Ghost Upon the Floor

 Tonight, for something different from the vaults of the crypt. This season, the ghost and the witch have posted quite a bit about the places of western NY that lurk in the dark side. But tonight, here is a rare gem-- a video shot in 1932 in Buffalo, NY, of school children parading in their Halloween costumes.

 This video appeared on YouTube a while back, having been transfered from 8MM film. It warms the haunted heart to see how Halloween has lasted, and lived on through the years as a time of-- among other things-- masks and costumes and the magic of childhood.

     Tonight, we will continue our series, "Exploring the Dark Side of Western New York," where Ghost and his haunted friend What a Witch will visit or explore an area, place or attraction in western NY that has a dark, spooky past, or lends itself to the darkness we long to explore. 

Exploring the Dark Side of Western New York: Frightworld Screampark 

     For this installment of western NY's dark side, we come to Frightworld Screampark, WNY's premiere haunted house attraction. This year, we again sat down with Stephen Szortyka, GM and Director of Operations for Eeire Productions and Frightworld America's Screampark, to talk about what makes Frightworld so widely popular-- and wildly unique-- in western New York. 




Stephen, thank you so much for sitting down with us to talk about Frightworld this year. Ghost and WhataWitch are dying to know….

What new things can we expect this year? 

 With our transition from the Northtowns to Depew, our customers can expect all BRAND NEW floor plans as well as a brand new attraction: INSANITY.

Frightworld is in a different location this year. What advantages do you see in the new space? 

 We are really excited about the new location! We are back in Depew in a 70,000 square ft building. It’s a great area! We have more space to make our attractions larger than before and more space to bring fear to our customers. Its been a great year thus far!



Your haunted houses are huge, and massively detailed. Eerie Asylum alone is so intricately detailed. When do you start planning for your setup each year?


 That’s a great question! We spend all year brainstorming different ideas and concepts that will intrigue our fans. We are constantly trying to impress our fans, as well as ourselves! We are really excited because we were able to expand our floor plans for each attraction this year! Some haunts are 50% larger than they were last year!


How long does it take you to build the houses, and how much help do you have in putting it together? 

 Our build crew and set dressing crew are extremely talented! Depending on the length and size of the attractions depends on how much time. Of course, we would love to spend months detailing an attraction, but that’s not feasible. Generally a house will take 2-3 weeks for build and 2-3 weeks for set dressing.

It seems like every few years another haunted house attraction pops up in WNY. How do you stay ahead of the competition and what do you think sets your attraction apart from the others? 

 I am confident in saying that we uphold a reputation of a very detail oriented event and our fans expect that every year. Making sure that our event holds up to that reputation is our main focus, and making sure that our scares and fears are current and up to date! Like I've said before, it takes months of preparation and research to understand what works and what doesn’t work. Congrats to the new comers to the industry and we always wish them best of luck in business!




Do you frequent haunted house conventions or attractions in other states to keep up on trends in the industry? 

  Absolutely. One of the biggest conventions for the haunted attraction industry is held in St. Louis every year. Transworld Haunt Show brings vendors from all over, bringing the newest sets, props, costumes, and technology. We always try to attend other haunted attractions but generally, we do not get the time as our favorite Halloween season is making sure our event is the best experience for our fans.

What is the creepiest or favorite acquisition you have made for your screampark? 

  We like to give the persona to our fans that once they walk through our doors, they forget that there is a real world out there, and they are now consumed in Frightworld. Once our fans walk through the door, it’s a whole different world. From the main floor to our bathrooms, you will be engulfed in fear and the unknown.

What kind of training are your actors given each year? 


  Each year, our actors attend a 4 hour "Boo School" where they are put through a rigorous training seminar. They partake in hands on training within the attractions. They understand Fear, the underlining reason why society gets scared. Different techniques, different movements, customer and actor safety, and customer flow within the attractions.




Frightworld’s reach extends beyond WNY, having notably been featured on the Travel Channel. Where are some of the furthest locations your guests have come from?

 Our furthest fans have come from as far as Hong Kong and Taiwan, CRAZY, I KNOW! Majority of our customers are from the Buffalo area, Syracuse, Rochester, Canada, and Pennsylvania. We have been lucky enough to be voted #1 haunted attraction in the Northeast and #1 in Buffalo, NY. Our Eerie State Asylum was actually voted #1 best attraction maze as well!!!! As well as being featured on the Travel Channel we were also voted many other awards! It feels GREAT to see all of our hard work, pay off.


Like many people, we were wrapped up in the hysteria that was HBO’s “True Detective” earlier this year. The show was a modern horror and crime mystery that drew largely from Robert Chambers’ 1895 horror book “The King in Yellow.”  So, let’s talk about Carcosa from the show. The moment we saw the creepy underground lair in the show’s finale, we thought it would make for a spectacular haunted house experience. Any chance we will ever see this—or something like it’s ruins-- in the future?  


 That’s a touchy subject. We would LOVE to mimic some of these great shows/movies that are coming out, but we also want to make sure we are original in everything that we do! Our fans love our work, and we want to make sure we withhold that reputation! Generally, we stay aware from mimicking shows and movies!


Frightworld seems to always fit the right balance of different kinds of horror. Unlike a number of horror attractions, you seem to understand that one cannot live on shock and gore alone, and feature a balance of more modern horror and the appeal of the seemingly older, as with the creepy old asylum. Is this intentional? 

 Yes, and very good observation! We have 5 differently themed attractions! We want to make sure that our fans are scared. Sometimes, an asylum may not scare a customer, but I can guarantee you that they fear something in one of our other attractions! We want to make sure that we have the ability to appeal to a wide array of fans. Like you said, we need to make sure we have balance.

Many people perceive people in your industry as being “dark” or “morbid.” What response do you give people who say such things, other than “Thank you”? 

 Many of us are just as normal as the person who is saying that. With normal day time jobs, graduate and undergraduate students as well as very talented industry professionals. There is a business side to this event that takes an extensive amount of time and expertise, between marketing and advertising to managing over 60 employees as well as our digital and media designs, commercials, both TV and radio production.



We often read in the paper about attractions like this- combined with the raging hormones from groups of teens and preteens- causing a bit of a disturbance of the non-paranormal kind. What kind of security measures do you have in place to keep your demons…errr…customers…exercised? 

  Customer safety is our main focus! The whole event is designed around making sure our fans are safe. We employee Cheektowaga uniformed police officers to patrol our event.

We are both dying to know if those claustrophobic balloon passages are part of your exhibit this year. They scare the living daylights out of us in a good way and WhataWitch is eager to experience them again… we all know its bad luck to disappoint a witch, Stephen. 

  Well I am glad to say that they ARE BACK. No bad luck for me this year with disappointing any witches :)


All Photos Copyright 2014 Frightworld Screampark. 

     Welcome back, October. How I have missed you. The weather, the cool, the colors begin. The harvest, the abundance, the peak of life. Is there a better way to ring the month where autumn takes full hold, than in a pumpkin patch?

     I don't believe so. This past Sunday, a visit to Kelkenberg Farms in Akron, New York. A warm morning, a quiet farm of several acres. Fourteen dollars allows one a ticket to the corn maze and the pumpkin patch. We wandered around the farm before the horse-drawn ride out to the pumpkin patch. We saw a charming old dog blind in one eye, the chickens, the goats, the horses. We walked through rows and rows of mums, past corn stalks for sale and into a country store that smelled of candle wax and pumpkin spice.



      And then we boarded the cart. The horses take you a distance from the main farm, and out to the pumpkin patch. Having not been in such a pumpkin patch for many years, the childlike glee that filled my Halloween haunted soul was almost too much to take. Unlike many farms and places where pumpkins are sold, Kelkenberg allows you to pick any pumpkin, regardless of size. We walked amongst the rows of pumpkin vines, bright orange decaying pumpkins, perfectly shaped pumpkins, enormous pumpkins. In search of the great pumpkin, the one I would take home.



      In the end, I decided on the largest pumpkin I'd ever brought home. Not the biggest one from the patch of so many, but the largest one the best for carving that I could find. This decision I regretted almost instantly on the walk back through the patch, to where the horses would pick us up and take us back to the farm; I persevered. Stopping more than once to rest. And am glad I did. Finding our pumpkins, washing off the mud in a basin with a pump. Exploring the corn maze, with friends, a candy apple and cider in hand. The perfect way to welcome the season of the witch, the month of the orange glow.

     Welcome, October.

     In Salem, when we weren't in cemeteries, we were walking around the city. Visiting the magic shops, the mystical places that offered stones to help with stress, love and other things in life. We saw the shops selling Halloween goods, and museums dedicated to the trials. And we saw the statue of Elizabeth Montgomery, the actress who played the witch character of Samantha on the 1960s-1970s TV series.

      We saw the other side of Salem, the histroy unrelated-- directly-- to the witch trials. The places of Nathaniel Hawthorne, starting with the Customs House. At the Customs House, we were given an incredible tour by a US Parks Ranger who wore his interest for the writer Hawthorne on his sleeve. We saw the original, striking and initimdating eagle statue famously described in Hawthorne's novel "The Scarlett Letter," and we toured a ship outside the Customs House at the Salem Maritime Musuem. We then saw the real House of the Seven Gables, which is famously the setting of Hawthorne's ghost story. Photos were not allow in the House, but there was a cat who lived there. And the tour was taken up a concealed staircase to an attic room where enslaved people slept. The air in this attic was, to say the absolute least, heavy, and hard.


     From there we saw the Witch House, the only building still standing with an actual connection to the Witch Trials. The House of Judge Jonathan Corwin, aside from providing a look at how a home was kept at the time of the trials, also gave us an opportunity to see a spoon believed to have been owned by trial victim John Proctor.




     But leaving Salem, we made the most meaningful stop of all. Before we left, to begin the drive home, we drove to a street in Danvers, and drove down a narrow driveway in between two houses and properties to some woods. A Massachusetts historical sign proclaimed this the "Samuel Parris Archealogical Site." Just in the first few trees in these woods, there is a stone foundation left from what appears a small home. This foundation belong to Samuel Parris, and it was here in his house where the hysteria was born; where Tituba entertained the girls who would go on to accuse women and men of witchcraft with her fantastical stories. Being on the quiet grounds is deeply moving, bringing the magnitude of the tragedy so great it has become a tourist attraction because of its history and the lore it produces home to a place where you know, so clearly, this was all so real.

     There was no one else in the next cemetery we visited. The Howard Street Cemetery lies away from the Old Burying Point, the magic shops and the majoirty of the tourist attractions in Salem. We followed our map down a residential street, and crossed over to another.

      We came next to the Old Salem Burying Ground. The land in the middle of the city isn't big, and it isn't small. Following along the street, I first thought we might not be walking in the right direction for the cemetery. Past houses and buildings and storefronts it lies, simply there. The cemetery, and the souls, that have laid there for so many years.


      We walked into the cemetery when it was empty. The stores and shops and attractions had been full as we passed them, and it seemed somehow odd, a kind of wrong that those who lived this history that put Salem on the map lay silent, univisited. My ignorance on exactly who is interred in the Old Salem Burying Ground quickly faded when my friend remarked that the victims of the trials were not here, but the judges were. Why weren't the victims here, I asked? Because they were convicted witches, and could not be buried in afforded a Christian burial in hollowed ground, I found.

      None of the famous victims-- Rebecca Nurse, Giles Corey, Mary Eastey, John Proctor-- are buried in the Old Salem Burying ground. Most of their final resting places remain unknown, with the notable exception of Rebecca Nurse, who had family who removed her body from the shallow grave where she was buried with other victims near the gallows, and brought her back to the family homestead to be properly buried. The Rebecca Nurse Homestead, in present day Danvers, MA, allows you to visit the historical Nurse family homestead, and pay your respects at Rebecca's grave. We did not make it over to the Homestead this trip, which I regret. Perhaps on a future return trip.



     While none of the victims are within the old burying ground, there is an honest and moving memorial to the victims on the outer edge of the cemetery. Stone benches with each victim's name are placed around a rectangular area with an open entryway resembling an unbarred prison, adorned with quotes inscribed on the ground from the victims' proclaiming their innocence. Without graves, walking from stone to stone, from John  Proctor to Sarah Good, I was left with the feeling that I had visited them, and laid my respects.

     Laying just outside the memorial is Judge John Hawthorne, who is buried in the ground of the Old Burying Point. His gravestone, old and from another time, has been preserved in the way many others in the cemetery have been, and reinforced. The judge who had such a direct hand in the murder of the victims has been sentenced, in death, to lie beside the memorial to the injustice he carried out, and the bold poetry of that circumstance is-- if not just-- fitting.

      While gravestones like Judge Hawthorne's have been aided in the quest to last through time, others have not. Stones from over 300 years ago stand tall, still upright, many clearly marked up by visitors attempting to read them. White lines made with stones highlight names and dates on grave markers that have stood so long they are decaying their self. The inscriptions for Giles Corey's, the victim who was sentenced to be crushed to death, first wife-- and others-- have been marked this way.

     And the stones are beautiful. The level and style of simple, direct decoration used going back what is now a few hundred years are all their own, and standing in that cemetery, in Salem, you understand it. The crudely drawn skeletons with wings, perched atop a stone, the simple designs of intertwined hearts. You understand something about these people. What they believed, and what death looked like to them.

     Apart from the Judge, the other famous residents of the old burying ground are those who came close to the history that makes Salem famous. Mary Corey, first wife of victim Giles Corey, lies far and to the back of the cemetery. And in a section covered by a few trees, over to the side, lies Nathaniel Mather, brother of Puritan and witchcraft expert Cotton Mather. In his writings, Cotton Mathew documented the witch trials, and in many ways fueled beliefs that led to the hysteria-- to the point where his writings are even mentioned as something the fictional Ichabod Crane-- superstitious believer in witchcraft and all things occult-- reads in Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." Standing in front of Nathaniel's grave, his brother Cotton Mather-- who was almost a character in the tale of the Headless Horseman, and certainly a player in the witch trials-- became more real to me, the fears and superstitions and prejudices of the trials stepping out of their graves and into the light.

     Walking out of the cemetery, we watched a bus of people on some type of senior citizen's tour disembark, and begin to file into the victims' memorial. And then, several other tourists began to wander in. We had, we found, caught the old burying point during a rare quiet time.


View my whole album of the first day in the Old Burying Point here.