The 13th Gate opens its 13th season this weekend and will be open Friday and Saturday 6:30 p.m.-11:30 p.m. Tickets start at $25. For more information, visit midnightproduction.com.
Dwayne Sanburn has been in the haunted house industry for more than 20 years, and he knows a thing or two about scaring people. In celebration of The 13th Gate’s 13th year, he says he and his crew “decided to go for the throat.”
Once last season was in the books, Sanburn went back to the drawing board, trying to bring something special to the Capital City haunt.
“We started asking customers what really scares them, and the No. 1 thing was clowns,” he says. “We decided to bring a clown back, but it’s not a circus clown. We built this house that has the story of a serial killer clown attached to it. It’s the final act [in the attraction], the haunted house at the end of the lane.”
When patrons go through the house, there’s no electricity, and a storm rages outside. The only time you can see anything is when lightning strikes. As you walk through the house, you’ll encounter the clown and ghosts. It’s hard not to get chills even when Sanburn describes it.
“Everything is haunted,” he says. “It’s going to be high impact and scary. We’ve been working on it for four or five months.”
In addition to the finale, Sanburn says the team has added effects and areas to its detailed London set from last year, as well as new elevator scares and a new fire show to Necropolis 13.
“Things will happen [in the fire show] that will make people scratch their heads,” he says.
For Sanburn and his crew, Halloween is 24/7. Even when he’s on vacation, Sanburn says he’s looking for a cave or haunted house.
“It never shuts off,” he says, laughing.
He got into the haunted house industry right as the business was growing, and he realizes that what scared people 20 years ago might garner merely a chuckle from a child today.
“When I started, the trade shows we’d visit were small, and now, there are thousands of vendors,” he says. “The business has grown exponentially, and everything that comes with it has grown in complexity. People nowadays expect to see movie-quality effects.”
Sanburn says he’d put his crew up against any movie production. Not only is The 13th Gate one of the nation’s best haunted houses, it’s also a breeding ground for talent in the movie industry.
“We have a lot of our actors that are active in the movie industry,” he says. “We’ve hired a lot of people who work in that industry to help us grow and train us. Now, people come here then go into the movie industry. The talent is all right here, and they make a point to outdo themselves each year.”
For more information on The 13th Gate, click here.
See a preview of The 13th Gate below. Warning: we can confirm the video is scary.
