The Caretaker

Dr. Albert Caine, better known as the Caretaker, was the second original icon developed and first used for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002.

Backstory

Once a well-respected surgeon, he became the caretaker of the Shady Oaks Cemetery in Willamette Valley. Caine later converted the Victorian-style mansion he and his family lived in into a mortuary/funeral parlor. For years during his career as a surgeon, Dr. Caine was intensly interested in the workings of the body and what happened to the patients he coulden't save, what happens to a person when they die. Caine 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 Caine's experiments, their elaborate "parties", or as house decoration. Caine performed these experiments in an attempt to discover the nature of the "soul". For fresh specimens, Caine would go into the nearby town to find homeless people, and, in what seemed like a charitable offer, invited them to his Mansion/funeral home until they got back on their feet. Instead of helping, though, he would perform horrifying surgeries on them, carving them open on the operating table while they were restrained and often fully conscious and without anesthetic. Caine occupied his time perfoming acts of the most base cruelty: chemical injections, brutal amputations, live dissections, castrations without anesthisia, electroshocks, even organ removal. Caine kept notes and audio recordings, but as time went on and his madness increased these became rambling discussions often delving into the philisophical.

A few of Caine's assistants would sometimes thieve body parts during the surgery when he wasen't looking to use as dinner ingredients, even going so far as to use corpses as playthings in elaborate funeral parlor parties. He also performed experiments in fear, and wished to see how 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 witnessed the Caine family dancing with the rotted remains of decaying corpses.

Skeletons in the Closets

"I made the news today." -Dr. Albert Caine, taken from audio recordings from the Caine Funeral Home.

Word of the grisly goings-on quickly spread and the Police launched a massive investigation, Chief Brockett giving the order to place all individuals at the crime scene under house arrest. Instead of resisting, 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 mob and setting fire to the Victorian mansion and the whole area with the Caine family still trapped inside.

ScreamHouse

Investigating the remains, investigators were unable to find the body of Caine or his demented family, save for the (supposed) body of Caine's young daughter 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 retreive 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.

A past that won't die

"Ah, the smell of death gives you a chill, it is even stronger from a fresh kill; Try to run from me and lose your way, I'm right behind you, here to stay." One year later, the Shady Oaks Cemetery had been off limits for all comers 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 to reopened cemetary 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 remains: Could Albert Caine and his family have escaped that fire?

I am DEATH...

When Fear was summoned, he chose The Caretaker as one of his minions: DEATH. The Caretaker now has strange markings on his neck, as with the other icons, linking him to Fear.

Twisted personality

HHN 12 - Extended Caretaker Commercial

While Dr. Albert Caine may have once 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 Caine himself had little belief that he was doing serious work. The Caretaker ran little more than a butcher shop; the major surgeries without anesthesia was proof of that. His diaries showed that he was a doctor who had gone mad with the power he had over first the dead, then his living patients. In his vanity, he fancied himself as a pioneer 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 appearences of a professional funeral director.

Inspiration

Albert Caine's character is made from a variety of sources. The Caretaker appeared as a tall and withered old mortician with a sunken skull-like face and dressed in a tattered suit with matching top hat, often seen with his signature weapon, a large clamp/claw that was a cross between a hedge clipper and a surgical clamps. He seems reminiscent of Victorian era serial killers, such as Jack the Ripper and Sweeney Todd, while his house decorations are reminicient of serial killer Ed Gein's house. Caine also resembles the Tall Man from the Phantasm horror movie series. The concept of the unethical physician performing experiments upon live human subjects appears to be inspired by Dr. Josef Mengele, the S.S. Concentration Camp medical doctor who performed horrible experiments on camp victims during WWII. His background could also have been inspired by the Timothy Dalton character Dr. Thomas Rock from the Mel Brooks-produced The Doctor and the Devils. Dr. Caine's "family" might be inspired by Charlie Manson, and the firey retribution by an angry mob is the same fate that first killed Freddy Krueger from A Nightmare on Elm Street and its sequels.

Appearances

He appeared as the main icon for the Islands of Fear event in the opening show, torturing a victim, and in his manor. He returned the following year for Halloween Horror Nights 13 in ScreamHouse Revisited. For Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16, he returned with Jack, The Director, and The Storyteller in the opening show, The Arrival, and ScreamHouse: Resurrection. He would appear with his daughter, Cindy in the Shadows from the Past scarezone for the last weeks of Halloween Horror Nights: Ripped from the Silver Screen and in the Fear Revealed scarezone for Halloween Horror Nights 20: Twenty Years of Fear. In 2012, it's revealed that he's a member of the Legions of Horror: a Baccanoid like Bloody Mary. In 2015, he appeared along with his fellow Icons as one of Jack the Clown's maniacs.

Quotes

• "Eenie, Meenie, Miney, Moe, catch a body by the toe, if he hollers, cut him low, eenie, meenie, miney.... moe."
• "Your time has come."
• "Bring the non-believer to me!" (Islands of Fear Opening Show)
• "I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men!"
• "Ah, the smell of Death gives you a chill It is even stronger from a fresh kill Try to run from me and lose your way I'm right behind you, here to stay."
• (Preparing his autopsy on a still living man) "Here is something you seldom see: a living, breathing, autopsy."
• (after removing organs) This person has no heart." (The Arrival)
• "Sticks and stones....will give me your blood and bone!" (In a scrapped Islands of Fear commercial)
• (his thoughts on Jack the Clown) "He's very impressive." (Television promo interview for Twenty Years of Fear)
• (his thoughts on The Usher) "He smells like DEATH! No, I think I smell pretty damn good." (Referencing a quote by the Usher when he made an appearance in a news report)
• (when told that he isn't blinking) "No, I'm not. I don't want to miss anything."
• "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!"
• (jokingly after a cooking accident) "I don't think that was supposed to happen!"
• "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 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: Halloween Horror Nights! (The Art of the Scare special)
• Join me, on a journey through your fears, as I transform Islands of Adventure into one disturbing nightmare after another. Your time... has come."
• "For all you non-believers, I know what evil lurks in the hearts of man. Your time has come." (25 Stage Kill)
• "You, and you. ALL OF YOU come here. I missed you. Come closer. Closer, I want to show you something. Something you never imagined in your whole life." (25 Stage Kill)
• For tonight, I will be performing, a living, breathing, live autopsy. Hush little baby, don't say a word, daddy's going to buy you a mockingbird. If that making bird don't fly, daddy says... IT'S TIME TO DIE!!! (25 Stage Kill)