Fenway Park was cursed, now it's haunted. A massive Halloween spectacular has been installed under the bleachers of the beloved ballpark, a fitting end to a horrifying fall for the Red Sox.
The attraction, which consists of a Graveyard, a 3D walk-through and a Haunted Mansion, is the work of SpookyWorld, a New England institution that has been putting on Halloween shows for two decades. SpookyWorld C.E.O. Michael Accomando tells the Huffington Post that his company was preparing to install the spider-web covered walls and electric ghouls after the Sox made a post-season run, but that the whole process got bumped up when the team fell apart in September.
"People have asked me, 'Did you want them to lose so you could open early?'" says Accomando. "No. I wanted them to win the whole damn thing. I wanted our visitors to come and say I can't believe I'm here in Fenway just a few days after...I guess the pressure got to them."
Visitors to the attraction can take a break between screams and walk around the outfield, though they're less than likely to find Jacoby Ellsbury waiting for them.
"None of the Red Sox have come but some of the Patriots came through," says Accomando. "I think our actors were a little scared by that. You lunge at those guys and they crush you. Also, Brad Marchand from the Bruins came and just screamed the whole time."
Mike Krausert, the 22-year veteran of the haunted house industry who was charged with constructing the three attractions on the concourse in four days, says that putting together SpookyWorld's 20th anniversary extravaganza was, appropriately enough, a bit of a nightmare. He's still working from Fenway, fixing the kinks and has been working 17-hour days for weeks.
"I think I'm known for working quickly because of a TV program I did a while back," jokes Krausert. "Extreme Makeover: Halloween Edition kind of bit me in the ass."
To get the haunts set up, Krausert had to truck down the set pieces he had already built at his studio in Derry, New Hampshire and assemble them on Fenway's notoriously crooked floors. He then had to get his cast together and ready to deal with a bunch of rowdy Bostonians -- the advantage and disadvantage of the location has to be the number of bars nearby.
"A lot of our actors create their own costumes during the year, so I question the sanity of that," says Krausert. "But I don't allow movie characters so I love people being original and it helps them get better at playing one character."
Krauster says he's pleased with the end result and looking forward to getting some rest on the other side of the holiday. In the meantime, he needs to make sure a pair of King Kong-size hands is programmed to grab visitors at the right moment.
If only fixing the pitching rotation were so easy.