Creative journey continues for artist, SFX designer
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Few people can be described as a true renaissance man, but local tattoo artist, oil painter, sculptor, special effects artist, beer tender and haunted house creator Ryan Rader definitely fits the bill.
The father of four started his creative journey by airbrushing in school -- eventually working on T-shirts and motorcycles on Virginia Beach. Once airbrushing started to decline, Rader's biker friends told him he should go into tattooing.
"Of course they were all ready for the free tattoos, so that's how it all started," Rader said, laughing.
To gain knowledge in the industry, he observed tattoo artists at various shops. Once he knew he was serious about tattooing full time, he moved to Seattle to learn under a master tattoo artist.
"When I first started out, it was pretty much trial and error to get it and kind of study what you could," Rader said. "We didn't have the internet like you have now."
Now, the owner of Sacred Keystone Tattoo has been in the tattoo business for about 30 years. However, that's far from the only thing in which he has been involved.
Making movie magic
Inspired early on by special effects artists and animators Jim Henson, Rick Baker, Ray Harryhausen and Tim Burton, Rader said that he has always wanted to be a creator. Over the years, he has managed to create a niche for himself doing special effects in indie horror films. He made a film called "Three" with Gypsy Cab Studios for Crypt TV, an entertainment company that produces horror-themed digital content with an emphasis on monsters.
For the film, Rader was tasked with creating a full-face prosthetic that was waterproof and had breathing gills. To simulate the gills breathing, he had breathing tubes running through the back of the prosthetic's head.
Creating the prosthetic took close to three months because he had to make a cast of the actress's face, sculpt a lifecast of the actress as the character and then cast that sculpture so that it would fit her face, he said. For each lifecast, the actress would have to sit still for hours at a time to be made up.
"Because it cures so fast, it is very claustrophobic," Rader said of the sculpting material. "It'll suck to your face really quick. But I leave the nose open the whole time and then at the last minute when it's getting ready to dry, I pop it right over the nose."
For the creature in "Three," Rader used latex because it was easier to wear in the water than silicone, which created a lot more suction.
"Everything comes down to the sketching design process to the sculpting, the clay, casting the clay and then pressing it into whatever agent you're gonna put it in, be it latex or silicone," Rader said.
For his sketching design process, Rader is still old school, using pencil and paper.
"I told my wife I should get an iPad or something to start doing these sketch things," Rader said. I do digital art, but I'm still just with a mouse, not with the CAD pen that they use nowadays."
In the film and video world, Rader also did the special effects for "Jericho's Bridge," a film for Maryland project Appalachian Trail Night Hikes and worked on music videos for local musicians.
Taking the stage
Last year, Rader took a break from doing special effects for films and videos to try his hand in live theater.
When Tara Enedy, the director of operations with Altoona Community Theatre, needed special effects for the production of "Death Trap" in September 2021, a colleague recommended Rader.
"Working with Ryan is quite a bit of fun," Enedy said. "He's very creative, and he builds interesting special effects."
Since "Death Trap" is a dark comedy about a washed-up playwright who is willing to kill for his former student's play that's guaranteed to be a Broadway hit, the show mainly needed blood effects.
As it was Rader's first time doing theater, he had no idea what he was walking into. It was a whole different design, using makeup and practical effects and having to build everything out of his head, he said.
"I'd never done live theater -- it's easier to do movies because you can stop and take and hide things easily," Rader said. "The Mishler gave me the greatest challenge of all, which was creating live magic."
During a fight sequence, an actor was shot with a large crossbow and landed on his back with an arrow in his chest, Enedy said. While on his back, the actor pulled the arrow out, causing blood to spurt.
On the show's test night, Rader said he had the blood bag on the actor's chest air driven and he could have hit the whole front row in the audience with blood.
"I just loved everyone's reaction when they saw it on test night," Rader laughed. "The one lady said she's never seen so much blood in the Mishler Theatre."
However, Enedy said it was too over the top and that they couldn't hit the audience with blood.
"He was more than willing to come up with some weird solutions," Enedy said. "He was really creative and so easy to work with when I asked him to make adjustments."
Working on "Death Trap" was fun but demanding, Rader said. During the show's run, after he had everything set up for the first half, he would almost fall asleep backstage waiting for the second half. Rader described it as a "go, go, go process" with one actor having to walk around with an empty blood pack on after the first scene.
"He had to walk around on stage with that at all times just sweating like crazy," Rader said.
Rader's family was also able to get in on the action by helping out with the special effects.
"I taught my wife and my kids how to do blood effects," Rader said. "Actually, my daughter made the best blood bag that came out of that whole show."
Enedy said that the theater would love to work with him again if given the opportunity.
"I don't know him really well, but when he was here with his kids, it was clear he was a great dad," Enedy said. "He always had a smile on his face."
He wanted to work on the Mishler Theatre's upcoming production of "The Addams Family," but was too busy working on a much bigger project, he said.
A haunted house in the making
"I've always wanted to be someone that created monsters and things like that," Rader said. "So now it's come full circle, and we're doing a haunted house in the Cresson prison."
Named the Imaginarium Sanitarium, Rader and his business partner Joe Pyzowski teamed up with Big House Produce, an on-site family-run farm that operates the abandoned Cresson State Correctional Institution.
They offer ghost hunting tours twice a month, owner Lauren Freeman said, but Big House Produce was looking to start a haunted house attraction.
"We know it's something far out of our own expertise," Freeman said. "We wanted to provide a good quality haunt because every year people expect something to happen for Halloween here."
