On September 17, Hope Lowe, 11, began working at Bloodrush haunted house in Elkhorn. This isn’t her first year, as she has been scaring for three years now as her clown character “Tickles.” Bloodrush is one of the many haunted houses in Omaha and consists of many key sections such as clowns, butcher, cattle cages, grandma shack, bone yard, and others. 

“Being able to give someone a fun experience or something they can remember is actually really fun. And its really fun to scare people,” Lowe said. 

While scaring is a major part of what she does, Lowe said that most of her job comes from behind the scenes work. They build sets, do make-up and hair, and even have cast parties, where they get in costume and do a photo or video shoot to promote Bloodrush. This year, Lowe said she even received her own poster. 

Not only does Lowe enjoy what she does, she loves the family that the other staff has created at the haunted house.  

“The people that I’ve met working at the haunted house honestly saved my life, I was in a really low place. Being able to come and everybody there treats you like family and everybody is so cool, it’s just a really good place to be,” said Lowe. 

This year Lowe earned the role of leader for her own group of clowns called the Ra5h Crew. She says that becoming a clown was a difficult task as they had their own initiation which required working the tree line. According to Lowe, tree line is the area right before clowns, and actors are tasked with welcoming customers into it. It has few spots to hide at, requiring the actor to stay in character almost constantly. Not only does she play Tickles, she also has a character that she plays in cattle cages named Rugby the cattle hand. 

“A lot of the clowns didn’t think I was going to be a clown, or they called me a wannabe clown, but this year I was titled head of the clown posse,” Lowe said. “Being told I was head of the clown posse made me so happy, and I was really proud of myself that I made it to being an actual clown,” she said. 

While working, Lowe has her own unique ways of scaring people, she likes to do backflips and cartwheels in front of people. She said that days with less groups that are more spaced out, are more fun because they let you interact with the people longer.  On the other hand, packed days such as opening night and Halloween, give her less time to entertain them, and she has to do her pop scare and run back to her hiding place immediately for the next group.

“For my pop scare, there’s a curtain that moves but you can’t tell it moves, so I’ll throw it back and yell Yahtzee and usually people scream,” said Lowe. 

She also said that less busy days allow more time for her to interact with the people and make them laugh after scaring them, which is her favorite part. 

With her experience, Lowe was recruited into a squad of actors called F9 Demons this year. This group consists of haunt actors from all over Omaha and the surrounding area. A similar group, 59 demons, is a group of actors from only Scary Acres, so to provide the same opportunity for other haunted house actors, F9 demons was created. 

“Our goal is to become our own group of actors, so we can haunt at other haunted houses other than the one we’re from,” said Lowe.  

Lowe is excited for the future of this season and encourages everyone to come visit before they close on October 31.  

“I’m going to do this my entire life, its so much fun,” said Lowe.