Louisville Halloween takes an exclusive early tour into the dark nether regions of the Devil’s Attic’s fifth haunting season.
Greetings, my River City reapers, it’s the Phantom of the Ville back with another exclusive preview of one of our city’s best haunted attractions, The Devil’s Attic, which exists in a lonely building at 647 West Hill Street. Infamous for its collection of some of the most evil souls to ever terrify mankind in literature, legend and horror films, the Devil’s Attic has spent the last five years adding to its morbid collection of madmen and monsters.
This year will see the addition of scenes depicting the madness and dark fantasies of American author and poet, Edgar Allan Poe.
This weekend I met with owner/operator, Jason Besemann, to discuss his evil schemes for the Devil’s Attic this Halloween and to take a journey through some of the most detailed haunt scenes in the haunted attraction business. Besemann and some of his signature characters are going to be quite busy even before the haunt formally opens on September 19.
“We’ll be having an event at the Sportsdrome Speedway in Jeffersonvile,” says Besemann, “We’ll be at ScareFest in Lexington and our characters will be out in full force at the Gaslight Festival parade in J-town. This year we’re also one of the sponsors of the Louisville Zombie Attack.”
The Louisville Zombie Attack 2014 (http://www.louisvillezombieattack.org/), which takes place this Friday, August 29 at 8:29 PM in the Highlands, will play host to many of the Devil’s Attic’s most popular characters. “Our Devil will be the MC of the zombie costume ball at the after party at the Highlands Taproom,” says Besemann. “It’s going to be huge this year. Lyndi (Lou) and John (King) just got their clearances from the city to block off an entire city block for the after party and The Devil’s Attic will have its own stage where we’ll be giving away lots of swag.”
“Our make-up artist, Izzie Jones, will be there doing zombie and all kinds of monster make-ups,” says Besemann. “We’ll have Green Screen Photography there taking photos of the zombies with different back drops, and we’ll be announcing this year’s big give-away contest. The last couple of years we’ve given away motorcycles, but this year we’ll be giving away a Caribbean cruise.”
It was time to brave the haunted hallways of Besemann’s creation, and I can testify that this haunt is even scary with the house lights on. When I arrived at the Devil’s Attic this weekend, I couldn’t find Besemann or any of his staff, so I crept around the building and found the front door open. I called out, but was met with an uncomfortable silence, so I pushed forward into the cobwebbed, gore covered walls in search of Jason or one of his crew.
The door to the Devil’s throne room creaked open as I passed into the labyrinth, and I was immediately overwhelmed with the incredible detail Besemann and his crew put into this attraction as I traveled down a skull covered hallway and into a Gothic vampire’s crypt. I could hear someone walking the hallways somewhere in the distance, but I couldn’t tell which direction the footsteps were coming from.
Finally, amid the monsters and the corpses, I ran into one of Besemann’s managers who guided me through the disorienting back passageways to the Devil’s Attic’s elaborate make-up room and found Besemann hard at work on one of his new scenes.
“This year we’ve added a whole new section based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe,” reveals Besemann. I was taken to a turn-of-the-century dungeon area right out of one of Roger Corman’s Poe movies starring Vincent Price, including a working “Pit and the Pendulum” set. This new part of the haunt reminds me of one of those ‘House of Horrors’ chambers you’d see in a wax museum sequence in old movies like “House of Wax” (1953). Except instead of passing lifelike figures, you’ll be confronting real screaming torture victims and masked tormentors and executioners who might want to put you in their pillory or iron maiden.
Then Besemann took me back to the Devil’s throne room, turned off all the house lights, and turned on the mood lighting & some of the animatronics so I could get an idea of what the rest of the haunt was going to look like in operation. The lighting in the Devil’s Attic is incredible, simulating flickering candles and torches that cast red hues on the walls in early scenes, and ghostly blue hues later in the “13 Ghosts” sequence and the “ghost hallway.”
The original music composed by Matt Clayton is pumped into each scene, adding the appropriate atmosphere to each different area of the haunt.
You’ll encounter a blinding tunnel that hides a demonic surprise. After you face the vampires’ crypt, Frankenstein’s laboratory and the Poe torture chamber, you’ll experience Jigsaw’s disorienting maze, a whole area devoted to ghosts and phantoms (my favorite part!), a cornfield in Sleepy Hollow, an exorcism in progress and you’ll meet a witch with the power to summon the curse of Pumpkinhead. You’ll also find out what happens when someone messes with the Lament Configuration before a final trip through the back roads of Texas.
“There’s also one more new surprise this year,” reveals Besemann. “We have another new character and scene that we added this season.” In the new, incredibly detailed scene, you’ll be taken through a Victorian era house during the Yuletide season for an encounter with Krampus, Saint Nicholas’ demonic sidekick that deals with all the children on the naughty list.
The Devil’s Attic is already impressive this season, and this is without the cast even in the scenes to bring them to life. Besemann’s haunt promises a good mix of large scale animatronic monsters, highly detailed sets and a talented cast. I can’t yet speak to the detail involved in the costumes and make-ups, but I look forward to returning for a full review when it opens on September 19.
