Haunted Trails, Amusement Parks and Maniacs

Written by Jeremy Herbert

There's a sign halfway down Ohio that scares the hell out of me. Not the one that says "Hell is Real," that's three-quarters down.

My sign isn’t as threatening in the ontological sense. It hangs between matchstick trees on a thicket off the western side of I-71. Memory has sanded off the finer details, but there are only two words that matter: "Haunted Trail."

You can't see the trail from the road, can't see a road at all. The sign is miles away from the nearest off-ramp in either direction and I don't recall ever seeing an exit number. I've since traveled far and wide beyond the state line, but that's still the closest thing I've ever seen to the edge of the map - somewhere in that direction, maybe in those very trees, there be monsters.

I've since met many monsters, all of them lovely sorts, but this is why I'm still a tough sell on haunted houses. Well, some of them. If I were to take a kitchen knife to the foot at, say, Universal's Halloween Horror Nights, I know there's plenty of Jurassic Park money with which to stem the bleeding. I cite that particular wound because it actually happened at 7 Floors of Hell, the haunt down the street from my childhood. An actor seemingly decided their prop knife wasn’t threatening enough and brought their own. To their point, the eleven-year-old boy that limped home was sufficiently threatened.

Now I'm not trying to villainize the grassroots ghouls out there. Statistically speaking, that kind of incident is probably less likely than roller coaster derailment. It was clearly a mistake, a rogue player in an obvious game.

But that's all it takes, isn't it?

In almost all stories about real maniacs hiding out on the midway, the suspense falls on the average park guest. Teenagers who see an actor violently improvise and can't convince security for the literal life of them. It's effective, but strikes me as a hat on a hat. That's the buy-in, after all - you and your body are supposed to believe, however briefly, those jumpy things in the dark can and will kill you.

For my money, that's the difference between Jaws and every other shark picture - might be animal instinct to fear an incoming Great White, but it's a special kind of secondhand tension to feel responsible for the carnage as you fail, over and over again, to stop it.

My co-screenwriter and narrative troubleshooter Wolf Stahl once made the case to me that party scenes tend to be boring unless you're tracking someone who doesn't want to be there, someone just passing through. If I see someone in a Halloweekends t-shirt go sprinting past me in the fog, that's not a surprise. Now if I saw someone in a security uniform do the same thing…

So Chief begat Chief.

But of what?

My earliest memories of grown-up Halloween must've happened within a few blurry years of each other. 

During the brief period Universal Orlando hosted its event at Islands of Adventure, the Herbert clan was wrapping up a day as the forces of darkness were clocking in. Couldn't tell you if it was SOP then - certainly isn't now - but a few creeps started crawling before the park officially closed for the changeover. Later that season, I watched the first few minutes of a Travel Channel special on the subject through my fingers. I did not watch the rest.

Closer to home, the dearly departed Geauga Lake was a more regular testing ground. They used to throw a corker of an Octoberfest - see also: the German population of Northeast Ohio - and it overlapped with the weekend nights of Fright Fest. So as Dad tried his hand at another season of beer stein shuffleboard or Mom split the schnitzel for me and my brother, I'd look around. Notice the things kids notice that imprint on them permanently, with any luck to be consulted decades later for fame and fortune. The park fountain running Kool-Aid red with blood. The slack-jawed skeletons slumped behind the wheels of an American Graffiti fleet. The pole barn just beyond accessible bounds, adorned with Styrofoam gargoyles and another two-word sign - "Brutal Planet" - that haunted me for years.

Braver classmates told me what they'd seen in there. Butchers dishing up bratwurst made from the freshest long pig. Masked hulks who only spoke with two-stroke engines and said more than enough. The Devil himself, although that might've been embellished by my Lutheran education.

It all tantalized and tortured me, clearly still does, but it didn't really matter. The sign is all I needed. What on earth could be in there? Beyond that aluminum siding, beneath those Halloween City decorations, I knew - there be monsters.

It had to be a regional park for Maniacs. When the idea started, as a one-page pitch to my brother and a mutual pal conspiring to make our own point-and-click adventure game, it was a closer cousin to Six Flags. "Thrill Kingdom," it was called. I've enjoyed many Flags, probably over a hundred by now if that's how the math works, but most of them exist for coasters first and atmosphere second. Even during the few years Geauga Lake became half of a Six Flags, it lost a little something in translation. 

The parks that imprinted on me most felt like they'd always been there. Kings Island had its record-breaking Beast, a wooden roller coaster so long and remote you'd swear it was pulled from the ground as a natural vein. Knoebels had its Haunted Mansion, a near-centennial home you'd be forgiven for thinking they built the park around. Idlewild had its, well, wild, passing better as a lucky strike between Alleghenies than any manmade achievement. 

So sprouted Bellevue Grove, in an impractical but nevertheless majestic corner of Pennsylvania. Ask the locals and they'd probably tell you it'll outlast their grandkids. Ask anyone in picturesque Aurora, Ohio, and they'll tell you they have no idea how Geauga Lake didn't.

Some will blame monsters. Not the kind they warn you about with signs on the side of the highway. The kind that would strip-mine a 120-year institution and leave its moldering corpse for the urban explorers because, although it was profitable, it wasn't profitable enough. They won't blame the same monsters, either, and never by Christian name. They're much bigger than that and much more shapeless, always are. Logos, brands, cartoon ambassadors, etc.

I haven't driven down Ohio much in the last few years, haven't seen the sign for a few more. Maybe the trail is still out there. Maybe the monsters are still scaring in the black.

I hope so. But I worry, that it's gone and they're gone, and the other kind of monster ate them alive.

That scares the hell out of me, too.