A few weeks ago, a friend sent me the link to Blackout NYC. One glance at the rules and I was terrified. You must walk through alone? You must wear a protective mask? There is no speaking allowed inside? You will encounter water exposure, crawling, and sexual & violent situations? Was this even legal? I swore to myself that I would never, ever find myself in such a situation.
This weekend, I proved myself wrong.
A group of us headed to the Haunted House on Sunday night, after spending the entire day psyching ourselves out and exchanging emails that had me both laughing and crying in fear.
AA: “This review I’m reading says that we should expect to crawl, scream, get stapled, painted, and almost raped. STAPLED?!?!”
JG: “RAPED?!?!?”
NC: “If anybody makes me get into a coffin, it’s over. “
Much to my surprise, none of us chickened out. We were close, though.
Upon our arrival, we were immediately handed waivers that said we wouldn’t sue for physical or mental damage inflicted upon us from the experience. Comforting. Once we had signed our lives away, we were instructed to get in line and to wait until they were ready for us. To say that we were scared would be the understatement of the century.
I don’t want to spoil too much of the actual experience for anyone who might be considering heading to Blackout NYC themselves, but I will say this — it is just as scary as they say it is. If you don’t like people breathing on your neck, pitch black rooms, bags thrown over your head, nudity, the inability to breathe for periods of time, putting unthinkable items in your mouth, and/or water torture, then this is definitely not the Haunted House for you.
As my little brother would say, “Dat shit cray.”
Call us crazy, but we all came out smiling. I think we were just happy to regain all five senses.
In all honesty, I would highly recommend this experience to anyone who was looking for a good scare this Halloween. While terrifying, it was also extremely well-crafted. You could tell that genuine thought and precision went into every single moment of the experience. It was also extremely well-casted. Nothing felt fake or phony.
Job well done, Blackout NYC! Thanks for having us.
Blackout NYC
54 West 39th Street
(Between 6th and 6th Avenues)
New York, NY 10018
www.blackoutNYC.com
Facebook comments:
