In a Thursday, Oct. 6 photo, a blacklight illuminates a graveyard scene at a haunted house in Athens, Ga. Rocky Elwood is a 20-year-veteran of the professional haunted house business and proprietor of the only professional haunted house in downtown Athens.

Staggering national debt, unrest in the Middle East, devastating earthquakes, poisoned cantaloupes: the world’s a scary place.

It’s getting harder and harder for professional fear-mongers to get a rise out of their audiences. Just ask Rocky Elwood, a 20-year-veteran of the professional haunted house business and proprietor of the only professional haunted house in downtown Athens.

“When we first did one, we didn’t have any animatronics -— just actors,” Elwood said. “Now we have animatronics, the lights, the noises, the air cannons. This place is real extreme once we get all the actors in here and turn everything on.”

Fear Factory, Elwood’s latest haunt, is located on Oconee Street in the vacant Athens Plumbing Supply building across from the intersection with Foundry Street. Fear Factory includes some very scary, gory scenes, including a haunted butcher shop, a haunted mental hospital and an extremely haunted living room and nursery.

Elwood has been honing his signature mix of disorienting lights, maze-like hallways, skilled actors and animatronics since he was 16. He now runs three haunted houses in the Spartanburg/ Greenville area that draw about 100 people a night during weekends in October.

He decided to expand his empire of terror this October and open a fourth haunted house in Athens.

Elwood started his first haunted house when he was 16 as fundraiser for his church youth group in his hometown of Anderson, S.C. Now, he’s 36 and he’s hooked.

“(Building haunted houses) is most of what I do for a living,” Elwood said. “It takes several months to put everything together.”

In his off months, he’s a run-of-the-mill handy-man and contractor but he essentially supports himself by scaring people, he said.

While building haunted houses has been his passion since he was a kid, he’s quick to point out that it’s not child’s play.

“When you’re building one haunted house, it’s a lot of fun,” he said. “When you’re doing more than one, or four, it’s a lot of work.”

Elwood’s haunted house will be open from 7 p.m. until late at night every Friday and Saturday night in October. Tickets are $15 apiece.

For folks who aren’t into blood, guts and strobe lights, there are also several G- and PG-rated, family-friendly ways to celebrate the Halloween season in the Athens area.

Oconee County teenagers will put on the Oconee County Library’s fourth-annual haunted house this year, from 6 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 28. This Alice in Wonderland-themed haunt is suitable for children under 11, but they must be accompanied by adults.