Local attractions offer zombies, candy and fun

BUTTE — Students from Palmer High School were still putting the finishing touches on their Zombie Hay Maze Friday night.

Chief among the remaining items: finding a way to turn off an electric fence before customers arrived. Current from the fence arced repeatedly as “zombies” and “reapers” went out to take their places in the hay maze. While someone went to turn off the fence, the horde of zombies inched warily around to get in place for the maze.

“We still have to find a way to turn off the fence or someone’s going to get fried,” said Josh Hardy, who was leading groups of students to their places.

Then, it was all business.

“Let’s talk about the zombie genres,” Hardy said. “Not all zombies run fast. Not all scream. Some say mumbled words like ‘brains.’ Figure out what type of zombie you’re going to be and commit to it for the night. If we have everyone a screaming chasing zombie, it’s going to get real boring after about five minutes.”

Reapers, on the other hand, are the guardian angels of the maze. For customers who realize mid-maze they may have bitten off more than they could chew, ‘reaper’ constitutes a safe word, Hardy told his zombies as flakes of snow began to fall.

“If someone yells reaper that means they are afraid or panicked or want out,” he said. “Zombies don’t like reapers.”

Reapers had their own fears, like the gently falling white stuff.

“The snow’s going to make us look white, and we won’t be scary anymore,” said Zachary Hardy.

Local Halloween events can roughly be divided into three categories: the not-scary, typically billed as fall festivals; the semi-scary, which accommodate younger children, or keep their haunted house separate; and the upper-echelon scarers. The hay maze fits somewhere between the second and third category. Zombies in the maze are allowed to be as terrifying as they can be (without touching customers) while reapers allow them to cater to clients who aren’t certain, or may have younger children with them.

Many attractions and events focused around this weekend, because Halloween typically falls on a school day. This year, however, some activities, like the Hay Maze, are taking advantage of conveniently scheduled local teaching in-service days (set for Thursday and Friday) to push the event to Halloween proper.

Many, like the animal shelter haunted house, feature volunteers and are held for local community causes. The money collected ($5) helps fund the animal shelter’s annual operations, said Susan Fujimoto, the shelter’s volunteer coordinator. The shelter haunted house, features both unnerving and disorienting moments as well as cookies, Fujimoto said.

“It’s not super-gorey or anything like that,” she said. “It just always keep you guessing. There’s a couple things that are a little icky.”

Others, like the Bone Breaker Haunt, set to kick off next weekend at the Meadowood Mall, have something of a haunted heritage. The haunt is a cooperative effort between the Meadow Lakes and Houston fire departments, and features work by haunt designer Angie Manson, who designed a haunt for many years on Scatters Way in Meadow Lakes, according to Linda Lockheart, who is providing floor space for the fire department's haunt.

The haunt had been held in an old firehouse, until the building was removed, according to West Lakes Fire Department Capt. David Kelley. This year they’re doubling the square footage and scaling up the sets to match the space, according to Kelley.

“In the past, a lot of it came from my imagination,” he said. “This year’s going to be a little different. I’m letting her (Lockhart) design the sets. We will be using actors with some special attacks.”

The haunt, staged for the first time at the Meadowood Mall at the intersection of the Parks Highway and Big Lake Road, is more about community than about money, Kelley said.

“We don’t charge anything,” he said.

The house is essentially a series of themed rooms connected by darkened walkways. Some of the themes include an enchanted forest walkway and a zombie nursery. The event also features balloon sculpture and hair-painting, according to Kelley.

Some prefer to leave scaring up to professionals. The for-profit haunt Gateway to Darkness, 1241 W. Melanie Ave., is part of the national haunted house professional scene (the longest-running national convention is held in St. Louis every year). As anyone who’s spent a significant amount of time in haunted houses knows, there are different types of scares, said owner Michelle Marsh.

“There’s the startle scare, there’s getting in their personal pace and making someone extremely uncomfortable, there’s animatronics, but it really comes down to the people,” she said.

Gateway to Darkness employs about 20 local actors tasked with developing a character, Marsh said.

“My husband and I kind of do that,” she said. “We give them guidance. We try to let them develop their own dialogue. We do have a lot of improv. You can’t always use the same line five hours a night.”

Running a haunted house in the 49th state comes with it’s own challenges. Halloween snow isn’t uncommon, which can limit the distance people are willing to travel, Marsh said. When the weather is amenable, they also compete with “mother nature and outdoor sports,” Marsh said.

Her haunted house typically opens the first weekend in October, and this year will run until Nov. 1. Admission is $15 at the door.

Haunted houses work because fear can be fun, Marsh said.

“Everybody likes to get scared,” she said. “It’s gets your endorphins going, gets your heart going. We’re not going to scare everyone, but at least we’re going to try.”

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269 or brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com.

Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that face-painting would be among the activities and that Lockheart was designing the Meadow Lakes attraction.