The Reason I'm a Scare Actor
Why am I a scare actor? I love doing it and it's changed my life in a very real and literal sense. The funny thing is that I happened into it entirely by accident, or divine intervention. This is a long story and I've tried to shorten it, but you can't just jump into it without a little background information.
I may joke around a lot, and I know I will never be accused of being the quiet one at my haunt, but when it comes to sharing my feelings, it’s actually quite difficult for me. The humor is more of a self-defense than a need to be comical; I’m very apprehensive about sharing my feelings and always afraid I’ll be hurt if I let people know my weaknesses and fears.
Being funny relaxes people and it also keeps them at a safe distance too. That's why showing my honest feelings about scare acting is actually quite difficult.
I intentionally don’t tell people at A Petrified Forest my story for quite some time, because I wanted them to see me as I am now, not what my life had been for several years. I’m finally comfortable to share that with everyone because I want everyone to have a true understanding of what I really mean when I say how thankful I am to be there.
To understand what being a scare actor at the Petrified Forest means to me, I have to take you back a few years. My wife at the time, Teresa, and I were married, had two girls, a house, I had a good job and we had a baby boy on the way. I made enough money that Teresa was able to go to school at night and stay with the kids during the day. I was also promoted to Senior Designer (Airport Design) at my engineering firm which came with a nice pay increase.
Then it all fell apart in one day. When Teresa was a semester away from her bachelor’s degree she fell and injured her leg. We thought it was a sprain. The leg healed but the pain never stopped. After several months of visits to different doctors and medical facilities they finally discovered that she had a rare nerve disorder called Reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (RSDS). It is permanent, there is no cure, she will be in pain for the rest of her life and it will only slowly get worse.
I was now faced with two young girls to take care of, a baby boy, a full time job and a bedridden wife who needed my care as well. Every day was waking and getting the kids ready for school, going to work and then returning home to handle dinner, homework and attending to the wife and kids. The prescriptions alone were several hundred dollars per month, plus the multiple monthly Doctor visits, and Physical therapy. Things got bad fast, and we had to sell the house before we were foreclosed on.
Things were better in the apartment as I had more time to take care of Teresa and the kids. I also got promoted to CAD manager and was elected to the Board of Directors for Autodesk Users Group International (AUGI), an AutoCAD community with over 170,000 active members worldwide. Things were beginning to improve again.
Then in 2009 I was laid off from my job. We almost lost the apartment but somehow managed to survive. After nine months of unemployment I got a job making half of what I used to make and I had to step down from the Board at AUGI. The stress of being a married “single parent” with a wife to care for as well, took its toll on me over the years. From early morning to late at night I never stopped working at home and at work. I was not the go-getter anymore, and I wasn’t the funny optimist my friends used to love.
I was surviving, not living and I was a person who had let the world win.
Then one day, a friend of mine needed a ride for herself and my step daughter to an audition at A Petrified Forest. I had no intention of auditioning. When I brought them there, I just loved the place at first site. So on a whim I auditioned. Since this is about being a scare actor, you've probably already inferred the rest of that story. I got hired.
The part that isn't obvious is what happened to me afterwards. One day about half way through the first year, I was making breakfast, I was exhausted, bruised and so sore I could barely walk, on top of the fact that I was completely sleep deprived. My middle daughter Deanna walked in and said “what is going on out there in that forest?” I told her I didn’t know what she meant. She said I was smiling while I was making breakfast. She said I never smiled anymore and noticed that I was making jokes again too. She said I was like "my old Dad again" before Mom got sick. She said she really missed that Dad a lot, and she hugged me.
After my first night in the Forest, right after my first big scare, I knew I would want to do it forever. But that moment with Deanna, that was the moment I knew the Forest would never be able to get rid of me. It brought back a part of me that I thought I had lost and I didn’t even see it happening.
So when the owners say that they appreciate all of us scare actors, and we are the ones to make it all happen, I’m not buying it. I know the truth, we are the ones lucky to be there.
It’s an amazing amount of fun when you're in the middle of a night and getting scare after scare, it's empowering, cathartic and an incredible rush at the same time. Seeing the people getting scared and then laughing because you got them is just magic. I will always strive to be better, think of a new things to say to the guests, what body language to use, or even figure out how to come at them in a better way.
