This isn’t your average haunted house, that’s for sure (Picture: Russ McKamey)
‘It’s basically human torture and cruelty. How is this even legal?’
Not exactly the review most people want on Google. But for Russ McKamey, this is just the kind of publicity he’s after.
Russ is behind McKamey Manor, a haunted house tour that isn’t full of the usual cardboard ghosts or actors in werewolf costumes bought around the corner.
No, people sign 40-page waivers to be buried alive, submerged in cold water and beaten across the roughly 10-hour-long experience.
What is McKamey Manor?
‘This is an audience participation event in which (YOU) will live your own horror movie,’ the manor’s warning page (yes, a warning page) on its website says.
The tourist attraction first came to public light in 2014, when it allegedly had 20,000 people on the waiting list. It sees actors doing… a lot to the contestants while Russ taunts them behind a camera.
McKamey Manor is so infamous that an online petition to shut down this ‘torture chamber’ has nearly 200,000 signatures.
Maybe bring some goggles with you (Picture: Russ McKamey)
‘It is seriously just torture porn,’ the petition says, alleging that one participant was ‘tortured so badly he passed out multiple times’.
‘Workers only stopped because they thought they had killed him.’
Some haunted house industry experts (yes, that’s a thing) aren’t the biggest fans of McKamey Manor either, stressing it’s very much not a haunted house.
What happens inside?
‘I was waterboarded, I was Tased, I was whipped. I still have scars of everything they did to me. I was repeatedly hit in my face, over and over and over again. Like, open-handed, as hard as a man could hit a woman in her face.’
This is what one participant, Laura Hertz Brotherton, says she went through in 2016.
Contestants are warned in the waiver they may be injured during their time inside (Picture: Russ McKamey)
One 2013 promotional video shows manor-goers eating cockroaches and begging to be released from contractions straight out of Saw. Others have described swimming through mud and taking a dip in a tank of moray eels.
Going through McKamey Manor is different every time, with Russ tailoring it to each contestant’s fears.
Despite what the fake-blood-soaked promos make the manor out to be, Russ has stressed it isn’t as bad as it seems.
He told the Nashville Scene in 2018: ‘Nobody’s ever been injured, ever. Nobody’s ever had any lawsuits, ever. I mean, there was a heart attack once but that person’s okay now.
‘People can get bumps, bruises, sprains and cuts. But you can die at Disneyland, too.’
How can I go to McKamey Manor?
Adrenaline junkies hoping to get through the door have to go through a complicated screening process. For one, you have to be at least 21 – or 18-20 with approval from a parent or guardian.
You also cannot be pregnant, claustrophobic or medically unfit. As in, they suffer from a heart condition or epilepsy.
Participants go through multiple screenings to take part, organisers say (Picture: Russ McKamey)
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Source:: Metro
