ARCHDALE, N.C. — The Kersey Valley Spookywoods Haunted Attraction in Archdale has been frightening its visitors for almost 40 years.
The attraction once was a Christmas tree farm.
“My family immigrated from Switzerland, and the dream was to own some land. So the first thing my father thought of is Christmas trees,” said owner Tony Wohlgemuth. “We planted a grove of a thousand trees. Then shortly after that, he decided to move back to Switzerland and said, ‘We're going to sell the farm.’”
The farm was not bought and Wohlgemuth began thinking of a way to make money from the land. Wohlgemuth and his friends started a haunted house in an old barn on the farm in 1985, charging $2 a ticket.
Now it is in its 40th season and has grown into one of the top haunted houses in the country, bringing in around 40,000 visitors.
“Along the way, I met a lot of owners, and we started collaborating together. We're not in the same market, so we've shared a lot of ideas and was able to help each other marketing-wise,” Wohlgemuth said.
Wohlgemuth started his hauntings with a stuffed cat taped to a stick as a jump scare, but he now has well over 100 actors helping put on a show for his visitors.
Each actor can sit in hair and makeup for hours with fake scars and blood being applied or turning into characters that resemble iconic Halloween slasher killers.
“We've had people that have worked here that started off here and really fell in love with the industry, and then they've continued on to go to be like set designers for either Disney or Universal as well,” said Spookywoods actor coordinator Dustin Douglas.
Douglas has been coming to Spookywoods since he was 8 and got a chance to work at the attraction years later.
“People are paying to come and be scared,” he said. “And it's such a unique industry because that's not something that the average person wakes up and goes, ooh, I want to go and get scared today.”
Each actor must completely embody their character. Costumes can be bush disguise, tattered clothing or get-ups that represent local ghost stories like Lydia’s bridge in Jamestown.
“We had a customer walk through recently that came out and they swore up and down that they have actually seen Lydia's ghost and that gave them PTSD from seeing that outfit,” Douglas said.
Once the actors are ready, they take their places around the sets on the farm. Over 20 attractions pay homage to Halloween cult classics from black and white hotels to haunted mansions.
“We will go and figure out what type of set we want to create, and then we work backwards and think, OK, well, how will the guests see this and understand it, and how will it play into our overall operation of getting that scare and make them scream?” Douglas said.
Douglas says that at his job, if you don’t hear screaming, something is wrong. He allows set designers to find hidden spots for actors, including under the bed.
“It's very easy for actors, possibly to hide under the bed and even raise up this bed and attack from down below, because we want guests to be on edge from the second they walk in,” Douglas said.
Gearing up for Halloween is a yearlong process, making sure each detail is correct, including the flickers of lights, set design and background noise. They work at night to make the set design looks just right.
“We partner a lot with local mom-and-pop thrift shops and stores to be able to have them call us and actually say, hey, we have something that we think will work really well inside of your haunted attraction,” Douglas said.
Kersey Valley has activities year-round and has been collecting donations for western North Carolina. The attraction is raffling off a Drift Trike to help buy more supplies.
Wohlgemuth says the attraction has also had a hard time finding chainsaws for their actors because of the devastation in the mountains.
Kersey Valley Spookywoods Haunted Attraction is open Halloween night through Nov. 2.