$260,000.00 Makeover of all new TERROR!

By MEGAN POINSKI
Staff Writer
PAINESVILLE - Without the actors, smoke, gore or sound effects, Michael Pattison said the Manor of Lost Souls, part of the Nightmare in Painesville at the Lake County Fairgrounds, is a haunted house. Furniture moves, radio stations change and haunted house professionals are spooked.
"People say, 'I thought you didn't allow (actors) touching,'" Pattison said. "And we don't. It's the spirits. Even I've been touched. You'll walk into a room and all of the sudden it's freezing. One time we had a rocking chair and it was rocking by itself and we didn't have a mechanism to rock it. And some people can hear whispering.... A weird feeling just passes through you there."
Sounds like the perfect setting for a Halloween haunted house.
The Manor of Lost Souls is one of four haunted houses at the Lake County Fairgrounds this year for the 14th annual Nightmare in Painesville. This year's Nightmare was given a $260,000 makeover so the haunts can keep up with the spirits who live in the Manor of Lost Souls.
"We didn't want anyone to say, 'We've been there before,'" said Pattison. "Everything is totally new, even some of the cast members. We really wanted people to come out and show no mercy."
These efforts are not in vain; the horrific scenes and terrifying actors don't stop, no matter how loud visitors scream or how quickly they run away.
Nightmare in Painesville is the descendant of Pattison's idea a decade and a half ago: a haunted festival. Pattison has been expanding the concept of the haunted festival since its inception. Several designers and makeup artists are graduates of prestigious art schools and this year's cast members attended Nightmare Academy where they were taught how to apply makeup to provide a maximum scare and become their characters.
Along with the Manor of Lost Souls, visitors to the Nightmare in Painesville can travel through the Mind of Madness, Hell Hole and Skins of Sins, all other haunted houses.
Only handheld flashlights illuminate the way through the Manor of Lost Souls. Pattison said it's the world's first flashlight haunted house, designed to create creepy shadows and add to the chilling effects provided by actors and scenery. The Manor is set up like a Victorian mansion, complete with sweeping stairways, framed portraits, and fleur-de-lis patterned walls. In addition to the spirits Pattison said lurk there, ghoulish characters who could have stepped out of a horror movie scare anyone who walks by.
Head scene designer Jason Blaszczak said the Manor's intricate details were well-planned out, but physically put together at the last minute.
"We put this all together in about a week," he said. "It was a lot of crazy hours and not much sleep." Blaszczak said many employees worked 24 or more uninterrupted hours in the days before the festival opened Sept. 28.
Visitors touring the Mind of Madness get to see gruesome scenes from the lives of infamous serial killers. While walking through the house, Blaszczak gave an interesting yet disturbing commentary on the scenes, the murderers, and what they did with their victims. Visitors encounter Charles Manson, Jack the Ripper, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, all enticing them to be the next victim. Blaszczak said he did all of the research for the house and in retrospect, librarians probably found him a little odd; he asked to find very specific details about horrific murders.
Visitors take a trip into Hades and even get to hear Lucifer cackle in the Hell Hole. Pattison said everyone wants to take a trip to hell, but it's a "vacation you'll hope is over quickly." Many of the scenes are made up to be conventional fiery pits of torture, but there is a dentist's office with the doctor wielding a large drill along the way. Blaszczak hid in a dark corner, watching visitors. A group of singing teenage girls holding hands wearing hooded sweatshirts walked through. As a monster jumped out of a small cave, they all screamed the same high pitched scream and broke into a bouncy run.
"This is when you know all your hard work has paid off. I live for this," Blaszczak said, shouting praises to the monsters after the girls had left.
Skins of Sins is a "high impact" haunted house, Pattison said. Visitors stumble through mazelike passages and come to scary scenes, where the lights turn on only long enough to see what's going on. Monsters reached out of dark holes in the walls and appeared around dark corners. And in the air was always the sound of screaming.
After walking through the Manor of Lost Souls, a young teenage boy with a group of his friends said he wasn't impressed.
"It's scary for girls, but not for me," he said with a shrug.
Some boys close to his age a few steps away from Hell Hole had a completely different attitude, anxiously badgering Blaszczak with questions.
"I hear a chainsaw in there. Are there many chainsaws? Where are they? I don't like chainsaws. I hope this isn't too scary," he said, making Blaszczak chuckle.
Mandy Sweeney of Fairview Park stood in the rain as part of a long line to get into the Manor of Lost Souls. She and her friends had come Tuesday night, but found the Nightmare was not open, so they returned on the weekend despite freezing drizzle.
"This is the best haunted house in the area, everyone always says, so we just had to come," she said.
Nightmare in Painesville, at the Lake County Fairgrounds, is open Fridays and Saturdays nfrom 7 p.m.-midnight and Sundays from 7-10 p.m. