In Salisbury, preparation for the Halloween season starts early.
As soon as the snow melts in the spring and the ground behind Brett Walker’s house dries out, Walker and his friend, Jim Hoyt, head out with a tractor.
“We’re out there for a few months, just clearing trees, pulling stumps, getting an area ready for a new scene,” Hoyt, the chair of the Salisbury Board of Selectmen, said.
As the weather heats up, the two men and Hoyt’s wife, Jen, begin to build. This year, they erected giant gray foam trees for a new scene inspired by a monster from Native American folklore. Walker, who used an angle grinder to carve them, found himself covered in foam on many weekends.
The months of work culminate in the opening of Salisbury Woods each October. The haunt started in 2014 as a small backyard event conceived by Walker and his then-wife, Lisa, to raise money for a playground at Salisbury Elementary School. Over the last dozen years, the experience has steadily grown from a couple scenes to roughly 20, drawing some 4,000 people annually and serving as a major fundraiser for the community.
It is easy to see why thrill seekers flock to Salisbury’s four corners on chilly Friday and Saturday nights as Halloween approaches. Though the haunt is a non-profit that Walker and the Hoyts run alongside dozens of other volunteers, it has all the features of a professional enterprise: intricate and eerily beautiful scenes, elaborate makeup and costumes and heart-stopping jump scares.
‘They never come out’
The 25-minute traverse through Salisbury Woods introduces visitors to a gauntlet of horrors. They meet creepy clowns, an evil doctor, about a dozen zombies, a screaming banshee, a chain-smoking granny, a witch (played by Jen) and a guy wielding a chainsaw (played by Jim).
On a good night, 75 actors swarm the crevices and corners of every scene, perfectly blending into the background in their face paint and costumes.
Some actors have participated since nearly the haunt’s inception. Others have been recruited by friends and family over the years. They come in all ages, but Walker said children are often the most scary.
“Little kid zombies? Amazing!” he said. “There’s nothing scarier than a little kid charging a fence.”
The day’s preparation begins at 4 p.m., particularly for the zombies and clowns, who require the most makeup. In adjoining trailers, actors don their costumes and sit down in one of five barbershop-style chairs to get their face, neck and arms done up. The process for zombies takes about a half-hour and involves latex and toilet paper “to make them look dead,” said Jen Hoyt, one of the makeup artists.
As the actors transform from humans to witches, demons and monsters, they enjoy a potluck dinner and prepare for their brave targets to arrive.
At 7 p.m., the haunt opens. On busy nights, the experience starts with a considerable wait in the graveyard, a COVID-era addition. Amidst glowing pumpkins, tombstones and a monkey, a blue troll awakens from his slumber every now and then.
“Why did you wake me up?” he asks groggily. “Are you going in there? I wouldn’t if I were you. I see people go in all the time, and they never come out.”
Jen and Jim Hoyt hauled the troll back from Indianapolis, Ind. last summer in a trailer.
“You should see the looks that we got,” Jen said.
Scare tactics
When it is time to enter the haunt, Walker, dressed as Scabby the Clown, ushers groups inside.
Attendees wind through several indoor structures and outdoor paths, a menagerie of sensory overload. Considerable psychology plays into the design of the scenes, which combine structural elements with lights and sounds to promote disorientation.
“The building is square. The hallways we travel through are not,” Walker said. “Square walls, square voids — your mind can put that together.
“That’s a 15° angle. That’s 95°,” Walker pointed out during a recent tour. “So you have no idea, and it just doesn’t make sense. So they don’t necessarily know where the voids are.”
The props play a similar role. Walker carved clowns, for example, to face upwards, in an effect to divert people’s attention.
“The idea is that the propping is taking your attention and then that’s what gets the actors the opportunity to do what they need to do,” Walker said.
The actors traverse hidden hallways and doors, relying on light and sound sensors and tiny holes drilled into the structure to select the perfect time to pounce.
Scott Erickson, 54, a veteran zombie from Boscawen, said the thrill of scaring people never gets old.
“It’s the best feeling in the world,” he said. “I’d say the worst ones are guys. They scream worse than women. As you see them coming, you can tell how well you’re going to scare them.”
Constructing the scenes
Some scenes, like “Clown Town”, are hallmarks of Salisbury Woods. Others get replaced every couple years. Walker, the creative mind behind the haunt, relies on inspiration from movies, myths and real-life places.
One of the more memorable scenes came to him on a trip to Rome.
“There’s some catacombs where the monks have decorated the whole place with bones,” he said. “And that’s how I got this idea.”
Over one summer, Walker constructed walls using spray foam to create the illusion of being deep underground. He and Jen collaborated on the mummies, using a mold to make the bodies and cloth to wrap them up. Jim, the owner of Countryside Builders, typically participates in construction projects, as well.
The catacombs are beautiful, but perhaps the most impressive scenes come near the end, in the form of a chapel and a three-room house. In the house, bloodied children roast in a kitchen pot and eyeballs sit in water on the counter, surrounded by walls stained brown with cigarette smoke.
A giant fundraiser
Salisbury Woods is a community event, primarily attracting actors from the Merrimack Valley towns of Salisbury, Boscawen, Loudon and Webster, as well as from Andover and Franklin. Visitors travel from these towns and further afield.
The concept Walker, the Hoyts and their team have perfected — a high-quality haunt that is also a major fundraiser — has not been replicated elsewhere in the state as far as they know.
Last year, the event raised roughly $70,000, with thousands of dollars each going to the parent-teacher organizations of the local schools. The 21 recipients also included the Salisbury’s Firefighters’ Association, library and Old Home Day fireworks display.
The haunt opens on Friday and runs every Friday and Saturday throughout October. Tickets are available online at https://app.hauntpay.com/events/salisbury-woods.