Fright Nights Haunted Carnival

Cemetary at Fright Nights

A popular Halloween event to attend in the last two weeks of October is Fright Nights held at Playland Amusement Park on the Pacific National Exhibition grounds in Vancouver.

Just like in the b-rated horror movies, the place is transformed into an eerie, haunted carnival with over 40,000 visitors. The roller coasters begin to run in the dark, skeletons become common passengers on rides and creepy, psychotic clowns and broken down dolls are seen roaming the cobweb fairgrounds feeding off the many screams of the patrons. The place is a spectacle of the macabre with tableaus of electrocutions, executions, walking zombies and smoke filled cemeteries.

The legendary, biggest attractions are the haunted houses; The Bates Hotel, Black Hole, Scary Tales, Nuclear Nightmare & Demons of the Dark/House of The Dead. The PNE worked in conjunction with Screamworks, theme park scare specialists, who developed the haunted houses as well as the majority of the costumes to come up with high quality sets and special effects. Each house offers not only terrifying visuals to fill your nightmares but each one hosts a live cast of professional 'scarers' who lurk inside every secret wall, hidden passage way and nook and cranny to assist in unleashing blood curdling screams from deep within your damned souls. Each house boasts its own theme and specialty such as Scary Tales which is based on dark characters from the Brothers Grimm and is entirely in 3-D and psychedelic colors. The most popular haunted house is Demons of the Dark/House of The Dead whose line-up of guests in front of the broken, boarded windows and blood, soaked hearse never seems to cease and is guaranteed to leave you shaking in fear.

The spokesperson for Fright Nights, Laura Balance, admits that this event is so spine chilling that they regularly cause guests of all ages to cry. "We run 13 of our most popular rides, including the historic Playland Wooden Roller Coaster – this is the only time of the year that we run that ride completely in the dark, and that alone is incredibly scary. New this year we have added 'The Last Ride' a wooden coffin that guests can get into and it simulates being buried alive. We also have a haunted maze and a roving scare crew who startle guests in the general park area as well as ones waiting in lineups for the houses or rides. Each person works to develop their own style – some use voices, costumes or certain tactics such as creeping up behind you."

If you need a break from the wicked rides and spooky, haunted houses then there are many other enthralments to keep you entertained. New this year is a freak show with live sideshow performers called the Monsters of Schlock. Here you can witness gruesome delights such as people being hammered, stapled, burned and pierced. Some of the acts include gothic divas using sledgehammers to break bricks on the stomachs of willing volunteers and painful comedy routines where the host puts prophylactics up his nose and pulls it out of his mouth. You can also watch the talented fire dancers or skeleton break dance crew or you can spend some time playing many of the amusement park games to win ghoulish prizes such as wounded teddy bears and gothic dollies.

This is the best place to go in Canada if you are an adrenaline junky or fans of Halloween and scary delights. Even a veteran such as myself could not help but be startled into surrendering a high-pitched shriek or two! They plan on adding even more petrifying, haunted houses and hair-raising attractions to scare the living daylights out of you.    frightnights.ca

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