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THE GREAT INDOORS: Well-designed scare tactics
With Halloween upon us, people are beginning to seek out the freakiest haunted houses, hoping to get scared out of their minds but still live to tell the tale. As a recent Art Museum-district transplant, I became interested in Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) and how its designers manage to transform the prison's beautiful stone façade into one of America's No. 1 haunted attractions.
THE GREAT INDOORS: Well-designed scare tactics
Reporter Meg Augustin takes you inside some of Philly's most fab dwellings to showcase our city's unique grasp on design and architecture.
With Halloween upon us, people are beginning to seek out the freakiest haunted houses, hoping to get scared out of their minds but still live to tell the tale. As a recent Art Museum-district transplant, I became interested in Eastern State Penitentiary (ESP) and how its designers manage to transform the prison’s beautiful stone façade into one of America’s No. 1 haunted attractions. So I met with ESP's associate director of design services Jason Ohlsen to get scoop about the design of Terror Behind the Walls.
Ohlsen, who claims to have no interest in “scary stuff” says the prison itself is the inspiration for the 
whole attraction. “The story line, the scenery, the costumes … they are all meant to make you feel [like] you are trapped in this massive prison.” The design team has used ESP in such a way that it distracts and reflects from what is really going on, offering a one-of-a-kind, totally believable story line. Even walking through the space in broad daylight, I was on my guard.
Ohlsen used the prison’s walls and floor plan to shape the course of the attraction, which gave him ideas about how each space could be built upon. “One of my greatest compliments,” he notes, “was when a visitor chastised us for ‘just putting people and stuff into rooms.’” Little did this visitor know that she was seeing fabricated spaces, not the prison itself. Walking through, even in daylight, it’s hard to distinguish what’s real and what's not. Fabricated walls and floors have perfected the texture and many of the items filling the spaces — exam tables, hospital beds and desks — were shipped from another prison, creating the blurred line between reality and make-believe that makes the space so bafflingly spooky.
“Confusion and distraction is what scares people,” says Ohlsen. While blood covered actors sure make for a horrifying experience, they are only there to complete the story. What really terrifies people, he explains, is their own minds. By adding false bars, hidden doors and disguised actors among the scenery, Ohlsen can create the trickery that makes a semi-confident visitor crap his drawers.
While impressed by the well-designed recreation of prison life and the surroundings, I was most in awe of 
the scale and detail of the finished product, which Ohlsen says takes a year to produce. “We usually start creating everything in June, but we have been sketching out ideas and measuring spaces since [a week before the prior] year’s event closed.” These sketches go from simple ideas to 3D renderings to full-blown architectural blueprints. The same thing goes for the costumes and make-up. And everything is handmade. The massive iron corrals that move people through the first attraction were welded in a way that allows them to easily be taken down and put up every year. The loose-looking oil barrels are welded together to create the illusion of disarray. Ohlsen and his design crew even created a computer system that controls advanced pyrotechnics, sound systems, creative lighting and automated hydraulics. His real “baby,” though, is a massive centrifuge-like walk-through that was made from two by fours, advanced hydraulics and engineered lighting systems that create a dizzying effect.
As I left Eastern State Penitentiary, I was floored by how much engineering and design goes into making the space feel eerier. While Terror Behind the Walls certainly uses the prison as its muse, Ohlsen and his team’s creations far surpass any expectations I had for creepy design tactics. Who knew the art of horror could be broken down to such a science?
(megan.augustin@citypaper.net)
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