The Last Haunt and McKamey Manor

I recently had the pleasure of receiving an eARC of The Last Haunt by Max Booth III. After watching Monster Inside: America’s Most Extreme Haunted House, I was stoked to read a fictional account inspired by McKamey Manor.

Disclaimer:
Some of the links provided are affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase via this link, I receive a small commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you.
I don’t live all that far from McKamey Manor and do not condone or desire to be in any way affiliated with it and the work of Russ McKamey.
The following review of The Last Haunt is my honest opinion and not altered in any way by the receipt of the book.

McKamey Manor

Before we get into The Last Haunt, its important to place it in the context of its creation by looking at the inspiration for the book.
McKamey Manor is an “extreme haunted house attraction” created by Russ McKamey. Calling it a haunted house is a bit of a misnomer. Mostly it takes place in a park, McKamey’s back yard, and sometimes his shed. Volunteers that pay for the experience with bags of dog food are subjected to torment by Russ and his helpers (or just Russ in some cases) starting with humiliating acts and escalating to torture including beatings, waterboarding, and more.

Recently, Monster Inside did a documentary on McKamey Manor, interviewing family members and former friends of Russ, people who have been subjected to the haunt’s various tortures, experts in the field of psychology, torture, and PTSD, and other extreme haunt creators.

After reading about the haunt in my proverbial back yard a couple of years ago, I wasn’t surprised to see what went on there. I’m not a haunted house enthusiast (I’m not a fan of jump scares or being touched by people I don’t know) so it was never really on my radar beyond being in the horror field, local, and looking like a bad idea. I watched the documentary and wasn’t surprised to see that the goings on are hardly legal and will not be surprised when Russ gets shut down completely either because of being sued, arrested, or worse.

I mention worse because The Last Haunt is the horror imaginings of just that scenario…

On the one-year anniversary of a young woman’s tragic death, an extreme haunted house attraction reopened its doors to the public. What happened next would forever traumatize a small Texas town. The Last Haunt is an attempt to make sense of the mysterious brutality that occurred on that fateful Halloween night. Constructed from interviews with the survivors, this oral history is the closest anyone has ever come to documenting the truth behind the McKinley Manor massacre.

The Last Haunt is a quick and fun Halloween read. The style of story telling – like a series of interviews spliced together for a documentary – felt like a continuation of the aforementioned documentary. Because of this, reading it felt a little surreal. It was so on the nose about the people involved, the location, and the happenings in the real haunt, I had to stay mindful of where the break between real world inspiration ended and the fiction began.

The horror comes in the parts that are inspired by the reality more than in the surreal ending. This blade cuts very close to the real world in that it would not be hard to see the fictional part (to a point) really happening.

Once we get past the real world inspiration and dive into the “what if” inspired deep end of the fiction pool that is The Last Haunt, things get weird fast. We’re treated to tantalizing tips and suggestions at the horror to come with each interview snippet. This kept me reading well past my bed time. I had to know what exactly happened to Gus, Trevor, and the others. Despite “knowing” what was to come, I was not prepared for the twist. It was fabulous!

On a final note: the cover art by Trevor Henderson is fantastic (no surprise given the artist). It does make me wonder which came first, the choice of the artist or the character in the book of the same name?

The Last Haunt by Max Booth III is a wonderful mind-bending short perfect for Halloween season.