“For now, Brigham Manor sits dark,” reads the website description of Spooky World in Litchfield. “Those in town swear they can still hear the blood curdling screams and cries for help coming from the house.”
Yep, I can confirm that, after exhaustive research for an investigative piece given to me by my editor.
In fact, those were my blood curdling screams coming from Brigham Manor last Monday night, and those were my cries for help.
A four-letter expletive, a synonym for doodie, slipped out now and again, too.
I made it, though, through the five haunted attractions there.
I outran killers with their chainsaws firing on all cylinders, blades spinning, ready to cut me to pieces. I escaped from ghosts, ghouls, goblins, zom
bies, skeletons, clowns and humanoid creatures I couldn’t identify.
I walked down narrow hallways and paths, sometimes in complete darkness, with monsters jumping at me, from above, from below, from the walls, from behind. I was scared doodie-less.
I tried to document what I saw with my cell phone, but the flash blew my cover. “Take another flash photo and die,” boomed a voice from the haunted woods, known as The Colony.
“No problem,” I said. “No photos.”
Wayne Caulfield, the Spooky World co-owner, had warned me, but only to a point. Before I dared walk through the various Halloween-themed parks, Caulfield told me, “Ages 10 and up are recommended for this. Someone comes in with a 5-year-old? We can’t stop them.”
I wish he’d stopped me.
Actually, I love this time of year, even when I’m being chased by a demon.
I love the crisp air, the blinding blue sky, the foliage, football season, light jackets, comfy quilts, scary midnight movies, parties with those mini KitKats, parties with those mini Twix bars, house decorations that include ghosts and witches and graveyards, tombstones with sayings such as “Here lies old Mrs. Derns, now being eaten by lots of worms.”
There’s a delicious irony here, of course, a secure feeling that goes with being scared. As long as it’s fake, a movie or a theme park, bring it on. I’m safe.
Bring on Norman Bates, the protagonist in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Norman kept his dead mother alive in his own mind, dressing her, speaking for her, obeying her every command, until her rotting corpse was discovered in the fruit cellar near the end of the movie.
“A son’s best friend is his mother,” Norman says.
Bring on Michael Myers, who killed his sister with a knife, then donned a creepy white mask and killed just about everyone else in Haddonfield, Ill., in the mother of all slasher movies, Halloween.
And bring on the unseen force in the Paranormal Activity franchise, which featured a demon stalking a particular bloodline. Doors closed. Chandeliers swung. Powder sprinkled at night showed footprints the next morning. And Duckler hid behind his super gigantic $9 bucket of popcorn.
So, with that sort of courage involved, I took the assignment. Before I knew it, however, I was quoting the Cowardly Lion from The Wizard of Oz, saying “I do believe in spooks, I do believe in spooks, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do, I do believe in spooks.”
I moved through something called the Festival of Fear, wearing 3D glasses and never really knowing how close the clowns and killers were to me.
I moved through Carnage, a junkyard filled with broken down trucks and buses, homes to monsters who popped out and then disappeared just as suddenly.
I moved through The Colony, which was where that voice yelled at me for snapping a photo. It was narrow and woodsy, and it scared the hell out of me.
The worst part was when a thing jumped out of nowhere, then followed me for a while, forcing me to look back, leaving me open for a frontal attack from someone, or something, else.
The dead people and ghosts growled at me, screamed at me and, on the one-mile Haunted Hayride, even touched me after climbing on to the wagon, pulled ever-so-slowly by a tractor, through the darkness, through the woods.
And then there was Brigham Manor, my favorite. Nothing in the history of fright beats a haunted house, right?
“The Bishop Family is no longer a threat to the people of Litchfield, NH this year,” the official story goes. “The police took matters into their own hands and shot, killed and locked up most of the family. It’s been said that a couple of members have taken to the hills, but only time will tell if the evil will ever return.”
It will. And it has.
Loud music blared from speakers, hidden somewhere on the long, two-decked colonial mansion. Weeds and a pair of ghosts stood outside, near the front door. A man who ran really fast on crutches zipped through the front door.
I crept in, baby steps, frightened.
It was dark, forcing me to slide my palms along walls until finding an opening, a doorway, a new path toward terror.
Then it would start all over again, until finally reaching an exit.
It lasted about 10 minutes. It seemed like an hour.
“It is now your turn to walk through the deserted halls of darkness,” read the website’s description. “No lights, no help and nowhere to go but onward. Will you meet the same fate of eternal darkness which have captured those before you? Try if you dare to make it through Brigham Manor. The Darkness.”
I made it, breathing heavily, steam shooting from my mouth like a fire-breathing dragon in the cold night. I like to be scared when I have nothing really to be scared of.
Happy Halloween.