Family forged in fear: Indy Scream Park actors create a community

Zombieland actors perform for a crowd before entering their attraction Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, at Indy Scream Park in Anderson, Ind.

Zombieland actors Jacob Nunn, left, Morgan Wood, middle, and Morgan Adams, right, talk at a picnic table before they get ready for work Thursday, Oct. 14, 2021, at Indy Scream Park in Anderson, Ind.

Zombieland actor Morgan Adams gets her makeup done Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, at Indy Scream Park in Anderson, Ind.

Zombieland actors Markey Loghead, left, Kendra Frye, middle, and Jacob Nunn, right, wait in line to get in costume before their haunt opens Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, at Indy Scream Park in Anderson, Ind.

A clown looks over the entrance for Indy Scream Park on Wednesday, Oct. 6, 2021, in Anderson, Ind.

Zombieland actor Isaiah Walton scares a group of customers Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2021, at Indy Scream Park in Anderson, Ind.

Zombieland actress Kendra Frye pretends to shave a customers head Saturday, Oct. 23, 2021, at Indy Scream Park in Anderson, Ind.

The Zombieland actors at Indy Scream Park did not waste a second when a co-worker struggled financially.

The actors showed up at 10 p.m. one night outside their co-worker’s house with a trunk full of groceries, water and medicine as a care package.

“We are a family,” said actor Kate Robinson, who is on Zombieland’s team this year. “If you go through whatever you’re going through, we’re going through it together.”

Attractions director Aubrey Stone said the team is unusually close. There are five individual haunts in the park, but the Zombieland team has created a remarkably close bond having met just this season.

Stone has been working at Indy Scream Park for nine years. She said the actors make their own group chats and hang out.

“I literally was crying on my couch the other day watching how they talk to each other,” Stone said. “Some of them tell each other without meeting each other, they don’t think they’d still be around or that this place has saved their life.”

Robinson was not expecting for the team at her haunt to get so close so quickly. She works as an actor and saw Indy Scream Park simply as a way to make money performing. When she was added to a group chat by her manager, she assumed the conversations would focus solely on her work.

Instead, Robinson and her co-workers realized they were extremely similar people. The conversations quickly transitioned from work-related to jokes and talking about struggles with mental health. The team began spending time together often outside work.

“They gave us one day in October for a free day,” Robinson said. “We decided to go to a different haunted house. I was like, ‘Of course we would be going to another haunted attraction on the one day we have off.’”

Indy Scream Park is open almost every day in October and ends the first weekend of November. Stone said the teams often hang out year round. Zombieland’s team is no exception — the actors are already planning a ‘Friendsgiving’ event next month.

Robinson said she plans to continue to spend time with her team through the offseason. She considers the people she met at Indy Scream Park to be “lifelong friends.”

“I went in thinking, ‘This is just going to be another job,’” Robinson said. “It ended up being a season in my life where there’s going to be people that I’m never going to stop talking to.”

You can view the story online in IndyStar here.