"Monster Inside: America's Most Extreme Haunted House" is a new Hulu documentary that follows the story of Russ McKamey and his McKamey Manor. The Navy Veteran turned master of horror started his horror experience as an approximately hour-long, extreme haunted house-style Halloween destination behind his home in a San Diego subdivision near Rancho Peñasquitos in 2001. Each year, McKamey tried to up the ante and outdo the year before, until his experience became what many allege is a no-holds-barred, terror-fueled horror show where he and a group of his "monsters" would essentially torture hand-selected participants mercilessly for hours at end.
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| A Yelp review from McKamey Manor San Diego. |
As detailed in the nearly hour-and-a-half documentary, McKamey Manor requires participants to sign a nearly 40-page liability waiver that includes the inability to leave the experience without the staff's permission and consent to being subjected to various forms of physical and psychological torture. There is no conventional entrance fee - instead, McKamey accepts dog food for his pet dogs. Prior to beginning, participants are required to complete a "sports physical" and provide a doctor's letter stating they are physically and mentally cleared, as well as provide proof of insurance, pass a background check and come up clean on an onsite drug test.
Once accepted into the "tour", McKamey performs 4-10 hours of unhinged terrors like waterboarding, burying alive, physical beatings, forced bug eating, tooth extraction, and worse. McKamey films the experience of each of his "contestants" for his own social channels, which have garnered him a cult-like following. Participants are incentivized to participate with the promise of $20,000 for any contestant that completes the challenge, although no known winners have ever been reported.
In 2017, McKamey left San Diego and moved his extreme horror experience to the Nashville area of Tennessee, and Huntsville, Alabama. A 2019 petition on Change.org gathered nearly 200,000 signature calling on the officials of the two states to shut down the attraction, which it describes as "a torture chamber under disguise," yet McKamey continues to operate the McKamey Manor experience throughout the year to this day. Considered a pioneer of "extreme" haunted attractions, McKamey Manor has been featured in many news segments, on the Travel Channel, in the 2017 documentary film Haunters: The Art of the Scare, and on the Netflix original series Dark Tourist.
Watch Hulu's Monster Inside: America's Most Extreme Haunted House here.
