Confessions of a Scare Actor

What happens when childhood nightmares become your calling card? In this episode of Horror Heals, scare actor Omar Ortega joins Corey and Kendall to talk about growing up inside a family-owned video store, how Nightmare on Elm Street haunted his imagination, and how horror evolved from fear to fuel.

Omar opens up about his journey from VHS kid to veteran scare actor, sharing the emotional highs and behind-the-scenes lows of working in iconic haunts like Universal Studios Hollywood and LA’s Haunted Hayride. From bad fan placement to drag in the dark, this conversation digs into the ways horror helps Omar process rage, build confidence, and offer guests a uniquely immersive experience they’ll never forget.

Whether he’s channeling Madman Marz, playing The Butcher, or embodying the spirit of Divine in full wig-slap glory, Omar reminds us that scaring others can be healing — and horror is far more than just a seasonal thrill.

Because… is horror good for mental wellness?

Of corpse it is.

Confessions of a Scare Actor

🎭 In This Episode:

• Omar’s horror origin story: family movie nights, Halloween II, and Freddy nightmares
• What it's really like to audition as a scare actor at Universal Studios
• The power of performance: transforming breakups, frustration, and rejection into compelling characters
• Honoring Janelle Monáe’s haunted vision and finding surprise joy in queer expression
• VHS nostalgia, underrated sequels, and why Nancy Thompson remains a top-tier Final Girl
• A brilliant take on The Exorcist… as a drama?

🧠 Horror-Healing Themes:

• Emotional catharsis through character work
• Channeling anger and grief into immersive performance
• Finding identity and power in horror personas
• The unique thrill of being seen in the shadows
• Community, resilience, and the evolution of haunted house acting

🩸 About Our Guest:

Omar Ortega is a Los Angeles–based scare actor and lifelong horror fan who has spent nearly a decade performing in haunted attractions like LA’s Haunted Hayride and Universal Studios Halloween Horror Nights. Raised in a family-run video store, Omar fell in love with horror from a young age — and now channels that passion into immersive, emotionally charged performances that blur the line between fear and therapy. He’s played everything from brutal butchers to haunted drag queens and believes that horror is a powerful vehicle for release, reinvention, and connection.

🎙️ Horror Heals is the podcast that asks:

Is horror good for mental wellness?

Of corpse it is.

Thank you for listening to Horror Heals. 

Share the show with someone who loves horror and someone who needs a little healing.

If you want to support our guests, check the show notes for links to their work, conventions, and fundraising pages.

You can also listen to our sister podcast Family Twist, a show about DNA surprises, identity, and the families we find along the way.

Horror Heals is produced by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.

Is horror good for mental wellness? Of corpse it is.

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:11

Hello, foils and dudes. It's your old pal trying to hear the voice of the crispkeeper. And I want to welcome my good friends of the Horror Heels Podcast. Is horror good for mental wellness? But of course it is. I delight in the delicious deaths of beautiful people on the silver screen. So get ready for a hell of a good time with my new fiends, Cory and Kendall, on the Horror Heels podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:04

Welcome back to Horror Heels, creepy creeps and cathartic screamers. Today's episode is a full-bodied scream of joy because we're joined by scare actor and horror devotee Omar Ortega. From growing up in his dad's LA Video store to haunting hayrides and Halloween mazes for nearly a decade, Omar doesn't just love horror, he lives it. We talk about VHS box art trauma in the best way, Freddy Krueger nightmares, auditioning for Universal Studios, and channeling inner rage into unforgettable characters, including a butcher with an axe to grind and a drag diva inspired by Divine. Omar shares how performing as a scare actor isn't just a job, it's therapy with a splash of fake blood. This is horror as adrenaline, horror as emotional exorcism, horror as healing. And Omar's story is proof that the monsters we unleash can also sometimes save us. Hey Omar, thank you for joining us on the Horror Heals podcast.

SPEAKER_00 2:04

I just keep thinking of actually how many kids are traumatized by my scare act. I love you guys. Great to see you both.

SPEAKER_01 2:14

Thank you. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

One of the memories that I remember being so fascinated with horror, it was going with the family to a multiplex showing of Halloween 2, the original from 1981.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

And the scene that stood out was Pamela Shoop being submerged in that horribly overheated pool.

SPEAKER_01 2:35

Yeah. Oh yeah. There are so many iconic moments in that sequel. I know it was Sean Carpenter was really reluctant to even make another Michael Myers film. He thought that it was like one and done, like this is my thing. But still, I mean, he didn't half acid. It's it's got some great, great stuff in, you know, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

So we're huge fans of that whole franchise.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

And the film has a huge following.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

It does. In fact, yeah. We because we watched the original several times a year, but I don't think we've watched two in a while. I think we might have to watch that tonight. Thanks, guys. Thanks for the recommendation, Omar.

