‘It’s basically human torture and cruelty. How is this even legal?’
Not exactly the review most people want on Google. But for Russ McKamey, this is just the kind of publicity he’s after.
Russ is behind McKamey Manor, a haunted house tour that isn’t full of the usual cardboard ghosts or actors in werewolf costumes bought around the corner.
No, people sign 40-page waivers to be buried alive, submerged in cold water and beaten across the roughly 10-hour-long experience.
What is McKamey Manor?
‘This is an audience participation event in which (YOU) will live your own horror movie,’ the manor’s warning page (yes, a warning page) on its website says.
The tourist attraction first came to public light in 2014, when it allegedly had 20,000 people on the waiting list. It sees actors doing… a lot to the contestants while Russ taunts them behind a camera.
McKamey Manor is so infamous that an online petition to shut down this ‘torture chamber’ has nearly 200,000 signatures.
‘It is seriously just torture porn,’ the petition says, alleging that one participant was ‘tortured so badly he passed out multiple times’.
‘Workers only stopped because they thought they had killed him.’
Some haunted house industry experts (yes, that’s a thing) aren’t the biggest fans of McKamey Manor either, stressing it’s very much not a haunted house.
What happens inside?
‘I was waterboarded, I was Tased, I was whipped. I still have scars of everything they did to me. I was repeatedly hit in my face, over and over and over again. Like, open-handed, as hard as a man could hit a woman in her face.’
This is what one participant, Laura Hertz Brotherton, says she went through in 2016.
One 2013 promotional video shows manor-goers eating cockroaches and begging to be released from contractions straight out of Saw. Others have described swimming through mud and taking a dip in a tank of moray eels.
Going through McKamey Manor is different every time, with Russ tailoring it to each contestant’s fears.
Despite what the fake-blood-soaked promos make the manor out to be, Russ has stressed it isn’t as bad as it seems.
He told the Nashville Scene in 2018: ‘Nobody’s ever been injured, ever. Nobody’s ever had any lawsuits, ever. I mean, there was a heart attack once but that person’s okay now.
‘People can get bumps, bruises, sprains and cuts. But you can die at Disneyland, too.’
How can I go to McKamey Manor?
Adrenaline junkies hoping to get through the door have to go through a complicated screening process. For one, you have to be at least 21 – or 18-20 with approval from a parent or guardian.
You also cannot be pregnant, claustrophobic or medically unfit. As in, they suffer from a heart condition or epilepsy.
First, there’s the physical exam, then the background check and a screening over the phone or Facebook. It would help if you had a doctor’s note saying you’re fit and healthy and, unsurprisingly, have health insurance.
If someone is still game, they’re made to watch a two-hour video of past participants recounting their experiences. (Russ has said he films every visit as proof of what did and did not happen.)
And then there’s the waiver.
What’s this I’ve heard about a 40-page waiver?
An alleged version of the document was leaked online four years ago.
Some of the possible injuries the waiver lists that ‘may occur’ include: ‘Neck, and back injuries, death, stroke, traumatic brain injury, brain aneurysms, cerebral or retinal haemorrhage, subdural hematoma, loss of consciousness, whiplash, harmful heart reactions, nausea, headache, dizziness, lacerations, broken or sprained bones, torn ligaments, bleeding wounds, scrapes and/or cuts, heatstroke, or drowning.’
What does the waiver say?
Here’s just a small selection of what the waiver asks participants to ‘agree’ to:
- Tooth-pulling
- Carbon monoxide poisoning
- Dislocated joints
- Mind-control tactics
- ‘Water torture’
- Extremities being ‘crushed’
- Fire
- Quicksand
- Hypothermia
- Raw sewage
- Being shaved bald
- Buried alive for 12 hours
- ‘Coming down with a disease later in life’
- Having your hand smashed with a hammer
- Having a nail ‘pierce’ your hand
- Being in an enclosed space with live bugs
- Ingesting said live bugs
- Consenting to feel like you ‘may die’
- And being able to say what their ‘final straw, their line in the sand’ is.
It says people are not ‘actually’ being harmed, just ‘roughed up’ at best, and aren’t being ‘held against their will’.
‘Participant agrees and understands that your life in reality is not in danger and this is just a game,’ it says, before adding: ‘Everything else imaginable can and will happen inside of MM. You are aware of this and are giving full permission for any action that may happen inside of MM.’
People can tap out at any time with a safe word.
No matter what, however, the contract is clear. Participants must haul all the ‘equipment and materials back to the van’ after the experience. Just what you need to do after hours of absolute terror.
Has anyone finished the McKamey Manor challenge?
Russ has for years offered a 20,000-dollar prize, or about £16,000, to anyone who completes the challenge.
To this day, according to Russ, no one has ever come close.
‘And they never will!’ he told the Nashville Scene. ‘Because it’s so mentally and physically challenging. But it will be the most exciting thing you’ve ever done.’
Is any of this… legal?
Legal experts aren’t quite sure what to make of it, especially the waiver.
Some have said it relies on the signatories ‘consenting’ to what the manor throws at them – as long as it’s not criminal. Tennessee District Attorney Brent Cooper previously said ‘torture’ is technically legal between two consenting adults, but both have the power to revoke their consent at any time.
Others are blunter, calling it an ”insane, legally questionable waiver (which consistently uses the word “libel” for “liable”)’.
On Halloween last year, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti sent a letter to Russ voicing his concerns about his ‘business practices’.
‘Haters gonna hate,’ was Russ’ response.
The state’s attorney general’s office launched an investigation into the attraction following the release of a Hulu documentary, Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House.
‘Former participants describe the adrenaline and pressure they felt when reviewing the waiver at the start of the tour,’ the state’s letter reads.
‘One interviewee on the Hulu documentary said they had “too much excitement going through my veins at the time,” and if the waiver would have said that, “a man is going to come out of the woods and murder you during this event, I would’ve have signed it”.’
Russ filed a lawsuit against the attorney general’s office in March, arguing that Skrmetti’s investigation is a ‘concerted effort to prevent [him] from engaging in lawful conduct on his private property’.
Where is McKamey Manor?
The first manor was on Russ’ property in San Diego before he moved to Summertown, Tennessee in 2015. Within weeks of setting up shop there, local police received multiple calls from residents about seeing seemingly bloodied people being dragged about – with one mistaking the attraction as a possible hostage situation.
A second location in Huntsville, Alabama, is where a mysterious second property is said to be for those who survive Smalltown.
Thrill-seekers can swing by for its one weekly ‘show’, though it hasn’t updated its hours since last year.
How long the show lasts ‘depends on how well the guest does’, according to the manor’s website.
It also depends if, amid all of this fear and trembling, you use any ‘foul language’. Yes, McKamey Manor has a zero-tolerance policy on swearing – certainly the last thing you’d want to do while being screamed at.
Why would people put themselves through McKameny Manor?
Now that’s the $20,000 question.
This was something Andrew Renzi, the filmmaker behind the McKamey Manor documentary, was especially keen to answer.
But when he spoke to contestants who included a veteran shaken by his time in Afghanistan, a queer woman told she’d burn for her sins and an anxiety-riddled orphan, the answer surprised him.
‘These were all people that were just trying to heal from their past traumas and wanted to push themselves to such extremes as a way to grow and conquer those fears that had consumed them for so much of their lives,’ he told The Hollywood Reporter.
‘I found this so relatable. We’re all trying to move on from the scars of our pasts and we’re not always presented with easy solutions to do that.
‘I really connected with the “why” when I heard these stories, and no longer looked at them as outsiders at all, just people that maybe felt like they were out of options.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
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