Terror on Church Street
Credit: photo illustration by Pedro Macias

As another hectic Halloween in Orlando peaks, it can be challenging to recall a time when Central Florida wasn’t the country’s undisputed capital of spooky season, home to multiple top-rated theme park events, as well as numerous high-quality independent monster mazes. But while Universal takes a well-earned victory lap in celebration of Halloween Horror Nights’ 35th edition, it’s worthwhile to take a look back at another legendary Orlando haunted attraction that also debuted 35 years ago — one that set a standard for screams that still echoes throughout the global haunt industry today, decades after it disappeared.

Terror on Church Street was the first (and only) American outpost of “Pasaje del Terror,” a groundbreaking chain of walk-through haunted house attractions that once stretched across Europe and still operates today in the U.K. Originally started in 1988 by Argentinian creators Fernando Quenard and Ignacio Brieva in Bilbao, Spain, the concept was transplanted to downtown Orlando by owners Antonio and Ramon Riba, who went on to build Pirates Dinner Adventure. Officially inaugurated on Nov. 8, 1991, with a grand-opening appearance by Psycho star Anthony “Norman Bates” Perkins, Terror on Church Street operated within a semi-derelict former Woolworth’s store at the corner of South Orange Avenue and Church Street.

Terror on Church Street promotional cast photo (via MPE Europe)

Inside, groups of up to eight guests at a time traversed over 20 terrifying rooms spread across two stories, surviving immersive scenes inspired by classic gothic genre icons like Dracula and Dr. Jekyll, as well as modern cinematic slashers — including an officially licensed Freddy Krueger, years before HHN made intellectual properties ubiquitous. At a time when Universal’s nascent fear-fest (then known as “Fright Nights”) featured only a single modest maze for a handful of evenings, Terror on Church Street offered a year-round experience that lasted about 20 minutes. And under the direction of David Clevinger, Terror’s “Eternal Dwellers” in-house acting troupe elevated the art of scare-acting above mere jump-startles, crafting original characters and theatrical techniques whose influences can be seen in today’s haunts.

At its height, Terror on Church Street had lines stretching around the block, as celebrities and tourists alike flocked to Orlando’s world-renowned downtown nightlife. However, after just under eight years it fell victim to rising rents, closing on May 2, 1999. Most of the props and set pieces were auctioned off to Church Street Station (which was not otherwise associated with Terror) for a short-lived revival at Church Street Exchange; many elements eventually made their way to Skull Kingdom, which operated on I-Drive from 1997 until 2006.

‘Boris the Spider’ adorned the exterior of Terror on Church Street (photo via MPE Europe)

The original location was razed in 2003 along with the rest of the “Jaymont block” to build the Plaza development (home of the now-defunct Plaza Cinema Cafe and a parking garage almost as scary as the attraction it displaced). But Terror on Church Street continues to live on in the memories of millions who got to experience it, as well as in the careers of its former cast and crew, several of whom continued on to important roles in the haunt industry, both in Orlando and around the world. We spoke to some key surviving players and asked them to reminisce about the highs and lows of this long-lost Orlando landmark for our exclusive oral history of Terror on Church Street. So read on, if you dare …


THEATER, NOT BLOOD

Alan Ostrander, head of makeup and character design:

It was the first time that someone had approached a haunted house from a theatrical standpoint. Before Terror, the standard had been blood and guts and scare them any way we can. We were just the opposite. None of us were haunters to begin with. We all had backgrounds in theater and the arts. … People would come out raving about the blood in the show, and we’d always look at each other and laugh, because we didn’t have any blood in the show. It was implied.

Alan Ostrander as ‘Roach’ (courtesy Kim Donovan)

Walter Price, head of improv characters:

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Walter Price (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Terror was first and foremost a show. The characters had dialogue. The rooms had stories to tell. Even if it was just a 20-second story, you were in a story.

Alan Ostrander:
We never touched them. We never threw liquids on them. People swore we did. It was just the way of getting into their heads. I was fortunate growing up here in Orlando with Disney, and learning that concept of you never see what you’re not supposed to see. If you went in the middle of a scary room and all of a sudden saw a maintenance guy walk by, that never happened.

