If you haven’t yet joined the cult ofPeaches Christ, “The Initiation” she has masterminded will convert you.

有一种喜欢的恐慌吗?演练的商店w, the sixthTerror Vault haunted attractionat the San Francisco Mint by Into the Dark, the production company composed of Peaches Christ, David Flower Productions and Non Plus Ultra, has just the effect to make your stomach lurch, the nerves in the back of your neck pinch and your breath choke off.

• Interview:Peaches Christ cuts deep during first ‘Show & Tell’

当你通过迷宫ine passageways to get initiated into a cult called Insight, as I did at the Friday, Sept. 29 opening, there are plenty of good old-fashioned jump scares. Performers pop out of curtains and walls, and from above and below, too. Inert bodies gasp to life. Appendages crawl out from under furniture; maybe some of them grab yours.

Or maybe you prefer your frights gorier, the better to imagine the most gruesome ways to die, but all within the safe confines of a show that has a definite endpoint (unlike your twisted imaginings). “The Initiation” has these, too. A body gets hacked, to squishy, squelchy sound effects. Intestines spill out of abdomens like overstuffed sausages. Orange smoke blasts up to roast the flesh of a naked man; after the haze dissipates, his charred remains twitch in the embers.

All these effects work so fiendishly well first because the Into the Dark team excels at capitalizing on their heebie-jeebie-inducing environs. When you first head downstairs, before the walk-through experience begins, theater haze already engulfs a bar area called the Fang Bang. (Themed cocktails: a vodka-based “True Consciousness,” a whiskey-centric “Brainwash.”) Everything’s murky, as if even the other side of the room is blurred in an ancient photograph.

Then there are the actual vaults once used to horde specie, with their sediment-thick doors perfect for encrypting bodies. Explore the rooms Into the Dark has laid out like macabre galleries — a coffin with dried flowers; a bloody crucifix with a demonic bunny’s head in place of Jesus’ — and your nose picks up the musty, metallic aroma of coins that have been rubbed by many, many palms.

Once inside, if some performers are stiffer than others, many conjure stereotypical cult member tics to delightful effect: the frozen smiles; the extra-long, unblinking eye contact; the abrupt head swivels; the breathy, melodic intonations charged with eroticism.

Drawing inspiration from San Francisco’s notorious cults such as the Peoples Temple and the Symbionese Liberation Army, the show creates, in room upon room, unerring set designs. The Into the Dark team members know the way sects always place coffee creamer and Sweet'N Low next to fans of brochures. They begrime insane asylum curtains and splotch bunk bed blankets with discolorations suggesting bodily fluid befoulment. Sometimes the haze hangs so thick and still your face involuntarily flinches, as if you’re about to walk through a cobweb.

If you wear a glow-stick necklace, as I did, you consent to have performers touch you. That can mean something as gentle as a cheekbone caress, but it can also mean you get wrestled into a booth and threatened with a tasing wand or snatched, manhandled and shoved by a machete-wielding maniac.

These jolts never last long. One of the best aspects of the show is the way the team, however arbitrary and zigzagging the narrative, keeps you moving. You barely stumble into one room in the maze before it’s time to grope your way in one darkened tunnel to the next. Your fight-or-flight response is piqued for an hour straight, and then you’re spat back out onto the streets of San Francisco, a bit readier to deal with our city’s real-life ghouls and goblins.

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com