Fun and fright

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/10/2018 (2837 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Unlike Christmas, nobody seems to complain when Halloween decorating and celebrating start early. Mid-October signals the start of spooky activities from corn mazes to haunted houses. Here are five suggestions, ranked from kid-friendly frights to totally terrifying nights.

Halloween Howl

This annual event at the Manitoba Children’s Museum — now in its 22nd year — features everything kids could want, from candy to creepy-crawlies. Treats are available in each of the museum’s 12 galleries, giving children all the fun of trick-or-treating without having to brave the cold or wear a coat over their costumes.

DJ Mama Cutsworth will be hosting a dance party, while the Let’s Talk Science outreach program from the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba will lead experiments. The Wildlife Haven Rehabilitation Centre will have some frightening feathered friends, while Prairie Exotics provides live reptiles. Children can also make a creepy craft to take home.

The Halloween Howl takes place Oct. 27 from 6 to 9 p.m., but don’t wait to get tickets at the door for this popular event. They are $13 plus tax at 204-924-4000 or online here.

 

Dalnavert Museum

If you want your frissons of fear delivered in authentic Victorian fashion, you’ll like the cut of Dalnavert Museum’s cravat. The circa-1890s mansion at 61 Carlton St. is hosting a variety of Halloween events starting Oct. 11 and running to Oct. 31.

For kids, there’s a family-friendly vampire-themed scavenger hunt, where kids (12 and under) find clues around the house to help them fill out a crossword puzzle. Costumes are encouraged, treats will be doled out.

For adults (18 and over) there’s Dracula Unearthed!, which puts visitors inside Bram Stoker’s Gothic novel. The house is dressed with props made to bring the story to life — journal entries, things you would find in the count’s castle or in Van Helsing’s possession. Participants are given flashlights to roam through the darkened mansion as part of a “research team,” while scenes, featuring local voice actors, are played out on headphones. The immersive experience — not a haunted house with jump scares, organizers stress, though you can hear the screams of Renfield in the basement — provides clues that lead visitors from room to room.

Charlene Van Buekenhout, the museum’s programming and marketing director, explains that the Victorian age was particularly obsessed with death and ritual.

“A lot of the trends have to do with Queen Victoria herself,” she says. “When Prince Albert died, she had a cast of his hand made and, when she died, put into the coffin with her. She developed the trend of wearing black while mourning — she mourned the rest of her life. She kept his room just as it was, she brought in his wash basin every day. She was obsessed with keeping his memory alive; that’s where the idea of memento mori comes from.”

Oct. 21 sees a hair-raising workshop (1 p.m., $20, materials provided) with local artist Sandra Klowak, demonstrating the art of Victorian hair work; participants can make their own flower form out of synthetic hair.

“The Victorians had hair receivers, so they would brush their hair and then keep it,” Van Buekenhout says. “After they had enough, you could make jewelry out of it or keepsakes. A lot of it had to do with death memorabilia, so when a family member died, you would often take their hair and form it into, say, the family wreath.”

Other events include a lecture on memento mori by Prof. Vanessa Warne (Oct. 14), and The New Fantasmagoriana, a presentation of four new ghost stories penned by authors who wrote them while spending the night at Dalnavert. (Oct. 31).

For more information and tickets prices, see friendsofdalnavert.ca.

 

Evil Dead the Musical: Bigger, Badder, Bloodier

The Toronto-founded off-Broadway sensation — a mashup of the titular 1981 horror classic directed by Sam Raimi, as well as Evil Dead 2 and Army of Darkness — returns to Winnipeg after a four-year hiatus. The tale of a group of college students who unleash an evil force that turns them into demons contains such hits as All the Men in My Life Keep Getting Killed by Candarian Demons, Ode to an Accidental Stabbing and Do the Necronomicon.

It’s not for kids, but it’s also not particularly scary or realistically gory — think the kitschy mock horror of Rocky Horror Picture Show. However, it’s not for those who hate blood, which is sprayed liberally into the front rows.

The Park Theatre hosts performances of this spooky spectacle topped with cheese from Oct. 24 to Nov. 3. Regular tickets are $28; VIP tickets in the splatter zone are $40 (and come with an Evil Dead Blood Poncho), available at Ticketfly.com.

 

Six Pines Haunted Attraction

Sure, during the day it’s an adorable agri-tourism farm, but after dark in October, Six Pines is transformed into Fear by Night, an extreme haunted house with live actors and special effects “for mature audience only!” The farm four kilometres north of the Perimeter on Sturgeon Road has been giving grownups goosebumps for years with its tale of an old barn, haunted by the spirits of little Louis and Nettie Whitfield, murdered back in 1901.

On weekends during the day, Six Pines offers more kid-friendly fare, including Mother Goose and her Petting Farm, hayrides, pony ride, a maze and friendly clowns. Courageous kids can brave the Barn of Doom.

Tickets for Fear by Night are $30. For more information, see sixpineshaunted.com.

 

Fear 4 Your Life

Now in its fourth year, this event offers four different eerie experiences, with differing levels of scariness and strategy. The first is the Zombie Chase (rated five out of five for scares), an immersive event that sees participants creep quietly through a 70-square-foot warehouse to avoid awaking the zombie hordes lying in wait. “Climb, crawl, run… but don’t scream!” warns the website.

Less scary (depending on your fear of enclosed spaces!) but more strategic is the Coffin Escape, in which a pair of partners are locked in coffins and can only communicate via a tube connecting the two burial vessels. You must work as a team to escape, using clues and riddles provided.

The Murder Mystery finds a group trying to solve the murder of the macabre, powerful Mr. Munroe, with the help of his butler.

Finally, inspired by the horror series of the same name, the Saw Escape sees 10 people locked in a room together; only by working as a team can they escape. However, the website warns, the experience is far creepier and more unpredictable than a traditional escape room.

The locations of the experiences are not revealed until two days before they take place, but organizers say they are all near downtown Winnipeg and on bus routes. Fear 4 Your Life runs every Friday and Saturday night in October, as well as Gate Night and Halloween. To buy tickets ($30) or for more information, see fearwpg.ca.

 

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca