Happy All Hallows Eve!

A dark and gloomy light fog laid over my hometown all day today.  The sun didn't peek out once leaving the gray skies a foreboding sight.  There was a feeling in the air that made me a bit paranoid.  As if many sets of eyes were keeping tabs on me.  It chilled me to the bone.

Though I was creeped out, I understood the reason for the oddities that seemed to follow me throughout the day.  Today is October 30th.  All Hallows Eve, also known as Devil's Night to a few.  It is the night before Halloween.  The time when the worlds of reality and the unknown are the closest.

When Halloween and All Hallows Eve end up in the middle of the week, it is always kind of a bummer.  Most of the Halloween hi-jinx have been celebrated the weekend before.  There's not a lot to do to celebrate Halloween in the middle of the week.

One of the most disappointing things about Halloween occurring during the week is that many of the Haunted Attractions have already shut down for the year.  Sure there may be a few who are smart enough to be open this Thursday, Friday and Saturday.  But, they are far and few between.

It takes a heck of a lot to put together a big show like that.  It would be only beneficial to open for a few more nights and make some more money.  With all of the planning, building and logistics it takes to pull off a Haunted Attraction year after year, you'd think that they'd want to pull in as much coin as they possibly could in a season.

How much work does it take to make a Haunt come to unlife?  Take a look at this behind the scenes video of a really great haunt.

It features the planning and building of a Haunt in an old brewery form a few years back.  The Haunted Lemp Brewery  in St. Louis, MO has become one of the best Haunted Attractions in the U.S.

That shall be all for another season of macabre and strange.  So, tomorrow when you get that uneasy feeling of unseen eyes watching you every move, waiting for the right time to pounce, just tell yourself, "It's only just one more day".

Have a happy and safe Halloween!

Stay vertical.

Zangz.

Another Ghoulish Gem I had Almost Forgot About. How Could I?

At the end of 2012's Halloween season, my family got together for our annual Halloween diner.  After we finished the meal and put my niece to bed, we gathered in the living room, lit candles, turned the lights off and watched this movie, The Woman In Black.  It scared the crap out of all of us!  I was going to post about it on my blog, but Halloween was coming to an end and I never gave myself a chance.  Skyfall was right around the corner and I was putting all of my movie viewing excitement into the next James Bond opus.

I watched The Woman In Black again yesterday and realized I never reviewed it here and what a crime and mistake that had been.  Especially since I'm the kind of Horror fan that is verry drawn to a real good and creepy ghost story.  And boy, does The Woman In Black deliver in that department.

I love movies like, The Sixth Sense, The Others, and Ghost Story.  Heck, I even love the more cheesy ones like House on Haunted Hill and The Haunting.  There's something about the stories of spirits haunting the living that I appreciate slightly more than the tried and true, axe wielding homicidal maniac chasing a bunch of horny teens around in the wilderness.  I'm always looking for the next chilling fright rather than the next blood, guts and severed head fiesta.  Chilling freights are the focal point of this Edwardian ghost story has to offer.

Based off of the book and play by Susan Hill, the story follows a young widower as he is assigned by his law firm to go a creepy old mansion in an old town on the coast of England to take care of the paperwork of the recently passed owner.  What the young lawyer, Arthur Kipps (Played by Daniel Radcliffe) eventually finds out is that the town is cursed and the mansion is haunted by the ghost of an angry spirit of a woman who lost her child in the muck of the nearby bog.

I wont give away the whole story, but I will tell you that this was one of the creepiest movies I have seen and absolutely love it for that sole reason.

Here are four reasons why this movie has a high level of creep-factor going for it.

1.  It takes place in Edwardian England.  Both the Edwardian and Victorian times are just creepy in general. You had people dressed in back all the time.  Spiritualism and the first signs of paranormal investigations were hugely popular in those days.  You look back at photos from those eras and everybody in them looks unnervingly stoic like their eyes are piercing the viewers soul.

2.  The setting is quite unsettling.  First you have this small, crusty township of frightened and seemingly superstitious folks.  Then you have the huge, Victorian mansion itself, sitting in the middle of a seaside bog where the tide comes in at night and blocks off the only small road leading in and out of the property.  The mansion also sports its own family burial ground upon its property.  And don't all old Victorian English manors have their own cemetery?  I'm pretty sure it's a law in the UK.

3.  Ghostly children and their creepy old time toys.  Again, I won't go too far into the story but, yes, there are a few ghost children in the film and ghost children are always creepy.  Whether it be two twins staring at you in a hallway or some girl crawling her way out of a well, they scare the livin' bajeesus out of everybody.  And I don't think I have to even start on the creepy old, wind up dolls that go off for no reason whatsoever.  Monkey with the symbols, anyone?

