‘Do not scare my child’: Life as a professional fright artist at Luna Park

9 hours ago 5

In a cramped tent in the middle of Luna Park, 25 people are scrambling into costume and make-up. Pig masks. Bloodied ruff shirts.

“Some parents come in and say, ‘Do not scare my child’,” I overhear from the make-up chair. “It’s like, bro, what are you doing here?” The man puts on his scarecrow mask and picks up a massive rubber scythe. I have another go attaching my spindly ghoul fingers to my gloves.

Will Cox as Mr Moon as part of Luna Dark.

For two weeks every October, Luna Park fills with costumes, music and spookiness. The centrepiece is a temporary haunted house which skirts the borders of kitsch and genuinely unsettling. The backstory goes that unhinged former park staff have been living in subterranean tunnels, assembling their own twisted amusements with the park’s detritus. Every Halloween, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, they get out.

The costumed performers, or “scarers”, are in it for the love of it. Some are actors, some are just Halloween mad. Many come back every year. Rosie, who’s playing a fortune-teller with an animatronic arm, lives in Wellington now, and plans her Melbourne visits around this. Laura, an educator and (temporary) seance ghoul, shows me her Halloween tattoos: a pumpkin, a ghost, a potion bottle and a black cat in a pointy hat.

Ebony is dancer and actor. Last year she was a “creepy-ass clown” and became immersed in the character. “It was amazing,” she says. “I was nearly possessed by the end of it.” This year, she’s a crazed electrician with a very convincing cattle prod, which she regularly applies to her skeleton captive. She inhabits the role worryingly well. She’s also been volunteering with the build team for the past few weeks, cabling for cameras, setting up lights and helping with set and prop design. “My passion is music and live events,” Ebony says. “So I’m keen to transition into backstage.”

Then there’s me – to report this story properly, I’ll need to immerse myself fully. So tonight I’m Mr Moon, a masked phantom with a beautifully painted mask inspired by the terrifying face on the Luna Park entrance.

A small team has been brainstorming ideas for months and building for several weeks. But for Dale Pope, the manager of Events After Dark, Halloween is a year-round concern.

“I’m obsessed with Halloween,” she says. “I do other small private events, but Halloween is the big one. It’s the most fun, and creatively, it’s so broad.”

Pope lived in Denver, Colorado for eight years. Her son’s birthday is around Halloween, so she always threw him themed birthday parties. When the family moved back from America in 2011, her kids wanted to go trick or treating. “It was awkward,” Pope says. “People were caught off guard. No one was prepared. But kids watch all the Halloween stuff from America now, and it’s grown and grown.”

He expects about 6000 visitors to the haunted house over six nights, mainly adults and teenagers. People can’t wait to be scared. In past years, people have needed escorting to hidden exits. Last year someone got so overwhelmed they threw up in a cauldron.

One of the scares inside the haunted house at Luna Park.

“It makes you feel like you’re doing it right,” Pope says. “I love watching people coming out the other side. They’re holding their hearts, bent at the knees, out of breath. I think it takes people out of their everyday lives. In that moment, you’re just immersed.”

It’s certainly a close, stifling atmosphere in there, all narrow corridors and low ceilings. Moving floors make you steady yourself on electrified walls. It’s stuffy with smoke, and smells of popcorn and dirt. There are jump scares around every corner. It’s not hard to believe it gets heart rates up.

As Mr Moon, I’m thrown in through a hidden safety exit and tasked with being a roaming scarer.

I’m not an actor and scaring people doesn’t come naturally. I’m not comfortable yelling at people, so I go for the silent approach. My costume and the layer of smoke make it easy to pose as a mannequin and come to life when people are right next to me. People’s shock is intense, palpable. In this twilight space people allow themselves to let go.

In past years, people have had to be escorted to hidden exits. Last year someone got so overwhelmed they threw up in a cauldron.

In my sweaty costume, barely able to see out my eye slots, I begin to understand what the monsters in the movies feel like. I decide to imbue the role with some tragic nobility. I cower, my claws over my face, like a trapped animal. I’m Frankenstein’s monster. The Phantom of the Opera. Might the visitors be the real monsters?

I hope they see this complex backstory in my performance, but most of them just scream louder than I’ve ever been screamed at. “Just keep moving!” Someone screams to her friend. “They can’t touch you!”

Afterwards I stand at the exit, watching people come out, clutching their chests and finding their breath.

Someone throws their arms in the air. “Well!” they say. “I shat myself.”

“You were useless!” someone else screams at their partner. “You left me!”

The couple wander off and get a hot dog. As I leave to scrape off my black make-up, the queue is getting longer. The punters eagerly await their moment of release.