October 25, 2001
Staff Profile: His house of horrors
By Steve Hill
University Week
This is no ghost story. It’s the truth.
Every night, after the sun goes down, when much of Seattle is clearing the dishes from the dining room table and settling in for a quiet evening at home, someone lurks in the shadows of an eerie basement. His mind plots the next moment of horror, the next sign of spook, the ultimate night of fright. And he waits, counting the months, weeks, days and hours until he can unleash his brand of devilishly good fun on neighbors, friends and family.
Jay Herzmark is a Halloween fanatic.
“I really ought to get more of a life,” the UW industrial hygienist joked recently from his office in the Hall Health Center. But the chances of that happening this time of year seem remote at best.
Herzmark’s basement at home is filled with papier-mâché heads he uses to scare the bejesus out of folks brave enough to enter one of his haunted houses. His lectures about workplace safety, however, rely only on the occasional illusion – no scare tactics allowed on the job.
But much of his Halloween shtick serves a dual purpose – pure and simple good-natured fright on the one hand, and to prove a point about safety on the other.
Ergo-man, for example, doesn’t fear any sort of awkward body positions because he is able to stretch and contort beyond even human imagination. There’s an element of fun involved when Herzmark uses the pliable dummy, but it’s also an effective teaching tool. Herzmark has used Ergo-man to illustrate a point during public hearings and at least one Occupational Safety and Health Administration meeting.
“My real reason for doing all this is consciousness raising,” Herzmark said. “I want people to realize that all these injuries are preventable. We have fun doing it, but this is serious business. People are dying. Sixty-thousand people die of work-related causes every year.”
His passions for Halloween and his profession started to merge about five years ago when he heard of someone doing a haunted house based on safety. Through the years his zeal has grown to the point where today he begins planning his Halloween display more than a year in advance.
This year the theme is down into the sewer. Earthquake preparedness is the likely theme for Halloween 2002. And last year’s display was a laboratory disaster – a nuclear reactor explosion on the roof of his house. At least one neighbor saw the green ooze and smoke rolling across Herzmark’s shingles, the emergency response team car with flashing lights in the street, and thought the place was burning down.
“I like tormenting my neighbors,” he said, laughing.
But for those brave enough to approach Herzmark’s front door, there’s more than a message about safety. There’s also the payoff of Halloween fun.
Last year trick-or-treaters enjoyed the super-colliding atom smasher – an adapted beer sign that featured two football helmet-adorned atoms bouncing together head on. There was the reanimation lab where human body parts were brought back to life; the parallel universe with illusory neon rings floating through the air; and an evolution machine, which turned a tyrannosaurus into that lovable purple dinosaur, Barney.
But, like any good Halloween display, the highlight was the candy. It was delivered with a nod to psychologist B.F. Skinner. Instead of rats pulling a lever to get cheese, the kids pulled a lever and out came a rat to deliver the goods.
This year, he warmed up for the Halloween witching hour with a haunted workplace – a fund raiser last week for the King County Labor Agency. That display included the confined space of death, which demonstrated the need to pay attention to air quality. There was a mixing blade that had been used improperly, leading to an accident too gruesome to mention. A worker caught on fire in another room. And, of course, there was Ergo-man stretching and twisting about while performing his routine work duties.
Herzmark’s love of Halloween began while he was living in New York City. There were no trick-or-treaters visiting his 12th-floor apartment, but he often devised an intricate costume for use in the Greenwich Village Halloween parade. When he became a homeowner in Seattle his Halloween creativity began to flourish.
“My theory is that anyone can do it as long as they spend 12 months a year and 24 hours a day thinking about it,” he said. “It’s not hard, it just takes a long time.”
You’re Invited
For those of you who dare, Herzmark would like to see you drop by 7036 21st Ave N.W. in Ballard for a Halloween scare.