4.  The Lady In Black herself.  The Grand Dame of this ghost tale is pretty simplistic in looks, but can still give viewers night terrors.  When a pale woman shrouded in a mourning dress is viewed out of the corner of one's eye and then disappears, don't tell me that it's not enough to crap your pants a little bit.  Of course the writers and director make sure she has some great pop-out moments that had the hairs on the back of my neck shoot straight up.  And I don't use that term as a euphemism, that physically happened.  It's science!

So if you're looking for a real good horror film this spooky season that truly scares you and you don't want to be grossed out, The Woman In Black is definitely Halloween viewing material.  Especially with candles and pumpkins being lit as you only light source.  You'll have nightmares for weeks.

In other Halloween happenings, some friends and I went on a moonlight ghost tour of downtown Milwaukee last night.  We went last year, but we were hit with a downpour of rain that blew sideways and destroyed the umbrella I had brought.  So we decided to give it another try this year with far better results.  We didn't see any ghosts, but did hear of the old ghostly folklore of the Haunted Pfister Hotel where Joey Laurence as well as a few professional sports players got spooked. Another particular eerie story involved an woman shrouded in black (familiar?) who haunts the outside of an old church in downtown Milwaukee.  A fun, if not chill filled evening was had by all.  If you're in the Milwaukee area during the Halloween season and want to go on the tour.  click here for more information.

And in tradition before I end this post here is another walkthrough of a haunted attractions called Reign of Terror located in Thousand Oaks, CA.  This is last years show.  Pretty impressive!

Them Park Adventure on YouTube

That's it for now.  I'll try and find more Halloween high-jinx I can drum up or get myself into in the coming weeks.  Stay tuned and stay vertical.

Zangz.

More Haunts Have Been Visited.... more pants have been moistened.

We're smack dab in the middle of Halloween season.  It always goes by too fracking fast for me.  I'd like to savor this season, but, that is quite difficult with work being so busy.  I find myself both mentally and physically exhausted when I get home from work.  The weekends seem to be my only time for solace.  Well, if you consider seeking out the living dead and infiltrator their domains a form of solace.

That's just what I did as I dragged my buddies Bones and Roberto to a couple more haunted attractions this weekend.

After trying to get out of work as early as I could on Friday I stormed down the freeway and picked up Bones.  Then the two of us headed west, toward Roberto's headquarters, during Friday afternoon rush hour.  This gave us a good hour's worth of heavy traffic travel time.  So I decided to pass the time by playing Bones one of my all time favorite, true ghost stories that I heard off of one of the Nerdist Podcast.

If you want to give yourself the chills go to HERE.  It's the second part of the show.  The first part features the famed astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson.  Feel free to listen to his portion of the show, but, if you want to get straight to the creepiness, forward to about 53 minutes in.  It is there where film director, Liam Lynch, spins a true tale of pure ghostly goodness involving his time living in a very old apartment building in England.  Be sure that you are alone and the lights are down low and you have at least one Jack-O-Lantern lit in the room.

Back to the haunts!  After some laborious traffic, Bones and I found ourselves at Roberto's where the three of us gathered and readied our ghoul fighting gear (warm jackets and sweaters and enough cash for two haunts and some dinner afterward.).  The three of us jumped into the Roberto mobile and headed over to the next county where we first visited......


Terror @ 212 - Formally called "Haunted High presents Terror @ 212" this reboot of the old Oconomowoc Haunted High attraction (that has since been torn down) was a very pleasant surprise.  I did a review of the old Haunted High last year.  Having lost the old high school building to development projects, the organizers secured a business building right in the downtown area of Oconomowoc.  The outside of it doesn't look that big, but the amount of freights they put inside is quite impressive.  In fact, it feels far more intimate than when they ran it in the old high school building.  The high school had a lot of large open spaces, but the new haunt is a lot of narrow hallways that wind around wonderful scenes, effects and tableau's.  The scare-actors, though young, put on a darn good show.  One of the best things is that it's pretty much a whole new show and experience which tore itself away from the repetitiveness that the Haunted High was starting to get into.  Definitely worth checking out if you're in southeastern Wisconsin.

Fin and Feather Haunted Woods - After 212, we darted down a very long and very dark road.  At one point we thought we took a wrong turn and were lost in the dark countryside.  But, we pressed on down the road were we barley noticed the sign to the entrance of the Fin and Feather outdoor club.  For the last several years these folks have been putting on a great haunted trail attraction that tends to be a bit of a sleeper hit and word of mouth haunt.  This year was one of it's best and most interactive as I found out the hard way.  It starts with a very dark trail dimly lit by strands of lights on each side and creepy eyes peering at you from the wooded darkness.  This leads you up to a huge castle that you go through while trying to avoid the creatures within.  After you escape the castle you're back in the dark woods winding you way through the darkness and trying hard not to wet yourself as chainsaw wielding mad men sneak up on you.  I don't want to give too much away, but I will tell you of my personal journey into dark madness.

Toward the end of the haunt we were ushered into a building that housed one of the darkest mazes we had to go through.  At first the three of us were venturing through it pretty well until we reached what appeared to be a dead end.  I was at the front of the group at that point and told the other two, that we needed to head back the way we came.  At that point we heard a ghastly, female voice from out of the darkness mock us.  We started to head back the way we came with Roberto in the front.  We reached another dead end.  This time two female voices started to chastise us.  They were very close by, but we couldn't see anything.  Between the three of us calling to each other back and forth, the seemingly disembodied voices caught on to our names and started calling out to us.  I felt my way along the walls and managed to pass by Bones and Roberto.  Roberto was right behind me.  I called out to him to grab on to me as I led the way.  I was expecting him to gab on to the back of my sweater.  Instead I felt a hand grab my own as I moved forward to find us a way out.  I called out to Roberto again and was surprised to hear his voice was far behind me.  Too far for his hand to still be in mine.  I should have realized, Roberto would have never emasculated himself by holding my hand.  I also should have realized that Roberto's hands were mysteriously Palmolive soft.  It was then one of the voices revealed itself to be right next to me and was the hand that was holding mine.  It was a scene right out of an episode of Scooby-Doo.  Then another voice was right in front of me.  Then a third voice appeared right next to me.  I heard Rob and Bone's voices well ahead of me now and it sounded like they had found their way out of the maze.  I was alone in the dark, trapped by three specters who held me there for a spell.  After tolerating a bit more of their chastising, they led me out of the maze to the end of the attraction. 

The three ghouls were actual three lovely scare-actresses whole were nice enough to pose for a picture with me after my escape from their clutches.  Excellent job, ladies!!!

Well, I think that will be it for this post.  I still have a few spooktastic treats up my sleeves for this season.

In the meantime, please, stay vertical!

Zangz.

It was a dark and stormy night........

And it truly was a dark and stormy night the evening me and my buddy, Bones, took to the road and headed north, out of town and toward the small burg called Hartford.  While I was at the wheel, Bones acted as my navigator, helping me read off of the maps app on my phone.

As we flew up the freeway the skies grew darker and at one point Bones remarked, "Look over that way!" He pointed just northwest of the freeway.  "The clouds are super dark over there."

Sure enough, amongst the murky gray clouds that had already spread across the entire sky that day, there was a big blotch of pure black sky just looming and waiting to burst into a nasty rain storm.

"Great. That's just where we are headed." I replied with a tinge of displeasure in my voice.

After dealing with a particular tricky round-a-bout (I frackin' hate those things) we found ourselves driving right into the thick of the black clouded mass, toward downtown Hartford, Wisconsin.

The torrential downpour started just as we were entering the small township.  Visibility was slim to nil and we still had to find the cross street to our first destination.  I didn't have the map app zoomed in enough, but I wasn't concerned since there usually was a big, blinking, light-up sign helping direct us to our destination so no one would miss it, but this year it wasn't where it usually was and we ended up turning on the street before the one we were supposed to use.

This was less than beneficial, since the forefathers of the small town decided to design the roads in a manner making it quite difficult to make a right hand turn to where we needed to go.  The rain was falling harder and harder, pelting against the car windows so that it was still hard to see even though I had the wipers on the "super-friggin'-fast" mode.

After a u-turn, we found a small alleyway that miraculously led us right up to our first place of interest we wanted to visit tonight.  I parked, but we found ourselves trapped in the car for the time being as gallons upon gallons of rainwater throttled down against the ground from the dark skies above.

Now what possible places in this town known as Hartford were we so anxious to visit that we would traverse a nasty weather system while driving, you may ask?

For myself, being a fine connoisseur of Haunted Attractions, the answer is simple.  The town of Hartford is easily one of the big hot spots when it comes to a couple of the finest Haunts that haunt enthusiasts can visit during the October season.

Both Terror on Rural Street, as well as The Hartford JC's Haunted House, were always among my favorite visits during Halloween.  It had been a couple years since I last visited them and this time I brought my old chum, Bones, along since he has shown an interest in visiting haunts with me in recent years.

