“Stop here,” the riot cop shouted at his prisoners as he marched through the darkened corridor. His black boots thudded against the exposed bedrock beneath and the blue beam of his rifle’s flashlight blinded his prisoners’ eyes as he pointed his gun straight at their heads.

They were at his mercy as he forced them down farther into the corridor.

This was one of the hyperbolized scenes played out in Substance at UMN ’s “American Nightmare” haunted house Saturday night.

The haunted house and concert at the Dinkytown Oakeshott Institute raised money to support the RNC 8 with their court expenses and helped pay the debt from the Ripple Effect concert, which Substance held on the second day of the Republican National Convention.

For $5 — or free for University students — concert-goers could get dragged, pushed, black-bagged and screamed at in the five-room police state basement of a Dinkytown church, led by 20 actors guised as badge-bearing tyrants. Then, after the abuse, the attendees listened to rock and hip-hop acts in the church’s atrium.

Substance founder and event manager Jim Forrey admitted that his group meant to sensationalize real life, not portray specific, realistic events like the RNC and torture chambers around the world.

“I think what it does is it shows this is ridiculous, but this is the kind of [stuff] that actually happened,” he said.

“Take this haunted house idea and do it as a scary dystopia idea of what a police state would be like if it was full-time,” Forrey said about the idea behind Saturday’s event.

The haunted house was a mixture of hyperbolized abuses — uniformed actors pushing around protestors and interrogators threatening to saw off a prisoner’s leg were some of the gruesome attractions.

Erick Boustead , another Substance founder and University senior, said the haunted house’s theme flowed from events at the RNC and worked with Substance’s aim of mixing music, art and progressive politics.

“We were playing off the American dream, what we were seeing in America was the American nightmare,” he said. “We realized we could definitely do a haunted house.”

One actor, Jesse Monson , an undeclared senior, said the haunted house and concert served a definite political purpose. The event was held to spur public debate on the issue of protest.

But not all students agreed with the event’s purpose. Stephanie Anderson , officer for College Republicans, said she doesn’t think the event’s negative attention is productive.

“I really don’t think that making fun of the RNC is going to do anything,” she said. “I don’t think mockery is the way to go.”

Organizers originally planned for a get-out-the-vote concert collaborated with the League of Pissed Off Voters, Friends of the RNC 8 , Democracy Matters and a booth from the secretary of state.

But when the event expanded to include the haunted house, MSA gave the planners a $1,100 grant and the secretary of state backed out, Forrey said.

“It was a little too racy for them,” he said with a chuckle.

The event raised $400 from spectators, and about 100 people showed up to see the four rock and hip-hop acts.

Boustead said the event would help pay back the expense from the Ripple Effect concert, which left him and other Substance members with hefty debt. The concert, which gathered 4,000 protestors to the Capitol grounds on Sept. 2, was the spontaneous location for a Rage Against the Machine show.

Boustead said if Substance collected any money above their debt, they would donate it to the RNC 8 to help defer the group’s court expenses.

Max Specktor , a University student and one of the eight facing charges, said the court expenses will probably reach $100,000 before the dust settles.

The RNC 8 plan on getting money from activists who won past lawsuits against the government, and also from small fundraising events being held around the nation, Specktor said.

Forrey said the event was an attempt to bring politics back to entertainment, like the music of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“Everything still does [have political undertones] as much as people ignore it, and we just try to emphasize that,” he said.