Michael Gavin, actor and box-office cashier:

I believe it was the attention to detail. It was the movie-quality sets. … I think it would compare to, and sometimes exceed, [Universal’s Halloween] Horror Nights in the detail, especially in the early days of Horror Nights.

Michael Gavin (courtesy Kim Donovan)

Jason Baerhold, actor:

The start of the training process is all about getting a hold of your own fear, because in almost every set you’re all by yourself in a very creepy place. … I think scare actors have to be in touch with their own fear, and it helps you scare the other people.

Actor Jason Baerhold (photo via borgia6 on Flickr)

Alan Ostrander:
The first goal was to make sure they were entertained. … If you can get people off their feet, not thinking, it’s much easier to scare them. So we would get them laughing, have fun with them, and then we could get a startle and scare them.

It would not have been the terror it was without David Clevinger… He was very open to input and listening to the cast.

Director David Clevinger (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Walter Price:
David was a very hard man to please. He was not unfair, but you had to know your stuff, and David knew his.

Jason Baerhold:
The relationship between management and actors, there wasn’t much of one. They made the schedule, and if there was a problem they’d talk to you, but it wasn’t Shakespeare. We weren’t talking about character.

Kim Donovan, actor and cashier:

When I first started working there, I was just interviewed as a cashier because they didn’t have any roles for the females at the time. Walter Price was working the gift shop, and he told me that they don’t have a whole lot of roles for females. So he said, if you really want to work here, say that you’re willing to do the shop too. A few months later I auditioned as a scare actor. They had me read the Undertaker monologue and then do some improv, which consisted of turning myself into a werewolf. … Improv has always scared me, but Walter does not care. Whatever comes through his mind is going to be the ultimate performance, and everybody’s going to enjoy it. It’s amazing to watch him work.

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Kim Donovan (courtesy photo)

ON THE STREET

Brook Hanemann, actor:

One of my favorite characters wore a straitjacket and medical scrubs and slippers. I carried around a stuffed cat. … One of my favorite moments was doing that character with a long line wrapped around the building. A fire truck pulled up to the red light in front of the entrance. So I ran over to the little tree next to the driver’s side and put my stuffed cat up in the tree, and I fell to my knees, sobbing, begging the fireman to come get my cat out of the tree. He resolutely shook his head no. But then I got the crowd riled up and everybody started shouting for him to help me. And with a flair he shook his head, I think he said “Damn it,” and hit the lights so the whole fire truck lit up, climbed down and saved my cat. I just leapt for joy, and everybody cheered, and he drove away.

Brook Hanemann as Anne Boleyn with unknown guest (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Jason Baerhold:
My street character was Bongo, the kid-eating clown. “You make them, I bake them. You breed them, I eat them.” Top hat and clown makeup and fangs. It was great fun, because I was a 19-year-old actor and they were like, “Go on the street and mess with people,” and it was just glorious. We had to entertain the people in line, because they were waiting 20, 30 minutes and it’s downtown on a Friday night in Orlando.

Walter Price:
The first character I created was Prof. Nicodemus Grim, a professor of necrology from the University of Budapest. Then I created a character called Gordon Bennett, an insane ex-innkeeper, and it literally allowed me to do whatever I wanted. One night I was a gumball machine. One night Gordon was freight. I literally stood in a box full of bubble wrap and told people I was freight. At one point I took my ponytail, wired it so it stuck up over my head, took duct tape and made a big silver square on my stomach, and I was a Teletubby. There were no limits.

Mike Acord as ‘Deadbeat’ (photo via borgia6 on Flickr)

Alan Ostrander:
Much of my tenure at Terror was spent outside on Church Street with one of my alter egos, Roach, a disgusting little old monk who chewed on cockroaches. He was always happy to offer them to anyone. … There was a huge picture window that ran across the front of Terror, and it’s exactly where we routed the queue line. It looked like a static display of monks. I loved working in that window because I would be totally frozen for about a minute and then just jump up and hit the window, and the entire queue line screams and runs. It was the best gag.