Our patience paid off as the rain slowed and then completely stopped in a short amount of time, allowing us to get out and visit the first haunt of the evening......


Terror On Rural Street - Upon entering the realm of Terror on Rural Street we were greeted with a fenced off graveyard with a sign overhead reading, "No Safehaven".  Once we got our tickets and our numbers were called we made our way past the graveyard to a facade of a dilapidated building.  We went through the doors and inside to find... another facade of another dilapidated building.  Double creep-tastic!  Since we had gotten there earlier in the evening, we were the only ones in the line and we went in shortly after the patented safety spiel had been read to us.

The door to the main haunt opened by itself ushering us into the world of dark madness.  The theme of this year's show seemed to fall into the category of old sanitarium where mad doctors made unnecessary experiments on the already dangerously troubled inmates.  During our journey we passed a couple of old souls trapped behind bars, pleading for their freedom as well as long forgotten corpses of patients past who would suddenly become reanimated and shake in their chains.

There were a couple of stand out rooms for me.  There was one room where a mad doctor had a poor patient strapped to a slab where a giant scythe-like pendulum sliced too and fro, slicing him in two through his stomach.  Of course the victim is very much alive and pleading for help that will never come.  The best thing is you may leave a little more moist from when you entered the room.  And it won't be your bodily functions you have to worry about.  Bruahahaha.

Then there is the the hallway where a spooky young girl lurks.  Not only do you have to avoid her you also have to keep your senses in check as the hallway appears to alter and bend.  This is a really cool effect!  There's also the room of many doors that you will easily get lost in.

As in years past, Terror on Rural Street keeps its top notch quality while delivering the scares!  Bones was pretty impressed also.

The Hartford JC's Haunted House  - Down the road from our last haunt is Fireman's Park.  To get there we had to drive up a dark, winding, heavily wooded road.  Once out of the wooded area we were in a parking lot of a nice and seemingly safe little park.

All feelings of that safety left us as the spooky farm house, looming in the park caught our attention.  We bought our tickets and waited in a musty old barn until they called out ticked numbers.  We then waited a little more in a tent just outside of the old farmhouse.  After a few visitors left their seats to travel into the unknown, it was finally our turn.  Bones had me take the lead, as he usually does.  If the creatures within the creepy wooded trail leading up the the entrance of the house was any indication of the creatures waiting for us on the inside, we were in for a treat.

The main highlight of this haunt was the combination of dramatics and interactivity that visitors will experience.  Many of the ghouls that dwell within have a bit of a story-line and dialog that we were entertained by.  In one my buddy, Bones, had to go on a ghoulish game show where he had to pick the right door for us to go through.  In another room a female spook was not so happy that I was intruding within her eerie little wooded area and then did not want me to leave.  She found a interesting way to block me from moving on into the next area, but I will not go into detail.  Suffice it to say her undead friend that was trying to shamble its way out of the wall wasn't much amused with me either.

If you are a lover of pirates and pirate lore, you'll love a good portion of this haunt as the conclusion of the haunt is dedicated to them.

I'd be remiss to also mention that the attention to detail of the scenery and sets was so intricate that I found myself trying to take in as much of it as I could while the scare-actors were up in my face putting on the scare.  It was pretty challenging.

This haunt has come such a long, long way from its inception that it competes with a lot of the bigger, more popular haunts around the Southeastern Wisconsin area.

After Bones and I had an evening of challenging the forces of the unknown, we treated ourselves to some BBQ ribs and a couple of tasty IPA's as a reward.  As always, a good time was had by all!

I'm hoping I may have a couple more haunt reviews here next week as well.  We'll see what we can do.  I do know that I'll be going on a local ghost tour that I had gone on before, but was sullied by a rain storm.  So I want to give it another shot.  So next weekend is looking to be another spooktacular one.  Knock on old coffin wood.


Now for another walk through a virtual haunted attraction from YouTube.  Many theme parks have gotten in the habit of taking advantage of the Halloween and Haunt season by redesigning their parks with a haunted motif.  Knottsberry Farms is no exception as they invoke all sorts of dastardly creatures to infiltrate their park.  Take a peek here.....

Video is from Theme Park Adventure

I'd like to leave you with these comforting thoughts.  That cackle you heard outside your home late at night was surely some sort of rare bird.  The scratching sound from under your bed that awakens you from your slumber?  I'm sure that's just some sort of cricket.  That cold spot in you home?  I wouldn't be surprised if you had some ventilation problems.  

Or perhaps I'm completely ass-backward wrong on all accounts and you better get an exorcist or ghost hunting crew over to your abode ASAP 'cause you're screwed!!!!

Until next time, stay vertical.

Zangz.