The Scream Team

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At precisely 6 p.m. on Friday, September 23rd, Busch Gardens changes. Tick, tock, tick, tock. SIX. And … cue the screams. Creepy, ethereal music fills the air as the amusement park’s loudspeakers warn parents that what happens next might not be for young children—or the faint of heart.

It's Howl-O-Scream time.

This year marks the 19th year of Busch GardensWilliamsburg’s annual fright nights, which run Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays—and for the first time, a few Thursdays—through the end of October.

During Howl-O-Scream, the spirit of Halloween fills the park as costumed “scare actors” roam the pathways and jump out from dark corners in haunted houses. Even the shows take on dark storylines, offering tales of monsters, murderers and things that go bump in the night.

“I just love it,” said Casie Conner, a 37-year-old Poquoson resident who’s visited Howl-O-Scream for years. “The atmosphere is so cool, all fall and scary and Halloweeny.”

Howl-O-Scream started as a small, seasonal event back in 1998 as amusement parks across the country sought to extend their summertime entertainment seasons. It’s grown ever since, including making the rankings of the Top 13 Best Haunted Theme Parks on hauntworld.com, a horror-fan website that tracks all things haunted across the country.

“It’s blossomed into one of our biggest attractions,” said Phil Raybourn, the senior production manager at BuschGardens Williamsburg and one of the brains behind the annual fright fest.

What makes Howl-O-Scream unique is its attention to detail—fashioning the haunted houses and “terror-tories” to fit within the country-themed areas. Rather than just adding ghosts and goblins, creators work real legends and lore into the event.

Take the Catacombs, one of the Busch Gardens’ seven haunted houses. It’s set in France in the late 1700s, whenParis’s network of underground tunnels was used to deposit remains in an attempt to alleviate overcrowded cemeteries. The haunted house, located partly inside the Royal Palace Theater in the France area of the park, is dark and full of skeletons, rats and other things that hide underground. Scares come from every direction.

“There’s more to the story than was ever printed in textbooks,” shared Busch Gardens’ research and entertainment teams. “Because to believe it as true means that you believe in ghosts. It’s very simple really … one’s final resting place should be exactly that … final. When graves are disturbed, so are the souls of the remains, and bizarre happenings are certain to follow.”

Busch Gardens periodically changes up its haunted houses, usually keeping a house for several years. One popular one from a few years ago was 13: Your Number’s Up, a terrifying look at real fears, such as claustrophobia, agoraphobia, arachnophobia and even dentophobia—the fear of dentists. It was a favorite of Conner’s.

“That was the scariest one they’ve had,” she said. “It was the most realistic.”

Bitten, the 19th-century Eastern European haunted manor featuring vampires, is being retired this year. In its place will be a new haunted house called FrostBite, which will be located in the Curse of DarKastle attraction in Germany. Busch Gardens describes it as “a frigid journey through an enchanted stronghold that has been overtaken by icy creatures.”

As the story goes, the fortress was once home to a fire-breathing dragon.After he met his demise in an icy grave, frostbite overtook all those trapped inside.

Raybourn said the park is always changing Howl-O-Scream to keep the scares fresh and new. It keeps up with what’s popular with the times— last year, when escape rooms began popping up (escape rooms are a type of real-life puzzle in which guests must solve clues to escape from a “locked” room within a certain amount of time), Busch Gardens added its own physical adventure game, called No Escape.

The attraction is back this year, as is the new carnival-themed haunted house that debuted last year, Circo Sinistro. Located in Festa Italia, guests experience the horrors of a faded big top gone bad, filled with demented clowns, mannequins that come to life and creepy dolls.

Howl-O-Scream’s creators know many people don’t like clowns.That’s why they work so well for a psychological scare, Raybourn said. Like everything in the park, people either love or hate certain things. Howl-O-Scream is set up so that areas can be avoided—don’t go over the bridge in Italy if you want to avoid the clowns, for example. The train and sky ride are fear-free.

But scare actors do roam the park (they’re called the Scare Squad), jumping out at passersby and trying to create as many scares as possible. They wait until after 6 p.m., at which time parents are advised to get young children out of the park. Still, many children stay, and the park is mindful.

“Most performers will pull back and play to the little kids,” said Phil White, a former scare actor who has played a silo worker in the haunted maze Cornered and a knife thrower in Circo Sinistro. “You want to startle them, but not send them off screaming. The actors do a good job of playing to the age group coming through.”

Those actors, many of whom return year after year, thoroughly enjoy what they do, donning costumes and applying elaborate make-up to make sure that Busch Garden’s guests have a scary good time. They keep various tricks up their sleeve to keep the frights fresh, from attaching themselves to a bungee cord for a quick jump from the shadows, to scraping a plastic bottle along a sidewalk at just the right time in the dark.

The myth that if you hold your arms a certain way, the actors won’t bother you? Ha! Those are the ones the actors look for, White said. Those, and the tough guys who act like nothing can scare them.

“The people there can tell who’s an easy target, and I’m an easy target,” laughed 48-year-old Marla Clancy of Hampton, who celebrates her anniversary with her husband Mike every year at Howl-O-Scream. “I know it’s not real. But I scream a lot. It’s so good.”

That’s welcome news to Raybourn and the rest of the Howl-O-Scream crew, some who spend the entire year conjuring up the best scares for the season. From sinister scarecrows to possessed lumberjacks, from infected environmental researchers to naughty nurses, it’s all there.

“It’s a scary event, and people should expect to be scared,”Raybourn said. “The idea is that people can come here and get scared safely. We’re pretty proud of what we do here.”

And to the headless women in fancy Victorian dresses holding parasols who walk along Ripper Row in England, you got me.

During Howl-O-Scream, Busch Gardens is open all day Fridays through Sundays so that families can enjoy non-scare fun while still getting to see the Halloween decorations throughout the park. Land of the Dragons closes at 6 p.m., while Sesame Street’s Forest of Fun ends at 8 p.m. This year, the park will stay open until midnight on Saturdays inOctober, and also open the last two Thursdays in October.