86: McKamey Manor Arrest: Did Extreme Haunted House Owner Go Too Far?
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More than half of America's seniors choose Medicare Advantage for high-quality health care at more affordable costs. In fact, seniors in Medicare Advantage are saving more than $2,500 a year compared to original Medicare. To protect and strengthen Medicare Advantage, we're making our voices heard. From our local communities to Washington, D.C., seniors are voting, and we're voting for Medicare Advantage.

Sponsored by the Coalition for Medicare Choices. Learn more at medicarechoices.org. On July 24th of this year, I saw an article that severely disturbed me. It did not surprise me, but it did disturb me nonetheless. It was an article about how a man named Russ McKamey had been arrested for the attempted murder of his girlfriend and was being held on a $100,000 bond. Apparently, in the past week, he had tried to kill the woman who has remained unnamed,

Immediately, the story started spreading around the internet like wildfire, and it seemed like everyone had the same reaction that I did. They were horrified. But anyone who knew who Russ was always feared that he would one day try to kill someone. Some had even tried to alert the authorities prior to this event.

See, Russ was known to be a dark guy. For over a decade, he owned and operated an interactive haunted house called McKamey Manor. But calling it a haunted house is actually the understatement of the century. McKamey Manor was known to torture those who signed up for it. This was not your typical haunted house attraction. People could have their teeth extracted without Novocaine or be waterboarded.

People would leave with broken bones and PTSD as they tried to finish Russ's haunted experience in 10 hours.

And all of this was the dark creation of Russ, who would live stream the participants as they suffered on Facebook. People had been saying for ages that Russ did this because he enjoyed torturing people, while others argued that the people who participated in this experience were consenting adults and Russ didn't do anything wrong. And now someone close to him is claiming he tried to kill them.

Maybe you're familiar with McKamey Manor. It's been talked about for a while now. There's even been documentaries about it. But not much else has come out since Russ's arrest. So today, I want to go through the charges against Russ and revisit stories of the horror people have experienced in the house. Because I promise you, it makes the house seem that much darker. It's when your heart starts pounding. It's when your heart starts pounding.

This is Heart Starts Pounding, a podcast of horrors, hauntings, and mysteries. I'm your host in this very grim adventure, Kaylin Moore. We release episodes every Wednesday at 10 p.m. if you live in the Appalachian Mountains, and that's 10 a.m. if you live by the beach in Australia, where you can see the ghost ship of the SS Alkamos off the shore. And if

and if you're listening to the audio only version ratings and reviews really help the show and also they let me hear from you guys a bit more so i love when i get them before we dive in today let's go through a few trigger warnings i need to inform you what you're getting yourself into

We're going to be talking about domestic violence as it pertains to the charges against Russ that were filed in July. There will be descriptions of torture as well as other very gross stuff that happens inside of McKamey Manor that still makes my stomach churn. So be warned.

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And of course, Patreon members can listen and watch ad-free with their subscription. There's a free trial if you want to test it out. I'll drop the link to everything in the show notes. But no matter how you listen or watch, you're supporting Heart Starts Pounding more than you know. And I'm very thankful for that. And with that, we're going to take a short break. And then I want to tell you about what Russ was recently charged with. This episode is brought to you by Miracle-Made.

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On a sunny day in Southern California, Amy Mulligan sat near a hot tub in the backyard of a two-story home wearing a Tweety Bird onesie. In the front of the house, away from where Amy could see, a red van pulls up and two men in ski masks pop out. With them is a man dressed in what I can only describe as a spirit Halloween doctor costume. He's carrying a camera and he records everything that happens next.

The men storm the backyard and force Amy down on the concrete patio, where one of them ties her hands behind her back and covers her eyes in duct tape. The men taunt her, slapping her in the face and asking why she's laughing. For what is happening to her, Amy's demeanor is surprisingly calm in this situation.

She's then thrown into the back of the red van. And as she is, one of the masked men tells her, this is going to be the worst seven hours of your life.

