As Halloween approaches quickly, many teenagers are making plans for the perfect spine-chilling fall activity – haunted houses. The thrill and fear that comes with walking or running through a haunted house is on brand for the spooky season. However, some students opt to do the scaring rather than being scared.

Senior Teah Stephenson and senior Lauren Donahue work at Hell’s Gate Haunted house as scare actors. This is their first year at this location after working at Disturbia Haunted House in previous years. Donahue describes how she got into the haunt industry.

“I didn’t even know it existed until Stephenson brought it up to me… we had to do an audition, they started calling out random things and you just had to act on what you thought was right,” Donahue said.

The job of a haunt actor doesn’t come up often in high school, so having such a unique job sets Stephenson and Donahue apart from many working teenagers. Both work at Panera in their limited free time, a haunted house job offers a break from the food service industry.

Along with the job of terrifying guests, frightening costumes and hyper-realistic gore makeup comes the long hours. Working 4:30-11 p.m. most weekends, Donahue and Stephenson make the half hour journey to Lockport to continue their passion.

Their job changes each week. Stephenson and Donahue get to experience different haunted roles to play in an attempt to scare guests. Each role is very different and requires a lot of focus to deliver it successfully.

“For the past couple days I was acting as an orphan so I have been going kind of crazy and jumping out at people trying to get good scares. I do find it enjoyable when people scream at me and I try hard not to laugh,” Donahue said.

The two only being at Hell’s Gate for a few weeks now have already begun making new relationships. Working with not many other teenagers, Donahue and Stephenson are able to connect with other people that share similar interests.

“My favorite part about it is that it’s so unique and different and there’s surprisingly a lot of people within it and a very supportive community. So I really love meeting new people and scaring people is also really fun but it’s so much more than that,” Stephenson said.