HauntedTrails2002

From Simreal

My entire Halloween season was absorbed by (a) surviving, (b) getting ready for my wedding, and (c) volunteering at Haunted Trails.

Sorry for the limited number of pictures and the cursory text -- I've been busy busy busy!

This year was directed by Thomas Mahler. He's the guy with all the walkie-talkies.

The tour of the asylum begins at the check-in tent. From there, they go up the stairs and find themselves directed into a two-story crawling maze. Inside the maze there are cobwebs and nasty squishy things to crawl through and over.

Crawling out of the maze, the hapless group finds themselves in a dark room. In one corner stands a television tuned to static. In another there is a skeleton. Milling around are a bunch of really crazy people. One of these people gets a shot from the attendant. That person is now your guide.

The suddenly lucid guide drags the group into the next room. Once settled into place, a nurse and "patient" come screaming into the room, careen off the guests, and the patient is then slammed onto the medical table and given his "medicine". He then expires.

The group is then given their pills (which, dimly, most of the guests eat... very sad). Once the nurse starts getting too friendly with guests we make our way to the next room. A lab. The inhabitant of the lab comes in and talks up the wonders of electro-shock therapy. He then wields the obviously crudely made paddles wired up to an ancient electrical machine. The group then tends to invite this nut-case to electrocute their guide to the fullest of the machine's ability. To their surprise, the madman turns up the machine and then shocks the guests instead! Shocking! We leave.

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Down the hall. Dark. Plastic.

Down the stairs, outside, around and up. The weather this year was wonderful for a haunt -- damp and misty, overcast, foggy. But miserable for guides, out in the weather for five hours a night.

Anyway, we soon come to Sophistra DelTore's last resting place. The front half of this actress is lying on a pillow on the box. The bottom half is tucked into the box, and we then laid these crispy legs on top of the box. It was a good illusion. Here is:

Shaun's picture of the thing

From there, things get even more grim -- the graveyard. Most of the text on the tombstones was unreadable -- small fonts, dim lighting. But we learned a lot about making them, and making them nice. Most of our stones were last-minute, so they were thin and generally unsupported. If we ever need 'em again, though, we know how to do 'em good.

Looming up at the end of the graveyard is the crypt -- where the recipe is hidden. We of course hid it in the wet, slimy, disgusting mess of gelatinous corpse parts at the end.

Here are some other views of the bones and bodies. We learned a lot about corpsing, too -- especially the squishy corpses. Very cool stuff. In addition to the touch and feel of the various body parts, we used scents in here to complete the atmosphere. It was very effective and well received.

Beyond the crypt we find the Rage station. I think. Or the bridge. It all got severely re-arranged from the written script and, even though I went through it maybe 20 times as a guide, I can't remember it clearly anymore. Very sad.

So, let's pretend the Bridge Of Doom is next. Not much happens there, though there was sometimes a boo-scare. Mostly a psych-out. And beyond that, Rage. Or maybe Rage is first. Who knows?

Then some quiet and we bump into the nice crazy lady who has information and a key for us. She stood here. Hey, I said I didn't have many pictures, right? Of course, looking at Shaun's pics, you will never guess which actress goes here! Oh well.

Down stream from One Bat is the garlic salesman to tries to steal your good stuff in exchange for bad. And then a gallery of ooky paintings. And then the scholar who interprets your recipe scroll. A quiet back forty for the trail. Catatonia comes next in the woods, except it's this adorable little crazy girl who provides a creepy interlude and, often, the key (except when we got it from One Bat).

The guests then trudge through the dark and the trees for a while, until we come to the wellhouse. In here, they get to rummage through the cold, dimly lit water to find the tiny little frog they need for the formula.