But Amy doesn't scream. She doesn't plead for her life. She calmly sits there as the men slap her head and face and make snide jokes to one another. And that's because this is an experience that Amy signed up for. This is part of McKamey Manor, a quote, horror attraction run by Russ McKamey. Now,

Now, Russ describes himself as an entertainer, a showman. I would describe him as Willy Wonka if he made the traps from Saw because to him, it might look bad what's happening to Amy, but he and his employees were totally in control of the performance and Amy was completely safe the whole time. According to Russ, he had no bad intentions.

But on Friday, July 19th of this year, Russ McKamey was arrested on charges of attempted murder, rape, and domestic assault.

People magazine reported that over the course of a week, McKamey allegedly tried to kill a woman believed to be his girlfriend. The Wednesday of that week, he tried to strangle her and then he assaulted her again on Thursday. And he allegedly attempted to kill her again via strangulation and sexually assaulted her on Friday, per online records filed in Lawrence County in Tennessee.

Russ was originally held on a $1,000 bond, which he posted, but his bond was later set to $100,000 after police learned the full extent of his abuse towards the woman. These charges are hard to read, and obviously anyone who does that should be held accountable to the full extent of the law. But it becomes even harder to hear when you realize that as this was happening, Russ was already under investigation for McCamey Manor.

See, back in November of 2023, Russ received a letter from the Attorney General of Tennessee, which started off, Dear Mr. McKamey, This office is responsible for protecting the public interest, including enforcing consumer protection laws in Tennessee. I am writing to express serious concerns about McKamey Manor, the quote, extreme haunted attraction you operate in Summertown, Tennessee."

Over the last few years, local police had received numerous concerning phone calls about the extreme haunted attraction Russ was running referenced in the letter. The same one that Amy was participating in. Neighbors had called authorities after hearing a woman screaming so loudly from inside the attraction that

They thought she was being murdered. One neighbor witnessed a woman at the manor being dragged behind a truck with chains attached to her neck. They knew that this was supposed to be a haunted house, but from the outside, it seemed like something out of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Each time the police arrived, they were greeted by Russ, the graying man with pockmarked skin and a wicked smile, who would assure them that the women were there consensually. Eventually, the woman who had been screaming so loudly she alerted neighbors was found by police tied up in Russ's storm cellar.

But as I stayed up late one night watching the video of Amy participating in Russ's experience back in 2015, I wondered if she actually knew what she was getting herself into.

In the video I watched, the van bounces back and forth with Amy in the back and one of the masked assailants screams at her to stand up. They force her to spin around in a circle before pushing her against the door of the van. "Stop smiling," he yells. He then dumps some sort of red liquid all over her.

Eventually, the van stops and the footage cuts to Amy inside of a dark house somewhere. The assailant stands over her asking if she's having second thoughts. A little bit, she confesses. The duct tape is still covering her eyes though, so she has no idea where she is. But then the masked man says something horrifying and a little confusing. He says, Las Vegas is watching. Do you understand that?

Next, Russ can be heard off screen telling Amy that the brothers are coming to see her. And then the footage cuts out. We don't see who the brothers are or what they get up to, but a text screen appears saying that this next part couldn't be shown. And when we cut back to Amy, she's laying in a chest freezer, the kind my grandmother used to have in her basement, except this one has a chain wrapped all the way around it.

Amy is inside, her hands zip tied together, laying in a small black pool of liquid. Her onesie is soaked and one of the assailants dumps the black liquid on her face and some of it gets into her mouth. We cut again and this time Amy is inside a coffin full of cockroaches.

The video ends with Amy sobbing, eyes still covered. We can't see who's above her, but Russ's voice can be heard as well as a few other men. Amy is begging to stop. She says she wants to quit the experience, but Russ can be heard telling her that they're going to bring her back into the house. Finally, as she shakes and cries, they let her quit.

I could not believe what I was watching as the video ended after 45 minutes. I love horror, I love haunted houses, but you cannot tell me that this is a haunted house. This is something entirely different.

