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Get ready for your senses to be assaulted and your psyche to be unsettled. For this Halloween season, a group of off-broadway directors and producers created what they are calling New York’s most horrifying haunted house. It’s not for the squeamish, in fact, no one under 16 is admitted without a parent or guardian. We did send WNYC’s Richard Hake to the Lower East Side where the haunted house finds its home.

REPORTER: The old and weathered tenement buildings around Rivington, Delancey and Suffolk Streets look pretty haunted….especially after the sun goes down during a light rain storm.

Guests to the haunted house, called “Nightmare,” gather in the lobby of the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center and wait until they are taken inside the exhibit in small groups.

While waiting there is a warm-up. In the next room there’s a very dark labrynth which can talk anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour for patrons to complete.

MAN: I think I’m getting the hang of this.

REPORTER: But this is the easy part. The haunted house contains 13 rooms and according to one of the show’s producers, Laurie Connor, don’t expect the typical Halloween type characters.

CONNOR: We have live actors all through the venue and they act out basically scenes from people’s nightmares.

REPORTER: The 50 actors follow the lead of Psycho Clan, a successful off Broadway production company. Producer Amy Danis says the haunted house is part theater and part thrill.

DANIS: I don’t think we’re going for any momentous revelation, theatrical revelation. I think we are taking the traditional haunted house idea and theatricalizing it. So it’s not witches and goblins and skeletons.

REPORTER: Nightmare’s Director, Timothy Haskell, created the attraction last year on a smaller scale. He says scaring people isn’t just about startling them.

HASKELL: What’s fun about scaring people is finding something a little deeper than that. What I like to do with this is that yes, we have the boo stuff, the scare stuff, but I also hope that you leave this thing with a little bit of a creepiness inside you, some images you’ll remember.

REPORTER: Like the first dimly lit room where you sit on a small bench.

[SCREAMS]

A man stands with his back to you in front of a large commercial fan. He slowly moves toward the fan and gets real close. Then he leaps into it as the lights abruptly go out.

[SCREAMS]

The Audience is then pelted with some kind of wet goo…that quickly disappears.

Then there is the nightmare most people remember from childhood…some even adulthood.

We’re in a young girl’s bedroom. She looks frightened, checks the windows, the closet, looks around, gets up…..

[SCREAMS]

And then she’s viscously pulled ever so quickly by her feet under the bed.

Her mother then enters the room and escorts us out.

Then as the group passes the bed… guess who gets his leg attacked too.

[SCREAMS]

Chris Toland was on the tour…

TOLAND: First is never good.

REPORTER: He quickly learned not to trust the actors.

Of course a demented looking clown would pop up among the corn stalks.

Most of the passageways are narrow…you have to duck and they are very, very dark.

Nightmare’s Director, Tim Haskell….

HASKELL: Woman Scream the loudest, but men are the biggest pansies.

REPORTER: A big concern for the production is not how scared they can make the audience, but keeping their actors safe from the people. Sometimes during the late night showings patrons have had too much to drink.

HASKELL: They get real aggressive with the actors in the room. They really play up the bravado, their own machoism and they ruin it for themselves They’ll sometimes hit the actors out of fear. I guess that’s to impress their friends or something. What I don’t understand is that you paid us to scare you and now you’re trying to eliminate that.

REPORTER: Producer Laurie Connor says staging something like changes your comfort level.

CONNOR: There’s a challenge both for the actors, the creators and the actors and the audience members because there is no divide. There is no movie screen. There is no stage. If I have a mask on, you can’t get away from me.

REPORTER: And this haunted house does make you feel trapped. Especially when you’re escorted into a cramped room, made to almost kneel with only a little light coming from what looks like a glass window above your head.

Parts of the tour are very disturbing. You see a demon-like baby with glowing eyes. In another room…a woman smothers a child. John Reading…a new father… thought that was inappropriate.

READING: I have enough fears and anxieties about babies, I don’t need to see any type of zombified children.

REPORTER: For some reason many people have dreams about their teeth falling out. So…there’s a guy here who uses pliers to pull his own out…right in front of you.

Water is also really scary….even frozen.

And of course…what are most people disgusted by? Even the toughest New Yorker? It’s at the end of the tour….in a…you guessed it…dark narrow hallway.

[RAT SOUNDS]

Director Tim Haskell says some people really freak out when they hit this room.

HASKELL: The rats sometimes under perform. Ya know how they say in movies you’re not supposed to perform with animals and children in because they steal the show. Well that’s not true in a haunted house so much. Rats are very sleepy creatures I’ve discovered. And they sleep a lot.

REPORTER: The audience members in our group said they would recommend Nightmare to their friends.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was great. You knew what they were doing the whole time, but it still scared you because they are good actors. I think it was most scary because it was disturbing not because it was realistic, just the story lines were disturbing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: They creep up on you. It plays on your nightmares. There are things that are in there that are gross. Yeah…I really didn’t know what to expect, but it was good.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: It was fun, it was a lot of fun. I thought it was pretty good. I don’t like the rats….laughs….I’m sorry…..

REPORTER: Shhhhhh…...don’t give it away. Nightmare…New York City’s most horrifying haunted house is running through Halloween night at the Velez Cultural Center on Suffolk Street on the Lower East Side. For WNYC,

[SCREAMS]

I’m Richard Hake.

» WWW.HAUNTEDHOUSENYC.COM