Nightmare on Suzhou Creek

Things that go bump in the night, decapitated ghouls and Nosferatu have all found a new home in an old warehouse on Suzhou Creek that stands as the first American-style haunted house in China.

With Halloween on the horizon next Saturday, co-founder Gan Quan assembled this frightful family of bugs, blood-suckers and hair-raisers with the help of his art-director girlfriend to give Shanghai residents a horror story to remember this fall.

State-of-the-art visual pyrotechnics lend even greater credibility to the gore-fest.

"This haunted house is unlike anything people have seen before in China," said the 26-year-old. "This house tells a story. It combines art, thrills and a touch of magic, and it brings together some of the most stunning visual and audio effects that we have seen in our travels across America."

Based inside a 107-year-old building, the haunted house features ghouls, ghosts, a stomach-jolting "beheading room" and other props such as jailhouse doors to maintain a dread-imbued ambience, as paying guests walk through the 500-square-meter property bracing at every turn.

One by one the lights go out as the intrepid visitor is blanketed in darkness upon setting foot in the first corridor. There are 13 scenarios to walk through, starting with a girl in a nightgown crawling cross a darkened hallway, creepy rooms full of rogue surgeons, dead teenagers and cockroaches on the walls.

For anyone foolhardy enough to laugh the affair off as pure smoke and mirrors, Gan has employed a so-called "scream team" to try and scare the living daylights out of them; all in the name of fun, of course.

"Each scenario has a story and visitors are invited to be part of the narrative," said Gan.

"For example, in the first chamber you'll be told to turn to the girl's wardrobe, which is also the channel linking to the next scenario, to help her find something.

"Most haunted houses in China lack good storylines, but we have placed a heavy accent on grim plots, striking lighting and atmospheric sound effects."

After squeezing into the little girl's closet and trying to navigate between two inflatable walls as chilly currents fill the air, guests enter a smoke and laser-lit forest before having to wind their way through a spinning tube splattered with day-glo paint.

"We visited 15 haunted houses in the US to study their special effects and we took classes at HauntCon, a tradeshow for the haunted house industry, to learn how to build and manage it," said Gan, who has a background in engineering.

"With (my girlfriend) Charlie's background in art, this made us the perfect team to bring an event like this to China."

Gan, who grew up in the United States, came up with the idea last October when he visited Shanghai and discovered there was a promising niche in the market.

With trick or treating not a part of Chinese culture, there was nothing to do on the Devil's birthday in the city except drive a fake dagger through your forehead, go to a club and get blind drunk - if you could find a themed party being staged in the city, that is.

"There was no Halloween atmosphere in the air and there was nobody out trick or treating," said Gan. "So we wanted to introduce this, very fun, part of American culture to the people of Shanghai, because we felt the people here were ready for it."

Gan and his 26-year-old girlfriend Charlie Xu subsequently packed in their jobs and spent last winter drawing up design and logistical plans to turn part of China's financial hob into a lucrative collective nightmare.

"This has never really been done before on the mainland, so the possibilities were endless, and we soon realized that the project would be, apart from anything else, a lot of fun," said Gan.

"We're not a big company just trying to turn a quick buck. We're just two passionate individuals who quit their corporate jobs at (chip maker) Intel to bring something new to Shanghai's vibrant nightlife scene."

Gan said that entertainment-based haunted houses often have humble beginnings - and not the kind that begin with an unsolved murder or the undead looking for revenge.

"In America, many aficionados started building the first part of their haunted houses in their garages, so it's not necessary to buy something that has already been made," he said.

Xu said the maturity of the haunted house industry in the US served as an indispensable practical guide.

"We also learned lots of things by attending a five-day training course run by HauntCon in Wisconsin about how to do set-ups, make-up, training the actors and taking care of the safety issues," she added.

The next step was to find a suitable location in Shanghai. After giving some thought to places like 1933 and other event venues, they finally chanced upon a warehouse with a "For Lease" sign on Suzhou Creek and opted for this to keep costs down.

Despite the over-arching themes of death and peril that pervade every haunted house, Gan was at pains to make sure that the risk of winding up on the wrong side of the gateway to the afterlife was slim.

"There's an emergency exit in each room, and if you shout 'safety!' at any point a team of trained stuff will run and save you from whatever mortal peril you may be in," he said.

However, at Shanghai nightmare, nothing is quite what it seems.

"The person you think is the safest in the group may turn out to be the most dangerous, and he or she may be standing right next to you," said Gan, betraying a bent for practical jokes that lies at the heart of every great scare-monger.

Those interested in taking the fear factor to the next level can even purchase VIP tickets to learn how to terrify their companions.

Shanghai Nightmare ends with a "Monster Bar" that provides drinks and other comforts to settle frayed nerves.

The five-week-long attraction is already seeing 800 guests a day, twice its original target. It remains open through next weekend.

(China Daily 10/24/2009 page13)