Bedlam Haunted House starts its second year with a few changes. Husband and wife Corey “Bob” Hale and Gerry Lynn “Boo” Hale are now co-owners of the haunt, supported by an extensive staff and over thirty haunt actors. They have made a few changes to Bedlam Haunted House, but the location remains the familiar sprawling red brick former industrial site at 302 W Willow in Scottsboro, Alabama. With so much space to work with, it’s easy to see how Bedlam Haunted House can contain a lot of walking room, thirty settings, and over thirty scare actors to add fright to the night.

Pricing for Bedlam Haunted House is one change for this year. General admission is $25. An Extreme ticket is $30, and VIP skip-the-line-tickets are $50. General admission is a touch-free tour while Extreme comes with a glow necklace marking the customer as a victim willing to endure the full onslaught of the haunt actors’ twisted imaginations.

Actors are the strength of Bedlam Haunted House , starting in the waiting area. They appear in a variety of shapes, ages, and guises. Wandering the front room is “Abigail DeMaris” the gaunt, sole survivor, or maybe undead revenant, of a tea party massacre. Abigail glides silently around the room with a basket of ghastly items and occasionally flips into a back bow with hands and feet on the floor to continue her stroll. I watched a local TV reporter react to Abigail, backing away quickly while muttering “Oh no…”

“Giggles” also works the front room, alternating scares with lollipops. He’s a demented doctor complete with blood spattered lab coat and wicked clown face. When not handing out candy, he’s handing out scares with a small Tesla coil toy or simply by leaning down to whisper in an unsuspecting ear.

Bedlam General Admission Tour

The general admission tour contained plenty of haunt actor imagination. The policy of Bedlam is to send the groups through as they arrive, so I asked a group of three complete strangers if I could join them. They graciously agreed. If I hadn’t found a group to go with, I’d have gone through alone.

A lively group definitely enhances the haunted house experience.

Mike the Doorman took us through a long interior walkway, lulling us by chatting idly about the haunt before turning us loose at a dark doorway. The scares commenced soon after.

Bedlam is synonymous with chaos and madness, the word deriving from the conditions of the infamous English asylum nicknamed Bedlam. Demented chaos is the theme of the haunt, and the characters, costumes, and make up propel the show. Bedlam contains no animatronics or flashy light gizmos. The settings vary from stark, deteriorating institutional rooms and passages to elaborately furnished morgues, labs, and parlors. A disabled car, complete with a body hanging out the window, inexplicably occupies the center of one of Bedlam’s larger rooms.

In our tour, we encountered a dizzying array of characters ranging from murderous, to menacing, to disturbingly sweet. Right off the bat, a hazmat suited toxic cleanup agent banged his shovel, behind us of course, prompting a hurried walk into a pair of blade wielding masked lunatics who took their sweet time letting us pass while asking us to admire their weaponry.

Along the way we encountered two sliders, mixing creeping along the ground with sudden bursts of movement. One was done up in black, purple, and green harlequin style with face paint. The other was a rainbow of light and color, including her teeth!

We were harangued by a twisted chef serving up a stew of body parts while searching for her lost knife. She added a sonic dimension to the encounter in the form of an ear-splitting scream. Screams of this level were encountered frequently during the walk.

An evil priest questioned the beliefs of our group, which appeared to genuinely disturb my haunt companions. They fled the room while singing an old children’s Bible school song. The actor responded accordingly with anguished shouts of “No!”

The owner is particularly proud of Bedlam’s gross-out scene, which lived up to his description. An asylum patient, stirring the contents of a filthy toilet with an equally filthy wall for a background. Don’t worry, we were assured nothing was as unhygienic as it looked.

Other scenes included a morgue complete with attendants, a screaming mother, more clowns and finally, the chainsaw wielding maniac. He chased my new acquaintances out of the building and down the street a way, ending our tour.

After exiting, I asked the group what they thought. Breathless from their run they said they loved it and would come back. One of them admitted it was already her second visit to Bedlam. Their favorite characters were clowns and anyone not holding a chainsaw. We parted company, or so I thought, and I re-entered the building to do the extreme tour.

Extreme

At Bedlam, extreme means physical contact. Lots and lots of physical contact. The actors also mess with your head, but those efforts are typically accompanied with touch. They are not shy about touching a guest who has voluntarily placed the glowstick necklace around his neck. Also, removal of the necklace is the escape hatch, returning the guest to General Admission level.

There was no ready group to join when I returned to Mike and the ticket takers. This time, I was alone.

The first encounter set the bar for the rest of the haunt. The blade wielding pair in the second room did not just menace. I was grabbed, pushed up against a wall, and given a close-up view of one large blade, which even included an offer to hold it. I did. It was real. Then came the mind scramble. The chatty lunatic, still holding me by the neck, locked eyes with me for a few seconds. I stared back, prompting him to say something like “You’ve seen some things, haven’t you?”

