This October proved to be one of my busiest and all time favourite Halloweens ever as I got to tick a major ambition off my bucket list. In the weeks leading up to and concluding on Oct 31st I was a scare actor at a local scare attraction called PrimEVIL situated in Lenwade Norfolk. Having attended as a customer the year before and being impressed by the enthusiasm and skill of the scare actors I wondered if I would be any good at it. A post on social media went out on their page asking for potential scare actors so I figured it wouldn’t do any harm to fill in an application form. Surprisingly I was invited to attend an audition, with no professional acting skills just a few zombie walks under my belt, an interest in all things horror and an enthusiasm for scaring people, I muddled through and miraculously made it into the PrimEVIL scare crew 2016!!!
The attraction is split into 5 zones. THE DARK a maze which is plunged into darkness so you have to rely on your other senses to get you through but you are not alone, MAYHEM MANOR a long forgotten resort full of crazed psychos, FORREST OF FEAR a walk through the woods infested with ghouls and chain saw wielding Hill Billies, ZONE 64 EAST DEADWOOD a maze where zombies and the infected are craving your brains and the CARNEVIL OF TERROR where clowns and carnies will drive you insane! All these attractions required suitable scare actors plus there was also a STREET TEAM of actors going around the venue between the attractions scaring the customers in the queues.
Our first training session was also the casting as well, bet you can’t guess what I was hoping for!!! Cutting a potentially waffley story short, to my utter delight I was cast as a zombie in ZONE 64!!! Once fitted for costumes it was off to our attraction to begin zombie training. After a few sessions training with the other members of the team and getting to know our way around the maze we were to call home we were ready to scare the crap out of some paying customers. There was even a team of make up artists on hand to zombie us up every night, which was great to start off with but eventually we all got a bit tired of constantly having sticky blood in our hair or around our eyes as when it dried and congealed you couldn’t close your eye properly or when you blinked your eyelid stuck to the top of your eye socket making you look like a sub-standard Cenobite or something!
I adored my place in ZONE 64. I was stationed about halfway through the maze behind some barrels in front of a rope bridge that was out of bounds to customers which meant after my initial scare I could run over the bridge and double team scare the groups the other end with a fellow zombie. I had the added bonus of a strobe light just down the track from me and a whole horde of zombie mannequins near by so there were a host of distractions around for many potential scares. The groups came through thick and fast so we were on the go pretty much solidly for about 4 or 5 hours a night obviously we had breaks but you have to be a fairly active person as you are constantly moving about and not in a normal way either so muscles ache that you don’t really seem to use in normal moving about.
Because of the distractions around me I could mix up my scares so I wasn’t doing the same one constantly. With the mannequins near by it was the perfect place to do a statue scare as a lot of people thought I was also a mannequin and depending on their reaction meant I would stay still for as long as possible then shuffle up behind them without them noticing till the last minute or move and chase them down the track towards the strobe. Another one was hiding behind the barrels and launching myself over them in a frenzy and would mix up what kind of zombie I was (fast or slow) between groups. I also messed with them in front of the strobe light too. I’d stand in front of it so they knew someone was there but they couldn’t see me properly, run at them and watch them scatter! This was the most dodgy one though as it was really hard to judge how far away they were so there was a risk of running straight into someone which I narrowly avoided a couple of times. There were endless possibilities and I tried as many as I could with mostly positive results. I got quite carried away at times and ended up covered in bruises from kicking and throwing myself at the barrels, I’m no Howard Sherman but I tried my hardest and gave it my all. I found that the more scared people got the more I wanted to scare them but also found the ones who didn’t really react made me want to try and scare them even more! There were however some people who just wouldn’t react at all, would think it was funny to try and scare the actors, try and abuse the no touching rules (scare actors weren’t to touch the customers and vice versa) by standing in your way or making sure you walked into them so they could complain and just being plain rude and abusive towards us. It is to these people I ask a few simple questions. Why? What exactly are you expecting to achieve by doing this apart from making yourself look like an arse? Why spend £20 plus on a ticket when you refuse to embrace the atmosphere? Maybe don’t bother next time or better still have a go at scare acting yourself if the rest of us are so shit at it (plus it’s tremendous fun, until you end up with a twat like you that is!!)! I’m not going to waste my time telling you about the pissed people that turned up and were promptly escorted off the premises.
Luckily the idiots were in the minority but there were also the people that got too scared and had to be escorted from the mazes due to panic attacks brought on by the scare actors. I’m not ashamed to admit to being partly responsible for one occasion in our maze but it did make me feel a bit bad, they did calm down and were fine but it felt a bit odd dropping the raging infected zombie act to say “Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Are you ok love?” with a fellow team mate offering them a drink of water and a banana. It felt great to scare people though and a lot of them were really up for it, many of their reactions will forever remain etched in my brain.
The final night being Halloween meant everyone on our team was incredibly pumped and the customers were really keen for a truly frightening experience. That night alone I made 6 different people fall over, one guy admitted that he literally just wet himself, I chased 5 fully grown men screaming like girls down the track into the strobe light and got them again the other side of the bridge and then the slightly unfortunate moment of myself and fellow zombie team mate causing a lady to have a panic attack. All in a nights work!! That night was probably my favourite but there were many others that were just as successful. It was a truly amazing experience enhanced by the great people behind the scenes organising us, creating the mazes, costumes and make up, but most of all the other scare actors.
Especially the ones I was lucky enough to call team mates and our tireless team leader who made sure he regularly checked on us all throughout the nights and was there in a flash if we needed him. It was like a little family really we’d all been thrown together but at the end of it all we felt quite emotional and I do actually still miss the times we had. There was a big after party for us so we could all have one last piss up and say our good byes. Who knows what will happen next year but it would be good to see everyone again.
Having been to PrimEVIL as a paying customer and now as a scare actor I really recommend this attraction and rate it very highly, it gets better every year and is by far the best scare attraction in my area.
Article written by Sarah Budd
Photos courtesy of Sarah Budd