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Going off of memory here, so I might get some details wrong, but here's what I remember from a few years back. Threat of getting shut down is a part of why he moved from California. Ironically, it wasn't from the assaulted people going to the cops (though I think at least one actually did) so much as it was from pissing off neighbors with all of the bullshit surrounding having something like that in a normal residential neighborhood. They were calling the police and other local agencies trying to run him out He also left his wife and shacked up with someone who was into what he was doing. Eventually she left him as well, with a host of unsurprising stories about him being a complete creep and a conman. At least some of his kids used to back him up in interviews and the like, but as they got older they've distanced themselves from him, too. By all accounts, he's awful and a large part of why he's still operating is due to him picking his new locations carefully and relying a lot on the "nah, I'm a good guy and this is really a dog rescue charity" bit. As of a few years ago, in the pre-COVID times, the latest area he was living in / running at least some of the "haunt" in was starting to look to shut him down or find charges that might stick, since even though he's way more isolated, locals were starting to catch on to what was going on out there and were pretty unhappy with it. Supposedly, he's taken most of it on the road since then, transporting folks via van to who-knows-where. His popularity also was dropping a lot, at least in part due to scandals within his fan community related to him using it as a place to troll for rear end and to harass the hell out of folks who don't suck up to him. All of this was before COVID hit though. I haven't seen anything about him more recent than that.
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Aug 4, 2021 01:49
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OhAreThey posted:Isn't the waiting list to participate like a mile long, too? From what I've seen, it looks like they were kind of big (for something of this nature, anyway) at one point, like around when Haunters first came out, but Russ is believed to have been inflating stories about waiting lists for a long, long time. Probably always, to one degree or another. People have tried to research how many people are actually coming to his place several times, and none of them could back up anything close to the numbers that McKamey claimed. Last reporter I remember was saying that their best estimate was something like less than a dozen a year.
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Aug 4, 2021 02:38
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punk rebel ecks posted:Awesome post, but I'm curious where you get this information from? I'm a big Halloween attraction dork and I've watched / read a ton of things on McKamey over the years. I don't remember where I first heard of him, but it wasn't long before Haunters came out. After I saw Haunters, I kept noticing him being referenced more and more in haunt-related articles. Then he started popping up all over the place, it seemed. More articles, YouTube videos about extreme haunts (I've absolutely seen that Lazy Masquerade video before!), even an episode of David Farrier's Dark Tourist on Netflix. Some of the YouTube videos about him have had interviews with former workers and haunt goers. Hell, if I remember correctly, Chris Hansen was even doing some poo poo about Russ towards the end of his YouTube bids for continued relevance. I think that's where I saw a lot of the stuff about McKamey's personal life and the weird poo poo he was doing with his online community. A lot of articles and videos just repeat a ton of what Russ has said about himself and his haunt without much deeper digging, but you can find some folks who've at least tried to do actual research and interviews who've made attempts to parse the bullshit out. I want to say that Farrier was one of the ones who seemed like he was doing more than just giving Russ free PR. Sorry I don't have more concrete links on most of this stuff. It wasn't ever something I was collecting a reference hoard on, and it's been a bit since I've wandered across anything new that I've bothered to read or watch, tbh. I'd say YouTube and Dark Tourist are good places to start, along with searches for old newspaper articles. You'll have to wade through a lot of repetitive poo poo that's slinging clickbait to find too much of substance, though. cake bunny fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Aug 4, 2021 |
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Aug 4, 2021 04:06
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