Colin Seed has literally lost his head.
A guillotine lopped it off his shoulders to the shock of a crowded group. Seed says seeing their reaction is part of the fun at Fort William Historical Park’s Haunted Fort Night.
Seed has worked at the event for about five years. Being beheaded is just one of the parts he has played. A Lakehead University student, Seed says he keeps coming back every year to hear fresh screams of anguish but mostly because it’s a lot of fun.
“Its lots of kind of scary things that jump out at you,” Seed says.
“It gets your heart-pumping sort of thing. It’s just a real fun experience for anyone coming to Fort William Historical Park. You get a lot of different people coming from Thunder Bay coming through here.
“People that think they are of the tough persona … they turn into a small child almost when the fear gets to them. It’s interesting watching people get scared and then seeing the actors and volunteers that we have here feeding into that fear and making it more intense for them. It’s pretty funny.”
This year, Seed is a guide for the visitors who will brave the haunted experience.
As the bus unloads, Seed greets them and sets the mood for the journey they are about to take. The event takes place at night, making the old fort seem even creepier.
With a lantern in his hand, Seed tells the group a story, which usually involved a relative being taken into the Fort. He has to then venture after them.
“Some kind of curse has come on Williams Town we call it and I’m just looking for someone and I’m really frightened pretty much,” he says. “I’m getting these people to kind of protect me as I go through the entire tour.”
This year, a dangerous witch has taken control of the sleepy village. Winding through one close encounter after the next, participants will find themselves face-to-face with ghouls, wraiths and other hellish creatures.
Throughout the journey, visitors will hear gun shots and screams ringing throughout the fort.
Seed says one his most memorable moments he’s had as a guide was when he did his first tour about two years ago.
“I walked into a building and there was something really scary there so I told the group to form a protective circle around me to protect me from whatever it was that was going to attack me,” he says. “The folks really loved it.”
Andrew Booth has worked at the Haunted Fort for about four years and says it’s one of the few times that he is able to share the experience of what’s going on with the visitors.
“Working a Haunted Fort night is a lot of fun,” Booth says. “You get to be a character that’s actually put into a situation with the visitors. You get to experience it in a way similar to the way they do.
“We get mixed reactions. People have as much fun as they want to let themselves as long as they are getting into the story and interacting with all of the stops. Usually people have a lot of fun and they get a bit scared.”
For him the scariest part about this year’s event is witches confession scene. In that scene an agent of the law finds two young maidens guilty of witchcraft. One is punished with a red-hot poker mark on her thumb but the other isn’t so lucky.
Booth says sometimes the experience can be too much for people.
“We have dark mazes sometimes, I remember coming out of the maze, and I was missing one person,” he says. ”I had to go back into the maze and she was sitting down waiting for me to come get her because she was so scared.
“She didn’t want to walk through the maze alone. She was sitting down in the middle of the maze with her eyes closed.”
FWFP spokesman Marty Mascarin says it’s a fine balance on how far they will go to make the visitors scared.
“It’s something that we’re very mindful of because we don’t want to overdo it,” Mascarin says.
“Customer service does play a role in this. It’s something that we’re cognisant of. We try not to push it too much. That being said we do have the caveat that it isn’t really ideal for children 10 or younger because it could, despite our intentions, it could appear intense just by the virtue that it’s dark and spooky.”
Despite costumes, props and special effects, one of the creepiest aspects of the event has to navigate through the fort at night.
Dense trees almost loom in to grab visitors as they at one point walked through a wooden trail. The night sky spread shadows across the ground and the wind seemed to make them come alive.
“I can testify just as a staff person and coming out of here at night especially walking through the main square and you hear footsteps and it’s actually your own but it does lend a feeling of uncertainty and paranoia,” he says.
“You are sometimes convinced that there is someone else around watching you or maybe you think maybe it’s someone from our maintenance department that’s on a late shift but there’s nobody there.”
Despite what some may believe, Mascarin says the fort isn’t haunted and all the creepiness comes from people’s own minds or from the creations of the staff.
Over the years since Haunted Fort Night 15 years started, the event has sold out every year. Mascarin credited the hard work of the staff involved for putting a thrilling experience for people.
“It all hinges really on our creative program and how they think of the plots, which could at various times involve curses or witches or possessed characters,” he says.
“A lot of the time, actually we borrow from the fort’s own history. It could be a derange De Meuron soldier running around the place or one of the company partners has gone off his head. In variably the tour takes on a sense of quest.
“That’s where the tour guide is very important because they set the tone and they help encourage the patrons to think about what’s going on and help to develop a plot and develop a sense of drama, urgency and suspense. That’s what really conjures the atmosphere plus going into darkened buildings and things go bump in the night.”
