The chamber was wide and long. The stone walls were dominated with elaborately carved circles topped with leering gargoyles. Lamps on the floor shined both green and purple light into the center of the circles, dimly illuminating the entire chamber in its grim and ghostly light. A misty fog swirled lazily in the air, and music from a chamber trio featuring a haunting harpsichord seemed to drift along with it.

I was pacing the floor impatiently, glancing every now and then into the inky darkness that engulfed the entrance to the chamber like a black hole. But no one appeared. It had been ten minutes since anyone other than Joe Samuels, my tag-team fright partner, had entered the chamber, and we were getting restless.

I was clad in a black, hooded robe belted around the middle by a black leather belt embedded with silver studs. A skeleton hung from the belt along with two cloth pounces. One of them held a rat. The other one held a ghost named Maxwell. I was wearing tattered, fingerless gloves, and I was holding a shaker can casually in my right hand. My face was a ruin of brunt and striped away skin oozing blood and exposing raw bone. My black lips dipped downwards into a frown. Without unweary guests, there was no one to frighten, and that's why I was there.

I was a Halloween monster, and this was my domain. It was called the Hall of Faces, and it lead into the gallery, a mysterious narrow corridor lined with portraits that regularly transformed into tableaus of horror as if some ghostly artist were repainting them from an invisible palate using a non-existent brush. Beyond was a long, stone-lined passage that led into a crypt. I could hear the other monsters in the rooms and hallways behind me. They were as hungry and restless as I was. But still no one came.

I heard a voice wailing from the gallery. It was Joe. "It's toooo quiet in here," he cried.

I more than agreed. I threw my head back. "Victims!" I cried. "Bring me victims! I want quivering teenage flesh!"

Joe wandered into the Hall as my words echoed off of it. "Quivering?" he asked through a sinister, questioning smile.

"Yeah," I said with a shrug. "Why not be specific? I don't just want teenage flesh. I want quivering teenage flesh."

He leisurely shook the shaker can he was carrying as he stared into the darkness ahead. It rattled with a muffled sound, having been nearly flattened from pounding against the walls. "I just want somebody. Anybody."

Joe began pacing beside me. He was wearing a dark blue jumpsuit and boots. His hair was short and spiked, and his face was a ghastly ruin of latex scars and theatrical blood.

It was Saturday night, October 13, 2001. Even though the event was in the second weekend of its run, the night had begun slowly. Like me, Joe was a veteran Shipwreck performer. He had won the MVM – Most Valuable Monster – award for the Engine Room Maze in 2000. Although I didn't know it at the time, I was destined for the same award for the maze we were working, The Factory of Fears, this year. We were the recipients of these awards for a very good reason. When it came to dishing out scares, we were the very best.

But we were both restless with the inactivity. The music in the background became more upbeat in tempo. I began singing a song Joe and I had made up to unsettle our victims.

"Just sit right back and you'll hear a tale," I sang in a low croaky voice. "A tale about Shipwreck…"

"…That started on this haunted ship," Joe chimed in. "Right on this very deck."

"So come a long we'll have some fun…"

"We'll leave you in a wreak…"

And then together we sang, "We'll chase you down our haunted halls and get you by the neck!"

I rattled my own shaker can. It was new, and the sound echoed down the hall. As if on cue, there was a stirring from the darkness. It was the sound of giggling and whispers.

"Victims!" I said, turning to Joe.

He disappeared around the corner into the gallery. I slipped into a corner and melded with the darkness. I crouched there, waiting.

A group of about 10 people were wandering slowly through the Hall of Faces, blinking upward at the gargoyles. I waited patiently until they neared the entrance to the gallery. One of them, a squat middle age woman stopped and peered into the shadows as if she had spotted something but wasn't sure what. As she leaned forward for a closer look, I sprang out, teeth bared; shaking the shaker can in my right hand and laughing like a maniac. Two of them fell back against the wall. The woman in front let out a shrill scream so loud that it drown out everything else. They all began running for the gallery as I rushed toward them.

They were laughing by the time they had all disappeared into the gloom of the gallery. A moment later, I heard them scream again. It was Joe. "This ain't no Disneyland," I heard him cry distantly in a hoarse voice. The fun was just beginning.

I had startled some young girl by pretending to be a grizzly statue and then coming alive when she stepped closer for a better look. I got her date – a tall fellow – too, but neither of them hurried away. Instead, she put her hand on my shoulder and spoke right into my ear.

"My mom is right behind us," she said. "She's really freaked out by all this. Get her."

It isn't unusual for people who had just gotten scared to ask us to scare their friends. But this was a first. I looked up at the girl's date. He looked back at me, confused, as if he had no idea what was going on. Oh, well, I thought. It takes all kinds.

So I melded with a dark wall as a new group of people wandered into the Hall of Faces. In the middle of the group was an attractive woman with short brown hair who was flinching at every whiff of fog. The young girl, who was standing near the entrance to the gallery with her befuddled boyfriend, began frantically pointing at the nervous woman. I sprang out of the darkness toward her, laughing like a demented ghoul. She not only threw back her head to scream, but she threw both arms in the air and sprinted toward the gallery as if someone had put a jetpack in her blouse.

I ran after her, rattling my shaker can. "Mommy!" I called to her back. "Where y'goin', Mommy? Come back here, Mommy, I need a hug."

But I doubt she heard me. The woman, still screaming, disappeared around the bend of the gallery like a character in a cartoon. Damn that woman was fast.

Her daughter stumbled up to me, doubled over with laughter. "That was great," she choked out as she offered a high five. Her boyfriend still looked confused.

A shrink, I thought as I watched them blend into the fog in the gallery, could make a living off those two. But, as I said, it takes all kinds.

The night was picking up, but as it wore on, there still wasn't that classic scare I'd been waiting for. Plenty of people jumped. Plenty of startled girls screamed. But aside from the mother-daughter thing, it was fairly sedate. I began to wonder if my shaker can was faulty. This sort of thing can be fairly hard on a monster's ego.