How We Crafted a Character for Laurel’s House of Horror
LAUREL, MD — We’ve spent a lot of time at Laurel’s House of Horror over the past few years, and in all that time we’ve yet to miss a Christmas Show. Longtime fans of our YouTube channel will likely know that it’s been a holiday tradition for me (Tim) to step into character as “Twinkle Coldstone”, a mischievous elf with a great reverence for Krampus. But as Long John Silver said to Jim Hawkins in what was arguably the second best adaptation of “Treasure Island”, you give up a few things chasing a dream. One of the things that I’ve given up year over year is the traditional walkthrough experience that the customers at Laurel’s House of Horror get to look forward to at the “Krampus Nightmare” event; so, this year, we were determined to mix things up a little bit. In debuting a new haunt character for Katie so that I could have the night off, we would bumble our way into a far more intensive character creation process than we had ever dared to try before.
The blocks that build a character are many, and the process can begin with any piece or part that sparks inspiration. For Katie, it was enough to know that she wanted to create something that was derivative of the Twinkle Coldstone character we had created for me a few years back. The character had to be festive, twisted and maniacal - but she would also need to be charismatic. How do you dress a character like that? Laurel’s House of Horror has an extensive collection of props and costumes that actors can leverage, but their flexible costume policy also allows the actors some creative freedom to design and produce their own costumes (subject to management’s approval) and it seemed a shame to waste a gift-wrapped opportunity to flex some creative muscle. However, we’re not costumers and we don’t exactly have an eye for fashion, so we made it as far as ‘red and green colors’ before it was off to the local consignment shop to see if anything called to us.
Katie found two dresses for her character at the consignment shop, but they were a bit too neat for our purposes - so she brought them home for some DIY costume distressing. First, she took scissors to cut uneven hems and tears into both dresses; then she took a cheese grater to them, which helped to create a more worn look and more jagged edges on the fabric. To make the dresses look dirty and old, she then blended instant coffee with cinnamon to make a grimy, dirty paste. At one point she was also trying to use black tea, but ultimately the hue of the tea was too light to be seen on the red material, so very concentrated instant coffee splattered on the dresses wound up being the best thing to create grungy-looking stains. The desired effect was achieved, but be forewarned: instant coffee smells horrible once dried. We were also sure to pick up a pair of colored contacts and some small latex horns to match Twinkle Coldstone’s original aesthetic. After so many long hours spent assembling and distressing the costume, the name actually came easy - “Holly Hexen” was born.
As you’d expect, VFX makeup (i.e. “creature effects”) is a critical piece of the character creation process. So after turning in Katie’s ID to Jada in accordance with LHOH check-in policy, she took her seat in Rachel’s chair to have her prosthetic horns attached and then shifted over to Mandy’s chair for a more elaborate look. And for the uninitiated, we’re not talking about basic clown makeup here - every artist at Laurel’s has spent years developing an extensive repertoire working with all kinds of products, solutions and styles and each of them is able to create dozens of realistic, grotesque and strangely beautiful creatures per night. Some looks are quite easy to create while others can be quite complicated, and the time to render each look varies widely based on the level of complexity. Katie’s look took a bit longer than a number of others that were produced during the “Krampus Nightmare” event, but I think we can all agree it was well worth the added time. One red wig later, Holly Hexen was ready.
If you’ve ever visited a haunted house right at (or close to) opening, you likely stood outside the building, facade or main gate waiting to be let in for the walkthrough experience. During that brief delay, actors are getting “pumped” with chants, dances, handsprings and bloodcurdling screams, stretching their acting muscles before having ultimately giving them a solid four-to-six hour workout in scene. After doing her “stretches”, Katie was placed in the Theatre, which is the grand finale of Laurel’s current layout. This was her first Christmas haunt in character, her first original character at Laurel’s, and the first time she’d be scaring guests at the literal end of their journey - a big job for little Holly Hexen, but one she took great pride in. With the sun down and the lights up, the Krampus Nightmare was officially ready to wake up.
Walking through the Krampus Nightmare as a guest is a completely different experience, especially when you’ve spent years only seeing it from within as a character. The team at Laurel’s House of Horror always goes all out no matter what time of year, but during the holiday season, the scale is impossible to notice. With over half a million lights, snow effects, projection mapping and - oh yeah, dozens of scare actors dispersed across the twenty-five minute walkthrough, the adrenaline is pumping from the moment you step inside the haunt until the moment you are (literally) chased out. And although we weren’t exactly attached at the hip after a certain point, I have it on good authority that Katie carried herself with poise, grace and confidence and got some great scares in.
Above: Katie's new holiday haunt character, Holly Hexen, scared up a good time at Laurel's House of Horror! Image credit goes to Cash Photography.
So what exactly was our takeaway from this mad scramble to create a character from scratch? Well, first and foremost, we have more respect than ever for professional scare actors who design their own characters on a regular basis. It takes a lot of creative energy to conceptualize what makes a character tick, how they’re going to behave inside the haunt, what their skit lines are going to be and what their costume is going to look like; it’s even more difficult to actually manifest all of those things you’ve conceptualized. That leads us to the second big takeaway of note, which is that no matter how immersive and exciting a haunt experience is, it’s the people inside it that make it special. By switching things up a bit for this event, Katie and I got to see sides of the holiday haunt experience that we’ve never been able to see before…and we got to dip our toes into a more creative side of the business, too. I doubt we’ve seen the last of “Holly Hexen”, but thanks to our friends at Laurel’s House of Horror, she had one hell of a debut…you can see the whole process from start to finish in our vlog below.
The Krampus Nightmare event is expected to return for the 2026 holiday season. In the meantime, prospective visitors can look forward to the Valentine’s Day “Love is Blind” event on February 14th and 21st, 2026, as well as the anticipated “Halfway to Halloween” event and the second annual “Purge” events for which tickets will be sold at a later date. Escape Games and Paranormal Tours are also available year round. For tickets and details, visit https://laurelhaunt.com/ - and remember that you can always save money on advance tickets using the promo code ‘TIMANDKT’! This blog article’s hero image is credited to Chad Douglas and Demon Llama Photography.
