Carlos Curiel has played the role of barber in the 17th Door’s barber shop for eight years. He relishes the part and was happy to report that by the end of this year’s three-hour dress rehearsal, he’d completed around 60 cuts or shaves.
“Seventeen haircuts, eight beards, two eyebrows, over 10 very hairy chests and four armpits,” said Curiel, 43, of Brea, who goes by the nickname “Cochino” and has been with the attraction since it opened. “It was a very fun night. My cheeks were hurting from laughing so much.”
There’s a warning sign outside the barber shop: “If you sit in the barber’s chair, your hair will be cut. You may use the safe word ‘mercy’ to avoid having your hair cut.” But many guests let it happen.
This year, the 17th Door in Buena Park turns 10. It first opened at the Market Place in Tustin on Sept. 25, 2015 and the extreme haunted attraction experience originally gained some attention for its intimidating-sounding waiver, including potential exposure to “electrical shock, insects, water, claustrophobia, touching from our staff, strobe lighting, fog, dizziness, moving floors, suffocation, physical restraints, moving vehicles, projectiles, loud noises, trigger warning for themes: rape, abuse, PTSD.”
Over the years, the husband-and-wife team who own the 17th Door, Heather and Robbie Luther, have fine-tuned the attraction by crafting a careful balance between the extreme and the fun.
“Our original mission was pretty simple: Create something unique that pushed the limits of what a haunted house could be,” Heather said. “Over the years, that mission hasn’t really changed, but it has evolved. We’ve learned how to balance extreme scares with fun scares, and how to build an experience that challenges people while still being something they want to come back to.
“When it comes down to it, it’s still about innovation, pushing boundaries and giving guests a haunt experience unlike anything else in the world.”
The original storyline of the attraction followed a victimized college student named Paula whose traumatic experience began on a fictional college campus, then took her to a mental health asylum and eventually a prison, called Perpetuum Penitentiary, where the current story takes place. This year’s event opened Sept. 26 and runs select nights through Nov. 2.
“A darkness has seized control of the inmates, and you’re no exception. Tormented cries echo from every fissure in the bleak stone walls, where repulsive crawling creatures scuttle through the shadows, feeding on fear,” according to the 17th Door website.
Underlying the scares and extreme elements — yes, shocks really do happen and there are indeed live roaches, among other things — is a complex circuitry of design and engineering developed and often invented by Robbie Luther.
Though Buena Park is the 17th Door’s third location — it was also in Fullerton for six years and Tustin for two — the basic idea of how guests travel through the experience has remained the same. In small groups of about six to eight, guests go from room to room (17 of them) to experience intense, sometimes hands-on themed interactions with characters. There’s the roach room, the barber shop, the tumbler room (which actually turns 360 degrees), the meat locker, the boiler room, the wind tunnel (with 100-plus mile-per-hour winds), the ball room and more. Robbie designed the rooms with doors that lock when guests are in the scene. Each room is numbered at the top and are red when locked and green when guests can move into the next room.
“Pretty much every room we create has a large technical component to it, because we believe that’s what sets us apart from the competition,” Robbie said. “For example, we bury an entire group of guests under 7 feet of plastic balls and remove those balls from the room in under two minutes using a giant vacuum system. We fabricated the system in-house using 240 feet of 12-inch sewer pipe, an array of articulating ramps and 12 industrial bounce house blowers.”
Robbie said a new idea for him is a multi-step process in his mind that examines what is actually possible.
“First it’s an idea and then it’s got to get to like six levels before you actually decide, ‘I’m gonna make this,’” he said. “‘Yeah that’s kind of a cool idea.’ Then you just kind of go, ‘well is it physically possible? OK, is it logically, like logistically possible? OK, how difficult is it gonna be to pull off?’ The great ideas that can pass all the tests get made. But I don’t ever consider any idea not possible in the beginning. You have to take every idea and run it through its course to see if it’s actually doable. If you look at ideas and say, ‘Well that’s not possible,’ you’re not trying to problem-solve or create anything.”
The tumbler room that spins 360 degrees with guests and clown characters inside, requires visitors to navigate the room with each turn as the scare actors guide them. It tests guests’ sense of up and down, as well as their coordination skills.
“Making a room spin is actually not hard. It’s just a box that spins,” Robbie said. “What’s difficult is having it turn into an experience that can be pulled off in 60 seconds and then reset for another group to come in and do it in a way that’s safe, that’s fun and that kind of makes sense. And how do you do that on a budget [in a way] that makes sense?”
The 17th Door experience is timed and takes about 35 minutes from start to finish. The safe word, “mercy,” can be used if guests want an actor to back off, if they want to leave the room, bypass a room or leave the attraction entirely. But there are three rooms guests can’t mercy out of once they have entered — so they must say it before entering. Actors will let guests know which rooms those are in the course of the experience.
“One of the things we’re most proud of is how strong our branding has become,” Heather said. “Even when we travel to other states, people have heard of the 17th Door. That recognition still amazes us. We’ve built a name in the haunt industry that is recognized far beyond Orange County.”
She said another big accomplishment was creating their own reality TV show, “Spook Show 17,” that streamed in 2022. The entire season can be seen free on YouTube, Tubi and Roku.
“We produced it entirely ourselves, and it gave fans a behind-the-scenes look at the creation, build and operation of an extreme haunted attraction,” she said. “That project really showed just how much heart, creativity, and grit go into making this haunt come alive. It’s really an awesome show.”
She said fans keep asking about a second season, which they have filmed. She said that while a full season might not happen, they do have plans to release never-before-seen footage on Patreon.
An escape room is also in the works.
“The planning and permitting process has taken longer than we expected, but we’re continuing to push forward,” she said. “We know it’s going to be something our fans will absolutely love, so we’re committed to making it happen.”
Last year, they launched a behind-the-scenes tour as an add-on to the main experience that guests could purchase for an additional 30-plus minutes to see the cast area, “costume castle,” actors running their scare routes, technical gadgetry and control room.
Scare actors making up the talent pool range the gamut of backgrounds and experience levels. While this was Curiel’s first gig as a scare actor when he started, Michael “Dusty” Williams, who plays a “scary old janitor,” worked at Knott’s Scary Farm from 1987 to 2014. He’s also a professional Santa Claus when he’s not at the 17th Door or working his day job in customer service in his local water department. He’s in his ninth year working at the 17th Door.
“It’s fun in there,” he said of working his role as janitor. “There’s so much going on that I try to be the comic relief.”
Willams, who lives in Hemet, has a makeup time at around 5:30 p.m. and he leaves at 12:30 a.m. for home — which is approximately a 90-minute drive. His day job hours are 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Thursday.
“When I’m working my job at 17th Door in the same day as my day job, I usually get about four hours sleep,” he said. “I’ll be 60 in November and I will keep haunting with 17th Door for as long as they will have me or until my body tells me otherwise.”
He said he loves scaring people but also loves the people he works with at the 17th Door.
“It’s like a family here,” he said. “Everybody knows everybody. Even in the off season, we all go to places as a group. We have beach parties. We have conventions that we go to.”
Kristi Mchugh, of Hemet, is in her second year at the 17th Door. She works at the beginning of the experience as a prison intake character, where guests hand their signed waivers over.
“I have been an actor for over 30 years at Renaissance festival,” she said. “I started out of college from my love of Shakespeare and theater. I sew and make costume and special-effects makeup.”
She said she studies Shakespeare as a method actor and she uses some of his comic tones in her character to make her loud, funny, scary and kooky.
She initially entered the haunted attraction world as a costume designer, then later designed some mazes and started scare acting a few years ago.
“I am a chicken actually when it comes to walk-throughs, so if I design a maze and scare myself, then I know the customer will be scared too,” she said. “I have learned a lot on this set and the people are so talented. It’s very technical, so I like the challenge. All the actors are dedicated freaks.”
Licensed cosmetologist Alicia Norberg, of Huntington Beach, has been doing makeup for more than 15 years and is in her fifth year as a makeup artist at the 17th Door. She said each actor takes between 5 and 15 minutes in the chair, depending on the complexity of their character’s makeup.
“Not only just because I love the art of it all, but also, I really have a close friendship,” she said of why she keeps coming back. “We call each other like our haunt family. It’s just great to see everyone coming together. … I’ve been offered a few other positions at other haunts but I’d rather just stay here. It’s home, it’s familiar, it’s nice.”
North Hollywood resident Nick Gallo has been visiting the haunted attraction since it first opened its doors. He had never been to an extreme haunted attraction before and didn’t know what to expect. He tries to come to the 17th Door both in the beginning and end of each Halloween season.
“I’m a big fan of Halloween haunt haunted attractions,” he said. “I was looking for something different — something more than just the normal kind of scares in the regular big haunts in the area. So I found this and I wanted to come check out this one and I’ve been in love with this place ever since.”
He said the only room he’s experienced some unease in is the one with the spiders — he’s not a fan. But he likes being scared.
“It gets the heart pumping, it gets the body going, it gets the blood flowing,” he said. “I feel like it’s a good rush for the body. It’s something good for the body that you need a good scare once in a while, just to get your body going.”
Gallo was one of the guests to sit in the barber’s chair during dress rehearsal.
“I had 17 shaved in the back of my head,” he said.