Haunt Manor gets bigger, creepier for 9th year
Lundy’s Lane attraction starts scaring people Friday — and you can credit Phil Van Kleef
Every September, Phil Van Kleef gathers his team to rally them for another season. Their job? Scare the crap out of you.
And around here, Haunt Manor on Lundy’s Lane is the New England Patriots of scaring people.
“It’s 85 staff right now, and growing,” says Van Kleef, who opens the macabre attraction for its 9th season Friday night at Campark Resorts. “I look at it like a football game — this is my team. I want people who love Halloween, love the show, and want to add to it.”
As he says, “everyone’s got a role.” Actors,
some of them professional, suit up every year as zombies, psychos and assorted creatures to torment patrons across six hectares and 45,000 square metres, making Haunt Manor the largest outdoor scare attraction in Canada. Van Kleef guesses it’s among the top three or four biggest in the world at this point, with more additions this year.
It’s all for fun, but Van Kleef says scaring people is a serious business. It’s why he went to Universal Studios in Florida last November. There he picked up pointers on sound and wheelchair accessibility, making the chills more crisp and easier to navigate.
Additions this year include an expanded prison yard to go with the authentic sections of Toronto’s notorious Don Jail the park acquired three years ago; a new, creepier corn maze using actual corn Van Kleef planted (“I’m a farmer now”); and a continuation of the Haunted Hayride ominously titled The Carnival of Darkness.
They join established Haunt Manor favourites like the Dead End Diner, Dark Raven Manor, Bates Motel, The Drop Tower and the Rotland Outdoor Cemetery Walk.
Van Kleef gathers props and materials throughout the year, and stays on top of horror trends. But he never goes too far — unlike some hardcore horror parks, he goes for a ‘Sleepy Hollow’ type atmosphere meant to make people laugh as much as they scream.
“It’s a fine art,” he says.
Actors are trained to frighten without getting ‘touchy.’ An old trick is to have one distract you while another creeps up behind or beside you. If it works in a horror movie, it’ll work at Haunt Manor.
Van Kleef recalls one year a local football team was walking through when the guy in front was so startled he fell back and created a domino effect. “The guy at the back screeched like a girl,” he says. “I normally never break character, but I said to the guy ‘I hope your friends didn’t hear that.’”