A Nebraska woman has sued a popular Missouri haunted house, claiming to have broken both her ankles, and she’s not the only patron to legally challenge the safety of the company’s spooky attractions.
Leslie Blake of Lincoln filed a lawsuit last Tuesday against Full Moon Productions, which owns The Beast Haunted House and other attractions in the West Bottoms neighborhood of Kansas City, claiming the company was negligent and reckless during her 2021 visit, The Kansas City Star reported.
On October 30, 2021, Blake did the “Beast Jump” from the haunted house’s second-story window and broke several bones in her ankles after landing on an inflatable pad, the lawsuit claims. Her injuries required surgery and “extensive” therapy, according to the suit.
Blake insists she followed all the safety instructions and claims the landing pad was “under-inflated” and not properly positioned or supervised.
Full Moon Productions told The Kansas City Star the “Beast Jump” is no longer a feature at the attraction. A company representative said Blake did not, in fact, follow directions, and she signed a waiver that informed her of the risks.
According to The Beast’s website, anyone who enters the haunted house or Full Moon Productions’ other attractions, such as The Edge of Hell and The Macabre Cinema, needs to sign a “waiver of liability.”
The waiver acknowledges the attractions have “certain, inherent, known and unknown, obvious or non-obvious risks,” which may cause “serious physical injury or even death.”
Blake tried to sue Full Moon Productions over her injuries in 2023 but the case was dismissed. In that case, the company claimed Blake signed the liability waiver, where she “had no issues with reading or reviewing” it, according to court documents reviewed by The Kansas City Star.
The company claimed attraction staff told her to land “bottom first,” but she landed “feet first, ‘like a pencil.’”
Full Moon Productions said in response to the new lawsuit, in which Blake is seeking more than $75,000, that it anticipates “that the case will once again be dismissed.”
The Independent has reached out to Full Moon Productions for comment.
But the company’s legal troubles don’t end with Blake.
Blake’s new lawsuit says Full Moon Productions should have known about “the dangerous conditions of the facility” because of multiple injury lawsuits filed against the company.
One pending lawsuit also mentioned The Beast’s inflatable pad, according to The Kansas City Star, which cited court documents. Another ongoing suit stems from a claim of an injury on a slide attraction at The Edge of Hell Haunted House.
