Scary movies usually play on fears of isolation. Think: a babysitter alone in a big house, camp counselors lost in the dark woods, road trippers taking a wrong turn toward bloody chainsaws in the middle of Nowhere, USA.
Is it even possible, then, to get spooked by a self-described “Hollywood-caliber haunted house” at an upscale real estate development in a bustling city?
It was a dark and stormy night when I arrived at the looming gates of Boston’s Wicked Haunt Fest to find out.
[Dramatic chord, rumble of thunder.]
The two-acre scare park has erected three themed haunted houses and a carnival-like midway—complete with a live music stage, pop-up shops, bars and a beer garden—in Charlestown’s Hood Park, an “urban campus” that boasts luxury apartments and ground-floor retail tenants. Halloween-season haunts are typically associated with sleepy suburbs and country towns where nobody can hear you scream, not with paved city lots in earshot of an indoor cycling studio and an Aveda Concept Salon. And yet there was Wicked Haunt Fest, “Boston’s first-ever large-scale Halloween festival,” a hulking setup aglow with theatrical orange, red and purple lights, barking eerie plumes of fog into the black sky.
My Time Out editor tapped me for this experiential assignment because I’m an avowed enthusiast of scary movies, ghostly tales, haunted houses and all things Halloween. Surely my in-depth knowledge of every slasher film franchise of the last 40 years, which is mainly useful only for occasional bar trivia, would come in handy for assessing the fear factor of Wicked Haunt Fest. After all, the park, which runs through November 3, is the brainchild of creative director Carl Rugato, a special effects expert and entertainment producer who has worked with major theme parks on their live-action arena shows. As it turns out, Rugato is a fan of fright nights, too, and has earned himself a local reputation for his annual Halloween displays at his home in Lynnfield.
Thanks to the wet and dreary weather and the fact that it’s a Monday night, the place is pretty, well, dead upon my arrival. No one appears to be manning the ticket booth, so I endure a please-follow-the-QR-code process to buy a $40 pass that gives access to all the on-site experiences.
I make my way through the gate and boom! “Skeleton Mountain,” straight ahead. That’s how the park map describes this towering arrangement of metal rafters and grates covered in climbing skeletons. At the summit is some kind of Big Daddy Overlord skeleton with his bony arms outstretched to the sky. It’s all bathed in demonic red lighting and fake fog. It looks rad. I feel like I’m in an Alice Cooper video. “Feed My Frankenstein,” baby!
Okay, time to scream. First stop: “Rise of Annkh,” an indoor haunt modeled after an ancient Egyptian tomb. I enter and my eyes adjust to the dark. I’m in a long black hallway with red “EXIT” signs advising me which way to evacuate in case of an actual emergency. Around me, the symphonic soundtrack of manufactured creaks and groans sounds oddly muffled.
Wait a minute. I spy a crevice of light in the wall. I peer through the gap, and see on the other side a crumbling crypt. I’ve somehow wandered backstage at the “Hollywood-caliber” haunt. My bad! In my defense, black-curtained partitions are usually interpreted as invitations at haunts, not barriers.
Let’s try this again. I retrace my steps and enter the actual haunt. Much better!
Because it’s a slow night, I get to take my time moving through the rooms without having to worry about other scare-hunting guests breathing down my neck. (PSA: Please don’t rush through haunted houses. Some of us like to count the rubber bats!)
I soak up the scenery like Indiana Jones—or The Mummy’s Rick O’Connell; choose your generational fighter—exploring a cursed pharaoh’s tomb. It looks like a million bucks. From the eerie lighting and cacophonous sound effects coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, to how the whole affair is propped out, the Hollywood set-level promise is fulfilled.
But, by the time I’m halfway through the (generously long) Rise of Annkh haunt, my timbers have yet to be shivered. It looks great, but where are the scare actors? Why ain’t nobody popping out to say “boo?”
Okay, there are a couple: At one point, feeling the weight of evil eyes upon my back, I turn to see the backlit silhouette of an undead mummy lumbering towards me. It’s a spine-tingling visual of a classic Hollywood monster (that has managed to avoid the fatal scythe of the "my culture is not a costume" discourse).
I encounter a single shadowy figure as I make it through "Into the Astray," a fog-filled maze of metal grates. Between the rock-show lighting, lasers and booming industrial music, I do feel like I’m inside an extremely cool goth nightclub (new Manray, take notes!), but I don’t feel afeared.
The third haunt, "Harvest Awakening," is a neon paint-splattered interpretation of a Berkshires farm from hell. Inside, I’m jolted once (and good!) by a live scarecrow who blends right in among the fakes. Otherwise, as I hop from haunt to haunt, I find that the sets are impressive but the casts lean. It’s a feast for the eyes and ears; the hair-raising sound design is damn impressive. But it’s easy on the nerves.
When it comes to scariness, my philosophy is best expressed in the words of Britney Spears circa 2007, “gimme gimme more.” (“Gimme more, gimme gimme more.”) I’m a real dial-it-up-to-11 kind of guy: I like my food extra spicy, my music loud, and my haunted houses to feel like a waking nightmare. So admittedly, maybe I’m just grading on too steep a curve.
And anyway, Halloween attractions aren’t just about making you pee your pants. They’re also about making you smile, and there’s a whole lot of that going on at Boson’s Wicked Haunt Fest. I see groups of friends stumbling out of haunt exits, laughing and looking happy enough to warm the darkest heart. Couples posing for selfies in a field of tombstones. People huddling at picnic tables over fried dough, surprisingly delicious jumbo cookies, and warm apple cider or boozy beverages from the "Monster Bar."
Vibes go a long way in a place like this—and the vibes, they are good. They are festive. They are fun.
Frightening? If getting scared is what you seek, you may still want to hit the road for a haunted hayride in the ’burbs. Sure, Boston has things that go bump in the night: the death rattle of a T trolley, a car getting towed, your neighbor jumping around to a HIIT workout at 12am.
But cities are full of life. At Halloween, I’ll take a few more ghosts.
