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(Enlarge) Bennett’s Curse at Arundel Mills also features an insane asylum called the Sanctuary of Insanity, which has approximately 30 actors. This is the ninth year that the attraction has been in existence. (Staff photo by Sarah Nix)

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

OK, so that admonition from the old "Addams Family" movie is more comical than foreboding. But it holds true when talking about Bennett's Curse, a haunted house that's been set up outside the Arundel Mills Mall during Halloween season for the past nine years.

Bennett's Curse is no mere house of mirrors or haunted hayride. Rather, it's an "experience" with live actors, mazes and state-of-the-art special effects that's really meant to shock and stun. To make a musical analogy, if other haunted houses were Alice Cooper, Bennett's Curse would be Marilyn Manson or Gwar.

In 2007, Bennett's Curse was named one of the top Halloween thrill attractions by the Web site America's Best Haunts. Yet the people who run it are quick to also say it's not really appropriate for anyone age 10 or younger.

The main person behind the eerie enterprise is Allan Bennett, a mild-mannered native of Baltimore who seems the very definition of normal in almost every respect (he's a family man and runs a successful business). An odd obsession with the big October holiday set young Allan apart from all the other kids in his neighborhood, he admits.

"I've always had a passion -- I guess it's a unique passion -- for Halloween," Bennett explains. "It's something I would start thinking about long before everyone else. In the summer I would start preparing. I got real excited and everyone who knew me would say 'Oh, man, it's your time of the year,' and they'd be saying that in August."

While some horrormeisters will cite film actor Vincent Price or "CBS Radio Mystery Theatre" as influences, Bennett admits to being shaped by an unlikely cultural force: the old 1970s cartoon "Scooby-Doo."

"I used to watch episodes as a kid," he chuckles. "And I'd love the haunted houses they'd go into. That helped inspire the passion, seeing the tricks and different things they'd do in haunted houses even in cartoons."

With visions of Scooby and his cartoon pal Shaggy in his head, Bennett "progressed on from there." As a pre-adolescent, he set up a makeshift "haunted basement" in his parents' home. When he moved into his own place later on, he'd turn his backyard into a haunt for neighborhood kids and teenagers every Halloween.

After he married his wife, Jill (who co-runs Bennett's Curse), the pair started to volunteer at Baltimore County's Huber's Farm, a venue known for its haunted hayrides and corn maze. But the pair also noticed that when it came to hardcore Halloween haunts -- the big mazes and nationally-recognized haunted attractions -- Pennsylvania seemed to have the edge.

So the Bennetts set out to alter the horrific state of haunted houses in this state.

"I wanted to create a Halloween event in Maryland that people traveled here for or stayed in the state for," he says. "That's something no one else has done in Maryland. No one has had a true commitment to it."

The nitty gritty

Where Allan Bennett works as a "conceptualist" for the business, dreaming up ideas and visiting other haunted attractions to make comparisons, Jill Bennett runs the day-to-day operations. That means she does everything from building special effects to hiring actors (there are 50 in all) to sending out press releases to media outlets.

She's also there to witness who visits. If people come and go and seem unperturbed, she says, then she knows something's wrong.

"We get people that cry, scream and sometimes even laugh," she says. "And for us, we just really want to get a reaction out of people. It doesn't matter what it is, but we're really just trying to get some type of emotion out of them, and we usually achieve that goal."

To that end, the Bennetts have devised two separate venues, the House of the Vampyres and the Sanctuary of Insanity. The first is less frightful than the second, if reactions from visitors are to be believed.

Jill Bennett recalls one pre-teen who made it all the way up to the front of a line with his parents, only to back out at the last minute, when he glimpsed how dark things were inside the Sanctuary.

"He made it through the first one, but when he got to the second, he was like 'I'm not going in, Dad. I can't go,' " she remembers.

What's the difference between the two haunts? The House of Vampyres is a Medieval-themed "traditional" haunted house, where visitors roam from room to room in a make-believe castle. Each room setting is different, and all are devised as separate "scenes" by the actors, who play out different scenarios.

It's the Sanctuary of Insanity that scares even hardcore horror freaks, Jill Bennett says.

"It's almost pitch black," she notes. "There's a claustrophobic feel. There's a maze with strobe lights. It's more psychotic in a sense. A lot of times people are just afraid of the dark, and that's what gets them."

The Bennetts estimate both houses of horror bring in 5,000 to 10,000 visitors per year in the month that they're open. Bennett's Curse has proven such a success that the couple was able to open a new attraction last year, the Creepywoods Haunted Forest, in northern Baltimore County.

Expanding the Bennett brand is a priority for the couple, they say. After all, Allan doesn't bill himself as "Maryland's King of Halloween" for nothing.

"Every year the support we get from customers goes right back into the show," Jill Bennett says. "Customers that know us from year one have seen us growing. Even our actors who come back always ask what's new. It's always different. I can't even tell you how many new things there are this year because we added so many."

Bennett's Curse's is open Thursdays and Sundays 7-10 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays 7-11 p.m., through Halloween. Bennett's Curse is in the outdoor parking lot adjacent to the Arundel Mills Mall, next to Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry and across from Wal-Mart and Costco (on Arundel Mills Circle, off Arundel Mills Boulevard in Hanover).

Admission is $20 general and $30 for a speed pass, which allows visitors little or no wait time. Parental consent is required for children younger than 10. For details, call 410-538-6461 or go to www.bennettscurse.com.

Also, The Maryland Poison Center at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy is an excellent resource for educating the public on safety issues, including safety concerns of parents regarding Halloween treats. For a timely list of safety tips, go here:
http://www.mdpoison.com/education/Halloween%20Safety%20Tips_English.pdf

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