took many swings at pushing the envelope of what could be done in a haunted house. Many of those attempts bore good fruit, like the freak show and live theatrical performances, while others were catastrophic, yet fascinating failures. One such dud was their attempt to create a dark ride.
Jay: A buddy of ours named Doug had this dream of running a Dark Ride at “The House of Shock.” He was an engineer, and we put $50,000 into trying to turn a spare warehouse into a classic Ghost Train. We tried to make it like the old Pontchartrain Beach from back in the day. That was our vision of it, and it just failed. The cars wouldn’t work properly, and nothing worked. We tried it for one year and then just said to tear it down, try something else.
(Click HERE to see behind-the-scenes footage of their valiant, yet ultimately unsuccessful attempts.)
PYRE AND BRIMSTONE
One of the innovations that helped make “The House of Shock” iconic was their nightly live show. A bombastic exhibition of blazing pyrotechnics and special effects where Satanic priests battled the forces of good for world domination, the live show dazzled thousands and lit up the Harahan nights with hellfire throughout October.
Jay: The live stage show ran about two or three times a night. We figured it would be cool to do something fun for folks who were waiting in line. But the reason we could even do that was because our partner, Steve Joseph, owned a pyro company and would do the stage work for bands like KISS, Motley Crue, the Rolling Stones, you name it. Whenever they weren’t on tour, we’d get their equipment to use. The first year was kind of cheesy, but it kept getting bigger and bigger. I couldn’t help but think, “How the hell are we doing this”? How are we pulling this crap off?” A bunch of losers. But it was cool, you know; big theatrical stuff with the battle between good and evil playing out night after night. One year, we actually let the good win. They killed the bad guy. We always wanted to do something different and ridiculous to outdo each other each year, and that was all, Ross Collins, baby. He was Lord Belial, the evil character. Ross and Steve designed it, figuring out the pyro cues. Then Ross would write the script for all the characters who would be in it. That was 100% Ross.
Sydney: When I was older, I was a part of the stage show, standing there with huge wings while a pair of men were fighting over me. The wings were beautiful, and I had this little corset and boots on. It was a good time. It was the last year, and it was bittersweet every time I did it. I remember being 13 or 14 and seeing all that fire, and now I was FEELING IT. It was right there in front of me! I also got an award that year because they called me a “whore” on stage. They had to ask me if that was okay, and I had just turned 18, so I was like, “Yeah, it’ll just be my first adult decision that you can call me a whore on stage.” So my award said “First Adult Decision.”
Spencer: I think the stage show was what made “The House of Shock” stand out from a lot of the other haunts. There have been people who tried to replicate it, but to my knowledge, nobody has been able to duplicate what “The House of Shock” did with the amount of work, the lights, and the audio. They had a whole team of techs working on it. A whole pyro crew. One of the puppets caught fire one year, you know, rising into the sky. Everybody thinks it’s a part of the skit, cheering and everything else. There was just something special about the ambience of it all when you get a little bit of that fog rolling into the queue line. Besides that, you got your sideshow acts, your freak shows. I think as a kid, one of the biggest things for me was just those hooks, people swinging on the hooks, right over the crowd. And then, you know, fast forward all these years, I get to meet all those people. And this was like, wait, that was you. You’re somewhat normal. You speak English like a normal human being. And it’s like, yeah, it’s just, it’s a crazy 360.
IT WAS A GRAVEYARD SMASH
“The House of Shock” can be easily equated to a bustling underground music scene; a vibrant, eclectic community of weirdos of shared purpose and unbridled passion. Also, like most music scenes worth their salt, once the show was over, the party kept going by any means necessary; chemical, physical, or otherwise.
Spencer: “The House of Shock” parties were crazy, with everything that comes with partying like a rock star. We had differently themed parties, and some people would stay until the next day when we opened. Some folks definitely partied harder than others, and you can just imagine everything that happened based on that.
Jay: I lived in Mandeville, so I would live on a trailer during the season for the last six or seven years. It would get wild every night after the event shut down. That’s something we did that nobody really does anymore, and I don’t think we even could. There was a lot of stuff that went on back there that you couldn’t have on Facebook.
