A Wisconsin haunted house has come under fire for using a hospital for disabled veterans as part of its spooky backstory, but the owner of the haunt says the town is taking jobs away from veterans by shutting the haunt down.
Guy Kitchell had been working for more than a year to turn a 15,000-square foot building on a highway in Waunakee, Wis. into “Wisconsin Scaryland.” One of the first things he did, he said, was work with his wife, a disabled Army veteran, and his lead fabricator, a disabled Navy veteran, to create a scary story for the haunted house’s website.
The “haunted history” details a horrible accident and massacre in a meat processing plant on the site, and says the building was later turned into an “amputee hospital” for soldiers returning from World War II.
“Since the hospital was underfunded and overrun with patients, many of the procedures were done by resident doctors using rusty knives, dull scalpels and no anesthetics,” according to the website. “Soldiers often became agitated and delirious due to improperly sterilized tools and subsequent infections. Some accounts indicate that patients even became violent toward themselves and others.”
The website says the hospital was shut down in 1968 after a “mass suicide” and had remained vacant for more than 40 years, until it was turned into Wisconsin Scaryland.
Though part of the story has a theme of veterans, the presentation does not include anything military- or veteran-related, Kitchell said. Instead, he said, the haunt is mainly based on the horror franchises “Silent Hill,” a Japanese horror movie and video game, and “The Walking Dead,” which depicts a postapocalyptic zombie world.
Haunted houses always have “some kind of fantastic story about the building that’s fake,” Kitchell said. “The two most popular are sanatorium or hospital.”
But the mention of veterans on the website bothered Chistopher Gerg, who told Madison television station WISC-TV that his father is a Vietnam veteran.
“What kind of rubbed my fur the wrong way was using veterans to make that dollar, and using the suffering of veterans to make that dollar,” he told WISC-TV. “It looks like they are using disabled veterans as a scary thing or people with post-traumatic stress disorder as a scary thing. It is a scary thing, but it’s not fun.”
Mark Trotter, a member of the Westport, Wis., Plan Commission, told Stars and Stripes he is concerned about signage, parking, restrooms, noise and safety issues with the site.
But as someone “with extreme respect for those who dedicate their lives and serve our country, I also find it extremely distasteful and disrespectful that the petitioner’s marketing premise” is that the site is a former amputee hospital.
“My nephew, who is still active-duty, has served two tours in Afghanistan and one tour in Iraq,” Trotter said. “I cannot speak for him, or the soldiers that have served our country, but I am personally concerned and disgusted by the macabre message that this proposed amusement facility sends to the youth in our community portraying our returning wounded soldiers as some sort of ghastly nightmare.
“This doesn’t seem right, and this is not Westport.”
Kitchell said he never meant to offend anyone with the story, and stressed that of his 38 employees, at least a dozen are veterans and many more are disabled. He also said the haunted house planned to donate half of its profits to charities, including the Wounded Warrior Project.
He said Gerg never contacted him with his complaint, and that Kitchell had offered free tours of the haunted house to all members of the town board to prove there are no veteran- or military-themed props or scares inside, but only one took him up on the offer.
That man, Brad Robinson, said at the recent joint Westport-Waunakee Plan Commission meeting that he had no problem with the haunted house, WISC-TV reported.
“I am a disabled veteran, and I have no problem with this temporary use, and I don’t think it’s a disgrace at all,” he said. “I would rather see that eyesore cleaned up than left the way it was.”
Kitchell said the property had been abandoned for years, and that he and his employees spent hundreds of hours improving the building, cutting down weeds and trees and hauling 36 dumpster loads of garbage away. He said he had planned to do more improvements to the parking area and the building, but stopped work when the planning commission voted down the zoning request.
Sara Kitchell, who served in the Army from 1992 to 1998, said she and another veteran wrote the story in part because they are veterans.
“It was never intended to offend anyone, and we actually kind of related to it more,” she said. “I was just shocked that anybody would find offense. That was something that obviously was not intended to hurt anybody.”
Kevin McKnight, who served in the Army from 1986 to 1989, also works for Wisconsin Scaryland. He said he remembers first reading the story and thinking that mistreatment from the VA was nothing new, but he wasn’t shocked or offended.
Instead, McKnight, who describes himself as “kind of a Halloween freak,” sought employment there, and said he loved learning more about the business of professional haunted houses.
Robert Ward, who served in the Army from 2008 to 2012 and said he has a traumatic brain injury and mild post-traumatic stress disorder, said he read the whole website before calling for a job, and he thought it was interesting, but not offensive.
“Obviously it’s all a story,” he said.
Working at the haunted house was a way to help him get out of the house and meet new people, Ward said. He helped with the setup and was going act as a clown in the haunt, which he called “a nice way to escape reality.”
So Ward was angry when he heard that people who are not veterans said they were offended on behalf of veterans. He said that though he served in Afghanistan and has been diagnosed with PTSD, he is not offended, “so I’m not sure how you can be more offended than I would be.”
Guy and Sara Kitchell, as well as McKnight, all believe the complaints about the veteran backstory were part of an effort to shut Wisconsin Scaryland down because it could bring a “bad element” into the small, wealthy suburb of Madison. Kitchell said a board member had complained about issues including the parking, lights and weeds, but used Kitchell’s efforts to fix those issues against him. The plan commission voted against the zoning variance.
However, Kitchell said, there is still a small chance the haunted house will open. The same commission that issued the rejection will consider an appeal Tuesday, he said.
hlad.jennifer@stripes.com
Twitter: @jhlad
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