The Bernal Scream in San Jose is a Backyard Family Show Gone Pro (5 stars)

The Bernal Scream was originally a free backyard show by father and son Abel and Mike Barrera, that became a community sensation. Now, post-covid and after his father’s death from cancer, Mike Barrera keeps the dreams (and the screams) alive.

We got a daytime walkthrough of the haunt, now a professional operation based at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds in San Jose, California, seeing their emphasis on interactivity. Every performer is given a secret trigger to push that operates some special effect that plays into a story: air jets, animatronics, or the many rooms that have an integrated computer monitor. That’s an extension of the Do-It-Yourself, ground up mentality of what was originally just a family production. Instead of feeling the absence of big effects and set design, you feel the power of the story that comes from engaging with actors.

Owner Mike Barrera very kindly agreed to an interview.

Events INSIDER: You’re a for-profit Halloween attraction, but you were originally a family operation and do a lot of good in the community. Tell us about that.

Mike Barrera: This year we’re teamed up with Home First. They’re a charity here in our area. They have, I think, 30-something shelters. So far this year we built 250 kits for the local homeless in our area. They had some encampments at some local parks that they cleared out, and Home First stepped in to provide some kind of housing for them, and we built some home warming kits, is what we call them.

Mike Barrera: Then also, we’re doing our clothing drive this year. We’ve already filled up our bins and we’ll continue that all season long. We’ve donated tickets to schools already, libraries, special needs, youth foundations, all kinds of stuff. We’ve done that from day one, and we’ll never stop.

Events INSIDER: How do you train your actors? Do they have theatrical scenes to play out, or just jump and scream?

Mike Barrera: It’s a mixture of both. We’re lucky enough to have a lot of veteran actors here that have been doing it for many, many years, and they’re well established. So normally kind of what happens is we do have actor orientation every year where we’ll go over the rooms and kind of develop what we think the scares should be. But at the same token, actors are very creative people, and you want to give them a toolbox for success rather than try to limit their creativity by being like, “This is exactly how it needs to be.”

Mike Barrera: So let’s say you come on a Tuesday night and you have such actor in that room, you come back on a Thursday night with a different actor, they each work that room differently. They’ll accomplish the scares at the end of the night, but how they approach that, they have the freedom to kind of intervene and be creative with that, and all the pneumatics and the sound and the lights, that’s just tools to help them be more successful. There are some overall blueprints for what we think the scares should be in that room, but again, we like to give them that creative freedom to be successful in their own way.

Events INSIDER: You seem to have an exceptionally interactive haunt, unlike other attractions with “filler” corridors of endless plywood. Here it looks like every room has something that’s a little unique or special in terms of being interactive.

Mike Barrera: That’s right. We want every room to feel like you’re actually a part of the scene. If we took you and dropped you in the center of a scary movie, what would that feel like? And it’s more than just drawings on the wall, that’s fantastic and there’s nothing wrong with that approach. But here we wanted it to be very immersive to the point where you actually are part of the scare.

Mike Barrera: And to do that, you have to have that interaction between the guest and the props, the guests and the actor. We want you to have that one-on-one attention, which is why we process such a small groups each turn. We don’t do the cattle system. You’re not in there with 50 people in front of you, 50 people behind you. You’re in there pretty much with yourself, and that creates a whole new level of immersion. And once those lights go down, the sound comes on, the actors and the props come to life, it’s a pretty memorable experience.

Events INSIDER: And it seems like that’s your focus, interactivity, as opposed to set design or the most expensive special effects.

Mike Barrera: 100%. Every single room.

Events INSIDER: Tell us about the bridge that drops. This is a really unique effect that I’ve never seen before. So, you walk onto a wooden bridge with hand rails, and then it suddenly drops 6 inches?

Mike Barrera: You’re not up there alone. It’s a guided experience. But yeah, we’ve built our name on that thing since day one.

Events INSIDER: Wow.

Mike Barrera: The bridge is so much fun. It feels a lot faster and more aggressive than it really is, but in the moment when you’re falling at 175 PSI, I mean, that’s quick, right? But it’s very safe. Luckily, no one gets hurt.

Events INSIDER: It’s really unexpected, I’m sure.

Mike Barrera: Very unexpected. Yeah. But if you’ve been to the show, you look forward to it when it comes every year. People would be very upset if that thing wasn’t here. So there’s eight cylinders. Each one holds a thousand pounds on the push and pull. It’s just an absolute blast.

Events INSIDER: Thank you.

The Bernal Scream is now open for the season in San Jose, California. 5 stars for this unique venue that goes the extra mile for storytelling and interaction.

For more, see thebernalscream.com.