The video was posted nine years ago and has never been taken down. No one ever went to jail for what happened, and Russ was allowed to continue McKamey Manor, even though I felt like I had just watched someone get tortured. Other videos I watched of other people's experiences were similar. Participants, many of them women,

were put through the same kind of grueling experiences. Some were buried alive, some were held underwater, and it only ended when they were in full states of panic.

begging for Russ to stop. So I actually looked Amy up afterwards and I found out some interesting stuff. Though she agreed to go through the manor, she had nothing but horrible things to say about her time there. And some of what she revealed afterwards actually made it seem worse than it even looked. She

She claimed that after the brothers showed up when the video cut out, that's when the worst of the abuse happened. Her head was held underwater and she begged for them to stop, but they wouldn't. They pressured her to keep going. And that's scary considering Russ wrote in the video that that was a section that he couldn't show. Why was that?

I did a little bit more digging and it turns out Russ has actually been doing a version of McKamey Manor for a long time. And the way he's gotten away with it is a little complicated.

More than half of America's seniors choose Medicare Advantage for high-quality health care at more affordable costs. In fact, seniors in Medicare Advantage are saving more than $2,500 a year compared to original Medicare. To protect and strengthen Medicare Advantage, we're making our voices heard. From our local communities to Washington, D.C., seniors are voting, and we're voting for Medicare Advantage.

Sponsored by the Coalition for Medicare Choices. Learn more at MedicareChoices.org. Russ claims he opened his first haunted house in 1989 when he was in the U.S. Navy stationed in California. According to Russ, he was a normal, straight-edge, conservative guy with a penchant for horror. He loved to go above and beyond for Halloween, making attractions that were bigger than anything anyone had seen.

At this time, his haunted houses were pretty standard and fun for the whole family. He started to share content from his kid-friendly haunted house that he ran in his backyard on YouTube.

Kids were even allowed to work there. But Russ started to quickly push the envelope of what the house was offering. Eventually, word started spreading that this was the most intense haunted house in America, and the wait list to enter grew exponentially. Russ then stopped allowing kids in the house, and he required people have medical clearance. By 2012, Russ ran the small operation with his long-term girlfriend, Carol.

At this point, the tour lasted anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour, and only three to four groups of four people max were let in per night. The tour also happened only during the Halloween season.

There was a mildly alarming waiver to enter, however, and Carol warned guests that they may be touched, bumped, bruised, or even cut during this experience. And when you entered, it became apparent that this was not just an ordinary haunted house. It was a dark, dungeon-like labyrinth, and Russ would be there recording your every step so he could put it on his YouTube channel.

The sets were covered in gory animatronics, fake severed body parts were everywhere. Actors were known to shove guests' heads in dirty toilets and lock them in empty freezers and coffins. It was an incredibly physical experience. You could expect to get pushed, shoved, or have your hair pulled.

or even have your head covered with a burlap sack. And guests were pushed to the point of crying and screaming for their mothers from the mental exhaustion and physical torment of the house. In 2013, Russ moved McKamey Manor out of his backyard and got a bigger space in San Diego. And this is where the media really caught wind of his operation. It became featured on the Travel Channel as one of the most outrageous amateur haunted houses in the country.

Russ claimed that the waitlist to get in was as long as 27,000 people. And at that point, he only accepted reservations. He also said he wouldn't take groups larger than two people because he wanted to make sure that the experience could be personalized. He also claimed that there was a $20,000 prize for whoever could make it through the entire experience.

The price of admission was just a bag of dog food because his girlfriend, Carol, fostered dogs. At this time, there were two guys that worked at the attraction, Andrew Sweeney and Ryan Lawrence.

And everything that they had to say about working there made me feel so much worse about it. Both men said that they enjoyed having the authority to inflict pain upon guests. They called it a stress reliever without any lines. Andrew Sweeney even said that brutalizing guests was how he got out his aggression from his personal life.

And that was the type of person who worked there when Amy found the manor and decided to sign up.

But she didn't know that. And you can't really blame her because at that point, publicly, Russ was severely downplaying the extremeness of the house. He would say things on record like, quote, "'This is a game. This experience is solely for entertainment. So we don't ever want to hurt somebody physically or mentally. If there was really a hospital or police involved, there would be lawsuits and I would be in jail.'"

So Amy said that she expected her tour to be unpleasant and scary. She didn't realize that the people who worked there got off on torturing guests. But I will say there was a reason that people felt like they couldn't leave once they signed up.

