Josh Holder has been in a scary business his whole life. He inherited it from his father, Brad.

The Holder family owns and operates metro Denver’s longest continuously running haunted house attraction: The Frightmare Compound in Westminster.

“Everyone says I must have just had the weirdest parents in the world,” Holder said. “It was always my dad’s idea. That’s what he wanted. Mom was more like ‘OK – I’ll support that as long as we have a nice house and I get to do my thing.’”

Holder proudly proclaims “we’re the number one rated Google haunted house in the U.S. — just Google us.”

When Brad Holder bought the farmland at 10798 Yukon Street in 1983, there was “nothing up here.”

“That was a serious thing for a while, because when you drove up here you were literally in the middle of nowhere.”

On the corner of West 108th Avenue and Wadsworth Boulevard, the Compound takes up the equivalent of a city block, if not a little more. It’s not a single haunted house — it’s several indoor and outdoor areas in a maze that goes up, down, sideways and through objects like a large refrigerator, oven, vintage camper, haunted chapel, a plane crash scene, caves, a quicksand simulator and a Monsters Museum.

The quality and care with which Holder takes — making changes every year to the monsters and different areas, hiring acting coaches and makeup experts, bringing in “Hollywood-quality” props and animatronics — is what keeps Frightmare popular and successful.

“You can’t impress these kids with Spirit Halloween costumes and foam props, it has to be extremely realistic,” Holder said.

So from November to March, Holder and his employees (“buddies” as he calls them) tour the U.S., and world, looking for props and visiting other haunted attractions for ideas and the keep up with the latest technology.

“We’ve probably got a quarter-million dollars just in mining equipment,” he said. “One of the biggest things that sets us apart is the history and props out here … The tombstones are real. The cars are real. The airplane is real. … It’s almost like a museum walking through this place.”

Albeit an extremely scary museum. When they retire monsters, they end up in the museum.

The Frightmare Compound employs from 75 to 100 workers each season. Holder said many have been with them for years, always looking forward to a two-month job that’s busy, but fun. He’s seen grandparents bring their grandchildren. That’s why he works so hard to create a story line and pay attention to the details.

As customers return, they expect new scares and an experience better than the season before — so Holder tries to deliver. The backstory of the U.S. Government using the Compound for experiments on dead humans and animals gives them plenty of leeway to make Frankenstein-style monsters and gruesome freaks of nature. The story line is all spelled out on mock Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News front pages that customers can read when they’re waiting in line. That “purely Colorado” piece is missing from other haunted house attractions that only go for the big scare.

“Some of these guys come out and they have clowns and aliens — like the most random things and the story line doesn’t add up. So this story line is super important to us here,” he said. “You know you’re in Colorado when you’re here.”

The scare actors are professionally trained and they’re almost like athletes, Holder said.

“Our chainsaw guy runs about 10 miles a night,” he said. “We ship in like 500 bottles of water a night for these actors — they’re working hard.”

Holder himself started running the business when he wasn’t even old enough to drink alcohol at 18-years-old.

“My dad passed away in 1999. My mom and our family friends kept it going until I was 18,” he said. “Honestly, I’m so blessed to have this opportunity. … I literally work 20-hour days this time of year, and it’s exhausting, but as the same time I love what I do 100% and wouldn’t change it for the world.”

There’s a charity element to Frightmare as well. The business collects donations for underprivileged children to come get costumes they might not be able to afford.

“We’ve given hundreds of thousands of dollars in our costume drives,” Holder said. “Every year, we support kids and families in need.”

As this reporter drove away from the Compound, the screams still rang out the whole way down 108th.

“It’s funny because I don’t know a lot of the neighbors now, but I’ll run into somebody and they’re like ‘I live up the block, and I hear the screams’,” Holder said. “I’m so glad they look forward to it.”