This waiver will drive you mad. (Image via Getty)
There’s no torture, there’s nothing like that, but under hypnosis if you make someone believe there’s something really scary going on, that’s just in their own mind and not reality. If you’re good enough and you’re able to get inside somebody’s noggin like the way that I can, I can make folks believe whatever I want them to believe.
I’m like the most strait-laced guy you could think of, but here I run this crazy haunted house. And people twist it around in their little minds. It really is a magic act, what I do. It’s a lot of smoke and mirrors.
— Russ McKamey, owner and operator of the McKamey Manor in Summertown, Tennessee, commenting on an online petition calling for the extreme haunted house to be shut down because “[i]t’s literally just a kidnapping and torture house” and “[s]ome people have had to seek professional psychiatric help and medical care for extensive injuries.” McKamey says people begin their tour of the house, which can last up to 10 hours, with the chance to earn $20,000 and lose $500 every time they fail an activity. In the 30 years McKamey has been running the haunted manor, no one has completed a tour. McKamey says he films each tour, and has been sued numerous times over what people thought happened to them, but didn’t actually occur.
In order to be selected as a participant, you must first go through an extreme screening process, which includes a physical exam, a background check, a phone screen, a drug test, the creation of a safe word, the viewing of a two-hour video, and the signing of a 40-page waiver. An older version of McKamey Manor’s insane, legally questionable waiver (which consistently uses the word “libel” for “liable”) has been leaked online. Flip to the next page to see it.
Staci Zaretsky is a senior editor at Above the Law, where she’s worked since 2011. She’d love to hear from you, so please feel free to email her with any tips, questions, comments, or critiques. You can follow her on Twitter or connect with her on LinkedIn.