Vampire Manor is Charles County’s local haunted house, run by the Charles County Rescue and Dive team. Every year, hundreds of people from all over the county line up at the Manor to be scared senseless in the dead of night with little hope of escaping, before immediately being ushered into the next nightmare. Six times.
Vampire Manor features six rooms, each themed with their own special brand of horror. This year, for example, the haunted house is showcasing a “clown room” as one of its main attractions.
The clown room is generously decorated with the corpses of dead clowns; most hang upside down from chains in the ceiling. The clowns themselves have been painted in garish (and usually bloody) face make up, and they are frozen in the expression of pain and fear they wore as they died.
The room is also fully equipped with blood smears, crackly and badly out of tune circus music and poor lighting. This, paired with the 3-D glasses (which make the UV-lit paint pop off of the walls, floors and corpses), creates an entirely disorienting and frankly petrifying experience for even the most foolhardy patrons of Vampire Manor.
Running the Manor has been an interesting and somewhat challenging experience for Kyle, who works with the actors and other supervisors to make sure the house is run smoothly.
“We’ve had people come through the house, not expecting what they got.”
In the time that Kyle has worked with the manor, he’s seen people lose control of their bodily functions and run down highway 301 because they were so badly scared.
“Those are always those beautiful moments that are a double edged sword because I got to go clean up [expletive] now. Stuff like that’s always fun.”
Vampire Manor was founded in 1989 in order to raise funds for the Charles County Dive Rescue team. This is their 26th year running. Today, they work with the Charles County Fire and Rescue department, as well as various theatre arts departments from schools around the county to run a terrifying haunted house every October.
Vampire Manor is located at 9410 Irving Road, Bel Alton, Md. Free parking is offered by the Bel Alton Fire department at 9765 Bel Alton Newtown Road, Bel Alton, Md., with free transportation to and from the Manor provided by “The Manor Express.” The tickets prices are $12 for adults and $8 for children under 12.
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