Take a look inside Chicago’s one and only puppet

The world is full of things that go bump in the night—closet doors that inch open seemingly on their own, floorboards that groan beneath an invisible weight, things that have haunted you since you were old enough to fear your own shadow. But the world’s most disturbing horrors don’t bump at all—they click; they creak. Puppets, as it turns out, are nightmare fuel carved from wood. Rough House Puppet Arts is all too aware of marionettes’ capability to shock, awe and terrify.

Every October, Rough House transforms Steppenwolf Theatre’s Merle Reskin Space into House of the Exquisite Corpse , Chicago’s one and only puppet-powered haunted house. For its fifth iteration, the horror installation—whose general motif changes every year—resurrects with the unifying theme of “blood.”

Each artist