Ohhhh, spooky!

“When we get home, she’ll ask if we can come again next weekend,’’ he said.

It’s October, and nothing’s more fun than being scared. Around the north region, fans of haunted houses have their choice, from haunted castles in Haverhill (Winnekenni) and Gloucester (Hammond), to entire theme parks in two New Hampshire locations: Litchfield (Spookyworld) and Salem (Screemfest at Canobie Lake Park), where professionals scare the daylights out of anyone who likes this stuff.

Then there’s Salem, which has turned October into a monthlong scare-a-bration, with three haunted houses and a presentation that matches real-life history (the Salem witch trials) and literature (the stories of Edgar Allan Poe) with theatrical presentations designed to educate as they send a shiver up your spine.

At all of those spots, the ghouls say, scaring the customer is not just about putting on a mask and jumping from a dark corner. There is skill to the scare; a method to the madness.

As people spilled from Count Orlok’s Nightmare Gallery in Salem, a wax museum that doubles as a haunted house during October weekends, they displayed a variety of emotions. Some emerged frightened, while others giggled and guffawed.

“I hate clowns!’’ raved Colleen Cusson, 27, of Woonsocket, R.I. She doesn’t even like them at fairs or parades, she said, but she and her friends were followed by a clown through the entire house.

Dee Spencer, a Plymouth mother of two pre-teenagers, came unglued during her trip with sons Shea and Vance and their friend Miles Crothers, 12, much to the boys’ delight.

“You scared me more than the monsters,’’ Crothers told his friends’ mother. “I was afraid you’d go into cardiac arrest.’’

There is a technique at play that extends beyond headless monsters and white-skinned ghouls, says James Lurgio, who owns the gallery. That is one reason he seeks out actors with previous haunted house experience.

“You can usually tell the good ones from the bad ones,’’ he said. “I’ve got one guy who completely separates himself from everyone else for a while [before the start], and you cannot call him by his real name when he’s working. You have to call him ‘Bubba.’ He’s really good.’’

While the haunts may differ, there are common factors in haunted houses: dark hallways, eerie music, scary masks, dry-ice smoke.

There is the creation of an alternate reality, a buildup of suspense, and - boo! - surprise.

“It’s the same things that scare us in cinema,’’ Lurgio said. “It’s the anticipation, buildup, suspense. The suspense is a whole big part of it. Every haunted house is different, but by and large you can’t have people jumping out bit after bit, and can’t have the same actor jumping out bit after bit. You want someone to react differently every time they get scared, and a variety of different creatures. You might not be scared of everything in a haunted house, but everyone’s scared of something.’’

Amy Gamache, 27, of Nashua, is a special effects makeup artist at Spookyworld New England, the horror theme park. She’s one of six who work on 150 actors in the two-hour period before the park opens.

“I lose track,’’ she said. “There’s a constant stream of people in my seat.’’

The makeup style depends on which “haunt’’ the actor is performing in that day: vampires or asylum patients or frightening clowns. The look alone does not make the ghoul, she said.

“I think it’s about 20 percent physical and 80 percent mental,’’ said Gamache. “Everybody has their own things that they’re scared of. In our park we have a great-looking zombie, but if [the actor] doesn’t act like a zombie, they’re not scary. There are a lot of mental tricks that scare people. They’ll follow you around through the whole park, and be two feet behind you, and really try to psyche you out.

“A lot of people are initially scared by what they see, but if the actors don’t follow through with it and play that character well, it’s not going to be scary.’’

Along with the actors’ authenticity, designers seek to create an environment through set design, lighting, music, and sound effects.

The techniques are applied to a genre of haunt found in Salem. The Witch City has no shortage of traditional haunted houses, but they’ve been joined by interactive performance pieces that mix history and literature with the haunted house in a stealth-learning experience.

One of the best examples is Spiritways, a Saturday night attraction at Salem’s Pioneer Village in which actors, set designers, and technicians recreate the environment of the late mid-17th century just before the Salem witch trials, when early settlers lived amidst warring tribes, smallpox, and the literal belief that the devil existed in the woods.

“The late 17th century was a terrifying time to be alive,’’ said Kristina Wacome Stevick, codirector of Gordon College’s Institute for Public History and director of Spiritways. “We didn’t feel the need to invent anything, just to dig into history.

“Pioneer Village is three acres, and you can see what it was like for people living in the 17th century. We recreate that and explore what was in the minds of the people who propelled the witchcraft hysteria, specifically the teenage girls whose accusations led to the first trials.’’

While reluctant to reveal secrets, Stevick acknowledged that authenticity, suspense, and surprise were key components of a visceral experience.

“The other night we had one person sobbing,’’ she said. “I’m not sure how good I feel about that, but they were definitely frightened.’’