Norman's 'Beside' Himself!!!

Because the Hall's A 'Smashing' Success!

WORKING THAT HAUNTED HALL MAGIC!

In a quavering voice, sideshow magician “The Great AliKillzam” described in graphic terms the results of his unprecedented feats of prestidigitation. Unprecedented in terms of epic failure, that is. The escape artist that he buried alive? Now a heap of bones in a coffin. The woman sawed in half? Well, neither part of her ‘SAW it coming!’ giggles AliKillzam’s flunky. The daring challenge of escaping from a water tank ended with the ‘glass half empty’-the body being freed, but not the head! And the daredevil who tried the ‘Bullet Catch’? Well, that ended in failure, not to mention a big red splotch on the wall. But perhaps the greatest feat of all is that AliKillzam mysteriously managed to come through all of this completely unscathed. TA-DAAAAAAAA!!!!!! This proves once again that magic is best performed on someone else, especially if you’re also a psychotic serial killer. Want to catch his show and perhaps be one of the lucky few chosen from the audience to take part in this amazing display for young and old alike? AliKillzam assures us “I’ll be appearing all week”, working that Haunted Hall Magic!

The HOD!!! was ushered into the 23^rd year of the Haunted Hall by longtime staffer Betty Hancock, who according to the rest of the crew (and certain other haunt reviewers) inspires more fear than the monsters inside the hall. Despite having doubled the salaries of all the Hall’s employees (“From zero to double zero” adds one of them), she’s currently getting a razzing from the assemblage. “Hey, I’m trying to work here”, says Betty. “And where else are you going to find someone whose hair color matches a red costume?” The easy camaraderie shown by the organizers goes a long way towards explaining how they are able to pull off building the event from the ground up in only three weeks-not to mention tearing it down in a single evening! It also explains why the event has managed to retain its edge for years and remain fresh with several generations working together to put on the best show possible.

The Haunted Hall has grown from its humble beginnings where it comprised only the rooms inside the main building. It now stretches across the Hall, at least four tents, a jail complex, a shed, the double sized Black Maze, and a lake. Yes, the Hall now has a real lake in its backyard, constructed out of planking, piping, and a huge liner. With the fog billowing across it in the dark, it looks so real we wish we’d brought a fishing pole. Of course, this is Camp Crystal Lake, so throwing your line in there is apt to have disastrous results. And the bridge across the lake doesn’t look too sturdy, either, especially if, say, some psycho were to come out of one of the tents and begin chasing you with a chainsaw. Not that that would ever happen, y’understand. Or would it?

As our description of the magic show indicates, the Hall isn’t afraid to throw in a large dose of grisly humor with its scares. This sense of mirth extends down to even the small details. Perched on a shelf inside the mirrored walls of the funhouse is a small Jack-in-the-box with a sign above it exhorting hauntgoers to ‘turn if u dare’. It’s something most people might not even notice since you’re usually being pursued by a haunt klown at that point. But we saw it and couldn’t resist. We turned it and were greeted by a little creature popping out that featured its own tiny custom makeup job. Not coincidentally, it also acted as the cue for yet another deformed greasepainted freak to come leaping out from behind a mirror.

And speaking of returning rooms, there’s the Hall’s pièce de résistance, the Black Maze. Sure, Black Mazes are used by most attractions to cut down on costs and extend their attraction’s time. But the Hall’s has achieved legendary status. Now twice as large (taking up two tents instead of the original one), the haunt is the ultimate reconfigured room-it’s changed on a weekly basis, or even more often at the whim of the designers. With no monsters inside, you’d think it would just be a fun walk in the dark for hauntgoers, but it inspires more raw fear than anything else in the Hall. It really IS pitch black in there, and it’s horrendously easy to get hopelessly lost, turned around, or cut off from your friends. Stand outside one night and watch as a group enters, only to see the two or three groups that entered after them emerge first-or witness how members of the same group emerge individually over the course of fifteen minutes. What really makes the Hall’s Maze special is that there are so many textures inside-wood panels, half panels, chain link fences, even what felt like a smooth Plexiglas sheet at one point. It’s hard to get a ‘feel’ for direction when the surfaces you’re touching are continuously changing.

We’ve already discussed one of the new additions-the Dead Magic Show area. Following that, continuing the ‘carny’ theme, is a bizarre circus tent with skeletal clowns in the strangest looking big top imaginable. With an abstract set and plenty of fog (and a rat inside a ‘popcorn’ machine), it scores high on both the ‘weird’ and ‘creepy’ meter. There’s a witch room with a child inside a cauldron, and also a room with a spiked wall that you’ll likely be dying to meet up with. And of course, there’s the Hall’s infamous outdoor shed where the craziest room is traditionally located, a different scene each year. But we’ll talk more about that and its current famous resident after we look at some of the creeps spotted lurking about the Hall…

Like most charity haunts, the Hall of necessity uses a good amount of younger actors. Unlike some, they put their youngsters into positions where they can succeed. On our trip through, most of the kids had on masks designed to give them as fearsome a visage as possible and put behind drop panels or inside cages where their small size wasn’t as obvious. They were given the opportunity to startle the audience and disappear quickly before hauntgoers knew what hit them. Even some of the more visible ones, like the two scarecrows in the small cornfield outside Crystal Lake, have such disturbing masks and are so creepy looking that they fit in well. And when it comes time to have up-front characters that interact with and carry on conversations with the crowd, that’s where you find the adults and older teens, almost all of them seasoned veterans of the Hall…

We’ve already talked about ‘Haunted Hall’ Matt Gratsch’s turn as the Great AliKillzam. His partner in crime (the two have collaborated on several award-winning short films here in Cincinnati), Eric Sterwerf, is currently playing Emmett Rotts. Rotts, the Hall’s preacher-turned elevator operator (one thing you can say for the Hall’s characters-they’re flexible!) is now also doubling as an exterminator. Seems there’s a room crawling with bugs leading into the Hellevator. Rotts decides that taking it up to the 13^th floor will make everything better-hey, it makes perfect sense to us! After spastically throwing himself around the elevator in a performance guaranteed to end with him in an upside-down heap on the floor (and that was so violently enthusiastic it temporarily knocked the Hellevator off-line), the bugs still seem to be there-but now Rotts isn’t the only thing that’s had its world turned upside-down…

Dr. Crazy (well, that’s what his name tag says-and since he's Matt's older brother Will, probably accurate) attempts to bring life to the dead, but he’s no better at it than the Great AliKillzam is at magic. He’s the ultimate mad doctor, with a crushed cigarette hanging from his mouth and mismatched eyes. Pulling back the sheet of his latest exercise in reanimation, hauntgoers are treated to the sight of a pile of bloody meat and bones. One might think he’s fumbling his dialogue, but when he’s corrected by the audience it turns out he just wanted to assert his authority, screaming out that “Don’t correct me! I’M the Doctor here!” Since our gal Ayame is a Doctor, we hear that quite a bit, so we dropped into step REALLY fast.

At one point early in the tour panic set in for The HOD!!! as it looked like Dracula had finally been retired, ending a long run as the sole surviving representation of the classic Count in the Cincinnati area. In his old digs was a witch who had thrown an unwary child into her cauldron-only the coffin that concealed the way out remained from Drac’s glory days. But after pushing our way through the rear of the casket into the Hall’s last room we saw what appeared to be a familiar funeral parlor. Could it be? Yes! Relief washed over us as Dracula rushed from his hidden vantage point. To show his appreciation for our concern, the Count beat us about the head and shoulders before showing us the door. There’s nothing like staying in touch with old friends.

Speaking of which, one character we didn’t have to wait for at all was Satan. Long a staple of the Hall, for years he’s succeeded in making even the most devout Christians bow down before him-sure, it’s through dishonest trickery and manipulation more than anything else, but isn’t that what Satan’s all about? At any rate, this season the Prince of Darkness is in the Hall’s very first room, occupying a space beside the stairway that seemingly defies gravity-in years past, the Hall would usually just have a ghost hanging there. One staffer couldn’t believe that they managed to get him up there safely. While Satan isn’t getting anyone to bow down this season, one of the construction crew states that next season you may not see a Stairway to Heaven, but one to Hell…