At McKamey Manor, people pay to be kidnapped, bound, masked, slapped, stomped on and held under water over an eight-hour ‘tour’. But unlike other ‘extreme haunts’ of the same variety, here there’s no safe word to make it stop

On a balmy California morning, three daredevils park in front of an elementary school and lean against their cars, trying to appear nonchalant as they wait to be kidnapped. They’re the guests of McKamey Manor, an interactive “extreme haunt” which has a cult-like devotion online.

The kidnappers are up the road in the manor, a grand name for a San Diego suburban house smelling of dog pee. They’re busy applying finishing touches to their outfits. Andrew Sweeney, 6ft5in and with a beard thick as a shoebrush, puts on a tattered shirt splattered with red and a fabric bag with eye-holes over his head. He looks like a demonic lumberjack.

“I’m not going to lie,” he says from inside the hood. “I go hard on the big guys. I’ve got three kids, a lady and six dogs – a lot going on in my life. This is a great de-stresser.” His tools today include plastic restraints, a rope and a robust-looking airtight plastic bag which fits snugly over an adult human head.

Ryan Lawrence also sports a beard, plus a nose ring and tattoos (an assortment of webs, skulls and a horned devil). He has his face painted kabuki white, with coal-black rings around the eyes. “I’m the enforcer,” he smiles. “I’m here to make sure no one makes it out. I get carried away. I don’t really have a line.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guests read a waiver for McKamey Manor as they sit in storm drain run-off. Photograph: Mae Ryan/The Guardian

For the past decade, the manor has hosted a handful of guests each weekend, challenging them to last the eight-hour “tour”. Marines and cage fighters, cops and bikers, plumbers and clerks, housewives and beauticians – all have tried.

None succeeded.

You can watch them on YouTube whimpering and trembling, begging for mercy, for it to stop. This only fuels a clamour to get in: there is apparently a waiting list of 27,000 people.

The half-dozen kidnappers are volunteer “actors” who originally came here as guests and now return to pass on that suffering, with glee, to others. A writer on The Truth about McKamey Manor, one of the several Facebook groups which monitor and criticise the haunt, accused it of recklessly endangering people by not properly training them.

“The possible consequences such as dry drowning or possible damage to lungs were never explained. If actors weren’t aware of these consequences and possible life-threatening situations, it’s fair to say that they had no idea what they were doing. The actors were never told what to do in certain situations, for example how to properly approach someone who is having a panic attack or loses consciousness,” one wrote.

Today, Lawrence is especially motivated because one of the “victims” is a 44-year-old woman named Christina Buster who, for reasons best known to herself, spent the past year taunting Lawrence and his colleagues on Facebook by branding them as inept and feeble abusers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Christina Buster reading the waiver: ‘There will be no safe word.’ Photograph: Mae Ryan/The Guardian

“I’m going to tear that girl apart,” says Lawrence, indignant. “I’ll drag her by her bald head. No one is leaving with eyebrows today.”

Modern audiences demand extremes; torture porn franchises such as Saw and Hostel have now migrated to the mainstream. Less well known is this boom in “extreme haunts” in which people sign liability waivers and pay more than $40 to stumble through dark, dungeon-like places where actors grab and manhandle them to amplify the frights. The pioneer, Blackout, has staged slick events in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. If things get too disturbing, punters yell a contractually stipulated “safe word” to exit the fantasy.



McKamey Manor, in contrast, does not make money. It operates as a nonprofit, taking just a handful of visitors each weekend and accepting payment only in dog food. It is also unique in not having a safe word, says Jon Schnitzer, who is making a documentary about extreme haunts.

“This manor gave me actual nightmares. It’s the only one where you don’t decide when to quit,” he says. That can be an issue when you’re being being bound, masked and held under water, slapped and stomped on, and compelled to eat your own vomit.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Actors from McKamey Manor force Beth Hipple to do sit-ups while they take her hostage. Photograph: Mae Ryan

The svengali is Russ McKamey, a hale, hearty showman who moonlights as a wedding singer, flashes toothy smiles and uses words like “rascal” and “critter”.

When I first interview McKamey in his office, a cramped room cluttered with horror memorabilia, he is in marketing mode. “Everyone is so blasé about what happens in the world. They need a safe release. It’s about creating a cinematic experience and making people feel they’re living their own horror movie. Movies can’t fool us anymore. It’s really hard to get emotions out of people.”

On that score, the manor delivers. It generates anxiety, fear, revulsion and, eventually, relief. “It’s survival horror boot camp,” says McKamey, who spent 23 years in the navy and still sports a buzz cut.

