Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal
By Dave Frank
Nevada Appeal Staff Writer
Brittney Kinsley lists the characters she's played at the Grimes Castle haunted house - a maid, an evil doctor and a torture victim - but she is interrupted by owner Michael Grimes before she can describe her role as a maid.
Grimes points to a seat splashed with red paint that's sitting in pile of materials and props at the warehouse where the haunted house is being built.
"There's the bloody toilet that she was puking in," he said smiling Tuesday.
But an interest in going to haunted houses or even horror movies, Grimes said, are not the reasons he bought and opened the haunted house three years ago.
"I never liked them before I bought this place, and I'm still not too fond of them," he said.
But his teenage niece and nephew liked going through haunted houses, and he said entertaining people like that sounded fun.
The 4,000-square-foot haunted house opened Friday in Carson City. But three days before, Grimes said he and house director Brian Fenn didn't know what they would put in several of the rooms.
"You want to put this strobe (light) by the dead body?" he asked Fenn as they toured the house.
"Yeah, anywhere," Fenn said.
Props are only part of what makes a haunted house scary, though, Fenn said. The actors make a good show.
Kinsley said some people try to act tough and refuse to be scared, but others are scared before they even see the actor who works to surprise them, like she did as an evil doctor she played one year.
"I mutilated my victim and then chased people out of the room with a chain saw," she said.
Drama students, haunted house lovers and others have joined as actors, and this year Grimes even got his 80-year-old mother, Barbara Grimes, to play a witch who will greet people as they come in.
She said she doesn't mind and is proud of all the ideas her son comes up with.
"Oh," she said, "I've done all kinds of things."
But building the haunted house for over a month has been difficult at times for everyone, Michael Grimes said, referring to the one half-broken box fan they have at the warehouse.
"We have our own little nightmares," Fenn said.
• Contact reporter Dave Frank at dfrank@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1212.
If you go
WHAT: Grimes Castle haunted house
WHERE: 3579 Highway 50 East, #113
WHEN: 7-10 p.m. on the following days: Today; Oct. 17-19; Oct. 24-26; Oct. 30-Nov. 2
INFO: 220-5031, www.grimescastle.com or www.myspace.com/grimescastle