Eleanora: Working at “The House of Shock” felt like a big family; we were all super close and had so many great memories. Some of them I probably don’t 100% remember. I’m sober now, but I used to end up actually blacking out, and I don’t really know what I would do.
Jennifer: Most of the things you’ve heard are probably true. Since nobody was paid, we often brought alcohol along with us, just so long as it wasn’t in a glass. The last year that I performed as Beatrice, I tripped on mushrooms one night while scaring people. One night, I was out there at one in the morning, we were playing hide and seek in the haunted house with only emergency lighting on, which was fun in a spooky way. So I walked into the cast area, and a woman was running around with her eyes wide open. She was like, “I am tripping so hard right now. Have you seen my pants?” We were wild. Some people would roll on ecstasy. And I’m sure there was heavier stuff, but I don’t really; I like to just smoke weed. Sometimes you’d walk in on people having sex you’d like, “Oops, sorry. I didn’t know this room was taken.” The poor groundskeepers had to wait for us to leave, to lock up, just to do it all again the next night. We were absolutely degenerate.
HOLLYWOOD COMES HAUNTING
At one time, “The House of Shock” was one of, if not the most, known haunted houses in the country, and was often featured on MTV as well as in several high-profile music videos. So it’s not surprising that when movie stars and rock stars came to town, they’d want to see what all the fuss was about and get a good scare for their trouble.
Sydney: One year, Will Smith came through “The House of Shock.” He looked at me and said, “That’s awesome.” From then on, I knew this was my calling.
Jennifer: I scared a few celebrities. One night, I popped up and was staring straight at Will Smith. He reacted like a lot of other people, falling back against the women behind him. But then he smiled and said, “Wow, you got me. You’re the first one to get me!” “Three Days Grace” also walked through, and “Shinedown.” The coolest group I met was “Ghost.” This was before they unmasked themselves back in 2016. They were from Sweden and had never seen an American haunted house like ours. They ended up camping their bus near the haunt and slept over. We were very strict about protecting their identities, so they went through the haunt maskless after the public was done for the night. I remember I had a burlap sack mask on and scared the lead singer. I was crawling along the ground, and he immediately ran away. It was so surreal. But after they went through, they stayed and drank PBRs with us, talking about how much they loved our performances.
Jay: After a while, we started to get attention from production companies that wanted to do a reality show about us. So we spent a lot of time working on it. Ross went to Hollywood for eleven days to meet with executives, then spent a couple of days in New York. For a minute there, we thought we had a show before SyFy Channel dropped out. One second, we were ready to have cameras in the haunt, the next, nothing. We even almost made a movie. A producer of music videos for Willie Nelson and Guns & Roses wanted to make a documentary about us, a the family that scares together stays together type of thing. They shot footage, but the movie never made it to release.
WE BELONG DEAD
Running a haunted house is hard; running one as ambitious as “The Houses of Shock” was even harder. It’s easy to say that the controversy is what put the final stake in its heart, but the truth is much simpler: “The House of Shock” simply ran out of money. But in the end, reasons didn’t matter; for many, owners, actors, and fans, “The House of Shock” was home, and Halloween would never be the same.
Jay: My partner, Steve Joseph, said it best. We were the Ramones of the haunted house business. Everybody in the world knew who the Ramones were. The biggest band in the world. But they never made any money and traveled in a van a lot. That’s how it was for “The House of Shock.” We just never made any money.
Spencer: Nobody knew what the future held. I think that’s the biggest thing. You know, “The House of Shock” had shut down one time before, and then we had the big resurrection year. But a lot of these people, from my experience, put their whole life into this place. We had several marriages there. People have met their long-term spouses. People have had kids. And their kids grew up there. We’ve had several kids perform in cages whose parents were working right beside them! So the kids didn’t know what Halloween was, besides this place. Now it was like, what are we going to do?
Sydney: That last season was a huge deal. I don’t think I really worked in the house that much because I was in the show. So I would just kind of hang out, watch everybody, all the customers, see what they’re doing. And then I would watch the suspension performers, with the hooks in their backs. I loved all that. It was so much fun. And just hanging out with everybody out front and, like, getting to know them. That was probably the craziest experience.
