South county hauntings continue through Saturday

The weather this fall hasn't been kind to the folks who run the haunted venues in south county. Weather has forced both Heidi's Haunted Hill in Edgewater, and the Deale Fire Department's Morgue Manor haunted house to be closed all but two nights.

But the organizers of both are hoping for a drier forecast since their scary sites will be open tonight through Saturday.

At Heidi's Haunted Hill, off of Solomons Island Road near Birdsville, organizers Holly Jensen and Greta Morris worked for months creating a scary trail for kids ages 12 and up.

"We both have high school and middle school students. So Holly and I thought it would be a fun way for the family to be involved together with the kids," Morris said.

It is a family affair. Morris and Jensen are sisters, and the two women roped in not only their husbands, but kids, boyfriends and their kids' friends.

They got the idea after touring haunted houses and haunted trails in the area over the years.

"We knew what we liked, and we thought we could do something good," Morris said.

Around Labor Day they started putting the pieces together. They installed fencing in the steep areas and added mulch to make the trail less slippery.

Then they really got to work making the attraction scary. The women stumbled across a truckload of decorations from a Howard County archery group that had previously run a haunted trail. Then parents and kids worked together to build simple wooden structures and mazes. They hung up gruesome mannequins, severed plastic body parts, plus stuffed rats, fake spiders and rubber snakes.

Next, they hired a handful of their children's high school and college classmates to provide the chilling drama. The 30 or so teens dress up each night as apes that swing across the trail, as clowns who jump out at people and, of course, as zombies, ghosts and ghouls. They operate chainsaws, they moan, they pound on things.

Each visitor is asked to pay $14 or $12 if they bring a nonperishable item to donate to the food bank. Each night a bonfire is set, so that patrons can warm up, roast marshmallows or make s'mores.

A tour guide leads groups, usually of no more than six at a time, into the forest with a lantern.

The haunted walk gets its name for Heidi Jensen, Holly's 14-year-old daughter, but both Jensen and Morris' children participate.

Walking the trail takes about 20 minutes, and is steep in some places. But the hilly terrain probably isn't what will get your heart going the most - that will be left to the phantoms along the way.

A little farther south, in Deale, the volunteers at the Deale Fire Station are running Morgue Manor, a haunted house that has been a south county tradition since the 1980s.

Paul Loiacono and Shannon Rohr, two volunteer firefighters at the station, are co-chairing the event this year.

Loiacono has been a firefighter for eight years, and he's been involved with the haunted house the entire time.

He said that a few of the hauntings are the return engagements, like an "appearance" by Freddy Krueger. But other things have changed. Last year visitors started their journey through the house on the outside steps, entering through the second floor and then making their way downstairs.

This year, visitors will start in a foyer, where there is seemingly no exit. Family portraits hang from the wall, but guests will have the feeling that they are being watched. Truth is, they are.

From there, guests go through the kitchen, a gruesome scene that is a hallmark of the yearly haunted house is played out for all to shriek, rather, to see.

Ghosts, ghouls, sickly doctors and nurses, a Jack in the Box, a demented chef, and others characters are brought to "life" by the volunteer firefighters.

One of the unique things about the Deale haunted house is that it is not a commercial haunted house set in a portable building in a parking lot. It takes place in a real house, a 100-year old south county farmhouse that for years was someone's home. The last resident died in 1986.

The journey for visitors begins by parking at the Deale fire station on Drum Point Road. The volunteers at the station sell refreshments and the $12 tickets for the haunted adventure. Guests then board a bus for the ride to the house. After a short walk down a driveway, the boarded up house awaits.

There are no refunds if you are too scared to go in.

Mitchelle Stephenson is a freelance writer living in Edgewater.