News

Dyanna Zimmer measures success in blood-curdling screams.

This time of year, several octaves of shriek come echoing from the barn behind her Surrey, B.C., home. And with every one she takes a certain glee.

The most satisfying cry of all rattled the barn rafters last year. Staff from a local pub had decided to stop by Ms. Zimmer's place for a tour of her famous Barnyard Phantoms exhibit, whose pneumatic ghouls and animatronic skeletons have scared thousands of visitors over the years. Minutes after the pub crew had disappeared inside, Ms. Zimmer heard a most satisfying screech: "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," she remembers a woman screaming. "I just peed myself!"

Music to Ms. Zimmer's ears.

"It's a lot of work to get someone to react like that," says Ms. Zimmer between cackles, "but fun work."

Ms. Zimmer is a haunter. Or a halloweener. Or a hauntaholic. The moniker depends on whom among this fright-obsessed group you ask.

What is clear is the haunting community's devotion to freaking the bejesus out of all who pass their homes on Halloween night.

Anyone can hang a store-bought skeleton and carve a jack-o'-lantern. Haunters go that extra ghoulish mile, constructing homemade corpses, programming animatronic cadavers and fabricating pneumatic Chucky dolls.

"You can't mass-produce these things," says Mike Lopes, a Toronto-area graphic designer who's created several corpses and a devil with a three-metre wingspan using chicken wire and latex. "There's no way you'd find anything like this stuff at Wal-Mart."

To hone their skills, genuine haunters attend conventions, scour bulletin boards and swap advice on such grisly minutiae as what makes more convincing human entrails, Mono Foam or paper-towel rolls.

"Some people think we must be freaks," says Ms. Zimmer, who hosted the first annual FrightFest BC, a gathering of avid haunters, at her house eight summers ago.

"When I first started [FrightFest] I was a little concerned about having all these people obsessed with severed limbs and corpses over," Ms. Zimmer says, "but they all turned out to be normal people with normal jobs. There were nurses, engineers, technicians - you really can't afford to do this unless you have a decent job."

Every summer since, dozens of haunters have shown up for FrightFest's unique schedule of workshops: Corpsing 101, Severed Limb Moulding, Peeled Face Transplants.

"We had one airbrushing seminar this year where people who'd never picked up an airbrush in their lives were walking away with extremely realistic severed heads," says Ms. Zimmer, who keeps projects - random limbs and bodies mainly - lying around the house year-round.

Haunters are regularly misjudged, usually as devil-worshippers or general miscreants. "The police sat outside my house all night one time," says Ms. Zimmer. "I guess they thought I was up to something creepy."

Haunters who can't make it to conferences scare up ideas online. Sites such as halloweenmonsterlist.info, skullandbone.com and pumpkinrot.com have shown thousands of haunters how to build biohazardous drums, coffin jumpers (fake corpses that spring out of the box to frighten passersby), body bags and other macabre ornaments.

At Ghoulfriday.com, Danielle Vendetti posts how-to guides for the ghastly props she spends months designing for her annual Halloween bash.

For this year's party, she created a Chuck E. Cheese-like funhouse with a few terrifying twists.

"It's about taking normal items and changing them to make you a little uneasy," she says, standing next to a welcome sign in her Toronto home that reads: "Clive E. Cleavers: where the laughter of children never stops," but with blood-red paint changing "laughter" to "slaughtering".

"I allow myself to go a little crazy sometimes," she says, showing off Mr. Flopsy, a human-sized bunny mascot with a withered skull for a head; Clarissa, a cute children's doll but for her pale complexion and blood-spattered limbs; and Peek-a-boo, a potted plant with eyeballs for buds.

Ms. Vendetti started making props in Grade 4 when her parents let her spray-paint a tombstone. Since then her designs have become more artistic and her themes more elaborate. Over the past few years, she has staged a rat infestation and a martini bar in hell at her home, which she shares with her husband.

"It's all very PG-13," she said. "I don't go for thrashing hanging victims or anything. You might offend somebody who's had a bad personal experience.

"But this stuff is fine. I mean, I don't know anyone who's been murdered, flayed and used as a buffet tray," she says, pointing to a particularly grim fruit tray in her kitchen as rocking sixties Halloween tunes play over a stereo.

"Surfer horror music," she explains. "It's classic ... and really hard to find."

Even before Halloween night, some haunters are already looking forward to next year. Mr. Lopes is planning a living-dead ballroom gala. "Even though the day after Halloween is always a bit of a letdown," he says, "it's also one of my favourite days of the year because all the Halloween stuff goes on sale. It's like my Boxing Day."