Jennifer: It was a whirlwind of emotions, and even looking back at it, I’m getting a little choked up. It was a bit surreal because it wasn’t October for us if we weren’t at “The House of Shock.” We were just so used to going there and converging. On our last night, there was something solemn in the air. You could feel it. We still had fun, but at the end of the night, when they told us when our last group was going through, the actors shared a moment. I remember looking at the show captain and thinking, “I want to remember what she looks like in her costume, because it is the last time and the last group that walked through.” We were all so sentimental that every actor followed that last group. It was almost like a funeral procession. We knew we were a part of something so unique in the haunting industry that no other haunted house is ever going to be like. Twenty-five years is a long time for a haunted house to run, and we were so proud and happy to be a part of it.
Spencer: That last night, one of my good friends grabbed me and pulled me into the queue line. We ended up standing on barricades during the stage show, and it was just so cool. Then, we started going into other rooms, scaring people. It was a free-for-all. My time at “The House of Shock” was short-lived lived but you could still feel it was a family kind of breaking up.
Jay: Everybody was crying, and Halloween night was miserable. After 25 years, that was more than half my life I devoted to this. It was a family, you know? It wasn’t just any haunted house. That’s what made us so unique, that it wasn’t just a bunch of actors. It was our friends and the people we hung out with. Everybody really cared about each other. That last night, I was the last person to walk through the haunt. I was like, man, look at all this, what we built, twenty-five and gone.
AFTER SHOCK
“The House of Shock” was a trailblazing creative endeavor that burned bright for as long as it could. I never dared to see it for myself, to get a glimpse at this infamous chasm of madness. At the time, I was too frightened by its reputation, like many. But while haunted attractions come and go, “The House of Shock” stands alone, a rider clad in black who blazed a trail of flame and fantasy for others to follow, in this case, an entire industry.
JP: “Shock” was its own universe, contained inside another. October teleported us into another dimension where the mundane normality of life was suspended in favor of otherworldly enterprises and brutality, and that made it special. The world we normally occupy is hollow, a script of the day-to-day mundanity of existence. “The House of Shock” offered a reprieve from that and allowed the outsiders an inside to be a part of. Larry Breaux said it best: “House of Shock is the island for misfit toys.” I’ll always be proud to have stayed in that toy box for a time, and I’m glad the haunt died with dignity, instead of being watered down by the same generic mundanity we all tried to escape the other 11 months of the year.
Eleanora: I was really sad whenever it ended. Even now, when you say “I worked at ‘The House of Shock,” people think you’re crazy, a Satanist, or want to tell you their fond memories of being scared.
Jay: Today I play music. I’ve played my whole life. I own a commercial door company, but I also play in a cover band called “The Levee Dogs” and an original heavy metal band called “Blackwater Canal.” I’m actually about to go practice in about an hour and a half. I have a daughter, a beautiful 16-year-old girl, and that’s it, man. That’s living the dream.
Spencer: “The House of Shock” was twenty-five years strong, and some people had a little sour taste about its ending. But when 13th Floor Entertainment came along, they asked me if I wanted to take the Performance Manager position at New Orleans Nightmare. So the following year, Sydney and I were actually co-performance managers until this past year, when Sydney and I were made Co-General Managers.
Jennifer: That last night, I looked my friend in the eye and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever act for anyone else again.” And I kept that promise. I’ve managed actors, but I’ve done my acting. I was fulfilled. It’s how I would imagine a widow feels, or like a woman whose husband may die, and she’s like, well, I don’t have to remarry. I already had the love of my life, and I’m content being alone. I don’t have to act because that was the biggest thrill I could ever have, scaring at “The House of Shock”.
Throw a rock nowadays, and you’ll find a haunt that tries to follow the “The House of Shock” playbook. There are literally dozens across the country, many more extreme than “Shock” ever dared go. But they’ll never compare to the original, the one that kept the world screaming for a quarter century, an innovation in scares that left its indelible mark on New Orleans. I believe that it’s safe to say that the legacy of America’s most infamous haunted house will assuredly live on, forged into the bedrock of a community by the friendships and family birthed in its bloody wake.
Happy Halloween, everybody!
See y’all in the moonlight!