I admitted that I had definitely seen some things. The actor held on a few seconds longer and then shoved me along.

The beauty of this brief interaction is how it establishes an impromptu rapport. Whether you stare back, whether you’ve ‘seen some things’ or not, and how you answer the ambiguous question, the actor now seems more than just some random guy shoving you around. If you aren’t scared witless, which might be a blessing, you have the additional benefit of carrying around this What The Hell? moment, at least until the next actor scares it out of you.

Almost everyone in the next 28 rooms touched, mostly in the form of grabs and shoves. Several encounters were quite distinct and memorable.

In the morgue, I was pushed backwards onto a waiting gurney and taken for a spin by the two attendants. When the ride was complete, the gurney tilted, allowing a long slide to the floor.

Further along, one or two actors got hold of me and demanded I close my eyes. I did, which is why I’m not sure how many actors were there. We played a game of Peek-a-Boo, only modified by the actor to include a lot of spinning around before my still dizzy body was pushed along the path toward the next setting.

Somewhere in there, something was smeared on my face and hair. Later, my earlier haunt acquaintances told me it was fake blood. Another mind prank occurred when one friendly actor insisted on gently running her fingers through my short, salt-and-pepper hair. Another encounter that might leave a guest wondering WTH?

The sweetest encounter was with the pale, doll bearing lady. She was dressed in white, face made up in white, clutching a white dressed doll. There was a spectral quality about them both. She wanted to play Ring Around The Rosie. We did, singing the entire verse and falling down at the conclusion. The conclusion which was quickly punctuated by an unexpected ear shattering scream to get out.

So much for sweetness.

Bedlam was not done with me yet. I passed through the toilet room, where a hapless patient insistently tried to share their bounty. A few steps later, the dark priest quickly concluded I was not worthy and shoved me along roughly after attempting to verify my belief.

There is one setting in Bedlam, another Corey Hale favorite, that can be extremely energetic: the elevator. A small room mounted on springs or maybe rails. I’ll just say it moves. The mattresses padding the walls should have warned me on my general admission tour. A clown haired masked maniac grabbed and flung me into one padded wall then another at least four times. Maybe five. Only my grip on a handful of the actor’s coverall kept me from sliding to the floor after the last bounce. The rapid-fire action there was as dizzying as the Peek-a-Boo spinning. I mumbled an apology for grabbing and staggered out to the next setting.

At the end of the haunt waited the chainsaw maniac. Sadly, technical difficulties prevented him from giving me the full treatment. I exited unscathed and ran into the three women from my general admission tour, and in a wonderful moment of turnabout, they asked me the questions I had asked them previously.

I had barely a moment to thank Corey before he was called away by Bedlam business.

The supermoon was just rising over the intersection of West Mary Hunter Ave and North Houston St as I made my way back to my car.

Not Finished Yet

Before I set foot in Bedlam, I talked extensively with Corey earlier by phone and then again on the evening of my visit. He was a good sport about being peppered with questions. Bedlam is in its second year, but it’s hardly his first haunt. He became hooked on haunts after designing and building a haunted trail at the age of eight. With help from his siblings, they put on a show culminating in a jump scare from a hide in a dry pond that thoroughly scared a neighborhood girl. Following that experience would be years of Jaycees haunts, haunted trails, houses, and barns.

Corey summed up his haunt philosophy in short, “If you can’t scare them, entertain them.” He had some other ideas about being part of the community, wanting to support both the haunt community at large and give back to the community he lives in. An upcoming night of Bedlam will donate its proceeds to two local charities.

When asked about the off season, he laughed. There’s a ton of work to do after a short rest: props, cleaning, and repair. Plus, new ideas for scenes and events that could occur during that precious off season time.

Corey stays busy.

I got a first hand look at how busy a haunted house is before the doors open. I arranged to arrive about two hours early on Friday 29 September, allowing for photos and chat with actors and staff. Corey was picking up some last minute supplies, but “Schizo” loudly announced my presence to several city blocks ensuring that it was known far and wide that I was an approved guest. There is a clear family atmosphere permeating Bedlam, and not just because so many families are involved.

I spoke several times to Gerry Lynn, who was busy with the ticket office, an impending TV interview, and numerous other details. The actors took time to answer my few questions. From them, I learned that their costume and make up can take anywhere between ten minutes and two hour, depending on the level of detail and whether a mask or make up was used.

I also found out that not everyone at Bedlam has been haunting their entire lives. I witnessed some excellent acting by folks who told me it was their first night.

For more information about Bedlam Haunted House, check out their Facebook page. For information about similar events, check out our Event Calendar.

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