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| “ | Your time has come. | „ |
| ~ The Caretaker's catchphrase. |
Dr. Albert Caine, better known by his alias, the Caretaker, is an icon for Universal's Halloween Horror Nights, first appearing in 2002's Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear as the primary icon of the event. He is a tall man with a black top hat and tuxedo suit who was a well-respected surgeon. In Universal Studios Horror Nights: The Art of Scare, his actor's name is revealed to be Bryce Ward.
Backstory[]
Once known as a well-respected surgeon, Albert Caine became the caretaker of the Shady Oaks cemetry from Williamette Valley. Caine later converted the Victorian-styled mansion he and his family lived in into a mortuary/funeral parlor. For years during his twisted career as a surgeon, Dr. Caine was intensely interested in the workings of the body and what happened to the patients he couldn't save, what happens to a person when they die.
Albert and his family eventually used the deceased of the town as guinea pigs in unnatural and bizarre experiments. His demented "extended family", made up of blood relatives and deranged assistants, dug up the bodies of both the recent and not-so-recently dead and used them for either Albert's experiments, their elaborate "parties", or as house decorations. Albert performed these experiments in an attempt to discover the nature of the "soul". For the fresh specimens, Albert Caine would go into the nearby town to find homeless people, and in what seemed like a charitable offer, and invited them to his mansion/funeral home until they got back on their feet.
Instead of helping, though, he would perform horrifying and painful surgeries on them, carving them open on the operating table while they were restrained and often fully conscious and without anesthetic. Albert occupied his time performing acts of the most baseless cruelty: chemical injections, brutal amputations, live dissections, castrations without anesthesia, electroshocks, and even organ removal. Albert Caine kept notes and audio recordings, but as the time has went on, his madness increased, and these became rambling discussions often delving into the philosophical.
A few of Albert Caine's assistants would steal body parts during the surgery when he wwasn't lookign to use as dinner ingredients, even going so far as to use corpses as playthings in elaborate funeral parlor parties. He also peformed experiments in fear, and wished to see show much the human mind could endure before succumbing to madness and death, which resulted in at least one person being buried alive.
The terrible sight was seen by two teenagers who decided to take a walk through the cemetery telling ghost stories. Walking past the gravestones and various monuments they heard music carried on the wind. Following the sound they came across the Shady Oaks cemetery which is where they noticed the Caines dancing with the rotted remains of decaying corpses.
Word of the grisly goings-on quickly spread and the police launched a massive investigation, with Chief Brockett giving the order to place all individuals at the crime scene under house arrest. Instead of the desire to resist things, Albert Caine gladly cooperated with the sickened authorities, and even seemed eager to show the results of his "research". Reports of what was found inside during the investigation made headlines that shocked and mortified the nation, a house of horrors the likes of which were not seen since the discovery of Wisconsin killer Ed Gein decades earlier, and a potential body count to rival a Nazi death camp. The local townspeople, mostly comprised of the relatives of the deceased used in the Caretaker's experiments took matters into their own hands, forming a mobs and setting fire to the Victorian mansion and the whole area with the Caines still trapped inside.
Investigating the remains, detectives were unable to find the body of Dr. Caine nor his demented family supposedly except for the body of Cindy. However, they did find an elaborate network of tunnels running for miles under the graveyard that started in the cellar, which allowed the vandals to retrieve bodies from below. Amongst the ghoulish evidence was a "kitchen filled with body parts", "...a large kettle on the stove that contained boiled body parts...", "...a corridor filled with intestines, an eyeball on the stove, boiling brains...", "...a collection of skulls...", and audio recordings, some of which were Dr. Caine's notes, others from his live surgeries, and some that appeared to be an audio diary of sorts. Before the torching of the site, four victims were positively identified and over 2,000 graves were estimated to have been tampered with.
One year later, the Shady Oaks Cemetery had been off limits for all visitor's until the charred ruins of the Caine Funeral Home were set to be demolished, until the discovery of three unidentified decomposing bodies on the premises. Not long after, people who were last reported in the vicinity of the site began to go missing. Several research teams were sent to the reopened cemetery to investigate reports of strange noises emanating from the ruin and the Shady Oaks Cemetery, which may be connected to the terrible secrets of its horrifying past. With three teams already gone missing, the question is: Could Albert Caine and the rest of his family escaped that fire?