Alan Ostrander as ‘Roach’ (photo by Lee McKee/LeGrand Studios via MPE Europe)

They didn’t use to let our characters go down the street in front of the Church Street Station area, even though it was an actual street that was closed to pedestrians at night. They used to send me down as the guinea pig, and they actually had the police cart me off in a squad car a couple of times. They put me in handcuffs in costume, put me in the back of the squad car, we drove around the block, and they dropped me off back at Terror.


KNOCK THREE TIMES: THE ROOMS

Jason Baerhold:
You get them into a line, tell them to put their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them, and there’s a spiel that tells them the three rules: no running, no stopping, no photos. Then you’d walk them down into a hallway that’s a Victorian alleyway, and you’d say, “At the end of this hallway is a large door. On that door there’s a large knocker. Grab that knocker and knock three times. It will come for you.” The fun part about that role was you could be rude. 

Then there’s a little voice: “The master will see you in the next room.” The guy comes out in a spooky monk’s robe. “We are the eternal dwellers of Terror on Church Street.” And you do a spooky — I can’t remember the whole spiel there, I wish I could. Then you open this large clanging gate that has a chain on it … and you slam the chain to scare them.

Guests inside Terror on Church Street (photo via MPE Europe)

Then they walk into the graveyard, with spooky sound effects and fog and a fence. The zombies on the other side of the fence start to shamble along with you, and people would taunt them through the fence because they’re drunk and having fun. And then the fence stops and the zombie charges them.

Jack Neiberlein, assistant director of operations and technical director:

We were really concerned about quality, which meant we slowed it down a little bit. They would come in in groups of eight, and then they were put in a single file line, and to keep them from touching the actors, we would tell them to put their hands on the shoulders or the waist of the person in front of you. We would send them through in groups of eight every three minutes or so. For Universal, that’s really slow. If something was backed up, people would call on the radio: “We’re backed up in the morgue.” OK, we’re going to stop until we get that fixed, because each actor had a performance. God bless Horror Nights. I go, I love it. But we did not do the conga line. That’s another reason why I think we were the best, and no one has topped it yet. Again, I’m biased.

Guests waiting outside Terror on Church Street (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Alan Ostrander:
Freddy [Krueger] was licensed. … He was on a lift. He basically floated in the air coming at the guests, so his one hand with the gloves was going right over their heads as he flew by. We had Dracula on a lift as well, and it was the only spot in the attraction we put the guests in total darkness. They had to feel the walls. The group would come up within inches of his face and still have no idea he was there. Then he would activate a spotlight on his face, and then he instantly flew off vertically four feet in the air into the darkness and disappeared. Safety-wise, we could never do anything like that now.

Jason Baerhold:
For pure artistry from an audience perspective, the Exorcist room was the most intense. The bed would rock up, the drawers would flop in and out, there was a big wardrobe that would swing out at you. And the actresses who played the Exorcist learned to use the bed as a catapult.

Clown Room is probably the most memorable. There’s a bunch of dolls lining the walls, which is creepy anyway. You hit a button and one of the dolls’ heads starts rotating, and then they all come to life and there’s a big noise. … There’s something about that room. Everybody who did the creepy clown idea got weird the whole night.

A scene from Terror on Church Street (photo by Lee McKee/LeGrand Studios via MPE Europe)

Sam Waters, actor:

There was a scene called the Morgue where we had the bodies hanging from the ceiling. They had no idea where you were. All they heard was your voice over the microphone, and they were scared to death.

Brook Hanemann:
The bodies in the Morgue were weighted and had give to them. Some were burn victims, some were made to look as if the body had been dismembered and then stapled back together. … The Lucy room was lace curtains and stained glass and the sound of rain and a crackling fire and a coffin. Candlelight. It was peaceful.

