TWIS Asks: Frightmares owner John Rusnak

A giant foam skull looms ominously above John Rusnak, its open mouth seemingly engulfing him as he excitedly describes the best way to remove fake-blood stains from skin.

"You have to let the suds sit on your hands for a lot longer than normal," he tells an employee, whose stained palms had been drawing strange looks at school. "At least five minutes. I know it sounds weird, but it's the only way to draw that out of your skin."

Such is ordinary workday fodder for Rusnak, a veteran haunted-house operator, filmmaker and the man behind Sarasota's popular Frightmares haunted house. The attraction opens in less than a day, and he's equally excited to be back at the Sarasota Fairgrounds as he is anxious for the impending long day of fine tuning his house of horrors.

"It's always down to the wire," he says with a knowing smile.

Rusnak took a break from perfecting bloodstain patterns and arranging severed limbs to discuss the new location, his scream-filled career and what keeps him up at night.

So, you're back at the Sarasota Fairgrounds '” what else is new this year?

Well, I used to host Tomb Of Terror here, and I've been trying to get back into this space for about four years now, and I was finally able to. It's more centrally located here, and there's better parking. As far as the theme goes, we've added some new animatronics and some water scares. We've also got some new scenes. There's a small church and a graveyard scene. We just finished building a brand new skull for the entrance, too. Last year we had a big clown head, and a lot of people said they were too scared to come in because of it.

You've had a busy year since last Halloween; what influences have you incorporated in this year's setup?

The church, actually. I worked on a movie that was filmed in a lot of closed down churches, and they kind of scared me. They were these old Georgia churches, too, so it was just kind of creepy.

It's hard to imagine you can be creeped out. What scares you?

Other people's haunted houses. I don't ever know what's in there! There are a lot of creative people in the industry, and if you have the time and money, you can do some incredible things. My own haunted house is nothing, but other people's are unpredictable, and I'm scared to death. I'm also really claustrophobic.

How would you describe your haunted house using a song title?

I'd say, "The Beautiful People," by Marilyn Manson (laughs). We always sing that back and forth to each other while we're working. We work such long hours in here that we just start doing ridiculous stuff to pass the time. We'll start singing songs like that and inserting our own names into it. We also give everybody nicknames. We have Snowball, Salamander, Ginger. We like to have fun.

Who would you most like to scare in your haunted house?

I think it'd be fun to have Rosie O'Donnell come in here, since she's supposed to be moving here. It would be awesome if we could get Stephen King to come through.

What would be the perfect haunted house for you?

It would be great to have a house that was up all year long, but only open for the season. I could continually upgrade it and make it better and better and more real all year.

What goes into making a haunted house successful?

It's probably 1/3 actors, 1/3 props and 1/3 the person going through the haunted house. Their perception has a lot to do with it, and that's something I didn't know before. I'll have people come up to me and tell me how much they liked a certain room, and the way they describe it is completely different from how it actually is. People create their own vision of what they want to see.

Why do you think people like to be scared?

I think it makes people feel alive, and like they're experiencing something. When do you feel most alive? It's when you feel like something might happen.

Is this a job that's hard to leave at work?

It is. When I do this, I have nightmares every year, but it's nightmares where I'll wake up in the middle of the night thinking about the power going out, or something not working. It's a stress dream. I'm kind of a perfectionist, so my biggest fear is probably that people will come through the haunted house and not be happy. You hear people going through these $1-million productions, and then they come out and say it sucked '” that's scary.

Frightmares opens at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 17 and runs through Friday, Nov. 1 at the Sarasota Fairgrounds. Tickets are $16 or $30 for a fast pass. For a complete list of dates and times, visit frightmareshauntedhouse.com