A haunted house insider has lifted the lid on the pus, blood and rotten flesh smells that help terrify visitors.
Jamie Humphrey is dungeon performance manager at the Blackpool Tower Dungeon, which means his job is to make the attraction as spine-tingingly horrifying as possible, within the confines of health and safety laws.
When the Mirror caught up with Jamie he was shifting 275 pumpkins into the dungeon ahead of the Halloween festival launch on Saturday.
This year's seasonal show will focus on Lancashire's own Edward Kelly and his apprentice, 14th century occultists who attempted to raise the dead and meet the Grim Reaper in a bid to cheat death.
The mythical death monger himself may have not shown himself to the hapless duo, but he will be transported into the Blackpool Dungeon for the Halloween season.
A key part of the horrifying scene setting that is Jamie's day job is perfecting the rancid smell that sticks in guests' nostrils long after they've emerged back into daylight.
To ensure that visitors are effectively transported back onto the cobbled, horse-manure and human waste covered streets of yesteryear, Jamie strategically plants smell pods around the dungeon.
"For the plague street we use a pod with a smell called rotting flesh," the fright-merchant explained.
"Another one is burning coal, we also have a forest smell, and in our monk show we have incense sticks.
"We have a sea smell in the smuggler section which used to be rotten fish, but we had too many complaints."
Visitors to the dungeon will have noticed the rivers of blood which run through it, which are happily not filled with actual blood, but water filled with food dye which has to be changed every few months to stop it rotting.
One area Jamie does want to go-off - or at least look like it has - is the skin of the actors.
"We use scratch blood to do grazes and open wounds, and lots of latex on the actors which we then fill with fake pus," he said.
"It's a synthetic pus from a company in London which gives the impression of buboes."
As Halloween nears the synthetic legions are filled with greater and greater quantities of pus, ramping up the terror levels alongside an enlarged cast of jump-scare actors.
Jamie says he feels great pride when a scare is executed effectively and the terror visitors are feeling is splashed across their faces.
The most typically terrifying part of the experience is the drop ride at the end, which 'hangs' guests after they're found guilty of being witches.
If the terror of public execution doesn't do it, the 'most people wuss out' at the gorey spectacle of the actors ripping parts of their bodies off.
Jamie's most impressive personal scare came when he was playing the Texas chainsaw massacrer at another attraction and he ran towards a large man with his tool spinning.
"He fell to the floor crying, asking me to back off," Jamie recalled.
On occasion those working at the Dungeon have found themselves on the other side of a spooking.
"The tower has been here for 127 years and sometimes actors have said they've had weird experiences," Jamie said.
"They feel like there's people watching them in the dark or people grab them in the dark.
"Sometimes you'll find stools in the middle of the floor, so either someone is playing with us or we're horribly haunted."
To buy tickets to the Dungeon click here.
