Central Florida firefighter Jordan Allen dedicates his career to helping people. Then, every Halloween, he scares the heck out of them.
Allen has moonlit as a scare actor at Orlando’s theme parks for years. The veteran Halloween performer dresses as a skeleton and slides across the ground — sparks flying! — at this year’s SeaWorld Orlando’s Howl-O-Scream[1], which runs through Nov. 1.
For Allen, the joy of Halloween[2] and the adrenaline of making others jump takes his mind off his normal career filled with late-night emergency calls and seeing people going through devastating moments in fires or car accidents.
“I love being a firefighter. I will be a firefighter until I retire,” Allen said as he talks about the teamwork in the Department and how every day is different.
But being a scare actor has helped him focus on his mental health and find a healthy outlet to deal with the hard days on the job. (Allen works for a government Fire Department that declined to be named for this story.)
“You’ve got to find your outlet whether that’s through therapy, whether that’s through going to the beach and taking a walk,” Allen said. “Finding something that makes you happy and brings you back to Earth, I think is very important.”
And for Allen, a Halloween fan since a kid, that outlet is working as a scare actor.
The rush fuels him. So does the laughter after he successfully surprises someone.
“You never know how someone’s going to react when they get scared,” Allen said. “Most people that come to these things, they enjoy Halloween and you’re giving them what they want. They get scared and then normally you get a laugh afterwards.”
Allen isn’t the only person from an unexpected background becoming a scare actor either. Allen said he has worked with Disney World princesses off the clock before at Howl-O-Scream.
SeaWorld is the only major Central Florida theme park with sliders, whose costumes include knee pads and metal pieces on their hands and toes with flint to make sparks and generate a loud, terrible noise.
Walking around Howl-O-Scream, it’s common to be looking straight ahead and not see a slider coming for you down low. One woman sure didn’t, as she bravely ate a chili cheese dog in the scare zone. She took a look at Allen and dropped her meal, making a complete mess on her shirt. (SeaWorld gave her a free T-shirt from a souvenir shop and a complimentary replacement hotdog, so the story ends well.)
Allen found his passion at a young age.
Growing up in Hunting Beach, California, Allen hid and jumped out at kids trick-or-treating or at homemade haunted houses in the neighborhood.
As a teenager, his first gig was holding a chainsaw and being a slider in a scare zone at Universal Studios Hollywood’s Halloween Horror Nights.
Following his two older brothers — who are also Central Florida firefighters — Allen moved to Florida in 2013 where he landed a role in HHN’s Walking Dead haunted house that year at Universal Orlando.
For 10 years, he worked at HHN[3] until SeaWorld Orlando started its own haunted house special ticketed event five years ago, where he’s been ever since.
Being a scare actor means thinking fast on your feet and not being afraid to go all in.
Sliders spend two weeks training in the Summer, using cones to practice their timing and control.
With the grand finale of Halloween night coming soon, Allen is busier than ever finishing his shifts as a firefighter/paramedic — where he is known as the “Halloween guy” around the station — and then going out to the theme park.
“Watching him slide across the pavement, hearing that metal spark and seeing guests jump a mile high never gets old,” said Kyle Smith, SeaWorld’s creative show manager. “He’s one of the best at what he does.”