“Phobia” Takes Extreme Measures to Scare

There are eight major haunted houses in Omaha.  ‘Nightmare on Q Street’ has added a controversial element to their attraction:  Phobia.

“Phobia is the top secret attraction that everyone is talking about,” owner Shaun Rosen said.  “I can tell you that you have to literally face your fears, you do sign a waiver because it’s so intense.”

In Phobia you are required to eat something, drink something and do something.

“It changes up every half hour, so what I tell you now could be different than when you come down,” Rosen said.

Besides scaring people, there’s another aspect of Phobia that makes it special.

“We’re the only money back haunt in the entire midwest,” Rosen said.

If you make it through, you get your money back.  But most people, like Scott Tilton, don’t make it.

“The first challenge was the easiest one,” Tilton said.  “It was eating something, real chewy, real griss-ly.”

It was the drinking challenge that stopped Tilton.

“Yeah they give you a taste test of what’s in the glass,” Tilton said.  “It was really spicy, really hot.  But then it had some chunks…”

So far only 35 out of about 1,000 people have made it through Phobia.  Keeping it exclusive is something important to Rosen.

“We just constantly think of ways to kind of ‘up the aunty’ if you will,” Rosen said. “We just introduce ideas that nobody else has done.”

“Omaha Live!” Highlights Talent Around the Metro

“It’s just something we’ve always been passionate about,” said Ben Tompkins, co-creator of Omaha Live! “We love to perform we love to make people laugh, we love to be goofy, we love to wear makeup.”

Satire and comedy skits are the focus of a new weekly variety show, Omaha Live!

“It’s such a rare, unique opportunity,”  Matt Tompkins, co-creator of Omaha Live! said.  “Nobody has ever done a local sketch comedy show in Omaha.”

Brothers Matt and Ben Tompkins write, edit, shoot and star in the show.  Each week they shoot skits around Omaha along with a cast of local comedians.  It all started as a conversation with WOWT’s general manager Vic Richards.

“They’re big supporters of everything local and they realized more so recently that we’ve lost touch of the local scene, especially in television,” Ben said.

Omaha Live! is also a great way for local comedians to show off their skills.

“I try to be an actor as much as I can be I guess,” actor Neil Vilwok said.  “In Omaha it’s a little more difficult than it is in other places.”

Vilwok hope Omaha Live! will continue for a second season.

“We’d really like to keep going with it, because there is a lot of development we could do with it,” Vilwok said.  “There’s a lot of different projects that we can do with Omaha.”

Producing and starring in the show is tough, but Matt thinks it’s worth it.

“It’s a long road to get to where you want to go, but once you get there it’s like picking that apple off a tree and taking a big juicy bite,” Matt said.

Neurotherapy: An unlikely alternative

Jennie Cote, mother of two, wanted her life back.

“I was in a cocoon, under six blankets, in my bed, in the dark,” Cote said.

Her migraines kept her away form her kids.

“My kids didn’t get to see me…unless they came in the room,” Cote said.  “And then they had to be quiet.”

When her prescription drugs weren’t working, she turned to neurotherapy, an alternative medicine that was discovered thirty years ago.

So what is neurotherapy?

“It tracks the electricity of the brain and starts to train the brain to do normal EEG work,” said Scott Carlson, a licensed mental health professional and neurotherapy counselor at Alternatives: Center for Conscious Health.

In a typical neurotherapy session, the health professionals (doctors or counselors) take sensors and attach them to the patients head.  With the sensors, they can see brain wave activity and can actually tell which waves are acting incorrectly.

“We look at troubled sites and with those troubled sites we know that waves will be either going too slow or too fast,” Carlson said.  “Then we train those sites to get better by having kids and adults play games.”

By playing games, the patients are re-training their brains to focus.  This therapy can be done with people who have issues with ADD, ADHD, insomnia, memory loss, PTSD, depression, and migraines.  Carlson recommends 40 sessions and says after completion the patient can be healed from their mental disorder.  This therapy would eliminate the need for continued prescription drug use.  According to Carlson, there is no dependency with neurotherapy.  Once a patient is done, they’re done.

Here’s the catch:  Each session costs $150 and insurance coverage is not yet available.

But Jennie Cote says it’s worth the money.

“I’m glad we decided to do it, because it gave me…life,” Cote said.