Audacious Immersive’s The Haunting of Your House Teaches How to Be a Ghost

With Halloween right around the corner, Audacious Immersive is getting in the spirit, bringing Denver a spooky afterlife experience that blurs the line between life and death. At the world premiere of The Haunting of Your House: A Practical Guide for How to Survive After You’ve Died, a ghoulish adventure transforms audience members into ghosts and teaches them the essential haunting skills necessary to make one’s presence felt in the mortal realm.

The immersive experience offers a curriculum of five carefully chosen lessons that cover everything you need to know to survive after death, from possession and communication with the living to apparition and even ectoplasmic creation. Under the guidance of enigmatic psychopomps – otherworldly mentors who traverse the chasm between death and the afterlife – participants will learn about the secrets of their past, confront the circumstances of their death, and discover what unfinished business binds them to the earthly realm.

“It’s kind of like a ghost tour, but what elevates it into theater is that we’re all experiencing our first moments of death in the afterlife together,” says Sara Stephenson, who designed the set and is portraying a doll named Lucy that attendees will learn how to possess. “I would say that it’s perfect for anyone who likes Halloween and wants to learn how to haunt their neighbors when they’re gone. Where else are you going to get practice like this?” 

Ren Manley, the organization’s founding artistic director, wrote and directed The Haunting of Your House, which is Audacious Theatre’s eighth original Halloween production. It premieres at the First Baptist Church of Denver on Friday, October 13, and runs through Sunday, October 29.

“I actually wanted to do this in 2022, but I got pregnant in 2021, so we had to pivot,” Manley says. “I’m at that point in the millennial generation where I miss ghost movies and always need more spooky things in my life. Audacious tries to do something creepy every year around a different theme; last October was Project Seven Sins, and the year before that was Lady Killers. This year, I’m looking forward to leaning more into the fun of ghost stories and the supernatural. As a kid, I was terrified but also fascinated by them, and I’ve done a million ghost tours, so ghosts are fundamental to my core. The Haunting of Your House really just puts a lot of my personal interests together into one massive project.”

Manley’s inspiration for this ethereal venture sprouted from an illusion called the Pepper’s Ghost Effect, which is a technique dating back to the 1800s. The practice, which involves reflective surfaces and clever lighting, allows an out-of-sight person or object to appear as a transparent specter. Typically, this effect is used to make an audience believe that a ghost is appearing in front of them; however, Manley had a slightly different idea for how to apply it here.

“Almost all of my ideas for shows come from one little thing I think would be really cool,” says Manley. “I knew they used Pepper’s Ghost on [Disney’s] Haunted Mansion ride, but I didn’t realize that it was this effect that had been around for hundreds of years and didn’t actually need electricity or anything. It was actually really simple. And then I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if the audience could be the ghost?’

“It’s a reflection, so the ‘ghost’ sits in a dark corner. Then there is some sort of clear glass – or in our case, plexiglass – and when you illuminate one side of it, that creates an illusion of this transparent-looking version of yourself,” she explains. “It’s basically just a lighting effect on glass that creates a transparent ghost look on the audience.”

While in ghost mode, the crowd will navigate the spookified church and learn how to use such apparatuses as the Scare-a-Min, the Aparate-o-Matic, the Otherworldly Ouija Planchette, the Spectral Reasoning Detector and more. As they move around the building during the one-and-a-half-hour tour, attendees are encouraged to interact directly with the performers.

“I really wanted to take the natural magnificence and gravity of the church and integrate it into this other dimension where things look familiar, but the more you go into the space, the more they become surreal,” says Stephenson of the scenic design. “One way I’m doing that is through the use of portals, where you enter from one space into another that maximizes all different kinds of effects.”

At the heart of the experience are the psychopomps, played by six different actors who guide the participants through the afterlife. According to Manley, the actors are sharing the role in a manner similiar to the way the Denver Center for the Performing Arts cast the role of David Byrne in Theater of the Mind, in which each actor played Byrne while guiding their respective audiences through the installation.

“Since we have six different people all playing the same character, finding out how to make the same character work for each of these individual actors was a fun process,” Manley says. “We actually started the whole process with an intensive weekend with the actors before we got going, because Audacious is immersive, which requires a little bit of a different style of acting. It seemed like a good idea to lay down ground rules for anyone who hasn’t worked with us before we bring everyone into rehearsals.”

Joaquin, a first-time performer with the company playing one of the psychopomp guides, appreciated the crash course in immersive theater. He compares it to one of his previous jobs as a ghost-tour guide. “I met Ren while I was working as a ghost guide here in Denver,” Joaquin says. “We’d give a history of Denver as well as tell you about all the ghosty, supernatural stuff happening in the area. I’m really passionate about this stuff, so this was a unique process for me. I fell in love with the script as we were going through it, because Ren’s script is so full of deep cuts to ghost lore. And everybody who plays a psychopomp is just so unique. If you really want the full experience of the show, you’ve got to come six times.”

“Agreed, definitely come six times if you’ve got the time,” adds Manley. “The main actor, playing the psychopomp, carries the show by themselves and gets to make the part their own. They have a lot of text that they have to memorize, lead a group of ten people through the whole thing, and serve as their best friend through the whole process. It is a very demanding role, because even though the show has a lot of humor, it also requires the actor to be very sensitive and human. Because we are all a little sensitive around death.”

Designed for ages twelve and up, this experience beckons to Halloween enthusiasts, the curious and the brave. Manley emphasizes that the show is more about seasonal fun and festivity than outright scares. Participants can actively engage or observe passively, ensuring an inclusive experience tailored to individual comfort levels.

“The Haunting of Your House is especially made for people who don’t want a scare-your-pants-off sort of Halloween experience – this is really more spooky, fun and festive,” she concludes. “If people like the parts of Meow Wolf where you get to interact with objects, this is a good show for that. People sometimes get nervous about the idea of immersive theater. They’re like, ‘Are you going to make me actually stand up and do stuff?’ and get a little uncomfortable. For this show, we’ve tried really hard to make sure that everything is fairly opt-in, so that people who are a little shy can just kind of be more passive observers. So if you go with a friend who does not want to participate in the interactive portion, you can participate while your friend watches you and enjoys the entertaining, paranormal technobabble in the show.”

The Haunting of Your House: A Practical Guide for How to Survive After You’ve Died, Friday, October 13, through Sunday, October 29, First Baptist Church of Denver, 1373 Grant Street. Find tickets at audacioustheatre.com.