The horror of South Seattle

The atmosphere of Seattle's industrial district just south of Safeco Field is thoroughly creepy at night, and the air is ripe with anticipation -- one never knows what lurks in the next dark alley. The water of Lake Union laps softly in the distance, and occasionally the scream of a far-off train whistle breaks the stillness of the night. The location is perfect.

Then something shatters the stillness of the night: Britney Spears, crooning "I wanna get in the zone." While it's easy to understand why the KISS 106.1 Haunted House is broadcasting the radio station's playlist from a pair of giant speakers, it's not altogether mood-appropriate.

The ramshackle warehouse on the outskirts of Seattle doesn't quite resemble the haunted houses horror stories are made of, but it holds it's own. Surrounded by industrial buildings whose daunting facades and monstrous equipment loom in the darkness, one can see the city skyline in the distance, where the buildings loom like a backdrop of a Halloween school play.

From the warehouse comes the sporadic group of screams; it seems as though the place is serving its purpose. The shrieks buoy the spirits of the viewer expecting just another ho-hum haunted house and strike anticipatory fear into the more faint-of-heart.

Inside, "guests" are greeted by a woman in a formal gown and hoodie whose face makeup indicates that she was having plastic surgery, but could only pay for half the procedure. It's not as scary as it is gross to look at. Before entering, groups are made to scream as loud as possible. One group has to do it three times. Some of the women confess to having a cold.

"That's pathetic," says the woman in the gross makeup, "but I'll let you in anyway." She leads the group to a door and yells, "Tiny, are you hungry?" The group is ushered into an almost pitch-black room, in the middle of which is a giant box. On cue, the giant jack-in-the-box pops open and a monstrous head springs out.

People are unleashed into a maze of darkness and special effects, some cheap, some theatrical, but few genuinely scary. There are a number of creepy-looking people in costume lurking about, but they don't chase, nor do they have scary weapons or the murderous gleam in their eyes necessary to send a chill down the spine.

One path becomes more frustrating than it is scary as the viewer gropes around, almost hoping someone in a witch's costume will pop out of the darkness so they can follow them into her next room.

The rooms are awash in glow-in-the-dark paint and some artfully done caricatures of skeletons and goblins. The horror-movie theme is shown by talented actors who portray snippets of horror movies, like The Ring and The Exorcist, on detailed sets -- but the actors seem oblivious to the hecklers around them.

The problem with this is that visitors feel like they're watching the scene, but not part of the action. If the recognizable murderer in the Jason mask were to turn after the spectators, and if he had his trademark chainsaw clutched in his hand, it would be a different story.

Although it's more theatrical than scary, this haunted house has one thing going for it that will inevitably attract Seattle's haunted-house-hopping population: it's actually in Seattle, unlike almost all other Seattle-based radio-station-sponsored haunts. If nothing else, one has to give this one a dismembered thumb up for that.