Professional scarer found her inner creature at Field of Screams

You’re on the clock. There’s a fog machine, strobe lights and maniacal laughter in the background. You pop out from behind a sheet in a monster mask, say something so unhinged a grown man loses control of his bladder.

Job done.

For scare actors in the iconic horror mazes at Field of Screams that’s just life for a part of the year. Raine Simon is a veteran scare actor in the field and she said it’s a bizarre, challenging job, but it changed her life for the better.

“It’s the ultimate improv experience. While you’re out there in the field, you’re out in the dark, and you’re in a whole new world with flashing lights and strange sounds and loud music, and there’s just crowds of people going past you. All the while you’re out there, and you’re part of this big show while also an individual act,” Simon said.

Field of Screams is the biggest Halloween attraction in the Okanagan. Several elaborate mazes are set up at O’Keefe Ranch in Vernon as dozens of scare actors wait for patrons to prey upon.

Amy Hollowick is the casting director for the scare actors and she’s been working Field of Screams since 2017. She had a brief stint as a scare actor herself where she wore a fake strongman muscle suit and a mask.

“I made a guy lose a shoe one time. He was running in the maze and he came around the corner, and I scared him, and he jumped, lost a shoe, and then started running. So I picked up his shoe, and I was chasing him trying to give his shoe back, but also trying to scare him more, and he was just getting more and more freaked out,” she said.

The process for scare actors has evolved over Hollowick’s tenure. In the beginning they were just scary costumes, but as the years went on, the event staff have put more emphasis on creating characters and telling stories through the mazes.

Now when they audition scare actors they find someone who fits the look or vibe of a particular character, then the organizers work with the actor to develop a deeper and truly terrifying character. Hollowick said they’ll also build on an actor’s existing skillset to round out a performance.

“We have one girl who can do a backbend, so we use her skill to her advantage and put her into a position where she can do that, because it’s really freaky in the middle of the maze,” she said. “We take everything into account, and pick where each person would fit best.”

This is Simon’s fourth year working and scaring at the iconic horror maze attraction. She liked acting in high school, but getting on stage wasn’t something she felt comfortable doing until her first year as a scare actor when she was 23.

“I found an incredible amount of confidence that came out of just doing this every year,” she said.

Simon said she’s generally a bubbly person, but something emerged from within her when she played the demon Lust in the Seven Deadly Sins themed maze.

“I was this nervous kid. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing,” she said. “I was wearing a corset, and I had these crazy demon horns, and I was on like a bed. . . Something unlocked in me. It was the complete opposite of who I was as a person, very dominating the room and really just getting in people’s faces and yelling and screaming, and it was so unlike me that it became me a little bit.”

She said she’s made tons of friends, grown as an actor and as a person since she became a scare actor. It’s an exhausting gig, being high energy for hours on end and immersed in a horrifying world as a strange character.

“At the beginning of the night, you can feel the thrill amongst all the actors. They get put in their places, and you can just hear them whooping and howling, and people embracing the catharticism,” she said.

There’s more than one way to be scary for these actors. Simon said sometimes it’s about the freaky dialogue, sometimes it’s weird body movements, jump scares or just using the maze environment to your advantage.

Last year, Simon was a creepy crawly character in a spooky sheet maze which she used strategically.

“The way that section was laid out, most people couldn’t tell which way they were going, and so we’d just end up, almost Scooby-Doo style, running around in a circle. The same entrance over and over and over again, and we’d just get this long like three, four rounds of running around in a circle,” she said.

Sometimes people run or scream or laugh when they get scared, but Simon said sometimes people have an unfortunate reaction.

“A couple times a year, you’ll scare someone so bad they will collapse to the ground and be like, ‘I’m so sorry, I am peeing myself right now,’” she said.

Most of the time Simon runs a landscaping business, but every year she taps into her inner monster, finds camaraderie with the other scare actors and gets a sense of satisfaction from being part of such an elaborate production.

“If you’ve ever wanted to do this, give it a shot, even for one year. It might be pretty life-changing for you. It’s a job like no other,” Simon said.

Field of Screams is on at O’Keefe Ranch until Nov. 1.