Brook Hanemann in the ‘Lucy’ room (photo by Lee McKee/LeGrand Studios via MPE Europe)

Alan Ostrander:
We did have a chicken exit halfway through, where we stopped the groups and gave them a choice if they wanted to continue on or leave the attraction, and many individuals left. I thought that was a great thing.


YELLOW MAN AND OTHER RESIDENTS

Sam Waters:
Yellow Man was called Yellow Man because of “code yellow.” We wanted guests in groups, but if you saw a single person going through the sets, you’d think, why did they get separated from the group? So you’d turn around and follow them down the hall, except they’re gone. They’re not there. And so we called them Yellow Man. No one ever saw him, but you know, Yellow Man was there. Doors would randomly slam for no reason.

Alan Ostrander:
Everyone swore the Exorcist room was actually haunted, because the electronics in the room would sometimes just go off by themselves. So it was haunted. No, it was very bad wiring. It used to catch fire backstage.

Terror on Church Street Graveyard scene (via Kim Donovan)

Walter Price:
I think I was the only person in the building who didn’t think it was haunted. … Never saw him, never heard him, never anything.

Jack Neiberlein:
There were times I worked 24 hours there. I’d be there at 3 in the morning, or I slept there, not a lot. I never heard or saw anything myself. I know they talked a lot about Yellow Man. One of the cast members took a Ouija board and put it backstage on one of the sets to see what would happen. I can’t verify any of that, because I saw nothing. I wasn’t trying to look; I wasn’t trying not to look. 

The scariest thing at the attraction was David Clevinger.

Xenomorph figure inside Terror on Church Street (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Jason Baerhold:
I desperately wanted to see something, not for lack of trying. But if you’re sitting alone in the dark listening to real screams and recorded screams, you’re going to feel like something’s watching you.

Michael Gavin:
It was the set before the Morgue that totally gave me the chills. My hair would stand on end. I couldn’t put a finger on it. I just know it was somewhere I did not want to be. It was projecting the thing, like, “Hey, don’t go in here. I don’t want you here.”

Jason Baerhold:
At the end of the night you have to walk through the labyrinth and make sure nobody dropped money on the floor. It’s just pitch black, me and my flashlight. All the circuits are turned off. I’ve turned them off myself. As I was walking through Clown Room, the first doll, the one that always moves its head first, I’ve turned off the breaker. The doll’s head, with the motorized noise and everything, just goes … and stops. I’m not a person who believes in ghosts. I want to, but I don’t. But I was out of there.

Terror on Church Street upstairs floor plan (courtesy Kim Donovan)

Brook Hanemann:
I had been in the Lucy room, and it had been 20 minutes since a group had come through … and all of a sudden in my ear, as if somebody’s mouth was right next to my face, there was a scream, so loud and so direct that I could almost feel the breath of the person on my face. It was a man’s voice screaming, and it just sounded like agony. I didn’t jump up and run out like I thought I would. I immediately burst into tears. I wept because it sounded like pain.

The most impactful one was in the Morgue. The gentleman in the Morgue was named Hans, a big imposing gentleman, very kind and not a prankster. The group went through, and I heard more screaming, and Hans came into my room afterward, visibly shaken. He said something came up from the corner of the Morgue, over by the dumbwaiters. It looked like the shape of a man, but almost like it was wearing a speed-skater outfit. It was all gray, and it started running toward the group. When Hans came out to do the second impact, he said it looked at him but didn’t have any facial features, and it turned around and appeared to walk into the wall. Hans called for security, and nothing like that had come through. It shook Hans so much that the next day he went to his church and got ashes to bless the space, and he made a cross above the entrances to the Morgue in blessed ashes.


FAMOUS FACES & DIFFICULT GUESTS

Wayne Martin as a Gargoyle atop the Terror on Church Street marquee (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Alan Ostrander:
I remember several accidents, like poor Shaquille O’Neal bashed his head coming out because he was taller than the doorways. He came out running from Leatherface, and I was standing in the gift shop, and he about got knocked out and slammed his head through the doorway. But still laughing and loving it the whole time.

