Your coffin crashes through two sets of double-doors, bringing you face-to-face
with a giant rat perched on a tree stump.
As you approach, he leaps at you, squeaking with the help of a self-contained transistorized siren. To your left is the first of many banisters; this one lined with gyrating skulls bearing spider legs. True Tracy madness!  

Entering another set of double doors, you’re headed down one of Tracy’s famous crooked chambers. Tracy’s use of off-center framing and a deceptive illustration at the chamber’s end gives you the forced perspective of infinity. Adding further credibility to the gimmick, an unseen ramp tips your car to the side as the digital sound bite of creaking timbers plays on.

Next, you’re sucked into a vortex - actually a bridge running straight through a rotating barrel lined with day-glo patterns. No ramps needed here.



 

The gimmick makes you feel like you’re defying the laws of gravity, getting pulled to either side of the barrel.



 

Straight ahead is a stunt depicting the car in front of you: Two riders watching helplessly as they’re swept up into the vortex’s eye.



 

This stunt is executed by mounting the rear of replica ride car onto a spinning disk and exemplifies Tracy’s attention to detail, including the “Rest in Peace” logo on the back of the car.









Apparently the vortex also has impacted one of the house’s rooms, as a quick turn to right reveals a woman awakening to find her whole bedroom turned upside down. All the room’s furnishings are mounted to the ceiling, including an end table with a lamp. It’s that lamp that clicks on to illuminate the bedroom and the terrified woman.

Leaving the bedroom, your car makes a short descent to the right, passing one of Tracy’s most bizarre stunts: Two disfigured clowns leaning over a birthday cake with a severed head in the icing.

Your car continues its decent passing a wolfman figure (origin unknown) and a family of trolls. It’s noteworthy that Mr. Trimper supplemented his ride with additional stunts over the years. However, only one Tracy stunt has been removed since the ride was built.

Next on the left is arguably Tracy’s most famous, yet controversial stunt, the Saw Mill where a female victim strapped to a conveyor belt is sliced in half by a table saw. Heard are the spinning of the saw and the final scream of the victim as she reaches the jagged blade. If you look back you’ll see the table tip backwards, returning the victim to her point of origin. It’s also interesting to note here that the sound for this stunt, like many others, was furnished by Tracy on a sound cartridge repeater in 1962.
Originally, all the sound carts were amplified by playback units located at the stunts and dioramas. But they were later moved to a hidden, centralized workshop, extending wires to the speakers on the sets. Then, with the advent of digital technology, he had all the sound carts dubbed to digital sound repeaters, now stacked up in the workshop.
“It’s much more efficient this way,” explains Scott Hudson, superintendent of Haunted House. “We still play the original sounds without worrying about the old tapes breaking. And we have every sound effect right in front of us,”