Woman Who Was Traumatized of Haunted Houses Now Works in One (Exclusive)

Becoming a “haunt actor” for TikToker Wardens Widow was not planned.

In fact, according to her, coming across the line of work was a completely “random occurrence.”

While in high school, she was a part of the National Honor Society, which, as part of its membership, mandated that participants rack up a certain number of volunteer hours.

“Our local haunted house was hiring volunteers, and that actually counted for hours,” she tells PEOPLE, of how she “stumbled” into the work. “I fell in love with it.”

She remembers watching the woman who would do her makeup for the haunted house at the time, and being fascinated by the products she would use. As a result, she went out by herself and bought some of the products, playing around with the effects and artistry of them on her own time.

“That was 17 years ago, and here we are now,” she laughs.

Since then, the social media star has expanded her participation in her hobby tenfold.

It’s a seasonal job — and not her full-time job — but that doesn’t mean the industry is at a standstill throughout the year until Halloween, she clarifies. She actually met her now-boyfriend through the haunt industry, as he works year-round, helping to plan, build and construct the sets for haunted houses in the area.

Interestingly, the spooky social media star was never quite interested in anything spooky or macabre as a child. Rather, it was quite the opposite, she shares.

“I still remember the first couple haunted houses that I went to with my family, and I was traumatized,” she divulges. “I hated it. It was awful. It wasn’t until I started working at them that I really got into it and started really appreciating all the makeup, the scenes, just everything that goes into it.”

Despite her job, the TikToker is not a believer in the supernatural.

“I always joke and say I’m the worst person to ask that ’cause I am too much of a scientific brain and everything has an explanation,” she says.

As she got more and more into the world of creating these characters and dabbling in makeup and costumes, the haunt actor began to share her interest online.

“It was during COVID — like everybody else in the world that started posting online,” she laughs. “I was bored and that was kind of the main reason.”

She would do her makeup in her apartment and post it on her Facebook, where she says “nobody but my 12 Facebook friends were seeing it.”

In an effort to broaden her reach, she took to TikTok to share her makeup videos.

“It wasn’t until I started posting content about my character that my page really took off,” she says, which is slightly an under-exaggeration, as she now has a million followers on the page.

Online, she goes by the name of the main character that she plays at the Blood Prison, a haunted house located in the old, defunct Ohio State Reformatory prison, whom she calls the Warden’s Widow.

Working at the Blood Prison is the first “professional big haunt” she’s worked at, which she says was always a goal of hers.

When she got the job at the Blood Prison, the organizers and coordinators told her she could have creative freedom to come up with her character on her own time.

“I like to tie my characters into the setting and what makes sense,” she explains of her process.

“So I started researching people that were actually at the prison when it was a running prison. I won’t say her name just out of respect for the family, but her character is loosely based off of a wife of one of the wardens there.”

The Ohio State Reformatory is well known in the horror world, as it has been the site of numerous films over the years, including The Shawshank Redemption.

While she isn’t a believer in the paranormal, she does say that some of her coworkers have had strange experiences: “I will say just the history alone of the building is incredible.”

The history of the Ohio State Reformatory lends itself well to the haunted house that the haunt actor and her colleagues cultivate at the Blood Prison; however, there’s another element that goes hand in hand with her spooky persona.

The TikToker stands at an impressive height of 6’7″, which she has, of course, managed to work into her character.

“I will a hundred percent chalk up to the only reason I scare people is because of my height,” she admits. “I can intimidate full-grown men, which most people cannot say. I’m gonna target the dad in the group, I’m gonna target the big boyfriend, ’cause if you can take them down, the rest of the group’s gonna be terrified.”

Doing the work of scaring people can be really fun, the influencer says, but her online presence is also devoted to raising awareness for how people should behave while inside a haunted house.

“The goal for all of my socials has always been to educate anybody in the industry, but especially new actors, ’cause I think, I think about my experience of becoming a haunt actor and that wasn’t really things that were talked about,” she says.

“People can be nasty. Just be nice. Don’t be mean, don’t be hitting people.”

She recalls receiving hate for a video she made to that same effect. “They were like, you work at a haunt, you should expect to be hit.”

For that reason, she reveals that the Blood Prison has security on site to deal with anyone who gets overzealous in the haunted house.

The job comes with unusual hazards, like five-hour-long makeup sessions and potentially violent teenage boys, but for the most part, she finds it fun.

“There’s always stuff to talk about,” she says. “I’m in a cue line, and I have several actors that are out there with me. We’ll hold it together while we’re scaring. And then we get back inside and we’re like, ‘Oh my God, did you see that guy I got, he did this or that.'”

Continuing on, she says, “You get to literally dress up and create whatever you could think of. I’m an adult playing dress up. Like it doesn’t get much better than that.”