Prior Lake duo brings frights, family to 'Haunted Basement'

Prior Lake American

The basement of the old General Mills building is haunted — infested, even, with creeps.

The basement is home to artistic horror extravaganza "The Haunted Basement," — a haunted house running from Sept. 29 through Tuesday, Oct. 31 in building No. 9 at 2010 E. Hennepin Ave. in Minneapolis — and all the creeps that come with it, including Prior Lake High School alumni Sarah Salisbury and Bo Brunner.

Oh, and in this case, "creep" is an affectionate term.

FROM SOAP TO CEREAL

Salisbury helped co-found The Haunted Basement and keep it running after it stopped being a fundraiser for the Soap Factory, an art gallery in Minneapolis. When the Soap Factory closed for renovations and would no longer have a basement, the fate of the horror attraction was left in the air.

"My other two co-founders, when the Soap Factory closed, they were going to go a different angle," Salisbury said. "We were like, 'Do we let this die?' And we were like, 'No, no, of course we can't let this die.'"

Salisbury and Brunner have been friends since their high school days, graduating in 2003 and 2005, respectively.

Salisbury worked as a stage manager for theater companies and other artistic ventures before joining the Soap Factory.

"My mother asks me all the time where she went wrong," Salisbury said. "I'm like, 'Mother, it's where you went very right.'"

Brunner helped with the Basement in 2016 and asked Salisbury if he could join the venture. Brunner is now the business manager. Before hat he traveled and worked for a few years before returning to the Twin Cities and opened a food truck, the Wandering Mug.

"All my friends work in theater so it was kind of inevitable I'd get roped into some theater job," Brunner said. "I love the arts, but I'm not so much of an actor or performer like that, but I love to be around and make it happen."

After the separation from the Soap Factory, the Haunted Basement began to search for a new home and when looking for a spooky piece of real estate, the weirder, the better — such as 30-foot tunnels that lead to nowhere or walk-in freezers with working fans.

"When we rented this place it came with this great walk-in freezer and they were like, 'We'll get that out of here for you,' and we were 'Please don't, please leave it,'" Brunner said.

The Haunted Basement takes advantage of such oddities. The freezer now hosts numerous hanging body bags, including one a person can hide in to scare patrons. The 30-foot tunnel to nowhere was outfitted with infinity lights and mirrors to make it seem as if it stretches for eternity.

"The story is that it led to building 13, which burned down," Salisbury said. "We're like, 'Yeah, that's perfect.' Who knows if that's true, but we're going with it."

CREEPY CREATORS

With the lights on, the Haunted Basement is a creative venture, which is what Salisbury and Brunner want it to be. It's a haunted house, but it goes beyond what a haunted house usually is. For instance, no zombies.

"They've been done and we're like, 'We're better than that,'" Salisbury said. "We call ourselves the artistic haunted house. We hire artists from various different mediums to come and design for us. We really strive to push every decision one step further like — is that the correct artistic choice?"

This includes 'Fraidy Cat tours which allows patrons to come in and tour the facility with the lights on and no actors to see the transformed space and all the details that people don't see when they are "running through scared," Salisbury said.

"It's not just about scaring people — like it is, but it's also like how can we do that in the most beautiful way possible because it really is a thing of beauty like the creepy, crazy stuff these people are putting together," Brunner said.

Salisbury said she also hopes the space will become an affordable space in the Twin Cities for artists, adding that the location "isn't there yet."

"There's a serious shortage of spaces for performing arts that are affordable," Salisbury said. "It's a goal of mine to make a dance rehearsal space in here, turn parts of it into a black box theater space, just have another space for people."

A FRIGHTENING FAMILY

With artistic spaces comes artists, and the Haunted Basement has them in droves, its own community of creeps.

"They're crazy and so few people can just let loose like they do," Brunner said.

The Haunted Basement community includes hundreds of people, from those who come for an hour every year to those who spend multiple months designing the sets, concocting the fear and pulling horrific performance after horrific performance off every weekend.

Cast and management sit, chat and joke in the green room (which is actually lit with red lights). They compliment and critique each other on their eerie performances. A list of correct pronouns for each person is taped next to a shift schedule on the white board.

"It's a space where people can feel — not necessarily patrons — but actors can feel free to be whoever they are," Salisbury said. "I've worked for a lot of organizations and there's never been a community quite like this. Everyone supports everyone."

ON TO THE HORROR

The Haunted Basement is one of the fabled haunted houses where the workers can touch patrons — with a signed waiver and an ID that proves they are 18 years or older, of course.

If someone is not into that, they can request a glow stick which tells workers that they should not be touched.

The Haunted Basement leads you through classic fears like clowns, mazes filled with sheets and jump scares and entirely dark rooms but also plays on the old General Mills building with a loose "cereal worship" theme.

"I think there's something scary about creating these normal ideas and like twisting them just a little bit," Salisbury said.

The rooms that fall along the theme include a Betty Crocker room with a spring-loaded vomiting closet mannequin named Linda, an asylum room containing a deranged version of Sonny the Cuckoo Bird swinging around the room on a chain and a cereal altar where patrons can make offerings to the cereal gods.

This includes entering a digestive tract and ending well, where a digestive tract ends with a character called Ploppy — best not to ask.

Every room, on theme or otherwise, is designed to disorient with strobe lights, darkness and even disco balls and tin foil. The Basement also hires a company that creates specific smells to each room to immerse patrons in the experience.

Patrons shouldn't wear clothes they don't mind getting dirty to the Haunted Basement — fake blood and just general, liquid messes to get into, as well as the occasional makeup transfer from the actors.

Salisbury and Brunner speak of these features with an obvious fondness, a loving tone designated for clown wigs caught in trees, painted catacombs, dark hallways and the like.

"Our perspective is skewed," Brunner said.

For additional costs, patrons can go into "Blind Invocation" rooms, which are extra experiences apart from the regular path. These include an Operation game on a human-sized rat complete with kicking legs or a room called "The Hatchery" where people can reach into an incubator with rotted eggs and the opportunity for an actor to grab the person from the other side.

"We're not above cheap scares like that," Salisbury said.

The Haunted Basement is also partnering with LGBTQ event group Flip Phone to bring drag queens to the Basement in addition to the regular cast of characters on Oct. 25 in a combination that could not possibly get better.

If patrons get too scared, they can cry "uncle" and staff will escort them out of the building and they will get made fun of — staff are only joking when they say this, but the experience will be over.

BEYOND THE SCARES

After Halloween, the popularity of a haunted house significantly drops but there are still plenty of people who are horror fanatics 'round the clock.

Salisbury and Brunner are hoping to snare this demographic because starting after Halloween, the Haunted Basement will be open year-round — just not as the Haunted Basement.

What exactly this will look like is still uncertain, but there are plenty of ideas the pair are toying with. For instance, a monthly scary movie showing, a Krampus-themed Christmas event, a New Year's party, corporate events, monthly workshops on set-building or stage makeup and more.

The Haunted Basement could also partner with puzzle escape rooms, The Break Room where people can destroy objects as a therapeutic experience or local theaters as a space to put on shows.

"We're just trying as hard as we can to get it off the ground right now and then once it's going, we're just so excited to do everything we can in our off-season, which is the other 11 months of the year," Brunner said. "There's tons of options."

The Haunted Basement was a fundraiser for the Soap Factory and will continue to be a nonprofit, but now any funds will go toward maintaining the area, the rent, paying the staff and creating affordable spaces for artists to come.

"Essentially the money went from the Basement to the general year-round Soap Factory fund so now we're trying to invest more into our community of creeps and Haunted Basement people, because they really deserve to be paid well because they're crazy," Brunner said.

The nonprofit aspects mean neither Salisbury or Brunner will get to devote 100 percent of their time to the Haunted Basement, but that wasn't unexpected.

"None of us are in this for the money," Salisbury said. "You can't be in the arts to be in it for the money because yikes."

The duo are dedicated to keeping the amalgamation of horror, art and family alive because as they will tell anyone, they love their job.

"It's super accepting, super loving no matter what and we get to scare the pants off people," Salisbury said. "What could be better?"

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post stated Salisbury was the co-founder of The Haunted Basement from the beginning. Salisbury is the co-founder for the Haunted Basement after it separated from the Soap Factory. We regret the error.