Carmen Bordonaro has been in the clown business a long time. He can still remember his first haunt like it was yesterday. It was 45 years ago.

“We used to have a saying, everybody wants to be in a haunt," Bordonaro says. "But not everybody is cut out to be in a haunt”

But not everyone has a long history scaring like Carmen.

Len Barrows sits in the makeup chair as an artist works to blend his skin tone with the horns on his head. It's his second year. He’s spent hours in that makeup chair over the past few weeks. He doesn't mind even though he will be wearing two masks: one for COVID-19 protection, and another over it as part of his costume.

After the horns are addressed, Mary Snell helps Barrows apply long black fingernails, a final touch to his horrifying getup. I asked about small things like the finger nails, which often go unseen in the dark.

“It helps me stay in character,” Barrows said.

Len gets up, and another actor sits down in Snell's chair. The process is a little different this year; there are new brushes and new paint for everyone. Nothing gets reused.

Snell is both a makeup artist and a scare actor. She says the added safety precautions haven’t dampened anyone’s experience.

“Some of it adds to [the experience]," Snell said. "The masks and everything that they have, some of them just complete the whole character they’re doing."

It all comes down to Bordonaro’s longstanding scaring philosophy: If you’re cut out for the haunt, you’ll make it work.

After all, scaring isn’t a science.

“The art of the scare is something you have to know how to do," Carmen says with a smile. "It’s something you practice, something you learn.”