We miss October. We are two of those people who love the art of carving pumpkins and telling ghost stories over hot apple cider, and all the holiday brings. I started writing this blog for myself, keeping track of all I see and do throughout the Halloween season, and have been joined by my haunted friend What a Witch in our quest to live our upstate New York Halloween to the fullest. We document all of our Halloween projects, products and anything we can find related to October 31 here.
This blog is named after a phrase from one of my favorite, not necessarily Halloween-related poems, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Raven."
Happy Haunting.
It was just a dream, it was just a dream. I kept telling myself it was just a dream.
Sleep paralysis.
For those of you who don’t know the term, I can only describe it as being unable to move while being attacked by the scariest monster you could ever imagine.
My first encounter with this dark force of night was when I was 25 years old, nearly 15 years ago.
I had just suffered a breakup with someone who I thought I was going to spend my forever with. It was one of those life altering, devastating break ups that you never get over. Loss of appetite, anxiety, crying fits, deep depression and sleepless nights ensued.
After several days of laying awake through the night, I collapsed in my bed into long awaited sleep.
And that’s when IT happened. Suddenly in the dark of night I was awake, but couldn’t move. My eyes seemed welded shut-at least the eyes of my physical being. Somehow, I could see outside myself. I could see both above myself and behind myself at the same time.
And that’s also when the devil came into my room. This dark being with the form of a human but with a monsters face. It was black, all black with wet, slimy skin. It’s physique was thin and gaunt, almost skeletal. His eyes white, his teeth long and sharp, and his mouth drooling like something from a horror movie.
First he was standing near my closet. I could sense his presence long before I could see him. Unable to move, unable to scream, unable to run away. I was locked there, frozen onto my mattress with my heart racing.
Then, he was laying behind me. His face inches away from the back of my head, growling. I was above myself looking down but also able to see behind my head at the same time.
The presence was heavy, evil and malicious. Unable to move my mouth I mentally recited prayers to myself. I’m not an overly religious person but the fear was that imminent and real that I tried anything in desperation to protect myself. I tried my hardest to will a finger or arm to move. If I could just wiggle a pinky finger I could break the spell.
After what felt like an hour of struggle, I began to slowly sink into the mattress. The feeling that I was going to suffocate in the depths of my mattress was overwhelming.The creature stared at me and growled. It’s pupils black and the whites of its eyes extraordinarily bright watching as I was being swallowed by my Sealy mattress.
Suddenly my efforts paid off. A hand was able to move, i jolted myself awake. I laid there stunned- and then quickly went back into slumber.
I didn’t fully recall the horror until the morning. I was in disbelief and rattled. Everything that played out the night before remained so vivid to me, which is not typical of my dreams which are always fuzzy on detail and quickly forgotten if I don’t record them.
I questioned my sanity. I questioned the possibility of an evil force following me. I checked my closets and locked my windows, even though it was a stifling hot early August night.
And then the same scenario played out again.
It was the next morning, in my office where I was too distracted and scared to be productive that I googled “ Satan bedroom sleep paralyzed”.
There I found a treasure trove of online forums and chat rooms describing my very encounter. I found solace in the hundreds of other people discussing their similar terrifying encounters.
It had a name. Sleep paralysis.
Stay tuned for future posts where we discuss this night time disorder and talk more about our own experiences.
It's been a quite crypt here at Ghost Upon the Floor this year. To our readers, we apologize for the silent graveyard. For many haunted, Halloween hearts, November brings the start of a new year, and in this new year, things will be more active among our tombstones and posts here.
The falling November leaves, rustling. A setting sun, marble grave stones tilted but standing strong. A mausoleum door creaks, slowly, the dark twilight descending. In the next year, the Ghost and Witch will walk forth from our graves upon the floor.
It’s not Halloween until you walk into the darkness, and the screams fill the air. And that is exactly what happens when you walk out of the world—a suburban parking lot—and into the doors of Frightworld, America’s Screampark.
Stephen Szortyka’s indoor haunted house park is put on every year in frighteningly spectacular fashion. Every year, What a Witch and the Ghost look forward to what Frightworld has planned to have jump out at us from our nightmares. Every year, we look forward to the originality, timelessness and terror Frightworld puts on—and this year was no exception.
