The Haunted Hoochie at Dead Acres

April 19th, 2011

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by Nate Bolen

Located just east of Columbus, Ohio is an October seasonal fear filled festival that is quickly becoming known as the “Worlds Most Extreme Haunted Attraction.” A mind-altering journey not for the faint of heart, Dead Acres offers a variety of entertainment choices such as hayrides, bon fires, large parties, games, paintball, and stage shows making it a Halloween event not to be missed.

A slick style of in your face intensity keeps over 30,000 fanatically loyal fans coming back year after year. Dead Acres strives for excellence in the art of terror, which brings in new followers from every corner of Ohio and surrounding states. Non-stop action packs this 50,000 square foot indoor and outdoor haunted showcase with scares around every corner. Over 50 animatronics, 90 actors and “one of a kind” effects throughout the attraction make this event a Haunt enthusiast’s dream. Its mixture of haunting styles combine into a perfect blend of realistic settings, amazing animatronics, gore filled sideshows and professional actors.

Realism drives an attention to detail that is unseen in most events. Every stone, broken bone, patch of rust, and rotted board, is meticulously acquired and placed, and each item must meet a standard of realism to qualify for the sets. Layers of grime and dirt appear naturally obtained through the struggles of time.

Each one of the more than 50 scenes is crafted to bring the patron into another world ruled by their inner most fears. For the illusions of madness that await you inside to reach maximum effectiveness, each scene must plunge the patron into a reality the Dead Acres designers have crafted for them. The sheer amount of work put into making this possible is stunning. Dead Acres has 5 artisans working part time for 10 months of the year, every year!

The energy level is in overdrive for patrons in this “in your face” haunt. High startle scares are delivered with frequency and intensity from the highly trained professional actors who employ cutting edge techniques and make up. The ride is non-stop once inside, as scares are packed tightly and delivered one after the other.

The History

Dead Acres is a haunted festival three generations is the making. Its history reaches back to the origins of the very concept of the Haunted Attraction. “My grandfather used to run a haunted hayride around the farm,” recalls Dead Acres owner/operator Tim May, “and us kids would run around with Halloween masks trying to scare everyone.” Haunting is not only in Tim’s heart but also in his blood.

Tim’s Grandfather, Frank J. Dixon, and wife Madeline Dixon along with friends, Hank Bond, Leo Ballman and Bill Grim, opened the Fran Bar Park Haunted Hayride in 1953 on the same farm property where Dead Acres sits today, thus planting the seed that would someday grow into a haunted juggernaut.

The idea of a Haunted Attraction was unheard of at the time, and the love for scaring and entertaining people was their only reward for putting on this free hayride. Visitors from far and wide loved the new type of fall entertainment offered in this strange twist of a hayride. These six might have been the first “Haunters” and unknowingly helped shape an idea that would someday grow into a nationwide industry.

Without the aid of “off the shelf ” props or effects, the crew made their own hand crafted costumes, such as the wolf man, a wicked witch, and Dixon himself as the headless horseman galloping toward the hay wagon on a real horse. This annual Haunted Hayride continued through the decades giving lifetimes of fond memories to everyone involved. The art and joy of haunting was passed down to their children and grandchildren.

In 1980, Tim joined his grandfather in the family business. By the time he was 14, Tim took on the role of producer and actor. By this time, the hayride took patrons through a wooded trail that featured multiple haunted sights constructed by the young Tim, along with childhood friends Ed Holman and Jay Smithberger. These early scenes included a cemetery, with freshly dug graves that hid monsters waiting to erupt at passing patron filled wagons. A voodoo priest beneath an authentic tribal “alter of the dark arts,” holding ritualistic ceremonies for his pagan Gods, and a life sized 16’ tall Guillotine built by Tim and designed to portray bloody acts of decapitation, with severed heads left swinging above the patrons.

The path of this early hayride made its way around an old swampy lake Frank Dixon had made in the 1930’s using dynamite to blast a hole in what has been said was “sacred ground.” The newly blasted hole filled with quicksand, which gives this bizarre lake an unknown depth. The strange body of water has claimed numerous victims over the long years. A team of horses leaped into its murky depths and was lost, and a man mysteriously disappeared from its blackened shores, leaving behind only a lonely firelight from his single lantern. To this day witnesses sometimes report seeing a single lantern gliding over the morbid lake. Endless sightings of the paranormal by campers continue to feed the legend of the curse that hangs over this old farm and just adds to the notoriety of Dead Acres.

Frank Dixon died in a 1988 tragic non- October tractor roll over accident on the same family farm that was his life. The loss devastated Tim, and the family business of haunting was abandoned for a time. After pursuing other interests and getting married to wife Cheryl, Tim took over operation of the farm in 1990. Immediately Tim’s entrepreneurship took over, turning the family farm into Fran Bar Park, a multi use property that hosted large parties, weddings, and huge annual events, such as festivals, concerts, motorcycle races, and company picnics. This country attraction included concerts, camping, swimming, volleyball, game room, playground, petting zoo, pony rides, fishing, family reunions, paintball and of course hayrides making it a family destination for the surrounding areas.

“Fran Bar Park was a fully functional business, and business was booming,” recalls Tim, but the family tradition of haunting called to him and he had to answer. Tim wanted to spice up the old hayride with a few scares and with the help of close friends Dave Basham, Dale Feazel and Jay Feazel, Toby Miracle, and Ron Morrison, Tim’s vision of the family tradition flourished.

The rabid word of mouth spread quickly, leaving the team of friends struggling to keep up with demand. The philosophy of this eager for screams team was “realism.” If realism wasn’t there to make the scare, then it wasn’t good enough. This new approach to lifelike graphic horror left the public yearning for more. The event attracted so many people they could not meet the demand. The phone was ringing off the hook, and the haunted hayrides were stretching into winter. “We were scaring people in the snow until almost Christmas,” recalls Tim. “It was a blast.”

The scare team of friends realized that they needed more manpower and the additional personnel was added in 1993, through a partnership with the High School Band Booster and Athletic Association, who would build and operate a second attraction on the farm in the form of a walk through trail titled Haunted Heights. Consisting of a few huts and a forest of shadowy trees, the haunted trail was considered a success at the time, but the attraction did not live up to Tim’s vision of what a Haunt should be. Creative differences soon caused an agreeable split between the new partners.

In 1994, Tim and the scare crew took over the Haunted Trail, but this shift meant the scare crew would have to stop Haunting the Hayride. To handle the capacity, the trails would have to be widened and buildings made larger to handle groups of 30 people or more at a time.

Birth of the Hoochie

“The public hungered for something more than what was offered at the time for a Halloween experience,” explains Tim. The low budget PG rated scares that were the norm in those days were novelty knockoffs of what Tim knew a Haunted Attraction could be. “Today’s teenage market is growing up on video games, movies and the internet which exposes them to new levels of horror” explains Tim. “It was time for us to unchain our nightmares, and release the demons within.”

In a brainstorming session years ago, someone had suggested that a good name for the generation X Haunt. The lyrics of a popular Alan Jackson song at the time, “Way down yonder on the Chattahoochee it gets hotter than a hoochie coochie.” was playing on the radio everyday. The idea was parents would hate it, and kids love what their parents hate so The Haunted Hoochie was born! The notoriety of the name is evident from patrons who have come from as far away as California to see what a Haunted Hoochie is. “The name is something people remember when they hear it,” explains Tim. “It becomes legend,”

With buckets of sweat and blood the Haunted Hoochie was unleashed on an unsuspecting public in October 1994. The new haunt was an extreme fright walk through the dark and swampy woods highlighted by several individual buildings, each containing its own malevolent act. The combination of ingenuity, skills in engineering, welding, set design, a drive for horror, and a demented imagination made for a haunted trail that would either succeed or fail miserably. Would the sensitive general public be ready for such a drastic leap ahead in means of explicit visuals and deadly acts?

The reaction was overwhelming. The shock of this new type of splatter gore sideshow haunt amazed and sickened everyone. They had never seen anything like it. Blood, guts, and violence were its brutal trademark, with a dash of comedy thrown in for good measure. The Hollywood style blood-filled effects were offensive, disgusting, and tasteless, and people loved it. Soon crowds numbering in the thousands made the nightly journey to this small country town to satisfy their growing gore lust. The word spread like wildfire, leaving surrounding haunts struggling to keep up with the new trend. The Hoochie’s skits are legendary to this day. Whole chat rooms have popped up online dedicated completely to the originality of the violent “ob-scenes” that went on year after year.

The Hoochie asked the important questions that no one else at the time would ask. Like how many ways can you kill a person with a chainsaw? How well can a shotgun blast paint brains onto a wall? How much blood is in the human body, and what would it look like in a puddle on the floor? What do the fires of hell feel like against your skin? Or the most puzzling, what if a chainsaw killer could fly? The Haunted Hoochie answered each one of these questions and more in vicious fashion. The goal was to present spectacular effects in a way that people could not figure out how they were done!

Most of the ideas for the “ill-usions” come from brainstorming sessions.

However, Tim warns that you have to be careful not to dismiss even bad ideas. “Sometimes someone comes up with an idea that is not that good,” explains Tim. “But it sparks a thought and bounces around the room and sometimes you end up with your great new effect.”

Coming up with a new grand effect to top last year’s kept Tim awake at night. “This stuff isn’t in books,” exclaims Tim. One illusion came to Tim in a dream. A clown, his mouth is covered with duct tape, is hanging from the ceiling with ropes tied around his wrists. An actor wheeling a machete taunts the captive. Struggling against the restraints and the clown kicks his tormenter back in defiance. In a rage the actor cuts down the clown and slams him down on a table. As the clown kicks to get away, the actor slams the machete down on the neck of the clown, and almost simultaneously lifts the blood dripping head of the clown to show the stunned audience.

The keys to the effect that Tim envisioned were the 4’ high stage that the scene was placed on and a table with a fake thickness. The sightlines of the audience keep them from seeing the top of the table. The clown ducked his head into the thickness of the table when the actor slammed down the machete. A fake head designed to look like that of the clown resting in a shallow pan filled with stage blood was lifted up to the horror of the audience.

Another of these scenes included one man’s dance with death. Patrons entered a room occupied by a raging man angry at the world, and tired of waiting for his end to come. He holds a shotgun in his shaking hands, and screams at onlookers before resting back in his easy chair. In an instant he swallows the guns barrel and after a deafening explosion the brains fly, splattering against a dirty window behind him. The effect was created using an air cannon set behind the chair splattering stage blood onto the set behind the actor. Tim warns to be sure and set up the splatter so that it does not get on the actor. “You cannot have your actors getting soaked all night,” explains Tim. This simple effect was a powerful display of realism that shocked people to the core and bent people’s ability to tell what was real and what wasn’t.

Each year would bring a new bloodthirsty effect of chainsaw violence and gallons of blood would flow in these gory dissections of death. A victim would be tied to a chair, the chainsaw maniac would appear thrashing his weapon of choice, with blood spitting off the chain by the gallon as he cut off the live actors head. Or a live victim would be strung up by his hands and be cut at the waist in the same manner, his legs falling to the floor, leaving gravity to spill guts everywhere.

The ultimate in these grisly deaths by saw was made possible by a specially engineered, all original kicking man animatronic. This idea of a bi-section of the human body needed a tailor made body so as the victim struggled against the meat hooks holding him in the air, he could be cut from the side starting at the top of the head down to the waist, the result being the front section of body would fall forward revealing all inner held structures and organs of the body cavity. These scenes of suicide and graphic murders were daring and controversial. The Hoochie broke the mold, and showed everyone what a Haunted Attraction could be.

An obsession with fire is deep seeded in the history of Dead Acres, from graves that shot flames from the cold earth, to scenes of the blazing reaches of Hell; fire was always a symbol of an ever-consuming fear. But with such fear came a real danger that required keen attention to fire safety rules and regulations. A licensed pyrotechnics technician had to be hired to make sure all fire effects were performed in a safe and professional manner. With his help an intricate building was constructed to house blazing walls of flames that rose over patrons’ heads filled the building.

As Satan leaped from his throne with fire blazing from his evil hands, the heat was intense and most importantly it was real.

Each gory display was performed hundreds of times a night, every few minutes and had to be beautifully simplistic. The reset on these brilliant effects had to be done in seconds and the margin for error was miniscule. “The skits were required to be simple and sadistic,” explains Tim. “They tricked the mind because blood is quicker than the eye.”

Before you could buy the high-end props of today, the Haunted Hoochie made their own. Through trial and error they created effects that blew people away. The creative minds and wicked hands of Dave Basham and Tim went to work building an army of evil creatures of enormous proportions, like the woodland giant dubbed “Hack” who rested behind low rising bushes, only to blast upward to his full height of forty feet. Dave and Tim created this and many other monstrosities that including giant winged gargoyles, an actual fire breathing dragon, massive skulls with working jaws lined with razor teeth and glowing moving green eyes. Each of these original works was crafted onsite and the result was Hollywood quality creations that fulfilled the team’s dream of absolute realism.

Tim had already noticed a downturn in the economy during the summer of 2001. Fewer pony rides at the farm meant that discretionary spending was down. Then terrorists flew planes into buildings in New York City. The Haunted Hoochie had been averaging 30,000 people per year since 1994, but after 9-11 attendance dropped to 22,000.

