(Photo illustration by Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) Beth Klint serves food by day on Temple Square, and at night she works at the Nightmare on 13th Street Haunted House, where on Halloween night she dresses as a witch.

When darkness falls, brokers and CEOs turn into ghastly ghouls

Halloween specials » Some Utahns take great pleasure in delivering fear at area haunted houses.

By Stephen Speckman

Special to The Tribune

First Published Oct 18 2012 05:54 pm • Last Updated Feb 07 2013 11:31 pm

By day, Beth Klint delivers food to employees in the clean, orderly headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Not too scary, unless she serves up the wrong food.

But this month, as darkness descends on Salt Lake City nightly, Klint helps deliver fear to the folks in the dingy halls of the chaotic Nightmare on 13th Haunted House.

For Utah residents like Klint, 54, the Halloween season’s fear business is a second quasi-career they relish.

Klint’s coworkers at the church office building know that this time of year she dons a uniform different from the tidy black pants and tan polo shirt she wears while the sun is shining. "They think it’s cool, and every day they go, ‘So what happened last night at the haunted house?’ " Klint said. "They think it’s awesome that I do this job at night."

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Geek by day, zombie by night » Utah seems to have a cache of Klints, those otherwise normal residents who seek a role in creating frightful fun every evening for a few weeks each year. People like Jason Lindsay, who plays several characters at the Strangling Brothers Haunted Circus in Draper. He’s a computer geek by day, zombie by night.

Or Gary Grove, who has been dressing up at night every Halloween season for the past 20 years. He’s Mr. Nice Guy on the phone at his day job, creepy and disgusting after the sun goes down.

"You can really be a part of something, that is, playing a little bit on the evil, dark side, and you can have fun with it," said Bob Tillotson, co-founder and partner of the Strangling Brothers Haunted Circus. He helped establish (and later sold his shares in) American Fork’s Haunted Forest and Ogden’s Haunted Hollow. "I think it’s a huge release for some people."

More than half of the 110 or so people who work for Strangling Brothers are adults, most with real jobs like real-estate broker, CEO of a major corporation or psychologist. Tillotson, a landscape contractor by day, says he keeps hearing from the wife of an LDS Church mission president who wishes she could take part in the terror business. "Daily I get people calling and wanting to be involved."

Usually actors don’t do it for the money, as the haunted houses don’t pay much, when they pay anything at all. "I’ve been in the business for 23 years, and it always surprises me the type of people who absolutely love Halloween," Tillotson said. "I haven’t figured it out. I don’t understand it."

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Getting that Zombie-ific smell » To wit, the church lady turned witchy woman. Klint, a Rose Park mother of two children, began professionally scaring people in 1989 at Wheeler Farm’s Haunted Woods, which shut down in 2001.

In 1998, Klint started working for Nightmare on 13th along with her husband, Michael, who serves as a technical director of sorts, working to bring life to otherwise inanimate objects, all in the name of fun and fright.

She started out playing hair-raising characters but now heads the box office. On Halloween, she shows up to work in full witch’s garb, which she believes is the best Halloween costume ever.

Those who work in haunted jobs say they pay great attention to detail. Jason Lindsay, the computer programmer who works at Strangling Brothers, bought a coat and shirt from Goodwill, dragged the items through the dirt and cut them up. And then, seeking a musty smell, he buried the clothes for two weeks and periodically watered the hole.

Yeah, costume-making is a different kind of problem-solving than what Lindsay, 42, does during his day job as lead software developer for the Lehi company NetSteps. "I am just a kind of Halloween enthusiast," Lindsay said. "I just love Halloween."

The funky-smelling dirty duds are for his zombie costume, while his other roles include ticket taker, doctor and cook. It’s Lindsay’s first year getting paid, albeit a small amount, to frighten people amid a cacophony of recorded screams, bloody handprints and "jerky" animatronics.

Certain unsuspecting patrons have been known to get a bit too petrified. Lindsay said he’s known people to lose bladder control, run into doors, trip over themselves in trying to get away, or buckle at the knees.

Some nights, after working all day, he doesn’t get home to his own temporarily haunted house in Highland until 1 a.m., long after his three boys have fallen asleep. But he said his wife understands his passion for Halloween, which this year is manifested as a temporary graveyard in front of the family’s home. "She gets into it, but not as much as I do," Lindsay said. "She doesn’t enjoy the goriness."

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From grandfather to line ghoul » Utah as a whole seems to love Halloween, Lindsay believes. "I think it’s just because of the demographic of the state," he said. "Halloween is one of the few times this conservative culture gets to cut loose."

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