Even when it got really, really dangerous. See, Russ required each person who entered the house to sign a contract, but they weren't allowed to see that contract until they arrived. Some participants admitted to being shocked by the contents of this contract, but they felt like they had to sign it because they had made it all the way out to Russ's property.

I read through this entire contract and let me tell you, it is shocking. So shocking that I had to share it with someone else. So here I am explaining it to my sibling, Leo. So I've been suffering all day trying to read this contract and I decided if I have to suffer through it, someone else needs to also. So Leo, I felt like you were the person I needed to call. Thank you. Thank you. I'm not a lawyer.

I've never practiced law, but I truly do not think that this is legally binding. You know what, Leo? You're probably right in that sense. So let me read through some of it for you. So it starts with by signing this contract. I state your name. Do herein voluntarily agree to participate in the below listed activities that will take place at McKinney Manor. Participant fully understands that McKinney Manor is an extremely physical and that doesn't say extremely physical. What? That's a typo.

And that participant may leave McKamey Manor with bumps, bruises, cuts, and or possible injuries, including possible broken bones. Participant understands that injuries are never on purpose at McKamey Manor and participant is fully aware of the risks and takes full responsibility. Participant agrees and understands that your life is in reality, not in danger, and that this is just a game. Okay.

OK, but they just said they might accidentally break your bones, but you're not really in danger, even though they might accidentally do something that would result in a broken bone. They might accidentally injure you for life. Participant understands and agrees that they are not being beat up, kicked, slugged or actually physically harmed. So you're just crazy if your bone gets broken.

And then you have point 28 where it's participant fully understands that by signing this waiver, they are giving McKamey Manor permission to keep nothing off the table except sexual or inappropriate situations. Everything else imaginable can and will happen inside of McKamey Manor. You are aware of this and are giving full permission for any action that may happen inside of McKamey Manor. But.

if they are stating that like none of things a b and c are you actually getting beat up they can also claim like well that also wasn't inappropriate that also wasn't sexual like right they yeah they said nothing inappropriate but you didn't define that term so but inappropriate is so vague what inappropriate yeah is to you is is different to someone else it's just like

Disgusting.

Participant agrees to and understands they might come into contact with electrical stimulation. Participant understands and agrees that they will absolutely get cuts, severe bruising and or swelling due to open handed striking on their face and other physical content, which could result in a black eye and possible rope burns to the face, neck, arms, hands, legs or feet. But this isn't torture. That's what they say. Also, previously, they're like, you might get.

bruises, you might get bumps and scrapes. Like that's a possibility. And then this is saying you absolutely will. It's like,

Girl, pick one. This is 23 pages, by the way, and I'm on six. Yeah, and how many spelling errors have there been? Participant fully understands and agrees that if they are selected to visit the dentist, they may have a tooth extracted without Novocaine and will not hold McKamey Manor libel. Be so for real right now. Oh, you're not even... Let me just fire off these next few. This is like stressing me out. Participant fully understands and agrees that MKUltra, parentheses, mind control...

Participant fully understands and agrees that water torture, they use the word torture after not calling it torture, that water torture may be used. Participant fully understands and agrees that a nail may pierce their hand, that their hands may be smashed with tools, that their nails may be removed.

from their nail beds. Medication may be given that induces hallucinations or sedatives given in pill form or by hypodermic needle at McKamey Manor's discretion. But it's not torture and it's not meant to harm you, according to them at the beginning of what we read. Participant fully understands and agrees that they may have a plastic bag or plastic wrap on their face, which could possibly cause suffocation, blackouts, and participant will not hold

a cameo manner responsible or liable. We're going to drug you, give you stigmata, remove your teeth, smash your hands. And we also might inject you with God knows what.

Are those needles being reused? I wouldn't doubt it. So this is where it gets really scary because it's the rules about quitting. It hasn't gotten scary yet? Oh, God. No, it gets worse. Believe me. Participant fully understands and agrees that there is no quitting until the staff of McKamey Manor stops the show due to completion or because participant is at a physical or psychological level that it is best that the tour be stopped. Time out. Time out. Time out.

Time out. But they said that participants can stop the tour at any time with the safe word. So which is it? Either participants can stop it with the safe word or they can't until it's either complete or they're at their limit. Also, how are you going to know their limit? I'm sorry. I'm getting like so riled up about this.

Participant fully agrees and demands that they want to push themselves as hard as possible while inside the McKamey Manor tour. No matter how many times a participant may say that they want out of the tour, participant is being clear that no matter what they say, participant wants the tour to continue. This sucks.

This place is dumb. "Dumb" is putting it lightly. "Dangerous" is more accurate. According to this contract, Russ wouldn't have to respect your safe word, and he could continue the tour if he wanted to.

I know what you may be thinking, because it was my first thought as well. How the hell is any of this legal? And also, what kind of lawyer would write a contract like this? One that graphically describes torture and admits that use of a safe word is null. Well, I asked my friend Paul, who happens to be a real lawyer, for some insight on this.

Is this even a legally binding document if you sign it? I just want to be upfront that nothing I'm saying should be construed as like legal advice. But at least as a thought experiment, I certainly think there's like enough wrong here that you could like make a strong case that this contract's not enforceable. I mean, for starters, like the judge can't enforce a contract to do something illegal. And, you know, I'm not familiar with every state's laws. And I kind of wasn't super clear on if this was California or Tennessee, but like,

A quick Google search suggests that torture is illegal in both states. So, you know. I would hope. Yeah. Yeah. And it's funny. Like at the beginning of the contract, it says this. You are acknowledging that this is not torture. And then it goes on to use torture like six more times in the document. You like nailed something that I like highlighted a thousand times. I mean, like.

There's a sentence in here that says, you know, this is not torture. You're not torturing. But then like five sentences later, it says, you agree that we can use medieval torture devices on you and we can use like water torture. That's just, it contradicts itself left and right. You know, in one breath, it says like, we're going to give you a safe word and you can use the safe word at any time and we'll stop. But then there's also like

And other instances in here where it says we're not stopping under any circumstances and you agree that we're going to keep going no matter what. So it's like you don't really know what you're standing up for in that sense. There's like some misrepresentation. That was a big thing that stood out to me, too, was how the sections where it says you understand we won't stop under any circumstance and it doesn't make an exception for the safe word.

Yeah. And so it's like that could be, I don't know, that's like maybe misrepresentation. It's like, how could a person understand the rules of the own contract that they're signed? Does it feel like it was drafted by a lawyer?

It seems like a Frankenstein's monster. Like, I kind of think that I can see when it turned into someone's just like coming up with every scenario under the sun because there's like 16 sections here that have like headings and they're just normal contract headings. And then there's like an additional 130 sections that are just like, do you agree that we can bury you alive? Look, I wouldn't be crazy surprised if

This guy, I don't know, maybe he had a lawyer help him for at least the first part and then took Microsoft Word and went to town. Would you ever advise a client to sign this contract? I wouldn't advise like my worst enemy to sign this. Yeah, yeah.

In 2017, public outcry became so overwhelming that Russ was forced to move McKamey Manor out of San Diego. He first tried to move to Illinois, but locals blocked the property, slashed tires, and harassed Russ until they had to abandon the property. Eventually, he moved his attraction to Tennessee, and he claimed that there was a second part of the property in Alabama for guests who could make it all the way through to the second round.

However, no one has ever been able to make it that far, so I don't know how real that claim is. And it's in Tennessee where Russ turns the tour into a one-person-at-a-time, 36-hour event.

Already, at this point, there are issues with the use of the safe word. Using it doesn't do anything unless Russ decides that you're ready to stop. And now that the tours are becoming just one person at a time, it's far more dangerous. No one is there to stand up for the participants.

The tour also changes a bit. In Tennessee, it starts with a physical orientation led by Holly, who was Russ's girlfriend at the time. And that physical orientation lasts at least four hours. The activities you could potentially do would be swimming through 200 yards of muddy trench water or swimming in a tank of eels.

Those who pass the physical part are then moved on to something they called cadus silvis, which translates roughly to murder in the woods. That part was psychological torture, and it's been said that most people couldn't last more than four to five hours there. And then if anyone made it past that part, they would be transported to Huntsville for their final destination. But no one has ever made it that far.

So we don't know what was supposed to happen in Huntsville, but it promised to be a three-hour, one-on-one experience with Russ based on psychological terrorism.

Russ has a series of girlfriends during this time, and one of them was a woman named Susan Kaplan. And she has some very disturbing things to say about her time with Russ. Susan gave an audio-only recount of her time as Russ's girlfriend, where she gave details on how he encouraged her to go through the experience multiple times.

Russ would cover her head with a hood and spray her with water to simulate being waterboarded. During one activity, she expressed that she was afraid that she was going to die, and he gave a little laugh and said, at least it would happen on camera.

Other girlfriends of Russ's, as well as other people close to Russ and McKimmy Manor, have come forward and said that Russ enjoyed watching his girlfriends suffer during the experience. He allegedly made one that was a vegetarian eat meat, and another girlfriend says that she was basically beat up for six hours.

Eventually, in 2023, Hulu releases a documentary about McKamey Manor called Monster Inside. And that really brings a lot of negative attention to Russ and his house of horrors. He ends up suing Hulu for over $8 million, but a lot of the damage had already been done to his reputation. And that's when the attorney general in Lawrence County starts investigating Russ.

So I watched a few of Russ's YouTube videos of people being tortured during this experience. And while I feel like I've basically watched snuff films, there is one thing that really spooks me about the videos that no matter how much I research, I can't really get any answers on. And that's when one of the guys in Russ's house told Amy, quote, Las Vegas is watching. So in Russ's contract, there's a section that reads,

participant agrees that their entire tour will be viewed by a live audience in Las Vegas, the Philippines, and or Thailand, and that they will act appropriately. So I haven't been able to figure out if this is true or not, but if this is true, it might clear up one question I have, which is how was Russ making any money on this if he was only requiring dog food from guests?

Was he selling the footage on a live stream somewhere? There's been some rumors on the internet that people in Vegas and or the Philippines were making bets on contestants, but I haven't really been able to find any concrete evidence about that. The most plausible theory that I can think of is that Russ was just a liar. He had no problem lying to guests about their safety and their use of safe words and whatever else to get them inside.

So maybe he was lying about this too. But at the end of the day, Russ insists that he's a good man and that the charges against him are part of a larger smear campaign against McKamey Manor. And actually, as I was writing this episode, all of the charges against Russ have officially been dropped. The attempted murder, the domestic violence, all of it. Apparently, the attorney general decided that there just wasn't enough there to actually prosecute Russ.

So here's what I will say about all of this. I tend to be a very to-each-their-own kind of person. If you want to pay someone to slap you around, go for it. I actually think that would do some people a lot of good. But the problem with all of this is that Russ seems to have taken away the participants' ability to consent.

In Tennessee, you can revoke your consent at any time. If you consent to getting slapped three times and after the first one you think, huh, that was dumb, maybe I shouldn't have agreed to this, you can revoke that consent. Also, in the United States, you cannot legally consent to serious bodily injury. Russ was having people sign up to get seriously hurt and not allowing them to withdraw that consent. Jail! Jail, I say!

As of today, McCamey Manor is still open. Russ is currently a free man. He posts on Facebook kind of a lot. His attorney actually put out a statement about the dropped charges that read, quote, Which makes dedicating resources to justice for real victims more difficult than it should be, end quote. Which, quote,

take that for what you will. Regardless of what the truth is behind those charges, we know that Russ has a hard time respecting boundaries and he has a penchant for inflicting torture. So if you're thinking of going to McKamey Manor, maybe don't. I don't know if this episode was enough to make you reconsider, especially, I will add, if you're a woman.

And if you're considering doing any extreme haunts this Halloween season, just please be careful. If you're hosting any extreme haunts because you see that as a good way to let off steam, maybe try something else. I've heard people like mindful meditation, maybe go for a jog and have a snack and then see how you feel. I don't know, you guys.

Heart Starts Pounding is written and produced by me, Kaylin Moore. Heart Starts Pounding is also produced by Matt Brown. Additional research by Marissa Dow. Sound design and mix by Peachtree Sound. Special thanks to Travis Dunlap, Grayson Jernigan, the team at WME, and Ben Jaffe. Have a heart pounding story or a case request? Check out heartstartspounding.com. Until next time, stay curious. Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh.