Usually around this time of year I’m putting out horror movie recs and tired Gen X jokes about being traumatized walking the mean streets of FOSTER CITY CA on Halloween, but I’m taking it in a darker direction this year. The horrors persist and so do I, so let’s talk about America’s worst S&M club, MCKAMEY MANOR.
McKamey Manor was an alleged extreme haunted house experience that was actually just a farm in Tennessee where a boomer with bad teeth and even worse humor tortured kids for yucks on YouTube. It’s part urban legend, part meme, and part torture porn. It was a real place – or it was, as far as I can tell it’s not running anymore – but the lore around it has a life of its own.
Origins
McKamey Manor started out as a backyard haunted house in San Diego. In the early 2000’s, Russ McKamey built a popular local attraction in his own yard. It sounds like it was pretty fun when it started – local teens helped out and he spent thousands of dollars on the project, a DIY haunted maze full of animatronic scares and terrifying props. Admission free and locals would form long lines to get in at Halloween.
As the haunt got more popular, Russ upped the ante, making it scarier and more physical. The event went from all ages to 18+, then to 21+. It was still technically a haunted house, but it took on a more physical quality. In Russ’ own words, it was “a survival horror boot camp experience.” He started making participants meet him at a park, where he blindfolded them and drove them around before bringing them into the manor. He hired ex-military as actors and muscle, and they slapped, pushed, and kicked participants, spraying them with hoses and dunking their heads in toilets. He poured fake blood on them, tied them up, and put spiders on their faces.
McKamey Manor, due to its increased insanity, required “physical and psychological” clearance for participation, and produced long, complicated waivers for visitors. The waivers included film rights, and Russ took videos of every tour, posting polished clips on YouTube. He told the news that he was always looking for his “kodak moment” and it’s clear that he considered himself a real auteur. As it evolved, so did complaints about injuries and violence. In 2012, McKamey announced that he was moving the haunt away from his yard and into a ranch space in Lakeside, CA. In 2015, he decided to move it out of California altogether – he was run out of town in Illinois and finally settled on Summertown, TN.
Internet Legends
McKamey Manor took its final form in Summertown, TN. It dropped all reasonable pretense of a haunted house and became a free for all torture experience. It also turned into an Internet sensation that attracted adrenaline junkies, clout chasers, and debunkers.
While Russ’ operation started as a local experience, growing by word of mouth and local news coverage, he expanded it into Tennessee with the help of the Internet. He created and uploaded YouTube videos of the visitors and their “tours,” and at last check he has almost 80,000 subscribers. The videos are full of Russ’s kodak moments – women tied up with spiders crawling on their faces, men being drowned in disgusting buckets of mud, people blindfolded and tied up, having their hair pulled and cut, being force fed, dragged, pushed, hit, and gagged, and waterboarded. All the while, Russ talking shit at them with his Go Pro and headlamp on. The best way to describe these videos is torture porn – it’s like amateur fetish content.
He also ran a Facebook Group that served as the recruiting pool for the Manor. Once admitted, applicants vied for Russ’ attention by posting audition videos for the manor. Russ streamed tours live, which meant that visitors got a lot of social media exposure for doing them. He hyped up the tour participants, getting them lots of encouragement and attention for agreeing to do the tour. In the 2023 documentary Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House, participants describe McKamey as charming and flattering at first, manipulating them into joining the tour and ignoring the red flags.
Russ claimed to have a wait list for the haunt that was thousands deep, but there’s no evidence that it was real. Participants describe posting on Facebook, then getting a call right away from Russ that a spot had “just opened up” and if they didn’t jump on it, they wouldn’t get another chance. This is classic con man shit that might not have worked without all the Internet hype. Past participants claim that Russ also picked and chose who he brought on the tour, and he had two types: vulnerable young women, and military veterans. According to the people interviewed, he got off of the power exchange in both situations. Just like you would expect someone making torture vides on the internet to do.
January 21, 2013 | McKamey Manor on IG
It’s the Fraud, stupid
Why the fuck would anyone sign up to do this? Can you consent to being tortured? Is it abuse if he repeatedly tells you “you don’t want to do this” and you sign up anyway? Is the cumbersome, gimmicky 30 page waiver valid if he’s pouring water on your head and yelling at you to sign it?
