I spent the day scaring strangers and discovered you should never say this one word
It’s 8am in the morning and I’m sipping a cup of coffee in an abandoned, and very creepy, school. I’m surrounded by skulls and feather quills, as oozing boils begin to appear on my skin.
This is a first for me, but it’s just another day in the London Dungeon, where I’m learning to become a scare actor.
I’ve been invited to spend the morning here, and I’m being transformed into a plague doctor’s assistant by Adam Keeler, the performance manager and a seasoned scarer who has been at the Dungeons for eight years.
‘We’ve got to make you look malnourished,’ he says, sitting me atop a wooden stool and pulling out a small clear makeup bag filled with just a handful of products.
White base primer washes away my natural colour, while dark eyeshadow and powder add sunken eyes, gaunt cheeks and deep forehead lines. ‘You’ve got to look like you haven’t slept in a week,’ Adam laughs.
Then it’s time for those boils. As Adam adds the grotesque bumps to my face, he explains that the actors have to apply their makeup by themselves every morning. While they have a full training day to learn the art, we now have just 20 minutes to transform me into the grotesque 17th-century character.
Two minutes later, a yellowish colour is dabbed around my mouth before lashings of fake blood completes the look.
I’m amazed and slightly offended by how little it takes to turn me into a practically dead plague victim.
As I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror, I barely recognize myself and feel a strong urge to look away. The hideous image staring back at me is both fascinating and horrifying, and I start to wonder if it’s too late to back out.
But before I can come up with an exit plan, Adam hands me a blue floor-length dress, a blood-stained apron and a bonnet.
I then find myself following him down a labyrinth of rooms and corridors filled with strange, unsettling smells and unique props. We walk through a cellar full of gunpowder and a torture chamber before reaching the ‘stinking’ plague alley – which would be my office for the morning.
My new colleagues? A plague-ridden mannequin hunched over a bucket of water that spews out water on a timer and the voice of a woman throwing ‘urine’ from a window. Thankfully, it’s just a mist of water.
Now, it’s time to get into character. Adam hands me a black plague mask and cloak to wear over my costume. He then shows me where I’ll be scaring the masses.
The plan is for me to leap out at unsuspecting tourists, before leading 30 of them down Plague Alley while pretending to be sick.
Simple enough, right? We then do a test run, and I quickly realise how hard it is to see through the tiny holes of the mask. I start imagining every possible scenario that could go wrong – tripping, missing my queue or even getting scared myself. You’re also (understandably) not allowed to touch any visitors so the scaring is down to my acting skills alone.
Adam says the worst thing I can do is say ‘Boo’, which feels somewhat groundbreaking. ‘It’s just not scary,’ he explains. Who knew?
As I wait for the first tour group to arrive at 10:00 am, it all starts to feel a bit more real. That’s when I notice a strong smell of vinegar in the air. Adam tells me it’s a hidden special effect that sporadically pumps smells into the air.
I have to stop myself from gagging, but apparently, the staff aren’t fazed by it. ‘We’ve all gone nose blind,’ he says.
The actors then start to clock in for the day — witches, torture masters, demon barbers, mass murderers, every possible terrifying character you could imagine.
Izzy Wood, 23, is one of the 45 scare actors working at the Dungeons. She’s wearing a ghoulish layer of makeup when I meet her, and stained yellow teeth for added effect.
Every actor will play three characters throughout the day. ‘A lot of the roles are physically demanding,’ she says. For example, Mrs Lovett, Sweeny Todd’s famous accomplice is a ‘very big open character’ that can ‘take a lot of energy for an actor’.
But these are often the most fun and rewarding to play, she says, and they get a ‘great reaction from guests’.
Izzy, who has worked at the Dungeons for two years, says she loves it here. ‘There’s not many jobs where you come into work and get paid to hear people scream. As an actor being able to do that every day is really enjoyable.’
Adam later tells me: ‘You’re paid to be horrible.’ He explains that each actor’s contract lasts six months, during which they’ll scare up to 100,000 people. Each tourist group has 30 to 40 people, and every section they walk through lasts four to six minutes.
The job isn’t for everyone, he adds. ‘It’s a dark place. You’re going to be on your own. There are smells and loud noises. If you’re scared by that, this is not the place for you, and we’re not offended by that. You need to have a high resilience for it.’
It’s also very straining vocally and he’ll often have to tell actors to ‘calm down’ when he sees them too engrossed in a role.
To prepare, each the morning, the actors will do plenty of vocal exercises to warm themselves up and prevent their voices from going horse. ‘Think Sharpay from High School Musical,’ Adam says
It’s not as easy as you might expect to scare either. Everything in the dungeon has been designed to frighten people, and each of the 16 different spaces is intended to be authentic. From the set design to the script, everything is checked to make sure it’s relevant to the time period.
Adam, who writes many of the dungeon’s scripts, adds: ‘Hats cover modern hair, piercings come out, tattoos are covered, and anything else that gives away that we’re in 2024.’
I struggle to imagine learning so many different characters while I’m trying to recall which way to turn down the one-way path on Plague Alley.
But now, it’s time to scare people.
The first tour group have just discovered Guy Fawkes’ Gun Powder plot and is mere minutes away from stepping into the torture chamber. I hide behind the door with Adam there next to me.
After what feels like an eternity, I hear my queue, and burst into the cage behind the random member of the public. My attempt at a dramatic entrance falls flat, however, as there’s a slight delay before she even notices I’m there.
I gesture the group to follow me and stumble down the alleyway, occasionally bumping into the walls as I try to stay in character. I surprise myself with how dramatic of a performance it turns into.
Next, I’ve positioned myself behind a fence, seizing an opportunity to jump out at two teenage girls whose screams are louder than I expect. While a few others jump at my presence, they manage to maintain their composure.
After just one scare I realise my talents don’t lie in acting and I come to terms with the fact I’m unlikely to win an Oscar anytime soon. But I did enjoy the thrill of it. I make my way upstairs to remove the layers of fake blood, boils and all-around plague-ness from my face. Surprisingly, it takes just one makeup wipe.
I finish the morning by tagging onto a tour group and walking through the rest of the attractions. While I’m now well acquainted with the inner workings, I’m still terrified.
The ‘Curse of the Witch room’ made me jump out of my skin, as did their new séance room, where psychic Agnes Guppy attempts to summon a killer via an Ouija board in their new séance room, introduced for Halloween.
I come away with a newfound admiration for the actors, though I’m not convinced I’d be cut out to work there – between the vinegar smells and terrifyingly dark rooms, one morning is enough.
This Halloween, the London Dungeon turns 50 years old. To visit the attraction at the spookiest time of year, when they promise to be ‘darker, scarier and more extreme than ever’ head to their website.