While other haunted attractions are content to rely on standard figures and (often copyrighted) characters of horror (Michael Myers, Freddy Kreuger, Walking Dead walkers)—Frightworld creates a world all original and all its own. And there is something for every part of the haunted heart. Whether you find you’re scared best in the walls of a creepy old Asylum, an outdoor cornfield and grave yard, in the creepy run down walls of secluded house, or in the dark—there will be something to make your heart race at Frightworld.
In 2015, Frightworld did not disappoint. The mental hospital, the maze, the grind house, the dark. What rose to the top for us this year was a perfect mix of the old and the new. Our two favorite houses were "Grind House" and "Night Stalkers."
"The Grind House" is a house we have been scared in before, and we were again this year. The actors at Frightworld are top-notch, and their talent is on full display in grind house. The desolate, dirty, hoarded, grime and terror of Grind House-- with the sound of a chainsaw in the distance, screams Halloween. And makes us scream. Our favorite actor of the house (and night) was a woman who-- never breaking character, asks you to come play with her, in her room of dolls. It is such an unsettling, perfect haunt-- and the girl with the doll face and the unforgettable voice is truly horror film quality.
"Nights Stalkers" was the new house this year, and it exceeded expectations. When you enter "Night Stalkers" one person in your group gets a flashlight handcuffed to their wrist. The flashlight is controlled by forces beyond you-- and you walk into the dark of the house, and the tone is instantly different. More adult, with few things that pop out at you, and more nuanced and with a fright far more lingering-- the darkness, and clinging to the flashlight in the house-- and how it fails you and reveals what is before you is the perfect experience of fear. The big reveal of the house is epic. We turned a corner and our flashlight revealed a room, large and populated with people, bodies. Shrouded and chained. Without spoiling the climax of the haunt, the experience is like no other we've had in a haunt before. "Night Stalkers" is a haunt that trusts you, and does not reveal all of its mysteries at once (if at all). And leaves you frightened long into the night and beyond.
We went to Frightworld on a Sunday night, and while the crowds were light when we came in, within a mere hour, hundreds-- if not over 1,000-- people had made their way into Frightworld, and created massive lines. Frightworld is always worth the wait, but we highly recommend the fast past as a money-well-spent investment.
Autumn
brings many things. The colors of the world explode into vibrant beauty, the
nights chill, dim, and the world swells with feasts of beauty—bright pumpkins
and corn and apples and cider and spice and pies.
This
year’s harvest brought something new for What a Witch. The harvest’s beauty
brought a little baby pumpkin. The new addition has us looking at our favorite
season from a different perspective—one we have not looked from in some time.
One of innocence.
For What
a Witch, gone are the days of blood, guts, and gore. Now the Halloween holiday
is filled with cute pumpkins, sweet treats and pajamas with dinosaur feet, and
chubby cartoon ghosts. What goes bump in the night, and haunts All Hallow’s
Eve, is taking on a more family-friendly air.
We’ve had
the joy of introducing some of the autumn season’s magical things to our little
pumpkin. A walk through the cemetery on a sunny day, the smell of mums in the
peak or their blossom (did you know mums have smell?); the sound of
rustling leaves. The morning we took our walk, child and stroller in tow, was
bright and warm. Fall was just beginning to peak out at us—in the flowering
mums planted in 100 year old urns, in the deep red just beginning to seep into
the trees. There was something so peaceful and sacred in walking around with
the little one, passing beneath trees, seeing the lakes and the spiders
spinning their webs. Reading names from stones, remembering if only for a
moment the people who have come to rest in the cemetery, walking silently
through the Chapel deep within the cemetery.
The next
week we took the little pumpkin to meet the great pumpkin, to a local pumpkin
patch. On a Sunday morning in the later fall, at a farm in the country where
goats ran free and horses watched from the barn, we took a horse-drawn wagon
ride over the farm and to the pumpkin patch; a gray but nevertheless beautiful
fall day. Pumpkins lay scattered on the ground, their vines twisting from the
earth, and here and there were pumpkin guts and seeds from those gourds which
fared less fortunately.
We look
forward to the years to come where we can watch the joy of the season grow, and
last, through a child’s eyes.
Welcome, October. We turn around, and it is gone. A world of winters, cold, shovels and snow, quickly becomes life. Turn around, and the spring has broken, when the world rains on muddy ground and the first seeds begin to grow. The sun shines brighter, and longer, and the world opens into summer. In summer, the autumn seems like a long ago dream. And then we turn around, and it's here.
Happy October, everyone, from us ghosts and witches here upon the floor. For the season of the witch is finally on us, when the ghost of the world is truly wrought upon the floor. All due apologies for the lack of posting over the summber months-- we vow to make up for it in this October.
This year, we are going to be showing you an October through the eyes of our world up here in western New York. We will visit our haunts, old and new. From the halls of an asylum our in the country, to the walls of one of America's premiere scream parks, to our New York pumpkin patches and apple orchards. We will be posting here as regularly as possible, and long into the dark, chilled flickering jack o'lantern autumn nights.
Tricks. Pumpkins. Treats. Ghosts. Goblins. Witches. Haunted houses. Apple cider. Pumpkin spice, and everything scary, everything nice.
Happy Haunts, all season long, from the Ghost. Won't you join us?
Ghost and What a Witch recently ventured out to see a new indie horror film “It Follows," and what followed was one hour and forty five minutes of pure suspense and terror.
The story centers around a girl named Jay who has been 'infected' by a horrific and deadly curse after a sexual encounter with her date. The curse is an entity that creepily follows the victim and, if it catches up, will kill the host. The remedy: pass on the curse to the next person by having sex with him/her.
This whole movie serves as a PSA to remind us once again that STDs are terrifying.
The scares in this film are few and rarely the kind that makes you want to jump out of your seat, but that, is a good thing. The tension that comes along with the slow, tension building pace and eerie, at times ear drum-popping music only makes those few jumpy moments more intense. The film's cinematography, complete with an overall 1980’s era vibe succeeds in bringing out an ambience that is even more cold and menacing. The Witch and the Ghost sat down to discuss their thoughts on what has been called the horror film of 2015. Possible spoilers may be discussed.
What do we think of the villain in this movie, the body shifting, slow moving nameless, background less entity?
What a Witch: It’s vagueness, combined with its relentlessness, makes it very, very unnerving. Are they one creature? Are they minions? Of whom? Why does it sometimes look like dead people, even when they are taking the form of someone who is alive in the story, and at other times, appear as a normal person?
The vagueness and lack of back story makes this whole story very Carpenter-esque. Remember that before "Halloween" became a franchise, developing the story that Michael Myers was Laurie Strodes brother- the original movie was about a random evil killer, setting his sight on a random girl. The only connection being that she lived in the same town as he did as a child. I couldn’t help but think though, what if, instead of always walking, they took public transportation? I would, If I was a murderous supernatural entity that had to walk to get my victims.
Ghost: The last scare of the movie for me is the inevitable sequel, and what I fear will, as my good friend the Witch mentioned, be a lesser sequel trying to explain the monster more. Because I do not want to know more about the monster. I do not want the kids of a sequel to be shown finding the weaknesses of the monster on Google. Mystery equals terror, it always has, from "Halloween" to "Psycho" to "Aliens" to the original MGM monster movies-- and explainations make that terror less, and for a film like this would pull the rug out from so much of it's punch. Becuase, simply, this monster works. Yes whatever it is follows some odd rules, and shape shifts, but the execution is stellar, and the commitment this monster has to stalking its victims is frightening. I loved that this monster could take on so many different forms and be scary. At one point in the film, I thought we were going to get some kind of back story having to deal with the briefly mentioned abandoned psychiatric hospital, especially when so many of the monster's forms appear to be patients in such a hospital-- but we were never told. Which worked so beautifully for me.
What about the music?
What a Witch: This is certainly another nod to Carpenter. The music sounds a lot like a vintage score crafted by John Carpenter with sinister synthesizer tunes similar to Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13.
The music terrified me. It provided its own jumps and scares for sure, but in the movies slow moments, it also created a sense of dread and tension.
Ghost: The music is an absolute love letter to John Carpenter. And I loved every note of it. Any critic who tries to dismiss the score as too much like Carpenter is having the point sail over her or his head. I want this score on viyl, and to play it this Halloween for trick or treaters.
Was it scary?
What a Witch:Yes!This movie feltlike an actual nightmare to me – what scared me was not the mindless terror but the notion of mindlessly trying to escape the terror. The evil was unrelenting, and even if you can manage to shake it, you always run the risk of it coming back for you.
The lesson in this story is of course, that you should only have sex with really smart people who can keep passing it on and avoid their own demise.
The few times the movie did provide a seat jumping scare, it was absolutely horrifying, especially with some of the scenes revealing the entity early on in the main characters experience…specifically, super tall guy in her bedroom!!!!
Ghost: Absolutely agreed, this was truly a scary nightmare of a film. You don't even feel like you've woken up from the nightmare once the credits roll. I would much rather be constantly unnerved by the atmosphere of a film, and occasionally jolted to fear, than any other experience horror can provide. Every scary in this film is worked for, and none are cheap or explotive in an era when the genre is oversaturated with such attempts at scares.
What about the retro vibe of the film?
What a Witch: I loved the 80’s look of the movie- and the fact that there was hardly any modern technology (save for the super awesome compact/ clamshell shaped e-reader that I hope becomes an actual thing!!).
And admittedly, I have a bit of an obsession with Detroit as recent movies like this one and "Only Lovers Left Alive" have somehow made the city’s urban decay sexy, hip and mysterious.
The cinematography in this film highlights Detroit’s mass scale degeneration and lack of inhabitants. And although it is filmed beautifully, the city becomes a menace of its own in this film. A place so large yet comes off as a secluded wasteland…and so, so stuck in it’s long ago and long past glory.
Ghost: The retro-vibe in here should win an Academy Award, seriously. Is that possible? It truly helped make the film for me. I don't think I will go as far as saying that in a modern, post 2015 setting, horror isn't as effective, but when you take our smart phones tracking our every move, and set us back in simpler times, horror thrives. Would John Carpenter's "Halloween" have been as successful if Laurie Strode used her smart phone to call Sheriff Brackett when she was trapped in the closet with Michael Myers outside? Would the chase to catch up with and destroy Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's novel be as thrilling if Van Helsing, Jonathan Harker and company were checking in at Transylvanian rest stops on Facebook every step of the way? I think not.
And that's what's so brilliant about this movie. It's like a dream. We see kids gathering around a small black and white TV to watch a scary movie that's being shown, and using phones with cords to call each other. They stop over at each other's houses instead of texting each other. And yet the one character has some kind of (primitive, futuristic, both or neither?) e-Reader. We don't know what time we are in, but we have known like times, and it takes us back to a scarier time, maybe the 1980s, when you were more isolated, alone and helpess when the mysterious other comes to terrorize you. I feel seriously sorry for children growing up today who won't know-- or can they?-- the frame of reference of growing up in a time before the Internet, when the world had so much more mystery to explore, and terrify.
But back to the movie. "It Follows," plays the retro-vibe up-- in setting, music and tone so perfectly. I'd watch it over and over again if for nothing else than the atmosphere.
What, in the end, does the curse means?
What a Witch: Perhaps an allegory about sexually transmitted disease?
Or maybe it is about death itself? The movie ends with one of Jay's friends reading aloud a grim Dostoevsky quote about the moment of extinction. Perhaps it is about the fear that we can never outrun or escape our inevitable demise.
Ghost: To paraphrase a quote from an artwork on roughly the same scale as Dostoevsky, the film "Mean Girls:" 'Don't have sex, or you will die.'
I think this is, at heart, the basis of the curse. But it's so much more than that. The now retro films that "It Follows" so expertly harkens back to-- "Halloween." "Friday the 13th," "Scream"-- so often boiled down to a cast of sexually active teen characters being killed by a killer who can never seem to catch the virginal character. "It Follows," remembers these films, and expounds on the concept with something deeper. There are few things in the world more primal, and occasionally frightening, than death and sex. Marrying the two together, and having these characters we so easily root for possibly spending their lives out running sex and death is something much smarter and more affecting than most-- well, nearly all-- horror films today have to say.
Tonight, we begin a seasonal series, exploring the darker side of Christmas. In this season of the darkest nights of the year and ancient traditions celebrating the passing of the season, those of us who are lucky enough to have haunted hearts appreciate the darker, creepy and sometimes terrifying aspects of the winter holiday-- some of which could not be more a part of the Christmas holiday in their own right. And here are 12 of them.
So this Christmas, when you are sitting sipping your eggnog warm by the fire, the tree lights aglow, waiting for the magic of Christmas morning through the night... Invite a ghost story or to in from the cold. It's only tradition. -What a Witch and The Ghost
"It's the most wonderful time of the year With the kids jingle belling And everyone telling you "Be of good cheer" It's the most wonderful time of the year It's the hap-happiest season of all With those holiday greetings and gay happy meetings When friends come to call It's the hap- happiest season of all
There'll be parties for hosting Marshmallows for toasting And caroling out in the snow There'll be scary ghost stories And tales of the glories Of Christmases long, long ago It's the most wonderful time of the year
There'll be much mistltoeing And hearts will be glowing When loved ones are near It's the most wonderful time of the year
There'll be parties for hosting Marshmallows for toasting And caroling out in the snow There'll be scary ghost stories And tales of the glories Of Christmases long, long ago
It's the most wonderful time of the year
There'll be much mistltoeing And hearts will be glowing When loved ones are near
It's the most wonderful time It's the most wonderful time It's the most wonderful time of the year."
Song Lyrics: Edward Pola and George Wyle Photograph: Bryan Ball, 2013.
Tonight, Ghost and What a Witch share their thoughts on what it means now that the Halloween season has come and gone. What does it mean now that Halloween is over? When do the decorations come down-- and how far into November does All Hallow's Eve stop?
Ghosts and Monsters on Your Street
A sadness comes over me every first week of November when It’s time to put away the Halloween decorations. To me, it means the end of harvest season, the passing of my favorite holiday, the demise of all the brilliant reds, yellows, browns and greens I get accustomed to seeing this time of year, and the end of the oddly comforting smells of leaves piling on the ground. Next comes the bitter cold, the mounds of snow, the leafless trees and neighbors and friends retreating to their warm houses, going into semi hibernation. Each year I find that I am never quite ready to let go of this season of abundance. I’m never ready to replace my lovingly carved pumpkins with portly, smiling Santas. I forever resist the transition from summer to winter.
What A Witch’s house is not elaborately decorated. I favor more natural elements like scattered pumpkins, colorful mums, rustic scarecrows and a sole ghost hanging from my Japanese maple tree. Inside I display some spooky skulls, vases and modern fall décor. Yet I admire and envy those who go to the extreme to celebrate the season.
So many houses I see these days have festive, funny or scary displays. The house across the street from me had a bit of everything; pumpkins galore, spooky ghosts, a life sized Bride of Frankenstein, as well as comical giant spiders. I have also seen those who have set up entire haunted houses in their garages or yard tents, complete with spooky music and lights, ghosts zombies and skeletons! I appreciate the neighborhoods where residents compete for the spookiest holiday decorations. For some people when it comes to Halloween decorating…more…is more!
It is the one time of year that it becomes normal to look abnormal and to really use the imagination. With each yard display I am taken back to my childhood: happy memories of trick or treating, retreating to my father’s protective arms when a neighbor in costume jumped from a tree or popped out at me from a hedge….of the terror of running up a sidewalk of animated skeletons to get to the giant bowl of candy at the end, of the awe of the sights and sounds.
Until then…I have resolved to do more. Next year I will think bigger, scarier…more…..let the planning begin.
-What A Witch
Looking for the Ghost
Every November I give up. Let go. The days leading up to All Hallow’s Eve are always bursting and speeding; falling like leaves to the ground. I do so much for the day; the day comes. And then it is gone.
The Ghost has no time when he plans to take down his decorations. The haunted house he lives in doesn’t lose Halloween completely at any time throughout the year—witches, Dia de los Muertoes skulls and similar oddities live on my desk and in my study twelve months’ round. The majority of the decorations I do put out eventually creep back to boxes, carefully numbered and with best attempts at taking an inventory. But that is not for a few weeks. The pumpkins and small gourds uncarved remain for the November holiday. That day when the last of the harvest meals happens comes, and goes. When the Ghost is ready, he pulls the cobwebs from the bushes, the shining orange lights from around the door. The tombstones come down from the yard, and it is like the ground never opened up for one night and let the souls of the departed, the eerie, the weird and the fascinating strange walk the earth.
Always, this comes with a sadness. A fast relief fades to disappointment. This year I packed in so much—from the rows of the pumpkin patch, to the halls of the haunted houses, to cookie baking and pumpkin carving and costume donning—but you always want more of the orange pumpkin glow. The panic that set in when you think you didn’t think you would finish in time, or have enough candy or hanging ghosts to live in the imaginations of your neighborhood’s children—that is gone. And in that moment there is relief. But your season has gone, and it is sad, and soon the life that is Halloween—the screaming scary brilliant colored abundance of the harvest and the holiday-- will fade into the dark. The snow, the earth cold, covered and gone. The seeds do not bloom and the dead stay buried underneath us.
Which is why I keep this blog. To keep that spark of the jack o’lantern lighting the night throughout the year. Some of us, the haunted hearts of the world—the ghosts and the witches—see in the darkness and appreciate that what comes to life on Halloween; in March, in June, in December. Soon, I will throw out the last of my carved pumpkins, the saddest sound as they hit and break, with their collapsed face, the bottom of the trash bin. Soon, there may be bells jingling from these haunted halls. But for the some of us, the lucky few, we will always have the season’s ghost.
Finally, Ghost and his friend What a Witch made their annual pilgrimage to FrightWorld America's Screampark. After our recent interview with Stephen Szortyka, Frightworld's GM and Director of Operations and master of all things terror, we were excited to see what spooks were in store for us this year!
This season, Frightworld moved into a new and much larger space, and the possibilites ran through our heads, to see just how they would make use of all the new room. Upon entering we were instanly conflicted on which wicked house we should explore first, and impressed with the layout of the houses.
There was "Eerie State Asylum," "Grind House," "Condemned," "Phobias"-- and the all new "Insantiy." Did we want the backwoods terror of the "Grind House?" The creepy old Asylum? A walk through haunted woods? Or whatever "Insanity" had in store for us? We decided on the Asylum first.
Walking into the first room of Asylum, the door shutting behind us, I was instantly aware of what I love about Frighworld, and what makes this haunted attraction so special. Right off the bat, there are new tricks-- and delightfully startling and scary treats-- in the old Asylum. Frightworld is a master of reinvention, and their actors were-- as they seem to take pride in being-- at the top of their game that night. Across the board, Frightworld's actors are so adept at becoming a character it is always impressive. Boo School, it would appear, pays off. The patients wandering the Asylum were excellently unnerving this year. Halfway through the house, we looked both ways down a hallway. To our left, lay a part of the Asylum we had walked through. To our right, looking farther down the hallway, was what appeared to be the neighboring house. Yes, from the Asylum you can see into the Grind House, and vice versa. The effect in person is wonderful, and exactly the kind of detail that makes Frightworld stand above the rest.
Without spoiling the scares, the highlights of Frightworld in their new space are legion. In the "Grind House," we walked into a closet-- in clothes and mess and darkness-- and the claustrophobia it induced was surprising, and got this Ghost's heart going strong. And, as always, the balloon rooms did not disappoint. For anyone unfortunate-- or fortunate? -- enough to not know what the balloon rooms are, they are the walls (and sometimes ceilings and floors) made of balloon-like material which you must walk through to make it out of a haunt. This Ghost and Witch have always appreciated the simple terror they throw on you; the claustrophobic darkness pressing into you, making you wonder if you will get out alive (literally). As I walked through an even longer-- and more twisted-- balloon room at Frightworld, the scare worked its best on me. What had to be about 10 seconds before emerging from the room, I found I had been in there long enough to take the scare to the next level. I was sweating, panicked. In other words, the ballon rooms this year, with more space to stretch out, did not disappoint.
The Ghost, the man behind Frightworld and the Witch.
"Insanity," Frightworld's new house, is a big bowl of tricks and treats. Without getting into any spoilers, there is a scare in "Insanity" that made me scream, curse and jump at the same time-- and instantly clap. A top notch, class act jump that is just brilliance. Bravo, Frightworld. The puzzle within "Insanity" was the perfect mix of environment and mind-teaser-- and we were so impressed with this new house.
We have written here before about the walk in the woods haunt. The kind that take you through sheds and graveyards and outdoor scenes of darkness and fright. The kind that so many haunts seem to forget. "Condemned" offered us our terrifying walk in the woods this year... the one we were waiting for. We tried to linger and enjoy the atmosphere, but the pig-faced residents chased us away. The cemetery, and other mist filled nighttime scenes in the haunt were darkly beautiful. Our haunted hearts loved every minute of it.
In talking with Stephen Szortyka after we experienced all the haunts, we saw first hand how his passion for his haunt and his team who puts it all on exists in every dark corner of Frightworld. In the haunts, in the actors, in the air and on the screen of horror movie trivia-- Frightworld gets it. Frightworld cares about the art of the scare, and explores what frightens us with both a knowledge of the past and an originality that is always a breath of fresh air-- the kind that takes our breath away.
Frightworld gets fear right. Whether it is the creaking doors of the asylum, the silence of the graveyard before you meet its residents, the visceral terror of "Grind House" or the emotion of "Insanity" -- Frightworld knows what scares us-- and is never afraid to use anything that makes us wonder, or see, what terror makes us jump in the night.
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