First and foremost the cast of Salisbury Woods is completely all volunteers. I’ve been having some great luck in recent years with haunts that have an all-volunteer cast and crew. I can really feel that they love doing what they do and so much to the point that they are actually good at it! Salisbury Woods is no exception to that. The actors and actresses at this haunt are awesome! They informed me that due to the pandemic they had to cut their numbers down quite a bit. Usually, they have around 70 actors and actresses working the haunt, however this year they could only have 40. To a newcomer, I would have never noticed any dead spots because this awesome cast must have been doing twice the work to make this haunt pop!
The first actors I noticed were a few ghouls hanging out in the cemetery waiting line. Technically, they were queue line entertainment but really they were just bringing the cemetery to life with the way they danced and moved all over it. The setting was eerie and spooky enough as it was but when a girl in a black dress she might have worn to her own funeral starts slowly dancing around the gravestones it’s impossible to not feel the cemetery’s energy.
One actress had me going good when I walked into her kitchen. I see a girl slaving away around a stove and sink with bits of human flesh all over the place. She turned to me and screamed, ‘Honey, dinner is here!’ referring to me! ‘I didn’t think we were having fresh meat, I was already thawing out the old stuff’ referring to all the chopped pieces of dead rotting flesh around the kitchen. It was such a great line and still very early into the walkthrough so my expectations were set high for more like her. She even followed me into the next room where her grandmother was somehow floating above her bed. She screamed for help and needed me to call for someone. Awesome acting for two scenes!
Maybe somewhere in the middle of the trail I came around a corner and marveled at one of their bigger sets I was not expecting to see. I was well enough distracted and in a prime state for a good pop-out scare although a simple jump scare wouldn’t be so impressive to me at this point. Sorta low hanging fruit in the scare business. To my surprise, I didn’t get any simple scare. An actor came frolicking from around the set marveling at the structure that I was too admiring. ‘Isn’t it wonderful!? Isn’t it splendid!?’ He shouted with glee in almost an old English accent to match the setting. ‘You must go inside! You’ve gotta go see it for yourself it’s beautiful!’ frolicking like a madman around me and sort of guiding me into the large structure. It wasn’t a pop-out scare or even one that was threatening in any way. More of a psychological scare as a glimpse into what I could become if I entered this structure or marveled at it for too long like this man obviously had done. In any case, it was still a pleasant surprise and enjoyable to have a mix of different types of actors.
And I couldn’t not mention the star of the show, Scrappy! The owner and operator himself, Brett, likes to get out there in the crowd and throw some zingers to pass the time. Dressed up like a stand-up comedian clown he hit us with ‘Hey! What’s the difference between a pile of dead bodies and a pile of sand? ‘ you can’t move a pile of sand with a pitchfork!’ Everyone laughs or groans but not as much as him with his loud crazy yelling laughs. And he would wrap up the jokes with ‘True story, true story’ which made the jokes even more brilliant. ‘What’s the difference between 10 ten babies and a Porsche? ‘ I don’t have a Porsche in my garage!’ he screams and laughs while most of the guests in the line admit that one gave them chills ‘True story, true story’. It also happened to be opening night and his Birthday! So the next time someone asks you what you want to do for your birthday just know that your answer will never be as cool as ‘I want to open a haunted trail and entertain people and raise money for kids in school ‘ True story, true story.’
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