Psycho Clan Presents THE DARK HOUSE

Psycho Clan, the creative team behind many well-known NYC immersive productions, will present THE DARK HOUSE, a horror experience just in time for the Halloween season.

Inspired by The Toll House, the classic British ghost story by W.W, Jacobs, THE DARK HOUSE is created by Psycho Clan original members Timothy Haskell and Paul Smithyman and will run OCTOBER 7TH through OCTOBER 31ST at the Philipstown Depot Theater located at 10 Garrisons Landing in Garrison, NY. Performances are Wednesdays-Sundays from 6-10 pm (with Halloween weekend running 5-10 pm), tickets are $30 regularly and $35 on 10/23, 24, 29, 30 and 31st and can be purchased IN ADVANCE ONLY at www.nightmarenyc.com. Please see Covid-19 protocols at the end of this release.

THE DARK HOUSE is largely experienced in complete darkness. As you arrive, you are greeted by the 'Optecs' team who wire you up and "download" the experience into your mind. You are then thrust into a ghost story where you are one of the main characters. As the story goes, you and 3 of your 'friends' set out to disprove that a house the locals have deemed 'haunted' truly isn't by spending the night in it. You fail! You will find your way through this intense and terrifying experience while wearing audio headsets and reaching for the "umbilicals" to help guide you. As you listen, the physical world is manifested in real time as story elements unfold and your imagination runs wild. THE DARK HOUSE is a sensory assault, using all senses except sight.

The biggest question - is this a haunted house!? "Well, that term is somewhat subjective," says co-creator Timothy Haskell. "THE DARK HOUSE exists for the same reason more traditional haunted houses do - to scare you for some holiday fun! Additionally, you go in groups, you move around, you enter a dark scary world, things scare you, you leave with the catharsis you get from screaming... but how it is presented is very different than a traditional haunted house. I should know, I built those for 20 years. With this one, however, we don't want to give anyone the false impression that they will be walking down dark hallways where monsters jump out at them with chain saws. It is not that at all." Adds co-creator Paul Smithyman, "We call it either a non-traditional Haunted House or, when we want to get fancy, an Immersive Horror Theater Experience."

Psycho Clan has been the creative team behind many horror theater productions, most notably NIGHTMARE that ran downtown for 15 years. Additionally, they produced the Nightmare: Horror Stories theater festival, staged the twisted Easter event Full Bunny Contact, the bizarre Christmas event Santastical, and more recently their first foray into more intimate theatrical horror experiences This is Real from 2016 - 2018. THE DARK HOUSE is the renaming and reworking of I Can't See that ran downtown Manhattan in 2019. Ten minutes have been added to it and the ending has been re-jiggered, not to mention a complete re-imaging of the lay-out as it transfers to this new space. All in all, the team also felt THE DARK HOUSE was a better name. For more about Psycho Clan visit www.thepsychoclan.com.

THE DARK HOUSE features technical and sound design by James Lo (received New York Dance and Performance BESSIE Awards for John Jasperse's furnished/unfurnished and for Donna Uchizono's State of Heads, and has created sound scores for dozens of choreographers as well as electronic and software designs for Robert Ashley, Ben Neill, Elizabeth Streb, and David Behrman) and production design by Paul Smithyman (designed the Nightmare Haunted House for 12 years, as well as Full Bunny Contact, Santastical and Timothy Haskell's Fatal Attraction, Jaded Assassin, and Road House, among other critically acclaimed theatrical productions).

Timothy Haskell most recently directed the critically acclaimed, sold out run of the immersive horror offering THIS IS REAL, an immersive abduction experience situated in a Brooklyn warehouse. He created and directed the wildly popular Easter spectacle Full Bunny Contact as well as the ridiculous Christmas wonderland Santastical. He has also directed other non-scary plays including James and the Giant Peach at St. John's University and Sex You (I'm Gonna) by Nathan Phillips at the ACE Hotel and then in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Other credits include Off-Broadway's Stitching (The Wild Project and The Elephant in Los Angeles), The Jaded Assassin (Ohio Theatre), Fatal Attraction: A Greek Tragedy starring Corey Feldman at the Classic Stage Company, the Paris Hilton spoof I Love Paris by Doug Fields also at the Blue Heron Arts Center and the cult hit Road House: The Stage Play, which transferred from Off-Off Broadway to Off-Broadway at the Barrow Street Theatre. Mr. Haskell also created and directed the annual Nightmare: New York's Most Horrifying Haunted House, which ran every fall for 13 seasons.

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