On a recent afternoon at Stanford’s Haunted Fortress, Teddy Secor and Esther Evans walked through the still-unfinished attraction, surveying its skulls, costumes and other pieces being assembled for another season of scares.
They reached one conclusion: “We need more bones.”
Secor, a Stanford Town Board member who handles marketing for the Fortress and performs as a pirate, and Evans, a retired nurse who has managed the attraction’s sprawling costume collection for about 20 years, are among the volunteers who spend much of the year preparing the haunt for October.
There is still work to do before the Haunted Fortress opens Friday, Oct. 2, when visitors will once again make their way through a collection of eerie scenes, hidden actors and improvised scares built almost entirely by volunteers.
Among the biggest additions this year is what organizers are calling “Doll Island,” an orphanage-themed section filled with donated dolls.
“They’re just creepy, right?” Evans said.
The area includes a headmistress and other details intended to turn the collection into something more unsettling than a simple display. Other sections of the Fortress are also changed or reworked from year to year.
Visitors begin by making their way along a roughly 600- to 700-foot swamp walk, where actors in ghillie suits can disappear into the surroundings before emerging unexpectedly. From there, guests encounter a series of scenes, including the Fortress’s pirate ship.
The scares depend heavily on the volunteers inside them. Many actors improvise around loose characters or backstories rather than follow a strict script, and organizers said they are still looking for adult actors, guides and pirates for this year’s run.
For Darcy Shields, now in her third year volunteering at the Fortress, the appeal is the chance to help create something from scratch.
“The creativeness, like being able to create stuff for people to see,” Shields said, adding that she also enjoys “the artistic” side of the attraction and the people she has met. Her grandchildren first drew her into volunteering.
Others take on more than one job. Christine Solazzo serves as both a makeup artist and a banshee, helping transform other volunteers before becoming part of the haunt herself.
That commitment stretches well beyond October. Organizers said planning begins again in December and continues throughout the year as volunteers develop new scenes, repair old ones and prepare for the next season.
The Fortress is built and operated without town tax dollars, Secor and Evans said. Admission revenue pays its expenses, making bad weather one of the production’s biggest real-life scares: Losing several nights to rain can cut significantly into the money available to cover its bills.
Evans and Secor were careful not to give too much away. They made brief mention of a man in a coat being perhaps, the scariest of them all. Who is he? What’s so scary about the coat? They wouldn’t say.
The Stanford Haunted Fortress opens Friday, Oct. 2, and runs through Friday, Oct. 30. It is open Fridays and Saturdays from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. and Sundays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., weather permitting. Admission is $15 for adults and $10 for children and seniors. Sensory-friendly walkthroughs, without actors, scary sounds or strobe lights, are offered Oct. 4 and Oct. 18 from 2 to 4 p.m. The Fortress does not operate in the rain.