Walter Price:
The best one was Shaquille O’Neal, back when he was playing for the Orlando Magic. Apparently he was doing all right until he got to the Exorcist room, and that was his hot button. I was not in the room at the time, but I heard that when the room went off and all the effects went off, that very large man hit the floor and crawled out on his hands and knees. … [The scare actor]’s story for the rest of the night was how she made him scream like a child. There is no doubt in my mind that all of those stories can be true.

Exorcist doll from Terror on Church Street (photo by borgia6 on Flickr)

Jason Baerhold:
He was easy to spot, obviously. I came out with a chainsaw and I said the line I always say, “You got a real purty mouth, boy,” and I hit the chainsaw, and he jumped like 7 feet into the air, landed on his knees, and then ran out with this poor hapless dude clinging onto his belt loops. Shortly after that I saw the commercial for his video game, Shaq Fu, and I desperately wanted there to be a level with me as Leatherface and Shaq, but they don’t listen to my ideas.

Jack Neiberlein:
Shaq was very young at the time. I’m 6-foot-5, so I’m always used to being tall, but he was towering over me, and I was worried, is he going to hit his head on something? He came with a little friend who appeared to be like 15 or something. He was terrified, and he came out of the show covered in sweat. His response was, “Who thought this stuff up? Oh my God!” Then we had him sign a poster. He was very gracious and he loved it.

Terror on Church Street Graveyard scene (photo by Lee McKee/LeGrand Studios via MPE Europe)

Sam Waters:
The best one I ever had was Elvira. Cassandra Peterson came through out of costume, but we knew she was coming. I was in Psycho that night. I’m a pretty big dude, I was wearing the skirt and the wig and the plastic butcher knife, and I jumped out in front of Cassandra Peterson: “Stay away from my mother! Get away from my mother!” She backpedaled and fell flat on her butt laughing all the way down. I had scared her into laughter. 

One night I was in the Altar Monk and in walk Mariette Hartley and Elliott Gould. I walked around behind her, and she went 14 different directions.

Walter Price:
SeaQuest DSV was being filmed at the time, so Jonathan Brandis came through a couple of times. One of the Saudi royal princesses was very fond of us. She would bring 10 or 20 of her closest friends, rent out an entire floor of a hotel, and then they would come downtown and go through Terror, and we would VIP them through as often as they wanted.

One night I was in the VIP hallway, we used to call it the Black Hole, and that’s where we would send people who didn’t want to be recognized by the public. There was a young girl sitting in there who didn’t want to go through, so I just sat with her and we talked for about 20 minutes, and we had a great time. Then she left, and one of my managers came over and said, “Do you know who that was?” “No.” “That was a princess.” Apparently she loved coming here but never actually went through. She was too scared.

Actor Stephen French as ‘Rattlebones’ (photo by borgia6 via Flickr)

Jason Baerhold:
George Romero came in, and Walter’s doing one of his goofy characters, and he walks up to Romero and says in his goofy voice, “What was it like working with Adam West?” confusing him with Cesar Romero.

The worst guy I ever had was in the front of the group, ruining the show for everybody. Somebody would jump out and he’d reach out and touch them on the chest. I told him, “You’re ruining the show, you’ve got to step out.” He got really angry: “Go ahead, make me.” I’m getting minimum wage. I’m not going to fight some drunk guy. So I called Carl. Carl the Candy Cop was a big scary policeman, a big dude with a bald head and a big white beard, a former Marine with a SWAT badge, and he would walk around after the group passed with a bunch of Jolly Ranchers: “Hey, how you doing? You having a good night?” And he started saying “sir” really fast.

Alan Ostrander:
My actors would be in trouble if I ever saw them over-scaring a kid to where they’re just terrified. Sometimes parents were not the best parents. They’d be shoving their kids at us, “Scare them,” and this poor child is bawling and screaming. No, I’m not going to do that. That’s not entertainment. That crosses a line.

Jack Neiberlein:
Sandra Bernhard came. She went through the show, and I asked, would you sign a poster? She just walked right out the door: “Fuck you!” Right in character there. But the huge majority of the people liked it. 

