Perhaps my most memorable, most exciting Halloween came when I was fifteen, in
1974. At that time, much to my parents’ chagrin, I spent most of my waking
moments immersed in scary, monstrous, otherworldly realms of fiction —
cinematic as well as literary. In May of that year,
The Martinsville Bulletin ran a full-page feature about me, following my sale of a
Godzilla vs. the Thing filmbook to the
long-dead but well-remembered monster movie tabloid called The Monster Times (see “Accent on Nerds” from
October 6). I have no recollection of how anyone at the Bulletin came to
find out about this particular feather in my cap, but the piece caught
numerous eyes, including those of the Associated Press, who picked up
the article and thus facilitated its publication in newspapers around the
country. And as a result of that, WLVA-TV, Channel 13, out of
Lynchburg, VA, sent a crew to my junior high school one day to
interview me that I might further elaborate on my blathering from the
newspaper article. Exciting times. Also as a result, a couple of members of
the local Jaycees, who had begun plotting a massive haunted castle
attraction for Martinsville, sought me out to recruit my help with the
planning, design, and execution of this, their most ambitious community
project.
And so, excited beyond words, I attended a series of meetings with the
Jaycees to brainstorm ideas for a bona fide castle of horrors, to be set up
in an abandoned warehouse in the small community of Koehler, just
outside of Martinsville. All the classic creatures would be showcased in
their own specially designed chambers: Dracula, the
Frankenstein Monster, the Wolfman, the Mummy,
Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde... with a pretty fair budget to boot.
Finally, one evening, just about sunset, the redoubtable
Dickie Globman (whose wife, Pam, is nowadays a geocacher
of high reputation), came by the house, picked me up in his MG sports car
(which was a thrill because I had never ridden with a madman in a sports car
before) and drove us out to Koehler.
Holy Yog! The warehouse, an old stone monstrosity half-hidden by trees and
rising above the nearby Smith River, was imposing and downright scary
even before any attractions had been set up. To enter, you had to go through
these massive doors and down a long, earthen-floor passageway into a vast
cellar with five-foot-diameter stone columns at regular intervals. What a
perfect place to set up a maze of horror chambers! I was ecstatic, and to
return a few times to contribute to the physical grunt work — sweeping away
actual cobwebs and piles of dust, setting up sheets of polyurethane,
connecting miles of extension cords, and the like — only heightened my
anticipation of its completion. On top of everything, I got to write and
illustrate the promos that ran in the Martinsville Bulletin. I wish I still had some of those little ads because, as crude as they
might have been, they were among the most fun artistic projects I ever
undertook.
For whatever reason, I wasn’t present when the actors for the various
horrific roles came on the scene, but on opening night, my little brother and I dared to enter the now-transformed halls of this most haunted
of haunted castles.
I couldn’t believe it. I had been in some big, scary, professional haunted
attractions before, but this thing blew me away. The rooms, full of
sparking, screeching scientific instruments; massive spiderwebs; fluorescent
passageways leading to dizzying abysses, all were fantastic. And through it
all, expertly made-up monsters roamed, screamed, and grabbed (ah, for those
good old days!).
This place... this spooky, spooky place... was Halloween heaven. And from
that moment on, to me, the old Koehler warehouse became known as simply “The
Spooky Place.” At some later time, one company or another purchased the
warehouse and returned it to its more traditional usage, which sadly put the
kibosh on the classic haunted castle. The Jacyees moved the attraction to
another location or two in Martinsville proper, and I think they were pretty
good, but I had no hand in them. The most memorable thing about one of those
was coming out of the exit and stepping on a stray roofing tack, which went
through my shoe and punctured my sole, so that, upon taking off said shoe, I
left a lovely trail of very real blood out to the parking lot. At least I’d
had a tetanus shot at the time, and the wound healed up without
complication.
Nowadays, the Koehler warehouse is still operating, I believe, but it’s
still a spooky, spooky place, and I used to have a geocache placed right out
in front of it. That one had to be archived, but I still have an active
cache on the Smith River Fieldale Trail, just across the river, that
overlooks the warehouse. I doubt the Koehler warehouse will ever again serve
its true purpose — as a haunted castle — but the
memories it offered me, and many others, are priceless.
In 1982, I made something of a return to the fold for that year’s Koehler
Halloween event. It, too, was classic stuff, although the rest of that
Halloween season was far from joyous. More on that one tomorrow, or whenever I
can get around to it.
Be spooky. Safe, but spooky.