His single-storey detached house started hosting Halloween haunts for children about 15 years ago. Gradually they became rougher, for adults only, with the host filming and posting the results online. “We were pretending to cut hair but YouTube critics said, yah, fake, so thanks to the naysayers we had to ramp it up and bring more reality to it,” he recalls. “Every year it’s got more crazy, more aggressive. We wouldn’t be infamous if we weren’t able to deliver the product.”

Which is?

A sly grin. “100% fear. We’re good at it. We’re the best at it.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Guests are forced head first into storm drain run-off. Photograph: Mae Ryan/The Guardian

This is achieved, he says, by imposing physical and psychological stress until people break, a process begun the moment they sign the waiver. “Pretty soon it becomes real. There’s no break. It’s non-stop. The whole goal is to get you exhausted so we have better control over you.”

And then?

Another grin. “As a (film) director everything I’m doing is geared towards capturing magic Kodak moments.” Translation: close-ups of jabbering, screaming and retching, occasionally with a cockroach or tarantula scurrying across the face.

Punishment escalates if you swear because McKamey, of all people, has a puritanical streak: he says he does not smoke, drink alcohol or coffee or “cuss”. There is no nudity or sexual suggestion in the manor.

“This is a live theatrical performance,” says McKamey, who majored in theatre studies before joining the navy. “It’s not real. If people were really hurt we’d be shut down. It’s smoke and mirrors.”

I’m not sure what to make of his statement, as some of it is real: the violence, the claustrophobic confinement, the forced-feeding, the choking.

A lively community of online critics brands McKamey an abomination, a sadist, a psychopath and worse. He shrugs them off as haters. However, that perception is a problem because, having recently been laid off from the navy, he now wants to make the manor commercial. San Diego regulations preclude that, so he must move. Protests scotched an envisaged site in Illinois so he is now preparing another, undisclosed location.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Some people climb Mount Everest, this is another challenge.’ Photograph: Mae Ryan/The Guardian

Today is the last hurrah for the San Diego house so a “special” farewell haunting is planned. A day earlier, McKamey tried to cajole two local women to participate. Lindsey Boley, a 36-year-old housewife and mother of three, and Nadia Nagor, 28, a fashion blogger and stylist, had each done it once before and were mulling a return visit.

“It intrigues me,” said Boley. “Some people climb Mount Everest, this is another challenge. You want to be the first person to conquer it. In your head it’s torture, but it’s a show.” If it felt like torture, was it not therefore torture? A pause. “I’m a masochist. A lot of it doesn’t bother me.”

Both women were proud of the resilience they showed in McKamey’s videos but were unsure about showing up for a sequel. Boley was due to start a warehouse loading job and feared injury. Nagor had a wedding the following week. “I’ll go looking like Sinead O’Connor.” McKamey promised she would keep her hair. Nagor looked sceptical. “Russ is so nice, but in the manor a switch flips.”

Neither shows up next day at the car park. Instead three other victims turn up, trying to not look self-conscious in their onesies. Families drive by and a couple play frisbee in an adjacent park, unconcerned. Make-believe abductions are routine sights here, though McKamey always notifies police to avoid misinterpretations.

Christina Buster, pale and thin, wears a frown and a Scooby-Doo outfit. A year ago she took a break from her job as a US government-contracted logistical analyst in Kuwait to test her resolve in McKamey Manor. She lasted five minutes, turning so hysterical McKamey yanked her out. Since then she has begged to return – and taunted her would-be tormentors in the process.

“Last time was brutal,” Buster says in a quavery voice. “I’ve come back to test my limits, push myself further. I’m nervous and I’m scared. I’m expecting to be torn limb from limb, to get it worse.” She gives a wan smile. “I’m probably going to regret it big time.”

Spencer Caine sports a grin and a pink onesie with images of donuts. He is 19, worked as an actor at the manor a year earlier and is studying associative justice in hope of becoming a DEA agent. His motivation: a chance to star in a mooted McKamey Manor reality show. Like Buster, he too has posted on Facebook to brand the tormentors as softies.

Beth Hipple, a nursing student, wears a beige teddybear onesie. “This weekend is going to be interesting. Mckamey Manor here I come. Ready to put myself to the test!” she posted on Facebook the day before. There is no time to talk to her because McKamey and a posse of balaclavas swoop, marching the prisoners from the car park to an isolated wooded copse with a pungent smell.

I can partly empathise with the doomed trio. The previous afternoon my film-making and photographer colleague Mae Ryan and I submitted to a “sissy” induction. McKamey and an accomplice with zombie-style contact lenses taped balaclavas to our heads and ordered us into a “rat run”, which turned out to be labyrinth of metal cages barely big enough for crawling. Whomever escaped first would avoid a “terrible punishment”.

My sequential thoughts, over the course of approximately 10 minutes, were as follows:

• The balaclava is hot and smelly and I can’t see anything. • This is kind of scary and exciting. • I should be chivalrous and let Mae win, take the punishment myself. • It’s very hot and cramped and I’m snagged on something. • I’m getting out. Sorry Mae. • I can’t get out. • Fuck this, I can hardly breathe or move. • LET ME OUT (this thought possibly verbalised).

McKamey let us out and there was no punishment because that was obviously, ahem, a bluff.

The trio committed to the non-sissy version, in contrast, receive no mercy. It all happens very fast. One moment they are standing in the sunshine, the next they are in a gloomy copse, on their knees, hands bound, with masking tape wrapped around their heads. As instructed, they crawl into a pool of fetid water by a storm drain.

“Why have you come back, grandma?” a tormentor bellows at Buster, shoving her face in the murk. He yanks her out by the hair and plunges her back in. Another works on Beth. Two focus on Caine – smacking and slapping, pulling his hair out in tufts, ramming a soiled rag in his mouth when he gasps for air. His eyes bulge. “You gonna cry Spencer? You gonna cry?”

At one point the trio, sodden with black filth, eyes wild, is forced into the mouth of the drain. Two men clamber on top and grab Hipple and Buster’s long hair, stretching it taut, while others jab the cowering figures. They resemble a Hieronymus Bosch tableau of the damned. Their transformation is shocking.

All of this happened before they have signed liability waivers.

They are then dragged one at a time to McKamey, who films as they read the form out loud (Clause 20: “Participant agrees there is no quitting unless serious physical or psychological injury is present.” Clause 25: “Participant fully understands that at many times they will be in a panic state of anxiety, in which they feel that they will drown and they may die.”)

All sign, even Buster, who looks half-dead. The tormentors whoop in delight and reward the captives with a fresh barrage of slaps. Sweeney, the de-stressing lumberjack, tosses them like dolls into the back of a black pick-up truck and they are driven to the manor to begin the official “tour”.

It begins with the rat-run. Unable to see or properly breathe, encased in soaking clothes, they inch through the maze while being hosed, prodded and screamed at. “I quit,” whimpers Hipple. Sweeney growls. “We tell you when you quit! Move!”

On it goes, the process of breaking their will with blasts of cold water, smacks and contraptions which include a medieval gibbet, a water tank and a chair with buckles and straps for force-feeding. When they shave Buster’s head, her shrieks could be heard down the street. “Help!” No one did.

All the while, incongruous normality reigns in other parts of the house. Sweeney’s three young children sit on a sofa watching cartoons. They seem oblivious to the shouts next door. (“I told you no cussing Spencer!” “Are you bleeding grandma? You’re disgusting.”) At points, tormentors wander into the kitchen for breaks, flushed and sweating. “Whoo! What a day,” says one, peeling off a balaclava. He eyes the snacks. “Chocolate chip? Awesome!”

After three hours, Caine, trussed in a straitjacket, is released and dumped on a sofa. Masking tape is peeled off to reveal a bruised, swollen, tearful face. Bald patches dot his scalp. “Please Russ, I’m done,” he moans. McKamey puts the camera close and asks for his verdict. Caine can barely focus. “Noooo,” he sobs. “Nooo, it’s horrible.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The tormentors rest in McKamey’s living room after a four hour experience at the Manor. Photograph: Mae Ryan/The Guardian

Given a blanket, water and a cookie, he slowly revives and almost smiles when his erstwhile tormentors commend him on a “good job”. Sweeney, demonic lumberjack no more, is especially warm and chatty and compares notes with Caine about the experience, as if analysing a baseball game. “It’s rough but really it’s just a show,” he observes.

Hipple is next out and sinks on the sofa. “It was too much, way too much.” Her legs and arms are covered in welts and bruises but she is relieved to have retained her tresses. “I don’t regret doing it,” she says, through tears, “but I’m never ever ever doing that again”. Later on Facebook she will call it the most terrifying experience. “But I am so happy that I did it and lasted four hours!”

Then comes Buster, who lasted four-and-a-half hours. The crew applauds her like a successful game show contestant. “Good job! You’re a tough chick.”

She trembles and looks awful but is remarkably composed. “I don’t feel I was tortured or abused,” she says, patting a greyhound. “It pushed me to my limits. I’m proud of myself. I still hold the record as the oldest person to go through.”

Will she return? Buster pops an M&M in her mouth and gives a rueful smile. “Yeah.”