Jump scares, leather gloves and squeaking moth noises: theatre horror masters on how they make their shows so scary

Whether it’s immersive chiller Blackout or the campily scary 2:22: A Ghost Story, ‘tis the season to be scared witless at the theatre. But what’s the secret to making an audience gasp in terror?It was 1am. Total darkness. Locking up a wedding venue, Sam Beech’s car sensor went off: there was something behind him. “It went on for half an hour,” the writer and director recalls, “on the front bumper, then round the back. But every time I looked, there was nothing.” It kept going, snuffling around the car. So he stopped looking. “I thought: ‘If I don’t look behind me, it won’t get me.’” Since then, Beech, the creator of one of a plethora of horror shows currently haunting the stage, admits, “I don’t like driving in the dark”.Beech’s experience was eerily similar to a scene in Andy Nyman’s hit 2010 play Ghost Stories, which Beech had seen four times, so the gnarly end the character had met on stage filled his mind when the sensor went off in the dark. N