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FRIGHT NIGHT 2011!

Our 5th annual Fright Night event is set for Saturday October 22nd, and you could win free tickets! Read on!

Latest Word - Oct 25th

• WOW what a great night! We had perfect weather and a good turnout of brave souls for this year's trail. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did creating it!
• This year's trail took 13 hours to build by nearly 20 volunteers, had 2 floors, 20 scenes and over 70 creatures throughout its length
• On average, people in line waited about 20 minutes to be able to get in
• Some people couldn't make it all the way through - just too scary for them! Some went through 2 and 3 times!
• Many thanks to our amazing sponsors - see below for who helped us and how!
• Did you see the article by Tara Hatherly about our free-ticket contest in the Oshawa, Whitby and Clarington 'This Week' newspapers? She'll have another one this Friday the 21st!
• Check out some of our photos and video of the 2010 event! You'll love it!
• Photos and video from this year's run as well as comments from our feedback survey coming to this page by the end of the week

 

 

Last year we saw hundreds of people come out to take the terrifying tour. So many in fact, that we had to cut the line off starting at 8pm in order to finish in time! But this year we have a whole new, two-floor trail in the works for you and your friends to enjoy. Some of the important new features include:

• As always, the whole tour is indoors
• We've made more room indoors for the lineup and seating!
• A snack bar in the waiting area
• An entirely new route through the building
• All new scenes, stories and spooky characters
• New effectcs to freak you out!
• More tour guides to take more groups through at a time!
• Still just five bucks - the best price anywhere in Durham for a 15 to 20 minute haunted house tour!
• Chance to win the "Frightastic Ticket for 4" for free tours all evening!

This event raises funds for both the United Way of Durham Region, and the Firehouse Youth Centre, two important charities that provide vital services to the community.

 

SPONSORS

Many many thanks to the following event supporters!

• Boston Pizza Bowmanville (site), who jumped aboard as they had for our Golf tournament back in August, to offer pizza at the couter for our guests, to help us feed our big list of volunteers, to put out Fright Night flyers with their home deliveries, and in their restaurant menus!
• Home Depot Bowmanville (site), who saw the September newspaper article and called us up to offer help with materials needed to create the trail.
• Ontario Power Generators, who have for the 5th year in a row, loaned us tents needed for creating an important part of our trail structure!
• Region of Durham, who are providing us 10 cases of water to keep our volunteers well hydrated!
• Custom Printing Whitby (site), who printed our flyers at an amazing price and with the utmost quality!
• Oshawa/Whitby/Clarington This Week (site), who have done a fantastic job providing word to the masses about our ticket contest, and for the articles they have done on our event to help promote it
• CKDO (site) and KX96 (site) Radio, who have once again assisted with promotion of the event through on-air announcements and special coverage!
• Vondal Makeup, by James Bickell, who leapt at the opportunity to come do makeup for our creatures (you know, after a year of being in the ground, they need a little cleanup!) and to then also join our creature team!

 

Would your company or organization like to hel out our event? We'll work your company name into the story line of one of our scenes (if you like), include it in our marketing on this website, our annual report, and in signage at the event. Sponsoring our event, just $75, also gets you 4 tickets for the tour. You could use them as a raffle prize in your office or as a unique gift to a client of your company. Contact paul.dobbs@jhsdurham.on.ca for any questions you may have - we'd love to have you a part of our charitable effort.

If you're a Halloween product retailer and would like to loan us an item or two as part of our design, send us a note too. Things like giant spiders, animatronic creatures, special lights and other props are all welcome. We'll be happy to include your company name as above and provide you 2 tickets for the event. Its a win-win as you get extra promo for your products in a perfectly matched setting, and we gain from having cool new things to share with our visitors.

 

 

SUGGEST A SCENE - WIN FREE TICKETS!

** Contest Complete ***

We opened the doors for ideas from the public and had some pretty cool submissions from Greg, Micah, Eve and Alexa! While we didn't use one of their scenes this year, we opted to give each of them a pair of free tickets for a tour as thanks for their contributions!

It's so easy! Submit your idea, and you could win the "Frightastic Ticket for 4" to have not just one, but all night free tours through the trail (note this isn't line jumping tickets, everyone in fair turn). We have some freaky ideas for our scenes, but we're opening things up for one scene to be inspired by your creative idea! We'll post people's names a scene names they suggest here as we receive them.

The Guidelines/Rules:

1. Last day for us to accept submissions is Friday September 30th, 2011 at 4pm
2. E-mail your submission to paul.dobbs@jhsdurham.on.ca (see sample format below)
3. There is only one prize of the "Frightastic Ticket for 4" for the night of the event, granting you and three friends free tours of the trail all evening. Non-transferable. No monetary trade-in value.
4. The scene has to fit inside of a 10ft x 10ft space. Thats the size of your typical summer backyard canopy
5. A max of about 3 characters in the scene - they gotta be able to fit in that space, plus have enough room for a tour group of 4 people and a tour guide to come through your scene
6. The theme you present should be something scarey!
7. Please AVOID ideas that include the following because these characters or topics were either already used recently and we don't want to repeat them, or they may already part of this year's design:
   1. Freddy Kruegger (Nightmare on Elm St.)
   2. Michael Meyers (Halloween)
   3. Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs)
   4. Vampires (unless you had a really awesome idea...)
   5. Frankenstein
   6. Zombies
   7. Clowns
   8. A medical emergency
   9. A ghost
   10. A sherrif
   11. Spooky teacher doing a potion class

Now that might seem like its hard to come up with something when we have a list like that which eliminates some of the classics like zombies, but let your imagination run wild - what scares you? What scares your friends? What would make someone feel confusion about where to turn next and uncertainty about what might happen next?

Example of how to write up your submission

Last year one of our scenes was a medical Quarantine theme. If we had to write it up as a submission, it would have looked something like this:

• Name From: Paul D
• Contact Info: paul.dobbs@jhsdurham.on.ca
• Scene Name: Quarantine
• Number of Characters Needed: 3
• Description:
• A doctor, a doctor's assistant, and a patient are in this scene. The idea is that people are walking into an area where some kind of virus has broken out. Yellow and red lights are flashing. The patient is lying on a table behind a wall of see-through plastic. When the tour group comes in, the Doctor is in a panic that these people have broken the quarantine. The doctor points to the patient and describes some of the gruesome symptoms (purple blotches on the skin, dark eyes, oozing sores, coughing, difficulty breathing) and asks the group if anyone is experiencing these symptoms. The Assistant gets right up close to each visitor to quickly examine them using a bright light in their eyes, asks them odd questions, and suggests there are signs of infection. During this whole process, the patient is moaning in agony, begging for someone to help him/her escape this evil experiement. The whole experience would be frantic and produce confusing, contradictory messages that the tour group has to cope with (is the doctor really helping? or is the doctor running experiments on people?). The tour guide would lead the group away to safety when the assistant tries to make one of the visitors lie down on a table.
• Decorations Needed:
• Characters need costumes such as a lab coat, stethescope, clip board, pen, flash light, maybe fake blood on the front of their lab coats. The patient would need makeup to make them look sickly. The room would need things like a table with medical tools, see-through plastic drape enclosing the table the patient lies on, flashing lights, body parts in the sink or on trays, biohazard signs, green glowing goo on the tables, maybe fake bodies leaning against the wall in plastic bags or on another table