I just got back from Montauk, where I attended a wild Halloween party at Sole East — a hotel that uses this event to close out the season.
The locals came out in full force, wearing costumes so creative and elaborate it feels like they spent all year preparing them.
There were Rockettes, women from The Handmaid’s Tale, and characters from Wet Hot American Summer.
Some people went niche. One group dressed as piping plovers, the endangered birds that shut down Montauk’s annual Fourth of July fireworks show this year after deciding to nest at the launch site. One fisherman dressed as the swordfish he caught the previous week.
Since it’s spooky season, I interviewed Jim Lorenzo, the owner of BloodManor — the scariest haunted house in New York City. It’s located in a space that once served as a studio for a Civil War photographer, so clearly there are ghosts there.
Visitors make their way through a maze of rooms, where they’re greeted by clowns, bloody doctors, and housekeepers and astronauts back from the dead. There are skulls, dismembered body parts, and blood-soaked props everywhere. Jimmy Fallon and Kevin Hart even visited for a show segment, where they couldn’t stop screaming.
This year, Lorenzo introduced a ticket where, for $350, you get outfitted in full makeup and costume and then get put on the floor to deliver the thrills. The ticket is called “The Scare Experience,” and honestly, the price feels like a bargain to see the inner-workings of a place like this.
Read below for my conversation with Jim. He talked me through the following:
What makes a good actor in a haunted house
The two rules all actors in the haunted house must follow
Why he wants to scare people the old-fashioned way and stay away from AI