While Dr. Albert Caine may have been passionate about saving lives, by the end nothing could be further from the truth. From the slipshod way he conducted his experiments, it was clear that Dr. Caine himself had little belief that he was doing serious work. The Caretaker ran little more than a butcher shop; the major surgery without anethesia was proof of that. His diaries showed that he was a doctor who had gone mad with the power he had over the dead, then his living patients. In his vanity, he fancied himself as a pionerr in his self-styled field of research, and in spite of the horrors in the back rooms, took a measure of pride in keeping up the appearances of a professional funeral director.
Appearances at Halloween Horror Nights[]
The Caretaker has first appeared in 2002 as the primary icon for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear at Universal's Islands of Adventure, after Cindy was dropped. Like most of the other Halloween Horror Nights icons, the Caretaker recieved his own haunted house known as ScreamHouse. Outside of being the icon, he appeared in ScreamHouse: Revisited at Halloween Horror Nights 13 which was the sequel to ScreamHouse. In Halloween Horror Nights XIV, he appeared in the haunted house Horror Nights Nightmares, along with Jack, his brother Eddie, and the Director, Rat Run at Halloween Horror Nights: Tales of Terror chasing people along with the Director and the Storyteller, while Jack the Clown insults the guests to promote something that will happen the following year. Speaking of that "next year", the Caretaker and the others appeared altogether for Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 in 2006. In Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear, he is revealed to be one of Fear's minions, known by the alias; Death.
Quotes[]
| “ | Are you scared of the dark? What about your nightmares? Have you ever imagined yourself being "dismembered"? Just what is your capacity for fear? I think it's time time we find out. I'm Albert Caine and I am the Caretaker. Tonight you will be my "very special guest" for the most intense night of terror on Earth - Universal's Halloween Horror Nights! Join me on a journey through your fears as I transform Islands of Adventure into one disturbing nightmare after another. Your time...has come. | „ |
| ~ The Caretaker on the introduction for Universal Studios Horror Nights - The Art of Scare, a documentary about Halloween Horror Nights that aired on the Travel Channel. |
| “ | Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. Catch a body by the toe, if he hollers, cut him low. Eenie meenie miney........moe! | „ |
| ~ The Caretaker's quote on one of the Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear commercials |
| “ | Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. | „ |
| ~ Another catch phrase of the Caretaker. |
| “ | I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men! | „ |
| ~ One of his quotes during the scare-a-mony for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002. |
| “ | Bring the non-believer to me! | „ |
| ~ The Caretaker commanding his minions to bring his victim to him so that he can kill him by removing his organs during the opening scare-a-mony from Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002. |
| “ | The heart of Halloween is in our grasps! | „ |
| ~ Another quote from the scare-a-mony during Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002. |
| “ | Eenie, meenie, miney moe. The Caretaker is here....and your time has come! Here is something you seldom see: a living, breathing, autopsy. Eenie......... meenie........ miney..... moe. This person.. has no heart! | „ |
| ~ The Caretaker at the Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 show The Arrival. |
| “ | Hush, little baby. Don't say a word. Daddy's going to buy you a mockingbird - and if that mockingbird don't fly, daddy says it's time to DIE! | „ |
| ~ The Caretaker about to kill a female victim. |
| “ | Sticks and stones....will give me your blood and bone! | „ |
| ~ In a scrapped advertisement for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear. |
Trivia[]
- The Caretaker wasn't originally going to be the 2002's icon. Instead, his daughter Cindy was going to be the icon of the event, but was dropped due to many child abductions.
| Halloween Horror Nights characters | |
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 Primary Icons: Bloody Mary | The Caretaker | The Director | Fear | Jack the Clown | Lady Luck | The Storyteller | The Usher Other original characters: Bobby "The Blade" Galletta | H.R. Bloodengutz | Cindy Caine | Chance | The Inmates of Shadybrook Asylum | Knightmare | Meaty Meetz | Sam Meetz | Eddie Schmidt | The Terra Queen Singapore Icons: The Crone of the Forest | The Daughter of the Undead | Doctor Dementia | High Priest | The Maiden of the Opera | The Undertaker Alternate versions of popular characters: Carnage | Dracula |
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