Building a Monster

One problem with the Haunted Hoochie was it was outside. Bad weather was not the only problem. “Outside, as soon as you build something, it starts rotting,” explains Tim, discouraged that the work was quickly taken back over by nature. “I knew that the only way I was going to retire someday, was if we went inside.” In 2000, Tim first attended TransWorld convention in Chicago. “For the first time I realized that I was working too hard, recalls Tim. “There are people around the country thinking the way I was, and coming up with things I could buy.”

Tim knew that it was time for a change. Even with the success of the Haunted Hoochie, Tim would completely change his event from a one of a kind Haunted Trail to an indoor Haunted House like no other. The gamble was huge; change the trademark name and theme and risk losing a decade of loyal fans, but without risk there can be no greatness.

The old two story family barn was a massive building that stood at the front of the farm property. A vital artery of old time farming, time and a modern world had rendered the barn a prehistoric memorial to a lost way of life. Tim saw something else; he saw a monster, his very own Frankenstein that would breathe new life into the once grand structure, but bringing this relic from his grandfather’s age up to meet today’s strict building and fire codes was a monumental task. One that many thought could not be done.

The chickens were evicted, the manure hauled out. Dairy cow stanchions and horse stalls were demolished, and the dust of generations vacuumed away. Every corner was washed and fire treated. Concrete was poured over the rocky dirt floor and large additions were constructed to expand the already vast structure. The new sprinkler system required by code was a major undertaking, including an extensive excavation underneath a state route in order to tap into the city water supply line across the street from the property. The skyscraping grain silos were cut open and decks were built in the tops to hold giant fans powering eye catching fire effect that could be seen for miles.

The custom castle façade required months of dedicated work to sculpt stonework from Styrofoam, and then cover with endless layers of real concrete to give it an authentic heavy rock texture. Raids on old abandoned houses in the area produced countless artifacts and building materials that had fought time and lost. These materials, that you just can’t buy, were used throughout the event. Entire off-site structures, scheduled for demolition, were disassembled, moved, and rebuilt on site.

Outside the barn work continued turning rocked pavement into a forest within an old ghost town. Heavy machinery was used to bury entire trees upside down, their inverted trunks and roots standing skyward. Ponds were dug and an entire bridge was constructed to span the newly formed depths. Real log cabins were stacked together next to an old mill and a covered well. Semi trailers were moved in and covered with wooden slats to enclose the outdoor town area.

Professional artists were hired to cover every inch of the haunt’s exterior with detailed airbrushed artwork of the worst their imaginations had to offer. A huge movie screen was mounted in the side of the barn. A DJ booth and large intimidating stage was constructed over the newly lined waiting area, and a paintball shooting range was setup for patrons to shoot live heckling monsters; a welcome chance for frightened visitors to get even.

Miles of airline was hung and air tanks installed for the numerous pneumatic props. Miles of wire was run to feed the new power hungry building. Closed circuit infrared security cameras were installed, leading to the state of the art security station, to insure every scene could be closely monitored. The upper level of the barn would house the security area along with an impressive employee lounge offering relaxation with pool tables, foosball, sofas, music, observation decks above the queue line, and a big screen television with DVD players and the newest video games.

The amount of work was staggering, but the tireless effort was ready for harvest in 2003. Dead Acres opened that October to rave reviews, but something was missing. Off the shelf animatronics did not have the edgy blood splattering attraction of the Hoochie. “The problem was we had fans from around the country,” explains Tim. “Who were there to see things you could not see anywhere else.” It took Tim and the scare crew four years of experimentation to get back the trademark intensity and gore. The team built new custom animatronics, and made changes and improvements to the ones they had purchased.

Now back to the stage style “gorefest” that made it famous, the event had one last name change in 2007, to The Haunted Hoochie at Dead Acres. The name recognition of the Hoochie drove attendance to record levels. Over 34,000 people attended in 2007 with two nights over 4,000 people, and another two nights over 5,000 people. The integration of the new age animatronics with the old school energy of the Hoochie was better than ever. The Haunt was a living breathing monster that swallowed hordes of guests only to spit them out a shivering shell of their former selves.

With sadistic nightmares or fond memories The Haunted Hoochie at Dead Acres leaves its scar on everyone it comes in contact with. It has built a family of fans that grew up looking forward to those fatal nights with friends at the “hooch.” They now bring their own children to show them were the boogeyman sleeps.

Nate Bolen is a producer and actor for Dead Acres. His wicked words, sadistic ideas, and brutal skills with a chainsaw have helped give The Haunted Hoochie a face and voice. He can be reached at natese7en@yahoo.com. Or check out his MySpace Page at www.myspace.com/ghostintheflesh

This article originally appeared in Haunted Attraction Magazine Issue #49