But for me it reminds me that I can be more than what I thought I was. When life had beaten me down my haunt family lifted me back up. You can never repay that, but I'm going to try.
I may joke around a lot, and I know I will never be accused of being the quiet one at my haunt, but when it comes to sharing my feelings, it’s actually quite difficult for me. The humor is more of a self-defense than a need to be comical; I’m very apprehensive about sharing my feelings and always afraid I’ll be hurt if I let people know my weaknesses and fears.
Being funny relaxes people and it also keeps them at a safe distance too. That's why showing my honest feelings about scare acting is actually quite difficult.
I intentionally don’t tell people at A Petrified Forest my story for quite some time, because I wanted them to see me as I am now, not what my life had been for several years. I’m finally comfortable to share that with everyone because I want everyone to have a true understanding of what I really mean when I say how thankful I am to be there.
To understand what being a scare actor at the Petrified Forest means to me, I have to take you back a few years. My wife at the time, Teresa, and I were married, had two girls, a house, I had a good job and we had a baby boy on the way. I made enough money that Teresa was able to go to school at night and stay with the kids during the day. I was also promoted to Senior Designer (Airport Design) at my engineering firm which came with a nice pay increase.
Then it all fell apart in one day. When Teresa was a semester away from her bachelor’s degree she fell and injured her leg. We thought it was a sprain. The leg healed but the pain never stopped. After several months of visits to different doctors and medical facilities they finally discovered that she had a rare nerve disorder called Reflex sympathetic dystrophy syndrome (RSDS). It is permanent, there is no cure, she will be in pain for the rest of her life and it will only slowly get worse.
I was now faced with two young girls to take care of, a baby boy, a full time job and a bedridden wife who needed my care as well. Every day was waking and getting the kids ready for school, going to work and then returning home to handle dinner, homework and attending to the wife and kids. The prescriptions alone were several hundred dollars per month, plus the multiple monthly Doctor visits, and Physical therapy. Things got bad fast, and we had to sell the house before we were foreclosed on.
Things were better in the apartment as I had more time to take care of Teresa and the kids. I also got promoted to CAD manager and was elected to the Board of Directors for Autodesk Users Group International (AUGI), an AutoCAD community with over 170,000 active members worldwide. Things were beginning to improve again.
Then in 2009 I was laid off from my job. We almost lost the apartment but somehow managed to survive. After nine months of unemployment I got a job making half of what I used to make and I had to step down from the Board at AUGI. The stress of being a married “single parent” with a wife to care for as well, took its toll on me over the years. From early morning to late at night I never stopped working at home and at work. I was not the go-getter anymore, and I wasn’t the funny optimist my friends used to love.
I was surviving, not living and I was a person who had let the world win.
Then one day, a friend of mine needed a ride for herself and my step daughter to an audition at A Petrified Forest. I had no intention of auditioning. When I brought them there, I just loved the place at first site. So on a whim I auditioned. Since this is about being a scare actor, you've probably already inferred the rest of that story. I got hired.
The part that isn't obvious is what happened to me afterwards. One day about half way through the first year, I was making breakfast, I was exhausted, bruised and so sore I could barely walk, on top of the fact that I was completely sleep deprived. My middle daughter Deanna walked in and said “what is going on out there in that forest?” I told her I didn’t know what she meant. She said I was smiling while I was making breakfast. She said I never smiled anymore and noticed that I was making jokes again too. She said I was like "my old Dad again" before Mom got sick. She said she really missed that Dad a lot, and she hugged me.
After my first night in the Forest, right after my first big scare, I knew I would want to do it forever. But that moment with Deanna, that was the moment I knew the Forest would never be able to get rid of me. It brought back a part of me that I thought I had lost and I didn’t even see it happening.
So when the owners say that they appreciate all of us scare actors, and we are the ones to make it all happen, I’m not buying it. I know the truth, we are the ones lucky to be there.
It’s an amazing amount of fun when you're in the middle of a night and getting scare after scare, it's empowering, cathartic and an incredible rush at the same time. Seeing the people getting scared and then laughing because you got them is just magic. I will always strive to be better, think of a new things to say to the guests, what body language to use, or even figure out how to come at them in a better way.
But for me it reminds me that I can be more than what I thought I was. When life had beaten me down my haunt family lifted me back up. You can never repay that, but I'm going to try.
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