Tokyo (CNN) – We can all agree that crying is a pivotal part of a great haunted house experience.
“With the virus, I knew there could be no way we could have a traditional haunted house, with all that crying in a small confined space,” Kenta Iwana, founder of Kowagarasetai, told CNN Travel.
“When I read that drive-theaters made a comeback, it was my ‘aha’ moment.”
Stuck in a pitch black, zombie-infested garage
The driveway of the haunted house, located in a covered parking garage in a non-descriptive building in downtown Tokyo, gives visitors a 360-degree, first-rate experience that simulates sitting in a car during a zombie outbreak .
Use your own car for JPY8,000 ($ 75), if you are like many Tokyoites and have none, they will provide a car for JPY9,000, or $ 85.
Since you are just sitting in the garage, no driving license is required.
The visitors turn off the engine and the garage door closes, placing the red in total darkness.
Drivers receive a set of Bluetooth speakers and the spooky story begins.
“Around these parts there is a legend that the ghosts attack people. Hook your horn three times if you want to hear more,” says the speaker’s voice, in Japanese.
For the next 17 minutes, blood-soaked ghouls and zombies press against the windows and rock the car.
Fear not, somehow you will live through it.
Afterwards, the car is cleaned of blood.
Kowagarasetai
Extra blood and cleaning services
With Tokyo fighting another wave of Covid-19 infections, the company says it is taking every precaution to protect both its players and customers. Each car is dried with alcohol to minimize risks to the ghost actors. Rental cars are lined in plastic, which is changed for each customer.
Afterwards, the car is wiped clean of the fake blood (and potential viruses from the hands of the ghosts). There is a print on the website that says, “We can not remove every drop of blood. It will be clean enough to drive on the road.”
An extra bloody package is also available for an extra JPY1,000 ($ 9).
Summer is traditionally peak season for ghost stories in Japan, a popular way to chill on a hot night. Iwana says scary movies and games have always been a part of his life.
“My parents rented horror movies and showed me how they’ve been playing ‘Biohazard’ (‘Resident Evil 7’) since I was three, ‘” Iwana says.
“Ghosts are like Pokemon to me.”
He dropped out of college six years ago to turn his passion into a business, stepping up haunted houses and making custom thrillers “wherever anyone asks me” – including theme parks, arcades and private homes.
Founded on Halloween Day in 2018, Kowagarasetai roughly refers to “the Scaredy Squad” in Japanese.
With all the self-control that went on in society through Covid-19, he wanted to show that it was OK for people to have some fun.
The drive-in haunted house experience began in July with a summer-ending attraction, with tickets sold the day they went on sale. Now there is a waiting list of more than 1,000 people, says Iwana.
Considering the enormous popularity, he says they bring it back as temperatures cool, because August is too hot to execute the ghostly drive-in.
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