A Visit to the New Albany Culbertson Mansion’s House of Anguish

The spiritualist instructed us to hold hands. Our amateur group of paranormal investigators had come to survey the carriage house of New Albany’s imposing Culbertson Mansion, once the residence of dry goods mogul turned Indiana’s richest man, William Culbertson. That history had decayed onto the floor of the foyer where we stood, the keepers of its once-ornate flourishes seemingly evicted by the undead. As the words of our guide intensified the dark room’s walls and fixtures began to shake and scream. The problem was worse than feared, she said, rotating a bookcase and shuffling us through the entry to our doom.

And so began the script on my visit to House of Anguish, a haunted house pulled from the classic mold and constructed in a building dating to 1867. Seated in the shadow of the Culbertson Mansion, this seasonal attraction has, for forty years now, been the primary public fundraiser for the historic site’s continued restoration. Organized and executed by a shifting cast of dedicated volunteers, preparations for the haunt begin as early as February, with work in the unaccommodating carriage house creeping through the Ohio River Valley’s sweltering summer until showtime in late September. Sweat doth not a bad venue make though, as within the carriage house’s unassuming, true-to-time exterior the servants of Anguish are free to explore their macabre creativity supported by a realizable budget and minimal oversight. Following the recent retirement of longtime leadership, the attraction received a new name to complement an expanded focus on immersive storylines and totalizing visual themes, requiring each iteration be rebuilt from the ground up like a canvas many times painted over.

I quickly found myself shoved to the front of our trembling pack of mediums, leading with a nervous smile one unsure step at a time. First came the smells, a damp sickness familiar to the unkempt archaic but uncannily touched with something more, which has haunted my shoes ever since. Next came the revelations, with the scattered ephemera and peeling walls unveiling disturbing detail to those who lingered in their trance. Then the visions, or what I desperately hope were that just. Long dead residents returned in various states of disease and decomposition, thrilled to torment our terrified team of supernatural janitors. Every corner offering a new domestic nightmare to confront.

A few weeks before my attempt to rid the house of evil spirits I was invited by design team member Kevin Warth to meet the artists behind the haunt and see the place with the lights on. It was one of their final Tuesday afternoon sessions before opening night and a shared, unflinching determination toward completing their work made my snooping nearly invisible. While easy to miss with your adrenaline spiked and ghouls pushing you along, each of the house’s sets were hand-painted with not only splatters of gore but carefully creepy touches like wallpaper patterns and simulated rot. Certain props I dare not spoil were custom built or modified to stash away performers set to scare. Entire walls were installed to restructure the room-to-room flow of the 19th century interior, with some paths designed to vary and confuse visitor-by-visitor. The carriage house, at one time the home of horses and still leaking the occasional oat from its ceiling, is now an unstable work of art evolving in preparation and practice night after night, striving toward a planned yet ever-evolving ideal. Much like the holiday season it embodies, the House of Anguish impacts its audience ephemerally, existing primarily in their memories. The evidence is in the haunt’s intrepid clientele, which according to Warth is increasingly multigenerational, eager to share the Halloween traditions of their youth with today’s.

Even overrun with ghosts the home was recognizable as such, our troupe stumbling through a twisted study, overflowing bathroom, blood-ridden bedroom, and so on. Descending into the cellar, though, was to become living in a world of the dead. We were suddenly drowned in animated corpses fresh and experienced, some sprouting fungus, others in the midst of melting, all who excitedly chased us through a cobblestone labyrinth to make His acquaintance. The tortures suffered at His whim are not mine to share, but yours to experience, as to appreciate His benevolence I now must recruit.

As an initiative of the Culbertson Mansion, House of Anguish is a fully nonprofit venture, a surprising rarity in the haunted house world. While most haunts rely on volunteer performers, those who enlist with Anguish can fulfil service hour obligations while getting to wear a fun costume and taunt strangers. Warth though, himself an event volunteer for over a decade now, described to me a change in attitude since the coronavirus pandemic. “It changed the way people look at work,” he told me, imparting that, for better or worse, people are much less willing to do anything without payment. Knowing one’s own worth is essential to minimizing exploitation, yes, but what value is left in the opportunity to create? To be given the resources to complete an expression and have that itself be the reward?

For Anguish’s volunteers there is a certain purity in their work, clearing away the temptations of the profit motive to reveal passion. A privilege of time unavailable to all, of course, but an outlet overflowing with potential. A shared creative freedom supported and envisioned communally. One of the team’s makeup artists Kaitlyn Toloczko makes her living as an auditor at a credit union, but come October plays Dr. Frankenstein for the piece’s many other contributors ranging from schoolchildren to retirees. Working with what is likely the smallest spending pool in the region, House of Anguish sculpts in cobweb and bone a model for populist, public art. With experiential arts spaces, or selfie museums as derided, pumping blood into the contemporary gallery scene, the haunted house remains a silent type-O donor. Maybe it’s time to embrace fear.

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