Jason Takes the House of Torment

Ki Ki Ki, Ma Ma Ma.

That terrifying refrain is echoing across the fear-filled rooms of the House of Torment this spooky season. Like a dark spell, it has summoned the hulking villain of the Friday the 13th films, the masked murderer and undead slasher known as Jason Voorhees, as Austin’s award-winning haunted attraction hosts Jason Un1v3rse: Survive the Night, a maze of mayhem dedicated to the exploits of the original campground killer. 

Ubiquitous as the masked killer is in pop culture, he’s been in a kind of legal limbo since the release of the Austin-shot 2009 reboot. Jason has been caught up in a welter of claims and counterclaims about who owns what particular part of the character and the broader mythos. These have been somewhat resolved through a legal agreement between vying parties that has led to the formation of Jason Un1v3rse. That’s meant the first new additions to the Friday the 13th story in over a decade. That includes the A24-produced TV series, Crystal Lake, and an agreement with the House of Torment’s parent company, 13th Floor Entertainment, to let Jason do his deadly business. Under the deal, characters from the films from 1982’s Friday the 13th Part 2 to 1989’s Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan will run loose in nine of its 15 markets, including Austin. As 13th Floor’s performance director and current House of Torment GM, longtime House inhabitant MIchael Faust has been pivotal in creating that magic and malice in all those locations. 

Operating a professional-level haunt like the House of Torment is a year-round operation. It involves months of planning, designing, fabrication, and training that starts pretty much as soon as Halloween is over, and explains why the House was just included on the Haunted Attraction Association’s list of Iconic Haunts. For 2026, the team was already deep into reshaping the middle of its three attractions from the VHS retro thrills of last year’s Torment ‘99 haunt into a cryptid-themed zone. Faust said, “We had camp scenes, we had cabins, all ready to go,’ and then it was, ‘Yup, we’ve got the IP for Jason.’”

This is the first time that the House has featured a licensed property, something that is normally the exclusive domain of major attractions like Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights in Florida or Knott’s Scary Farm in California. However, the House team is still used to dealing with horror with a back story, just of its own creation. Even as the House has changed over time and even relocated, regular guests will have been able to follow the evolving story of the cursed and monster-infested city of Blackthorne. But dealing with a popular IP is a big challenge – especially for Faust, who admitted that he’d never watched the Friday the 13th films until recently. He was raised on spookshows like Poltergeist and when it came to slashers he was always more of a Freddie Krueger guy. However, he soon developed favorites within the series. Top of the list was Jason X, “where he goes into space,” but when it comes to the films that are part of Jason Un1v3rse, “it’s VI, with Tommy Jarvis, where he sticks him with the pole.”

Luckily, he also had the encyclopedic skills of another veteran of the House, “our historian” Mark Pacina, to rely on. “He knows all our lore, and if I forget a year and ask him, ‘Hey, what was this character?’ he knows. So, with Jason, I was able to tell him, ‘Now go research all that.’”

Credit: 13th Floor Entertainment/Jason Un1v3rse

That research was important, because there’s not just one Jason. The look of the character changed over the films, with not even a consistent design for his signature hockey mask. Moreover, each Jason has to be right for the space they’re in, so you won’t find Camp Crystal Lake Jason amid concrete walks and sewer pipes. With seven films to work from, Faust said, “In our house, you’ll see Jason VII in one scene, Manhattan in one scene, then you’ll see Jason III in another, but in Denver you’ll see a different Jason.”

As part of his responsibilities, Faust has been making sure that all the Jasons across all the locations remain screen accurate to their scene. “‘Why does he have that mask on? That one’s shirt’s tucked in! He doesn’t have yellow gloves, it’s VI that has yellow gloves and the belt.’ …. When I sent the costumes out, everyone was like, ‘This isn’t even distressed!’ I know! Shocked me too! It’s VI when he comes out of the water and he’s all tattered up. In III, there’s barely anything on him. Barely any blood, nothing. 

The addition of Jason Un1v3rse in Austin makes every haunt within the House of Torment feel more distinct than ever. Visitors start in Return of the Abominations, which Faust called “a throwback” to how they did things back at their old location at Highland Mall, “super-intense.” Next, they head into Jason’s realm, with its sense of creeping terror. After that, they are drawn into the occult realm of Beyond the Veil, where the alluring devotees of a terrible cult lurk in a faded Victorian manor to lure you on to a fate worse than death. That order reflects the flow that the team has tried to develop since coming back from its year off during the pandemic. Faust explained, “House one is always intense. House two is fun. House three is the dialogue one.” As a result, he added, “Everyone has their favorite haunted house and it’s not like, ‘This one’s the scariest.’ It’s ‘That one was fun, that one was scary, but this one was my favorite because I just liked it.’”

However, it’s not just about décor. What’s really different about this year, and really re-enforces those distinctions, is the performances from the scarers, with guests just as likely to bump into a terrified camp counselor or a Takes Manhattan-era NYC mugger as Jason himself. For Faust, that’s the end result of a process that started a couple of seasons ago. He said that he realized, after a lot of soul-searching, “I’d been approaching performance and how I work with people the wrong way. It had always been ‘I’ve done it for this long here, I’m one of the pillars of Torment, we’re gonna do it this way.’ It was very much, ‘we’re going to be intense and scare people.’ Now it was, ‘No, we’re here to entertain people.’ Our company’s name is 13th Floor Entertainment Group, not 13th Floor Scary Group.”

To make that leap, Faust introduced dialogue workshops and scripts, “not in the guise of ‘this is what you’re going to say, but this is the basis. Change up what you want.’” He credited his sweepers, the leads of the respective house – Kat Ford in house one, House historian Pacina in house 2, and Rio Thorn in house 3 – and their teams for not only grasping this change in perspective, but really embracing it. It got to the point that performers were bringing him pages of dialogue that they could fold into their scenes. “I said, go, implement it.”

Even now, with the haunting season well under way, the team is finding new ways to make the experience more entertaining, including a change inspired by an interaction between a guest and one of the actors playing a thug. “One of them got a $20 tip,” Faust said. “They were acting like they were mugging customers, and a customer gave them 20 bucks. I’ve got a bunch of fake money here, and I told them, ‘Why don’t you mug each other?’ So now they’re doing that, and it’s cool. We’re always developing.”

The House of Torment, including Jason Un1v3rse: Survive the Night, is open through Nov. 8. Tickets and info at houseoftorment.com.

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