Horror experts go to scary levels of detail [Maryland Gazette (MD)]

It took a haunted trail to get Thomas Lester's life in the right direction.

Lester said he was headed for trouble when, as a teen, he got involved in putting together the first Wicked Woods 15 years ago. He knew some of the organizers through church and the community. Now, Lester's one of only three original volunteers still working in the woods.

"I was so busy, it kept me out of trouble," he said. "I didn't have time for anything else. If it wasn't for that, I could be dead, dealing drugs, or in jail."

Lester's one of the biggest cheerleaders for the haunt, but far from the only person involved. About 80 people are stationed in the woods to jump out at guests, or perform various frights.

Wicked Woods this year features two trails for the first time, as well as a children's maze. The 1,000-foot main trial is Edals Valley Asylum and the 750-foot secondary trail is Syngaro's Sinister Circus. Organizers decided on the circus after the reaction to clowns in the past.

The asylum winds visitors through patient and administrative areas that only health insurance from Hell would cover. There's also a cemetery and mausoleum, chain saw room, spider's lair, clowns, and a vortex tunnel which gives the illusion of a spinning room.

"We've had people running out of their shoes," said another organizer, Jeff DiLorenzo.

The circus trial offers three different mazes, a fortune teller, a midway featuring a wheel of misfortune and a head toss, skeletons on trapeze, clowns, and Syngaro's lair.

Despite all this, Wicked Woods is low on hard core blood and gore. "It's just a choice," DiLorenzo said. "We don't think it's particularly scary. It's (just) gross."

Everything is made by hand and planning starts after Christmas. Construction begins in August, although people start fashioning props at home well before.

The woods seem particularly suited to 8-to-13-year-olds. Older teens aren't as into the illusion, and those younger are advised to stick to the children's maze. Girls and boys are equally scared, though girls are willing to scream and boys try to hold it in, according to the organizers.

'There's something about being able to let yourself go and believe enough...to step out of reality," said Erica Abagnale, who is in charge of makeup.

Buckets of blood

A giant mutant rat gnaws on a severed human hand in a room of mangled flesh and buckets of blood.

But as green light filters in through fog, Mark Torsani sees beauty in the beast. "To us, this is absolutely beautiful," he said.

Torsani has spent close to 30 years perfecting scares, so it's understandable.

Torsani and Gary Fischer are chief monster masters of Psycho Safari, an enormous haunted attraction at the Bowie Baysox stadium. In 32 rooms on the upper level of the structure, the duo (with the help of many volunteers) covers all the bases of horror.

Bangs, pops and creeks accent loud eerie music, bright blinking lights assault the eyes, every manner of creature and body part jumps out at visitors, and bloodied actors provide additional screams and scares.

In 30 minutes, people walk through two pitch-black "claustrophobia rooms" which squeeze them, a rickety bridge, a morgue, a butcher shop no one would want to eat at, a meat locker, and a snake-filled habitat complete with a giant anaconda.

Why Torsani and Fischer spend so much time and money - they've invested countless hours thinking up new creature features as well as several hundred thousand dollars - comes down to this: It's fun to scare people.

"Why not?" said Torsani, who runs a deli. "There's a sense of satisfaction in seeing it work."

Haunted houses are his hobby, the same as someone who golfs or collects comics. He sees nothing different in what he does, even though it involves chain saw massacres and talking skeletons.

"These things don't scare us," said Torsani, who had fake blood on the seat of his pants.

The operators of similar attractions say similar things, boiling down their affinity for horror to nothing more than the fun factor. People immersed in a hobby often have a hard time quantifying it beyond simple terms.

No interpretation is needed for the droves of residents waiting in line for the privilege of being frightened. They like to be scared almost as much as people such as Torsani and Fischer enjoy scaring them. Both sides know the horrors are fake, but they generate enough emotion so it doesn't matter.

The haunts don't just scare up profits for the proprietors, either. Torsani and Fischer funnel money from ticket sales back into the operation and donate to charity, as do many other haunts. Wicked Woods in Glen Burnie, for example, is a major fund-raiser for Monsignor Slade Catholic School.

Anything is fair game for the attractions save babies, devils and witches. Even in horror, it seems, there's PC - at least at the three sites we visited. But visitors are usually far too preoccupied with making their way through monsters and mazes to care.

"I can't explain it," said Tiffany Helfer of Crofton, who has a reputation as the best screamer at Psycho Safari. "It's kind of like an adrenaline rush."

Torsani and Fischer operate as Tulip Gulch Productions, a company whose name comes from the road in Bowie where Torsani lives.

Their roots in horror go back decades, to when Torsani used to have a much smaller haunt at his home.

Fischer, a construction superintendent and neighbor, joined in about 20 years ago after Torsani scared his wife and twins and he went to see what the fuss was about.

"We got stuff little by little," Torsani said. "First, we stored it in the shed and garage. Then, in my garage and Gary's garage, and the shed and attic. Now, we have eight trailers full."

Frightening ups and downs

Three years ago, Heidi Jensen asked her parents if they could open their own haunted house. Already big Halloween fans, they dove in and Heidi's Haunted Hills of Harwood was born.

"Christmas is so commercial," said Heidi's mother, Holly Plumber. "Halloween's just fun. It's different than the everyday stuff. I don't think it's gross. I think it's neat."

The family had trails for horses behind their home, so they simply adorned a hilly, winding path with all manner of monsters fashioned from items such as carpet padding, wood, foam and plastic.

"I thought it'd be fun," said Heidi, 16, a junior at South River High School. "I just like setting things up and hanging out with my family."

Fittingly, when she's not at her own haunt, she works at Spirit Halloween a couple miles from home. "Scaring people - I like to see their reactions," she said.

Her family has assistance from more than 20 ghoulish actors each night. They populate the hills, which have a toxic waste scene, an electric chair, cemetery, a door maze, spiders, and pirate ship with a tiny skeleton on the bow. "I love him," Plumber said. "He's so cute."

It takes about 1 1/2 months to set up the site and it's open a month. Like the other attractions, there's something different every year so people don't get tired of the same old ghosts.

Plumber enjoys sitting up at the house and listening to the screams and other noises from the hills below. "What else would you do in October?" she said.

Her husband, Todd Plumber, likes it best when people tell him how much they enjoyed being scared. "It brings a lot of other people's families together, too," he said.

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