The Caretaker (Halloween Horror Nights)

"Your time has come."

- The Caretaker's catchphrase

Dr. Albert Caine, also known as The Caretaker is an icon for Universal Studios' Halloween event called Halloween Horror Nights. He was the icon of its twelveth year in 2002, Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear. He was played by actor Bryce Ward and has appeared as the icon for ScreamHouse, the main haunted house for 2002's event. The aforementioned haunted house spawned two sequels including ScreamHouse: Revisited in Halloween Horror Nights 13 and ScreamHouse: Resurrection in Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16. Originally, he was not going to be the icon for 2002's event. Instead, his daughter Cindy was the original icon for the event but was scrapped due to child abductions. He has also appeared in 2006 with Jack the Clown, the Director, and the Storyteller for Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 returning to Universal Studios Florida, as well as returning with the aforementioned icons and the Usher in 2010 for Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear. In 2010, he is revealed to be the personification of death.

Background
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 philosophical.

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.

Word of the grisly goings-on quickly spread and the police launched a massive investigation, with Chief Brockett giving the order to place all individuals at the crime scene under house arrest. Instead of the desire to resist things, Albert 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 mobs and setting fire to the Victorian mansion and the whole area with the Caines still trapped inside.

Investigating the remains, detectives were unable to find the body of Dr. Caine nor his demented family supposedly except for the body of 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 retrieve 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.

One year later, the Shady Oaks Cemetery had been off limits for all visitor's 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 reopened cemetery 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 is: Could Albert Caine and the rest of his family escaped that fire?

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

Physical appearance and twisted personality
The Caretaker is a really tall and dark man with a large black top hat, black tuxedo suit, a skull-like face, and long dark-gray hair. Despite his tall, dark, and gruesome appearance, the Caretaker actually turns out to be a calm, well-spoken, and sort-of charismatic character. Dr. Caine is a huge mastermind in a twisted manner, which explains why he performs surgeries the brutal and grotesque way.

Appearances at Halloween Horror Nights
The Caretaker has first appeared in 2002 as the icon for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear at Universal's Islands of Adventure, after Cindy was dropped. Like most of the other Halloween Horror Nights icons, the Caretaker recieved his own haunted house known as ScreamHouse. Outside of being the icon, he appeared in ScreamHouse: Revisited at Halloween Horror Nights 13 which was the sequel to ScreamHouse. In Halloween Horror Nights XIV, he appeared in the haunted house Horror Nights Nightmares, along with Jack, his brother Eddie, and the Director, Rat Run at Halloween Horror Nights: Tales of Terror chasing people along with the Director and the Storyteller while Jack insults the guests to promote something that will happen next year. Speaking of that "next year", the Caretaker and the others appeared altogether for Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 in 2006. In Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear, he is revealed to be one of Fear's minions, known by the alias, Death.

Quotes
"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 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 - Universal's Halloween Horror Nights! Join me on a journey through your fears as I transform Islands of Adventure into one disturbing nightmare after another. Your time...has come."

- The Caretaker on the introduction for Universal Studios Horror Nights - The Art of Scare, a documentary about Halloween Horror Nights that aired on the Travel Channel.

"Eenie, meenie, miney, moe. Catch a body by the toe, if he hollers, cut him low. Eenie meenie miney........moe!"

- The Caretaker's quote on one of the Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear commercials

"Eenie, meenie, miney, moe."

- Another catch phrase of the Caretaker.

"I know what evil lurks in the hearts of men!"

- One of his quotes during the scare-a-mony for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002.

"Bring the non-believer to me!"

- The Caretaker commanding his minions to bring his victim to him so that he can kill him by removing his organs during the opening scare-a-mony from Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002.

"The heart of Halloween is in our grasps!"

- Another quote from the scare-a-mony during Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear in 2002.

"Eenie, meenie, miney moe. The Caretaker is here....and your time has come! Here is something you seldom see: a living, breathing, autopsy. Eenie......... meenie........ miney..... moe. This person.. has no heart!"

- The Caretaker at the Halloween Horror Nights: Sweet 16 show The Arrival.

"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!"

- The Caretaker about to kill a female victim.

"Sticks and stones....will give me your blood and bone!"

- In a scrapped advertisement for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear. "Twenty years. Twenty years. Twenty years. Twenty years. What has passed is merely the prologue. A new era will be ushered in. But not before the final act. If you read between the lines, our purpose has been eternal. Fear! To capture Fear! To speak Fear! To examine Fear! To bring Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! Fear! To you, I'm a clown. A caretaker. A storyteller. A director. An usher. But to he, who is Fear? We are so much more! I. Am Chaos. Death. Sacrifice. Legend. Vengeance! We have provided the past, from which fear will be revealed!"

- The Caretaker speaking about Fear along with the other icons during the introduction video of Halloween Horror Nights: Twenty Years of Fear.

Trivia

 * Cindy, the scrapped icon for Halloween Horror Nights: Islands of Fear, is the Caretaker's daughter.
 * The Caretaker bears resemblance to Reverend Amos Howell from Superman: The Animated Series, and also slightly resembles Jack Skellington, the main character of The Nightmare Before Christmas, for their tall, dark, and gruesome appearances.
 * The Caretaker appears in the intro of Universal Studios Horror Nights: The Art of Scare, which has aired on the Travel Channel and also revealed the name of the Caretaker's actor.