SPEAKER_02 3:16

Hey, you know?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

And where I really became a fan was my father used to run a family-owned video store here in LA, and I would help him put up the posters in his shop. So lo and behold, I remember when I first heard of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the original from 1984. I honestly thought it was a dark Disney movie. I don't know. I just imagined I and weirdly enough, I imagined an actress like Jennifer Connolly. You know, just Yeah. And and maybe like some thunder shots here and lightning and and uh yeah, I thought of it as some sort of a kid's dark movie, but I didn't really put attention to it. I never saw trailers on TV. Um, not until um I put up the poster. And the first time I looked at the poster, I was mesmerized. And I I just couldn't wait to see it. My father got uh an early copy because it was a video store owner of the movie on VHS, and I remember it was a Sunday night, and we all huddled together as a family in the living room and watched it, and I instantly fell in love with everything. And of course, at that time I was a kid, so it I didn't sleep last night. And why I didn't sleep, I was wide awake, wasn't because of Freddie, it was because of Tina in the body bag, in the bloody body bag.

unknown 4:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

I thought she was gonna rise. Right. Oh my gosh, yeah. Oof, because you were I mean, you were pretty young for you know about eight years old or whatever when that came out. So that was you know, any shadow you saw in the corner of the room was something.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah, it was my eyes were allude to that TV set.

SPEAKER_01 4:54

That, yeah. So cool that your dad owned a video store. Like we've we talk about VHS on it, it feels like almost every episode, and how you know the the go into the video rental places was such a special time and and great memories, and talk about the amazing artwork on those horror boxes, you know. I mean wild.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

Wow. Well, and the posters. I mean, I loved to get my hands on the posters when I could. Strangely, a woman that so my father was a mail person and he walked a mail route in my hometown, and he the a record store was on his route, and he befriended the owner, and she would strangely get like movie posters, but she didn't sell movie. I don't know why. And so she never really even put them up, and he would somehow I don't know if he paid her, I'm sure he offered to pay her, but I would always get them. And it was bizarre. I even joked, I'm like, that doesn't even make sense, but thank you, you know?

SPEAKER_00 5:55

And I put them nowadays it makes me appreciate the 80s much more if it came to uh that somebody would suggest or maybe even introduce to a friend, I would introduce him to an 80 slasher. There's just a big difference. Yeah. There really is.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

But we gotta know, like, how do you how does one decide like I want to become a scare actor?

SPEAKER_00 6:20

Well, now that I've pretty much said horrors in my veins, literally it started my first year as a scare actor began in 2013. For some odd reason I thought to myself, you know what? Wanna try it out. I love a challenge. So found out when was Universal Studios Hollywood's schedule for scare actor auditions. And I went and pretty much didn't expect anything. I didn't even expect to be chosen. The audition process for them is pretty much like it is in any other venue, but they kind of nickname it Cattle Call, which is you get a bunch of people in a room and you either scream, you jump around, or you do clever and do different things. So afterwards they put you in a line and then they ask you to scream again, scream as loud as you can, and then or you can I it's either screaming or do something horrible or something that'll just make it outstanding. So yeah, I mean I remember from one of the auditions for the police that I've worked at for eight years, I did a certain like really strange movement and I went, Helter, skelter, bitch. Just anything that'll make it stand out, you know. Yeah. Don't do what the next guy or the other guy in back of you are doing. And you just show up, you know, you do your scare as best as you can, and then you just wait. So for Universal, I remember it was for the first Insidious Maze. It was it was the premiere of the Insidious Maze, so I I was in the first further. So that was pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01 8:01

Well, something that I've noticed, like in when I was a kid and through high school and stuff, we I was in St. Louis, and St. Louis was kind of one of the bigger haunted attraction cities. But I really feel like the attractions have upped their game as far as the acting quality. Because I remember back then we did the publicity for one of the bigger haunted houses, and most of the cast was high school kids on the weekend. They didn't have any professional training. But now that we live in New England, we've been to some of the bigger outdoor attractions here. And if people are bringing their A game, I think it's definitely improved over the years. Now, obviously you're very loyal to the haunt that you've been working at for eight years to a variety of characters, different characters every year, or how does that work?

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Well, when I first started back in 2016, the first three years that I worked for them, I remember I never had any particular anything in mind, just whatever they would cast me in. And so I do recall that for the first three years that I worked for them, I would be cast in the hayride. And so that was the hayride itself is kind of like a big stage, and you're just kind of like trawling in this circle. So it's like a huge outdoor stage event. And uh, I do remember they did something innovative, which was and they didn't do that again. I was kind of surprised that they didn't do that because I thought it was great. They added something new that they hadn't done before, which was that the hayride would begin and then it would stop, and the guests would come out of the wagon, and there was this huge cornfield, kind of like in the middle. If you guys have been to the LA Zoo ruins, the original site for the LA Zoo, there is like this huge center center circle, and that's what they used for the corn maze. And uh, it was just a bunch of scare actors in just like kind of different little portions of the corn maze. It was kind of like a little labyrinth that you got around. Then when you exit it, you would go sit down on the back of the wagon and the wagon would continue. Yeah, that first year I was the ice cream man. I was cast as the ice cream man. No, I did not use the Clint Howard's ice cream character. I didn't have them in mind. I always try to do some fresh ideas, yeah. And the ideas that just come about, you know, it's kind of like the secret to my scare acting and such is kind of like when you're sort of frustrated that some things didn't really go as planned or whatever, or even breakups and everything like that. You just have that sort of anger within you, you know, that you don't really release. Well, that's what I kind of do. In my scare acting, that's what I kind of do, and that's so intense.

unknown 10:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:37

Yeah. I just let it out right there in front of anyone. You just gotta be like emotionally and physically exhausted. Physically, yeah. But mentally, yeah, it takes it honestly does take me a little bit of time to to even just to go to sleep. But I'm still I still have a little bit of energy kind of left over. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I pretty much started scare acting in my 30s. Now approaching my fifties. Every year I kind of learn something and I adapt, which I think is a very important aspect of being a scare actor. You want to be innovative and you want to be clever because pretty much how I see it is I see myself in the guests that come in. And I see myself, you know what? That's how I would like to have the feeling. I'd like to have that same experience. So that's why I give my 120% for whatever, whenever it is. I've worked with a lot of coworkers who unfortunately are now blacklisted because they sort of had that ego and they had a sort of had that thing, oh well, they didn't give me this part, and they start bickering and they start making scenes, and there's actually one time that I thought a physical fight was gonna happen. So I had to go run and let one of the crew members in to kind of like go and supervise and to just that it didn't go to great lengths.

unknown 12:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

And the scare the scariest part was that uh the guy who initiated it, I don't know how, but I remember about an hour after he sort of came up to me and goes, Did you tell on me? I was like, Oh my gosh.

unknown 12:30

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 12:31

I was speechless for a moment there. Yeah. What character are you playing this year? This year I was mostly excited because of something brand new. The excitement is never ending because Janelle Monet has introduced her own maze at the LA Haunted Haywright. It's her vision, you could just feel the love in the place. She did an extraordinary job. She and her people have brought this envisionment that she had. And not only that, she is also the host for this year's AMC's Fear Fest horror films lineup on AMC cable channel. So yeah, she's very popular this year. I initially I thought to myself when I first heard of it, I know I didn't see her movie Antebellum, but I kind of envisioned that there was gonna be voodoo, there was gonna be kind of like magic and different things. But honestly, the maze does not have a concrete plot, main plot. You kind of have to make your guesses or your own ideas of what it is. Even I don't really the main concept I don't really comprehend because every room is different. Yeah. And it has like that paranormal yet 80s slasher kind of vibe to it. But it's also really fun. I love seeing the guest reactions because every guest has a different reaction. I'm even getting conga lines with people acting like they're in a nightclub. Seriously. It's great. They put me into my part, it's next to the chef's room, and uh there's not the only lit thing in the room is what's supposed to be, I guess, Janelle Monet's body, but with her head chopped off, and there's just a light stroming on it, you know, they've discovered her body. So I am called the butcher, and the butcher is just I really had to go think dark on this one. Um, and I also had Madman Mars as my inspired kind of character. Yeah. So I think of different concepts. He's nicknamed The Butcher, and the Butcher is just pretty much you you just go into his room and you're reliable to just anything. And he's got an axe, he's got an axe to grind, and uh, he's very intimidating. And you just wanna leave that room as soon as you can. But there is a surprise. There's a surprise, and that comes right before the guests leave the room. Yeah. I'm also going to be playing a second character starting tomorrow. I don't really know too much about it, so that's also very exciting. Last year I got to play several characters, which was something I hadn't done before. Last year, the LA haunted hayride paired up and converted for a weekend because they wanted to try it out and and see what kind of response was it. And I think it was very popular, I think it was it was successful, very popular. It was for the goosebumps reboot. So one of the mazes called Trick Retreat was reinvented and reimagined as the Goosebumps maze. I got cast as Slappy. Fun. School. Yeah. But that weekend I remember it was great. It was great seeing people's reactions and stuff like that. So yeah, it was a long weekend, I remember.

SPEAKER_01 16:11

A lot of people would come to that for sure.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yeah. And uh towards the end of the event, one of the actors had to leave on a personal something just came up, so he had to abandon his role. So they asked me to be a secretary, which was the character in drag, which is something I'd never done before.

unknown 16:27

Oh, fun.

SPEAKER_00 16:28

And that was extremely excited. At Divine for as inspired for that character. Yeah, I was over the roof, being playing a gate kind of like a drag character. Right. Which is great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

Yeah.

unknown 16:42

Cool.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

And got to really just do different things, different scenarios and kind of stuff like that in the big room that they put me in. I just remember though that the you know, I'd never really worn wigs before. And they put this one wig that was long haired, and uh I'm very I do a lot of movements, it just felt like a cobweb just kept hitting me in the face. You can tell.

SPEAKER_01 17:09

So Omar, you said that uh horror runs through your veins. What are your feelings about the therapeutic value that horror has?

SPEAKER_00 17:16

I've always felt horror is pretty much getting on a virtual roller coaster. It's on a it's it's really an adrenaline rush. For me personally, that's what it is. It's an adrenaline, it's an adrenaline rush. I think that's why I'm left with energy, a little bit of energy at the end of the night. I'm physically exhausted, but just mentally, yeah. Because it's very intense. And I'm very intense at what I do. Yeah, every night. I think it's a little bit of an array of emotions, kind of like a little bit of excitement and just kind of different things, and also just that mindset of living out your darkest uh thoughts and emotions for a little while. But as a professional, keeping it I've also because I've been doing this for eight years, it's sort of I don't know if maybe it's because I'm so spiritually inclined, but I actually give a little bit something extra. Like I'm comfortable enough to kind of like not so much of as a close proximity, but I could get pretty close, but not too close. I've received compliments that they're like, you don't get this at Universal, you don't get this at other place. So that's a really nice compliment. That's awesome. Love that.

SPEAKER_01 18:31

So the last question that we ask every guest of the podcast, and I have a feeling you're gonna have a very interesting answer because you've got a deep knowledge of horror movies. Who is your favorite final person in a horror movie?

SPEAKER_00 18:45

Final person, Nancy Thompson from the original Nightmare in Elm Street. Because she didn't use weapons at the moment of her final standoff with Freddie Krueger. She was just verbal. And she was in control at that moment. She was mature, she was so confident. Oh my gosh, I'm even getting goosebumps right now. Just something about that moment that she did not have a weapon in her hands. In her head, she was just so confident enough that here she has this dream demon behind her about to kill her, and she was just so confident in just the atmosphere and everything. And despite all the deaths that she endured, she was able to confront Freddie and just being mentally. It was just all it was just mental.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Well, we're kick Italian, and for the record, Nancy was also my pick. Kendall's is it not Kendall's Isariat King from the original Freddy, but also another drone final person. I just love Nancy as well. So, like a part B to the final question, what did you think of the kicker ending of the original nightmare with the mom getting sucked through the window and the door?

SPEAKER_00 19:56

First time I saw it when I was on video on VHS, I was blown away. I was completely blown away. Nowadays, it's now I'm gonna go a little bit into that just really quick. Sure. It's a little bit funny. You know, now seeing it as an adult, yeah. The life-size inflatable dummy.

unknown 20:13

Right.

SPEAKER_00 20:14

It's a little bit funny, it's still entertaining, it's always entertaining, but it's just a little bit funny. But that's one of the when you see horror films as a kid and when you see horror films as an adult. For example, I went to a special screening last year of The Exorcist, and I really thought I was gonna come out of the movie theater startled, you know. And I actually I now see it as a drama. I felt it was more of a drama than it was. I mean, don't get me wrong, I mean, the scenario and everything was great, but I honestly came out saying, you know what, this felt like a drama. I mean, I know with the devil and everything like that, but it really felt like drama. Because I think for the first time as an adult, seeing the priest what with his ailing mom and her conditions and everything, and then when the demon kind of imposes her voice and just kind of picks at his fears, that yeah, it just felt a little bit more of a drama to me.

SPEAKER_01 21:09

Yeah, yeah. I I've said something similar on another episode, how that scene really gets at you. And I think it's just it's an age thing, I think. We could relate more to the adult characters in the film now. That's great, great points. Well, thank you so much for being on. This has been a blast. Guys, it was a pleasure. We appreciate Omar pulling back the blood-soaked curtain of what it really means to be a scare actor. The sweat, the masks, the weird wigs, and the soul cleansing scream therapy. Omar reminds us that horror doesn't have to be polished or perfect, it just has to be honest. And when we're brave enough to step into the dark and make others scream, sometimes we find our own peace. So, if you're stalking guests in a haunted maze, or still haunted by Tina in the bloody body bag, you're not alone. Horror is here for all of us, in every form. And once again, if someone asks, is horror good for mental wellness? you tell them, of course it is. The Horror Heals podcast is produced and presented by How the Cow Ate the Cabbage LLC.