Author’s Note: Some readers may find this content disturbing.
NAKINA — An hour southwest of Wilmington, down dark coastal back roads and over the Waccamaw River, turn right on Swamp Fox Highway and head six miles north toward the Grissett Swamp. There you’ll find a dirt road leading a long line of cars past a marsh, and a sign welcoming visitors to “the Carolinas’ most extreme haunted attraction.”
But calling Panic Attack a haunted attraction is like calling “The Shining” a disturbing movie — accurate, although it doesn’t fully capture the terror of when Jack Nicholson’s character Jack hacks through a bathroom door with an ax and yells, “Heeere’s Johnny!”
SEE PHOTOS HERE: The most intense haunted house in the South
When you have set designers, mechanized props, and actors from Wilmington’s film industry at your disposal, the result is an experience more like walking through the set of a horror film than a haunted house. A bloody nurse shrieks, “Leave us!” in a completely deranged psych ward. Violent clowns run around like lunatics with roaring chainsaws, hiding behind walls in a room where stuffed animals swing from ropes tied to the ceiling. A demon-like elf sits on the mantle of a cabin in the North Pole over a half-naked, bloodied woman curled up on a fur blanket draped over a metal cot.
At one point, an actress reaches toward visitors as a crazed clown grabs her from behind and throws her to the floor. He then acts like he’s eating the side of her stomach near her ribs, while repeatedly yelling, “I’ll eat my cake!” Eventually, the woman stops screaming and is presumed dead. The words “Happy Birthday” are painted in glowing neon on the walls above her.
Panic Attack owner Eric Pino believes the renowned attraction is better off in the swamplands of southern Columbus County than its previous home — a couple warehouses off 15th Street in Wilmington. The car journey through coastal Brunswick County certainly gets you in the mood, and once there, the first thing you’ll notice is the enormous scale of the operation. From the live music stage next to the parking lot to the size of the haunted house itself, it is a spectacle. People form a long queue in a haunted fishing village as a man with long, black hair lets children touch a boa constrictor coiled around his neck. A DJ blares music next to a fire dancer.
The second thing you’ll notice, once you enter, is how devoted the 50 to 70 actors are to scaring the living daylights out of you — whether they are dressed as Michael Myers appearing from a trick door with a butcher knife or a half-human, half-fish creature sitting in a rock cave. Often, you don’t know what’s mechanized or what’s human until you walk beside it, like the snowman in the North Pole that shifts its evil eyes in your direction as you walk by it.
“We pride ourselves on getting people trained, getting them in their spot, and working with them to give the best scare possible,” Pino said, minutes before his staff opened last Friday night. “And we pride ourselves on movie quality sets. We have animatronics [mechatronic puppets] throughout the path that come out lightning fast to give you the scare.”
He said people from the film and theater industry helped design and build the sets, including a man who did the foam carving for the “Scream” relaunch currently being filmed in Wilmington.
“We had detailers from New Orleans who specialize in haunted house detail — doing the blood splatter, making it creepy, giving it that scary effect that you don’t get at other haunted houses,” Pino said.
Pino said he and his staff began building the sets in June, often working from sunrise to midnight. This year they aimed to make it especially scary for those who feel a bit cooped up because of Covid-19 restrictions. They wanted to give them “that sense of normalcy you don’t see anymore,” according to Pino.
They’ve also taken certain precautionary moves to guard against any potential Covid-19 spread. Each actor’s temperature is checked upon arrival and when closed, the whole house is sprayed with Vital Oxide disinfectant, which has been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency to kill 99.9% of the novel coronavirus particles. Actors are told to wear face masks beneath their costume masks and to stay at least six feet from visitors.
Travonna Micklos was checking tickets at the front door of the haunted house. She said it was her eleventh year working for Panic Attack.
“It’s grown tremendously,” Micklos said. “I’m just ready to watch it grow even more. This is huge — the biggest it’s ever been.”
Panic Attack is only open during the month of October every Friday and Saturday night. It is located at 3245 Pine Level Church Road in Nakina, Columbus County. Tickets are available online here.
View photos of Panic Attack by clicking on the image below:
Send tips and comments to the reporter at mark@localdailymedia.com or (970) 413-3815
