I opened a horror cafe to keep Blackpool weird

Blackpool Gazette

Kurt Walsh tells Lucinda Herbert how he managed to fill his horror cafe full of gruesome and spooky props.  The former scare attraction owner and actor packed Scream And Shake Cafe with gory waxworks, film memorabilia, and has acquired some grizzly pieces of true-crime memorabilia which he also has on the walls.   Having just launched a brand new stall inside Abingdon Street Market, Kurt tells Unconventional Brits he's on a mission to 'keep Blackpool weird'.  Full episode coming soon to Shots! TV.

Transcript

00:00Scream and Shake is basically a cafe slash bar. We have a lot of kind of

00:05horror themed decor, we have props from movies, we have wax works of characters.

00:09So initially I was working as an actor at Passage del Terror, which was a dream

00:14job chasing people around with chainsaws and lots of good times. Then one day I

00:19noticed that the old little horror crypt attraction had closed down. We kind of

00:24did it up, refurbished it, put lots of wax works in that myself and my friends

00:29had built and that attraction did well for three years but people mostly used

00:33to come and travel to it and they would buy cups of tea and coffee from around

00:37the corner and come and stand and talk to me about horror movies for like three

00:41hours. So one day I had a bit of like the tiny bit of business part of my brain

00:45which is very tiny sparked off and was like if I was selling the cups of tea

00:48I'd be making more money than selling admission tickets. We took all the

00:53props, we took the kind of social element, the cafe. Yeah so we've got an

00:58allegedly a strand of Charles Manson's hair. We've got an actual life magazine

01:02that he's on the front cover of from 1969. We have a bit of Ed Gein's fence

01:07that was a birthday present one year from a friend. People know that I like weird

01:11stuff. People might say it's pretty morbid and it's pretty grim and like oh

01:15you should be ashamed of yourselves for making money off murder and stuff. Yeah

01:18but in general people do see that it's not they're glamorizing anything. These

01:22things are presented alongside like you know Frankenstein and Dracula so it's

01:26not like we're saying here's a bunch of great guys and fly from it you know

01:30he's a monsters you know he's a terrible people. We've got very irregular

01:35regulars. It's exactly what I wanted. I always wanted to be some like a safe

01:39haven for the weirdos. So at the same time we have regulars that are people in

01:42the 60s and 70s who just like to come down have a cup of tea and maybe they

01:47were fans of like old films back in the day and stuff or they just enjoy the

01:51atmosphere. So I think even though we look a bit scary we're all quite polite

01:54people I think. I've always been a big horror fan since as long as I can

01:59remember. Blackpool was somewhere that I came on holiday with to with my parents

02:04because I knew there was a lot of strange things here that would keep me

02:08entertained. The Two Sides exhibition used to be a Louis Two Sides and used to

02:13have the big chamber of horrors underneath kind of thing. So when years

02:17later I moved to Blackpool and like that place had gone I think like a lot of the

02:21ghost trains had closed down and stuff. I just wanted to kind of do something to

02:24kind of keep Blackpool weird.

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