Tom Savini has been one of my personal heroes. He came multiple times, and he was very kind. A stuntman who worked for Wes Craven, the guy who did the body burn in the first Nightmare on Elm Street, came out, too. He said for about 3,000 bucks he could set himself on fire on a bicycle and ride down Orange Avenue in front of the attraction. My bosses didn’t go for it.

Actor Jeff Chokel as ‘Undertaker’ (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

Dan Carro, actor (currently Gatorland creative director):

I was a pretty good Leatherface because of my size. One night there was a busload of teenagers, very energized and definitely very afraid, and I jump down chasing them and they smash through the glass doors and run onto Orange Avenue, and I’m hearing cars screeching to a halt. I’m thinking I killed someone. Jack, the general manager, comes walking into my set, and I’m pacing like, “I’m going to get fired.” And I’m saying, “I’m so sorry.” And he goes, “No.” He rubs his forehead. “That’s what we want you to do. Good job.”


THE ETERNAL DWELLERS

Alan Ostrander:
It was the strangest group of people that in any other instance would never have gotten along. But we were all the best of friends and brothers in there because we had a common goal of scaring and entertaining people. We had drag queens sitting next to skinhead punks sitting next to the guy who thought he was a vampire and really drinking blood. We still keep in touch 20, 30 years later. … We were there 364 nights a year. The only night we were closed was Christmas Eve, and that was our Terror Orphans Christmas party.

Terror on Church Street cast photo (via Kim Donovan)

Michael Gavin:
It was like an extended family. I really came into my own and out of my shell working there. … I’m more afraid of the mundane people now than I am of the tattooed and the freaks, because the tattooed freaks are much more genuine and friendly and supportive. … Management was management, and cast was family.

Sam Waters:
We were a weird, warped family. I wasn’t doing it for the money. I was doing it because I love doing it. I love scaring. There were rivalries, but not heated rivalries. It was trash-talking, [like] there were rat traps everywhere, and I just managed to sit down on a rat trap one time, so I picked up the name Rat Trap. We picked on each other, but we cared about each other.

Jason Baerhold:
Sitting in the makeup room putting on your makeup with people like Walter Price, it was like a ping-pong match. The banter would just fly around the room. That was great training for learning how to be quick verbally. … There was this one guy who was in Phantom, and he was like, “I’m not going to be scared. I’m not a child. I’m not scared of the dark.” That rubbed me the wrong way. I was in security that night, which means I wasn’t in the show, and I slipped into that pitch-black hallway behind him. I waited until he was doing the speech on the microphone, and I just lightly pushed my finger down the back of his neck, and he screamed and ran out through the other doorway. Then I went to the break room like, “How’s it going in there?” He was a lot less cocky.

Manager Marie Amoroso with Brook Hanemann on the Exorcist bed (courtesy Kim Donovan)

Walter Price:
If it was a slow night, it was pretty much a free-for-all. A bunch of us would gather on the Exorcist bed and just gab until we heard a cue going off and then, “OK, sorry, I got to go.” After the show would close, oftentimes all of us would head over to the Denny’s on OBT, and we would sit there for hours and just talk and be silly with each other. Like every family, there were people you got on with better than others, but I can’t think of anybody that I did not care for.

Jason Baerhold:
I asked for a raise, and three months later they said, “Yeah, we’ll give you a raise.” And then three months after that, no raise materialized. So I found another job, and I was heartbroken to do it, because I loved working there. … They were 9-to-5 and we were the ghouls and the freaks.

Dan Carro:
Other people have said we were such a family. That was my Skull Kingdom experience. That was not my Terror on Church Street experience. But there were people I made friends with and felt pretty close to. Jack was always really nice. … The thing I love about haunting, it’s not the horror. For me it’s the most intimate form of theater, and the only theater I know of where the guest is on the stage with you.

