Haunted House Actor Still in Character Three Days After Closing Gets Promoted

DUNMORE — Management of the Blackwood Manor haunted attraction announced Wednesday that Marcus Webb, the actor who portrayed “The Cellar Warden,” has been promoted to Assistant Creative Director after remaining in character for three full days following the attraction’s closing night.

“The show closed Sunday at midnight,” said former creative director Alan Pryce. “By Wednesday morning, Marcus was still in the cellar scene, in full prosthetics, whispering ‘turn back’ at the decommissioning crew. Doug Rafferty’s foreman asked him to leave. Marcus whispered ‘the warden never leaves.’ At that point we stopped managing him and started taking notes.”

Webb, 34, had played the Cellar Warden for all 22 nights of the attraction’s run, earning a reputation among staff for “method-adjacent commitment” that included refusing to answer to his real name after 6 p.m. and filing his nightly incident reports in character — “The torch-bearers were rowdy this eve. One dropped a retainer. I kept it. It is mine now.”

According to Pryce, the decision to promote rather than dismiss Webb came after the actor’s Wednesday performance for an empty room was observed by the attraction’s owner, who called it “the most committed thing I’ve seen in thirty years of seasonal entertainment, and I once watched a man play a haunted corn maze in a thunderstorm.”

“You can’t teach that,” the owner said. “You can barely insure it.”

As Assistant Creative Director, Webb will oversee next year’s scare-actor training, where his first initiative — the “Warden Method” workshop — will teach performers “sustained atmospheric presence,” “whisper projection,” and “knowing when to stop, which is a module Marcus himself has not yet completed.”

Webb accepted the promotion via a handwritten note delivered to the office in a sealed envelope marked with a wax stamp. The note read, in full: “The warden accepts. The warden has always been here. The warden will train the new wardens. Bring your own retainer.”

Staff report that Webb has since begun sleeping in the storage unit “voluntarily and, he insists, strategically,” and has started referring to the fog juice inventory as “the mists.” Pryce said management has decided to “channel rather than correct” the behavior. “Next year’s haunt is going to be incredible,” he said. “Or a workplace safety seminar. Possibly both.”