Hauntings

So those of you who have been following my adventures via my facebook, probably know that this past week I was doing some hauntings in Kamloops.

 

It's the week before Halloween and all sorts of organizations are capitalizing on the scare factor of this time of year and putting together events to lure people into their organizations and businesses to make some money or raise awareness. For the last six nights I have been working with the Laughing Stock Theatre Company to bring alive the spirits of a few famous dead Kamloopsians.

 

Now whether or not you believe in ghosts has nothing to do with what I've been doing. I don't find Halloween particularly sinful or evil, and we all know that I will take any opportunity given to me to dress up.

 

From Tuesday - Friday night our crew of six haunted various places around Kamloops as we worked with the Kamloops Museum and Archives on their annual Haunted Kamloops Tour. This tour travels around the city and tells the story of Kamloops' past. It's super interesting and we actors added a new dimension to their tour as we popped up from behind gravestones, or showed up in the museum. We each had a monologue prepared to share with the people and educate them a bit more about Kamloops. I played Queeenie - an 'actual' ghost that haunts the museum. Apparently she likes to play with taps, flush toilets, slam doors, and people have seen her reflection in the display cases. I'm not convinced. But I scared some people pretty good. 

 

 

 On Saturday and Sunday night our troupe drove out to Tranquille Farm to haunt their corn maze. Now if you have ever been to Tranquille Farm (also known as Padova), you know that this is most likely the creepiest place in the world. It's an old institution for people who had tuberculosis. It was built in 1907 and shut down in the 80s. Since then it has pretty much just sat around decomposing. It's super creepy. Teenagers always break in and look around and my friends have all had some wierd experiences there. Even my Christian friends who don't believe in ghosts have seen some wierd, strange, creepy things. Anyways, the point is, this place is creepy. So you are already being creeped out by being on the property, then things like this walk out at you. In the dark.

It was amazing.

I scared so many people so, so , so bad!

My favourite thing to do was hide in the corn and then just jump out at people. I also liked to creep up behind them when they were reading one of the many information plaques and just stand there until they turned around and saw me a foot away from them. They would scream so much. The best was when this one guy screamed like a girl, then coughed, and said, "uh, yeah. I'm not scared... I just had to make that girl feel good about herself." (Sure you did buddy, sure you did.)

I had a few key lines that I would say too as the night progressed.

"He promised me forever, and I'll wait forever!"

"Have you seen my little boy? I can't find him. I keep looking and I can't find him. Where is my little boy?" (I liked doing that to like 6 year olds and then I'd describe my little kid to look like exactly what the kid looked like. And then have this dreamy voice and make no eye contact, super creepy.)

"Shhhhhhhh, they'll find me!"

And occasionally I'd just run down the aisles and scream like a mad woman. Sometimes two or three of us would end up trapping a group of people and then it would be really fun for us!

So much screaming, so much fun for me. It was SUPER difficult to stay in character and not laugh at people, because some people have the funniest reaction. This one 13 year old full out threw his bag of popcorn at my face and fell down as he screamed like a girl.

Then there was the two young guys and their girlfriends, and the guys screamed and hid behind their girlfriends.

It was a busy six nights, but it was a lot of fun and kept me occupied. I'm totally doing it again next year.

Happy Halloween!