Obviously, participants had different reasons for signing up for this, but some of them may have been induced by fraud. Part of the McKamey Manor lore is the $20,000 prize for “finishing” the tour. As the documentaries and podcasts indicate, Russ is not likely to have that kind of cash laying around – he works at Walmart. Second, the rules for finishing are unclear and entirely within Russ’ purview. There’s no objective standard to win, which could make it fraudulent.
Others signed up to chase clout or get exposure on the Internet. Several of the young women interviewed for the documentary talk about wanting to break into horror, or work as influencers. The live streaming and Facebook features could boost their careers, and Russ knew that. Say what you want about people who work as content creators, or want to get publicity to help their careers – I don’t think any of them deserved this kind of shit just to get followers. Women spoke of sexual harassment by both Russ and his actors. Most of them are young and vulnerable to this kind of manipulation; it’s nasty and wrong. Full stop.
It also really seems like people didn’t realize what they were getting into. I think they assumed – reasonably – that all of these warnings and precautions were just marketing. There are a lot of extreme attractions out there, and Russ himself constantly vacillated between “someone had a heart attack” and “this is all for fun, we’ll keep you safe.” The version of the waiver that I read says a safe word will be provided, but in videos Russ brags that there are no safe words. One clause refers to broken bones, another reminds you this is “just a game.” Besides being full of boiler plate bullshit (a full twelve pages), spelling and grammatical errors, the waiver is completely inconsistent. I don’t think it’s a surprise that people didn’t take it seriously.
Visitors had personal reasons for seeking out entertainment like this, too. A lot of them are trauma survivors – everything from child abuse to combat. It’s heartbreaking to see a sadistic predator take advantage of vulnerability like that.
So is this shit legal? Lest I step out of line and accuse people of breaking the law, I’ll let the Attorney General of Tennessee do it instead. On Halloween 2023, he sent a letter to Russ McKamey detailing grounds for an investigation into the manor and his antics:
We are concerned by recent reports regarding McKamey Manor and its practices. Specifically, various sources and reports allege that:
- McKamey Manor either does not offer, or honor, a means for a participant to stop the tour. In Hulu’s 2023 documentary about McKamey Manor, you are quoted as saying, “we’re known for no quitting and no safe wording.”
- Participants do not have access to the lengthy waiver that describes the risks involved with a “tour” before signing up, traveling long distances to Tennessee, or even before the tour begins. Former participants describe the adrenaline and pressure they felt when reviewing the waiver at the start of the tour. One interviewee from the Hulu documentary stated, “I had too much excitement going through my veins at the time. If [the waiver] would have said that a man is going to come out of the woods and murder you during this event, I would’ve signed it.”
- The supposed $20,000 prize offered to anyone who completes the McKamey Manor “challenge” does not exist and/or is impossible to win. When a journalist from the Nashville Scene asked you if anyone has won the challenge, you responded by saying, “Of course not, and they never will! Because it’s so mentally and physically challenging. But it will be the most exciting thing you’ve ever done.”
Bye, Girl
As far as I can tell, McKamey Manor is shut down. Russ sued the TN AG but lost, and around the same time he was arrested for attempted murder and rape of his ex-girlfriend (the prosecutor declined to charge). The Manor site is still up, but Russ has pivoted to making corny karaoke videos for his YouTube channel. It’s truly fucking deranged to see a lineup of shitty romance pop set to lasers and stock footage of women walking on the beach right after the endless torture porn.
At the end of the day, I think this guy is just a regular ass pervert. It seems pretty clear that he gets off on hurting people, and he’s been able to hide behind the smokescreen of “America’s scariest haunt” to do it. As one of his victims put it, she didn’t consent to being part of his fantasy. Because that’s what it is – he’s like a wicked old witch who lured his targets into his candy house of horrors with tricks and illusions.
Sources
Inside McKamey Manor – podcast
Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House
Reddit – McKamey Manor, Extreme Haunts
Dark Tourist – McKamey Manor Episode + his Reddit AMA
There are a lot of great YouTube docs on this, too