The Haunted Trail is full of new surprises in 2013, so we are issuing a challenge. Can you spot Hugo The Clown before he spots you? It is very important. Life or Death important. Somewhere on the trail, in one of the scenes, Hugo awaits you in all of his gory glory. Good luck finding him before you wet your pants.
Rot and Mold! Hello Cleveland!
Its 3:07 a.m and the Haunted Forest is looking quite good as we tap into the spine of all things freaky. Yours truly, The Reaper, has finally done what he refused to do over the last few weeks – enter the forest alone after everyone else has gone home. I don’t mind walking through the huge spider webs (they only bite once). I don’t mind the skeletons, zombies, or the darkness. Its the howling. Something in that forest lets go every now and then with a human-sounding shriek that turns my stomach. But tonight, I completed a round through the entire haunted trail changing out batteries and making a list of the last-minute fixes that have to be done before opening night on Friday.
Come on out! We’re letting the first 150 people in for $10 each. Tell two friends. Then they’ll tell two friends. And so on, and so on…
Birth of a Ghost Bus
When Panic Point had a prison, decades ago, the inmates only feared one man. It wasn’t Warden Jenkins, he of the baby-face and easy smile. No. “Warden J.” was cleaner than a frog’s armpit. And it wasn’t the guards. Those guys were dumber than a bucket of gopher puke, and only slightly more useful. One man, and one man alone put the “Panic” in Panic Point, and made the convicts wish they were somewhere better (like hell, for instance, or being hunted like big game by mustached-men in safari suits in some perverse reality show). His name was Dr. Mortimer F. Corpus (aka “Monster F”, “The Real MF.”, or “Doc Mort”)
The mortality rate at the infirmary ran at about 30%. Thing is, nobody who checked in could accurately recall exactly what happened there. They suspected Doc Mort of drugging the infirm. That was OK by them, really, if not for the death part. What really stood out were the smells. Awful, sick, vomit-inducing, unrecognizable odors that only confused them more. Years of rumor and foggy recollections birthed the theory that the Good Dr. was killing inmates for their organs, and then preserving them through some occult ritual and selling them to brokers from the shadow world of the organ trade. When not enough prisoners checked in, Dr. Corpus would pull invisible strings to spark violence at Panic Point.
One fateful day Rex Skulling, bus driver by trade, checked himself into the infirmary. Rex was sure he was dying, so he figured if Dr. Mort could fix him he’d have at least a 50/50 shot of getting out alive. Rex’s crime was reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter….23 times. He only felt at home behind the wheel. That night Corpus drugged him and attempted a new technique. He wanted to see what would happen if he began preservation before harvesting Rex’s brain. He removed Rex’s skull, exposed the brain, and worked his magic. To the Doctor’s surprise rex sat up, looked around, and walked out the door. He wasn’t dead, so you couldn’t call him a zombie, but he had definitely crossed over into “creature”, and hovered somewhere in between living and dead.
Rex headed straight for the prison bus, started it up, and busted out. The partially-zombified Rex Skulling continues to drive the Panic Point Bus to this day, running over bunny rabbits, nuns, little old ladies, and anyone else he can mow down. He made a stop in at the prison a year or so after his escape. He found Doc Mort asleep, ripped out his heart, preserved it with a ritual incantation, then returned it to Mortimer Corpus’ chest. He dragged The Doc out, chained him up in the back of the bus, and took off.
Now the two are a team. Rex is compelled to mow ’em down, and Doc Mort stands ready to operate on the victims (dead or alive). So watch your back, and watch out for the Panic Point Ghost Bus. You may hear it coming, but Rex won’t flip the lights on until about a half second before impact. He wants to see the look on your face the moment you become part of his grill.