"My job is selling people endorphins,” he says. “It used to be you'd be sitting around a fire outside of the cave you lived in. Something would come out of the darkness, drag someone out, and you'd hear them being eaten. Our brain still has that level of anxiety, and humans are the scariest thing on earth. People who come to a haunted house are already scared. All we have to do is put a face on it and let them release it."
Hopps' passion for horror came organically. Growing up in the 1980s in Havre de Grace, Maryland, Hopps' favorite toy was a stuffed King Kong. A fan of monsters of all variations, he realized at an early age creatures could help even the smallest kid feel like they could take on the world.
"I've always loved monster movies, but I was always scared as a kid of the dark and other things kids are afraid of. I think that as a young child, I wanted to have the thought of, 'I could be stronger than this; I could be braver than this,'" he says. "I was in the right place at the right time and latched onto monsters."
And latch on, he did. Hopp's first haunted house experience was at the tender age of 10 when he hid in the ceiling to dangle a rubber spider on a fishing pole over patrons' heads.
Supported in his artistic endeavors by his creative mom, he moved to Orlando, Florida, after high school graduation and started performing as a haunt actor, playing a werewolf. By 1997, he was making airbrush masks as well as performing, working year-round at the now-defunct Skull Kingdom attraction.
Hopps feels that training on the job was the best way to embrace this unusual industry. For him, exploring different roles of a haunt can help someone discover how to run a business successfully.
"I don't think going to school for it is even a good idea," he says. "There's so much to it, and you're going to be doing something different all the time. It's more about learning how to solve problems. Once you learn that, then you apply that [philosophy] to whatever problems come up."
Hobbs was so passionate about the industry that when he took a vacation, he would use it to work at a different haunted house in another state. In 2001, he traveled to Texas, where he spotted his future wife wandering through a haunt's dark halls. By the end of that season, he was planning to relocate to the Lone Star State to be with her.
Bouncing around the next decade from venue to venue, Hopps heard that horror aficionado Lucy Moore was planning to open Dark Hour off Central Expressway in Plano. In 2013, Hopps signed on to design some scenes for the up-and-coming space.
"Over the course of about six months, I went from being the guy who did one thing to the guy that did all of it. I failed upwards and was asked to be the artistic director of the show," he says. "At the time Dark Hour was being built, there was this huge buzz of electricians and drywall people and light and sound people who all needed answers from someone. They weren't getting the right answers from the current director, so they had me step in to do it."
As the 40,000-square-foot attraction runs all year, this was no easy gig. At Dark Hour's peak, Hopps managed 100 actors and a support staff of costumers, makeup artists, casting directors, parking attendants, security staff, line management, and ticket takers. Because he initially joined the company when the haunt was still under construction, he tailored his ideas around the existing design, growing and adapting a master story that explores a coven of witches.
Curiously, the enforced time off during the 2020 pandemic was a blessing in disguise for Hopps, who took the opportunity to redesign the 13 witches in the Dark Hour coven.
If Allen Hopps looks familiar, it's because he's scared the crap out of you at Dark Hour.
Robert Alcala
From pop culture and classic fairy tales, Hopps creates stories referencing many cultures. Through his staging of myths, he's careful to avoid cultural appropriation. For example, for his back story of a witch possessed by a wendigo spirit, Hopps worked with the Ojibwe tribe to ensure the props and monsters were as authentic as possible. Reluctant to cast actors who weren't from the tribe as indigenous zombies, he altered his story to focus on zombie fur trappers instead.
Once the themes, side characters and sets are decided, a plot is created to "fuel the dark hour spell." Each year, Dark Hour's Halloween show focuses on a different witch, with 2023's star being Jenny Greenteeth in "The Rise of the Sea Hag."
"She was a nursery bogey designed to keep children from playing near the water," says Hopps. "I try to do witches that are, if not familiar, at least iconic. She's 9 feet tall, green, and nasty — she's really our most physically intimidating witch."
Pinterest vision boards and conceptual meetings eventually lead to mask-making, costuming design and testing scary scenarios until the story is ready to be cast. The audition process begins in August; many cast members are carried over from year to year to fill most of the 85 spots, and 25 to 30 new performers are added each season. Hopps trains actors all over the country throughout the summer while maintaining a YouTube channel with 129k subscribers called “Stiltbeast Studio,” where he happily shares scary tips and tricks.
"It's not just my knowledge; it should be everybody's," Hopps says. "We're all on the same path, and it would be very weird if I tried to push people down the hill to get further up. If I show 100 people a new trick to make a corpse, they all have their own different perspectives they feel obliged to share with me."
The Dark Hour director gained an even more significant opportunity to spread his knowledge when he took over the ownership of the space after Moore retired earlier this year. He’s excited about bringing Stiltbeast Studios in-house to offer on-site monster camps, stilt walking, mask making, and airbrush classes designed to help the next generation of spooktacular performers learn and grow right alongside him.
"There's a saying that art is never finished, but I get the joy of already thinking about what we're going to do next season," he says. "We're going to make Dark Hour the best version of ourselves we can be based on time, budget, energy and positive exposure. We're integrating what it means to be a haunt with what it means to be a theater and a school. That's our way of giving back to the haunt community and the local community."
With the motto "you should produce more than you consume," Hobbs is busy absorbing his youngest cast members' viewpoints and fears, keeping an ear out for pop culture moments and incorporating new ideas he feels Dark Hour can do justice. Helping the next generation conquer their fears while following in his footsteps is what ultimately fulfills this master of the macabre.
"You might have a kid into dark stuff, but it just means they're more tuned in and aware," he says. "If they're into art that's a little creepy or scary, there's a living to be made in it, so without a doubt, foster that art as opposed to trying to snuff it out.
"If nothing else, there wouldn't be any light without darkness. Every hero is judged by their villains. So, if I'm imagining awesome villains, I'm making people into heroes."
Dark Hour Haunted House tickets range from $35 to $100 for the VooDoo Suite. The current show, at 701 Taylor Drive, Plano, runs through Oct. 31.
