Amenti Haunted House strives for more ‘wet pants’ this Halloween season

By ZAK QUIGGLE

The Egyptian Theatre is opening its doors to anyone brave enough to wander the depths of the ancient Egyptian underworld.

The now-annual haunted house will be open from 7 to 11 p.m. Oct. 26-31.

The haunted house, which winds its way through all six levels of the theater-turned-labyrinth, will include more than 20 “scenes” focused on the seven deadly sins and is intended to scare more than screams out of the patrons.

“Last year, we had over 30 wet pants. These are full-grown adults and college students,” said Alex Nerad, operations director of the Egyptian Theatre. “We don’t recommend this for anyone under 12 years old, although sometimes the 8-year-olds are braver than the adults.”

The theater has been planning the event since January, discussing ideas for scares and building the scenes during more than 1,000 volunteer hours.

This year, Nerad hopes the haunted house will compete with the professional ones in the area.

“We’ve really stepped it up this year,” Nerad said. “I don’t like to give too much away, but I can say we had a very good response last year. We had many full-grown adults running and screaming for the door.”

The Amenti Haunted House, named after the Egyptian goddess of the underworld, represents the Egyptian Theatre’s largest fundraising event of the year. General admission is $10, or $20 for a VIP pass to the front of the line. Last year’s longest wait time was 1.5 hours.

The wet-pants statistic is something the organizers and workers take pride in, tallying that night’s count at the daily meetings.

When asked what this year’s wet-pants goal is, Nerad matter-of-factly said, “We would like to hit 40 or 50.”