Therefore Freeman and her family met with four or five companies before deciding that Rader and Pyzowski were the best option for them.
"They care about the things we care about," Freeman said. "They are incredibly passionate, customer focused and safety minded. Everything just gelled."
When they initially met with Freeman, Rader and Pyzowski knew which building they wanted to use: the old Cresson Tuberculosis Sanatorium.
Freeman said that the pair are "gung-ho" preparing and have even started to move some props into the building.
"They scared the crap out of me," Freeman said. "I drove by a window and saw stuff I didn't expect to see in there yet."
According to Rader, he and his core team of six people have 41,000 square feet to work with. First, they're working on the safety aspects of the haunt by going over everything from fire escapes to crowd control.
"We have a pretty good team," Rader said. "We even just sent one of our employees to Harrisburg to get his haunt inspection license so he's now a haunt inspector."
In the meantime, Rader continues to build props at his house before giving them to Pyzowski, who then makes them move.
"I have this walker stalker which we're building a giant mother of the dolls on," Rader said. "We're going to build a gigantic 8-and-a-half-foot tall female creature that takes care of the city of the dolls."
Since the building used to be a tuberculosis ward, it has a lot of hidden features. It even housed a serial killer at one point, which Rader didn't know until the "Ghost Hunter" episode on the Cresson prison came out, he said.
The building's backstory began to creep out the lifelong horror fan, who said he began sculpting a small boy before learning that a young boy had supposedly died there.
"I was like 'Man, it's creepy that I was sculpting a little boy that I had no intention of doing,'" Rader said. "I was supposed to be sculpting these little girls that are going to float around the house."
Rader is hoping to make the haunt completely immersive for Halloween.
"My whole goal is to make it one of the biggest events ever on the East Coast for Halloween," he said.
Running on the weekends from Sept. 30 to Nov. 5, the haunted house will also feature the food trucks Rebelz, Meatball Madness and Funnel Cake King.
"They're so excited and passionate to have somewhere to call home for their own haunt," Freeman said. "They're getting to chase their own dreams. It's a really cool thing."
The Imaginarium Sanitarium's first promotion will be at the Altoona Curve on Friday, May 13. Rader created a livecast of his own arm for a photo opportunity at the event, which will make it look like the participant is being strangled.
"We have a few surprises," Rader said.
Eventually, Rader would love to use all of the property's 1 million square feet for the haunt. The property has multiple buildings, including three jails, the sanitarium and various small utility houses.
Rader's ultimate goals, however, are for the haunt to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest haunted house in the world.
"I want to be up there in about five years with the top rated haunters in the business," he said. "Retiring as a haunter is my thing."
The current largest haunted house in the world is Dragon's House Of Horror in Albuquerque, N.M., which totaled a linear 7,183 feet 8.4 inches, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. It has held the title since November 2015.
Rader believes achieving this record will put the Imaginarium Sanitarium above everyone else in the business.
"Which, I mean I like tattooing, I've been doing this for so long so there's kids coming into the scene and now it's like I'm venturing into a new realm of art," Rader said. "Which is more kind of how the Mishler is, more immersive, which I kind of like. I like that you can make a lot of people a part of your world."
Both Freeman and Rader agree that having the haunted house will bring a lot to Cresson.
"If we get this off the ground like we want to, it's going to completely rebuild Cresson," Rader said. "We're hoping to take the small little town of Cresson and put it on the map."
Further community involvement
The Imaginarium Sanitarium won't be the first haunted house Rader has been involved in. He has previously done them for charity, holding two in the U.S. Hotel in Hollidaysburg with one benefiting Habitat for Humanity and the other the Humane Society of Central Pennsylvania.
"I like seeing the community thrive, and I like being the guy that does it because I'm not necessarily the face that people expect to be behind stuff," Rader said. "When they meet me and talk to me, they come to find out that I'm kind of like a big teddy bear and not the big scary ugly dude. It works well with my daughter, when she has boys coming around."
Of Rader's four children, two are still living at home. When it comes to his spooky side gigs, Rader said his 10-year-old son loves it while his 14-year-old daughter has started to grow out of it. As for his wife, who works as a nurse at Maybrook Hills Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center and also does the piercings at Sacred Keystone Tattoo, she's all about Halloween, he said.
"My wife is the most supportive human I've ever met in my life," Rader said. "She's my rock. She's even got her own little character that we're going to unleash this year."
In the little free time he has, Rader also writes, having co-written a short film called "Sin Eater" with Gypsy Cab Productions that went on to become a New York City Horror Film Festival Screenplay Competition Finalist in 2019.
Rader even taught himself how to oil paint and went on to paint the murals at both Slinger's Axe Throwing and Iron Pint. When Levity Brewing opens back up, he'll continue working as a beer-tender there and teach customers about independent brewing.
Before COVID-19 came to the region, Rader had been scheduled to teach full sculpting and casting classes for kids at ArtsAltoona.
"It's something that these kids would be able to make money off of," Rader said. "I think everybody teaches art, not really teaching them how like, 'Hey you can make money off of this.'"
When asked why he chooses to be so involved in the community, Rader brought up his friend, Eddie Spencer, who passed away.
"I don't want to cry on this, but he came up with these shirts that said Altoona Sucks Because of You," Rader said. "It always resonated with us because people say that and they don't really try to find things to do if that makes sense. And there's just so much to do around here."
"So we've always -- ever since the beginning -- have wanted to make Altoona a little bit more than what it is."
Mirror Staff Writer Rachel Foor is at 814-946-7458