Voices From The Community | Spinal Cord Injury & Paralysis

Behind the Scare: Inclusion in the Haunt Community

Written by EmpowHer Stories | Oct 28, 2024 1:00:00 PM

My name is Anna Knapp, but in some places in the world, I am known as Taser Girl. I am writing to tell you about my passion for all things Halloween. Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays, but in the past decade, I have developed an ever-bigger love for the holiday. I started full-time haunt acting at my local haunted attraction and was immediately hooked. Over the past decade, haunt acting has given me more confidence than I thought possible.

My passion for Halloween really started in 2017 when I created a haunt character named Taser Girl. Taser Girl was a clown who worked at a traveling circus but got trapped by a disturbed Ringmaster. After years of torture, she now does to other people what was done to her. I have had a lot of amazing opportunities. Still, the best thing to come out of creating Taser Girl is having a platform to share about being a scare actor with a disability and to bring awareness to the Disability Community.

From my experience, the haunt community is very inclusive, but there is always room for improvement when it comes to accepting and understanding the needs of disabled people. I was fortunate to have worked for people at my local haunt who understood that I needed to be in a place where I had the option to sit down while I was scaring people. For the first several years, I scared guests on a wooded trail, and I had an old wheelchair tucked away so I could sit down in between groups. In recent years, I have acted in an old school bus which still allowed me to sit down while waiting for guests to come through my sections of the haunted attraction.