When darkness falls across the fields of Fort Edmonton Park, Bellerose Composite student Jesse Peters becomes a creature of menace and malice.
He dons a weathered black coat and a striped shirt drenched in blood. Crimson-stained iron claws seem to sprout from his hands, and his face becomes concealed beneath a ghoulish, gourd-like mockery of a human skull.
And then he charges at you out of the shadows with an inhuman shriek. Much to your delight. Peters is one of about 130 performers participating in the seventh annual Dark — Edmonton’s Halloween Festival at Fort Edmonton Park this month.
The paid event draws tens of thousands of thrill-seekers each year to the park to run screaming through themed indoor and outdoor haunted houses, each packed with special effects and spooky performances. A Halloween fanatic, Peters is making his debut as a performer in Dark after many years of jump-scares as a guest.
“I want to give back that scare that people gave me,” he said.
Dark is Fort Edmonton’s annual Halloween festival, and drew some 23,000 people last year, said Lacey Huculak, manager of experience development at the Fort. Staff have been working all year to transform the park’s farms and historic buildings into horrific hellscapes with the help of elaborate sets, special effects, and costumed performers. “Guests can really experience a totally different side of Fort Edmonton Park,” she said, including areas normally off-limits to the public.
This year’s Dark features four indoor/outdoor haunted houses for guests to explore, each with a different theme, Huculak said. Acid Trip is an industrial murder rave that takes place in the park’s train barn, for example, while 3 A.M. uses the Blatchford Field Air Hangar to depict the nightmares that roam your home in the middle of the night.
Visitors can also stroll through the zombie-infested turn-of the-century oil camp occupying the Undead Mile along 1905 and 1885 Streets, or head to the midway to sample some Cursery Rhymes. Dark also features more free-form scare zones where guests can chat and take pictures with (or flee from) performers. Peters is stationed in the Blood Harvest zone, which is based around a perfectly ordinary white farmhouse whose occupants practice an unusual form of organic agriculture.
“We’re just out harvesting blood,” explained Edmonton actor Aston Holysh, who plays one of the masked murderers in Blood Harvest.
Holysh said the story behind Blood Harvest involves a family that turned to dark rituals to save their farm. Now, the farm is populated by animal-masked murderers seeking victims to sacrifices to their demonic masters. Bloodied sheets hang from
the clotheslines, and disembowelled corpses dangle from the trees. The murderers drive guests toward a sanguinary sacrificial altar behind the farmhouse that features candles, mutilated heads, and most horrifying of all, a little white mouse in a bowl of grapes. Holysh himself lurks in a cage near the altar, striking sparks off the walls of his prison with his machete.
Sacrifices upon the altar give rise to the farm’s Scare Lords, one of whom Peters becomes with the help of a costume, mask, and a bit of makeup. His job as a Scare Lord is to lure guests onto the farm for the murderers to scare them.
“We get fed a lot by all the visitors coming by,” Peters said and he gets to
pose for pictures. Peters said his best moments so far at Dark have been those times when he’s sent visitors sprinting down the gravel path in fear.
“It’s awesome to be able to terrify them.” Holysh said guests who find Dark too scary can always ask staff for directions to the exit. (The event is not suitable for young children.)
Dark runs from 6:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.
Thursdays through Saturdays from
Oct. 4 to Nov. 2 at Fort Edmonton
Park. Tickets are $50. Visit thedark.ca
for details.
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