Is Steampunk Scary?

Pittsburgh's ScareHouse has broken away from the usual zombies, mummies, and werewolves to bring thrill seekers steampunk-flavored scares, with mutants, rebel scientists, gunfire, and of course, plenty of gas masks.

This year, one of the ScareHouse's three Halloween "haunts" is Rampage, an attraction powered by steampunk concepts and design. Guests witness an uprising in a clockwork facility, where scholars and workers have long been oppressed by the wicked DieRector. They'll travel amidst the facility's grisly experiments, encounter mutants aplenty, and try to avoid getting caught in the crossfire between the rebels and the DieRector's militant forces. The ScareHouse's creative director Scott Simmons says that visually, Rampage borrows from Alien and Serenity in addition to more steampunky influences like Bioshock, and describes it as "much more aggressive and hard-hitting that anything we had done before."