Halloween Horror Nights scare actors say they often deal with harassment and assault from belligerent guests

18.10.2023 - 02:15 / insider.com

Scare actorsat horror theme parks like Universal Studios Hollywood and Orlando often have to deal with assault and harassment from belligerent guests for a job that pays little more than minimum wage, employees told Insider.

Workers wearing elaborate costumes and make-up at horror-fied theme parks say they enjoy scaring the living hell out of guests who willfully attend these attractions every Halloween season.

Peyton McCormick, an actor and comedian, is working her second year at Universal Studios Hollywood's Halloween Horror Nights in Los Angeles, California. Her first year was a decade ago, in 2013.

She told Insider there's a unique pleasure in seeing guests' reactions when you've successfully terrified them.

"There is nothing more hilarious than seeing the fear on someone's face when you pop out and really get them," McCormick said. "So it's a very fulfilling job. There's a lot of times where I am cracking up right after a good scare."

But there are two caveats to the job, she said: The pay isn't great, and there are always people who get violent.

"The majority of people are wonderful and they showed up for the right reasons," McCormick said. "But there's always a handful of people, and by handful I mean a big handful of people who are there to start fights with the performers, it seems."

This year, McCormick says dealing with belligerent guests can be particularly frustrating as many of the employees at her park are also actors going without pay due to the Hollywood strike.

The SAG-AFTRA union, representing about 160,000 actors and other media employees, is in its third month of striking. Negotiations came to a halt on Wednesday.

"Performers have gone through a lot this year with these strikes," McCormick said. "We've had to fight so hard just to earn a living wage, which we don't necessarily still have, so we don't need to be punched in the face at work."

Jordan Allen, a firefighter who works at horror theme parks during the season, told Insider that violent encounters with guests have been common even before he started working as a scare actor 14 years ago.

"I've had a handful of occasions through my years of scaring, where people actually try to throw punches at me," Allen, who currently works as a scare actor at Universal Studios Orlando, said. "One person got his hands on me, but I was able to subdue him to the ground."

While he couldn't say if guests were more problematic this season, Allen said the issue worsened in the past few years after the COVID lockdowns.

"I have seen with my own eyes multiple instances of just more aggression by people, even if it's just verbal," he said.

McCormick and Allen say that the perpetrators can vary across the spectrum: old, young, men, women, sober, or