Brook Hanemann:
There were people who were just extraordinarily good friends and kind people, people who had great struggles in life and people who held each other up. I remember one particular manager being very, very kind to everybody. I had taken all my clothes down to a laundromat, and when I returned from the gas station, someone had stolen my clothes, which was everything I had. That night at work he knew I was upset and crying. The next day he asked me to come down to the office and handed me about five bags from various department stores. He had bought me a wardrobe of clothes because he knew I was putting myself through college and I didn’t have the money to replace it. That was special.

Terror on Church Street poster signed by cast of 1994 Tokyo Japan show (photo courtesy Kim Donovan)

LAST CALL

These are memories of a place that closed more than 25 years ago, and the people who lived them don’t always agree. How much warning the cast got, and what shape the building was in, depends on who you ask.

Terror on Church Street under demolition (photo via borgia6 on Flickr)

Sam Waters:
We got no warning. Everybody started contacting each other: “OK, who’s checking the schedule?” “Oh, the schedule’s not up.” And then we saw the sign posted in the window: “Thank you for eight great years, Orlando. Terror on Church Street is now closed.” A week or so later we found out they’re auctioning all the stuff off, so a bunch of us showed up at the auction just to say our goodbyes. It felt like you were losing a part of yourself.

Alan Ostrander:
The downtown redevelopment board had decided to redevelop downtown, and basically our lease came up and the rent was tripled and we were forced out.

Walter Price:
A day or so before the actual closing, the man in charge of the makeup called me and said, “Come down tonight and get your costumes. We’re closing.” I went down there the very next evening and got my belongings. And that was, I believe, the last night they were open.

Jack Neiberlein:
I was told by a person in management one day, “There’s a problem with the landlord, and we might not be open much longer.” And I was like, oh my goodness, I don’t want to come in and find a padlock on the door. Then someone was advising people in management, “Don’t tell the actors.” And I said, we’ve got to tell them something. I’m not just going to tell them everything’s fine, and then they show up and there’s a padlock on the door. This was about two weeks before it closed.

Brook Hanemann:
When they started to tear it down, a group of us actors found a side door that had been ajar, and we took one last tour of the space. You could tell that there were unhoused people who had set up shop in certain areas, and some areas still just had all the scenic elements up in the back. It was painful when the whole building was taken down, because a lot of people kind of grew up during that time together.

Kim Donovan:
It was an old building. If you’re not going to fix the roof leaks, and there’s roaches, and there’s rats running down the hallways … they definitely weren’t doing what they could to maintain the building. 

Jack Neiberlein:
I was in there at all hours of the day and night. I never saw a rat. Roaches, well, maybe. It was the old Woolworth’s building, and there were parts that were questionable. The roof was literally falling in over the break room. There was a big hole. But it was repaired. We had a full-time custodian. The building was safe. When David did his set designs, we always had to have inspections by fire marshals.

Original Woolworth’s building that housed Terror on Church Street (image via Florida Memory)

Sam Waters:
They moved the props into the third floor of Church Street Station. We used to call it Terror 2: Electric Boogaloo. In my opinion, they really didn’t know the first thing about operating a haunted attraction. So that didn’t last too long.

Alan Ostrander:
Because of Terror, I ended up at Ocean Park [in Hong Kong] for 13 years directing a cast of 400 performers. I owe it all to Terror and David Clevinger. … It’s been almost 30 years, and I still get emails weekly from people asking when we’re going to open another Terror. It’s amazing, the legend that we created without even knowing it.

Jason Baerhold:
Terror on Church Street took something wholesome and went dark with it, and proved that a year-round haunt would not only work but succeed fabulously. … I remember hearing that Universal Studios was going to do Halloween Horror Nights and thinking, they’re copying us.

Terror on Church Street cast in 1995 Citrus Bowl Parade (via borgia6 on Flickr)

Walter Price:
If you were having a bad day, all you had to do was get to work, throw on a top hat, and you could be horrifically rude to people, and they would pay you for it. It was the greatest job in the world. To this day, I miss it.

Brook Hanemann:
I still have dreams about that place even now, 30 years later. And every Halloween I get a flare of nostalgia, and I hang spooky chandeliers from my oak trees and hang a ghost bride over my pool.



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