It is near pitch dark as your feet shuffle across the creaky floor toward the next room, where startled screams allude to the frights to come. As you stop for a breath in front of the doorway, something grabs hold of your ankle and quickly lets go. A small scream escapes as you lurch forward through the door and into the next hallway.
“There are secret passages that help the staff get around and push certain buttons for certain people. I don’t want to say too much, it’s our secret,” says Glory Reimer, owner and creator of Creepy Hollow Haunted Mansion.
You see a figure walking slowly toward you as you enter the hallway – only when you touch the mirror do you realize it was your frightened reflection looking back at you. With screams coming from both ends of the hallway, you find your bearings and walk on.
“One person can do all kinds of things in that house to torture the group,” says Reimer.
For 15 years she and her family have run a haunted house. Five of which have been spent at her current location, on an acreage near Warner. The family first started giving tours of their home in Stirling, which Reimer says was a 100-year-old brick house with a creepy, undeveloped basement.
“We used to go down and play in the dark… and the neighbors used to come play in the dark. That’s kind of where it started, next thing you know the whole community was in on it,” she says.
Reimer moved to the new location after having disagreements with a few Stirling residents about her house and business. She says some people accused her of not having a proper business license.
“It’s a village of 1,100 people and we had five or six that didn’t like what we did and somehow, they got their way and we left,” she says.
Moving gave the family a chance to expand their operation. They now have a campground and ample space to host events.
“We have 20 acres instead of three. It’s been a lot of fun to just let the imagination go wild,” says Reimer.
Since they could no longer give tours of the old brick house, Reimer and her family had to design a new haunted house.
“We could plan the perfect layout and create the maze it needs to be in order to make people feel like, ‘does it ever end,’” she says.
The designing process was her favourite part of the move and the old Stirling house provided inspiration for the new haunted mansion.
“The experience was pretty cool, I got scared… I enjoyed scaring [other guests],” says Roger Metz, a visitor at Creepy Hollow.
When the family first started their haunted house, things came together slowly, according to Reimer. She says they liked collecting antiques and paintings and displaying them for tourists gave them a good use for the collectables. Creepy Hollow is run by the family with help from volunteers, including up to 24 actors on some nights, according to Reimer.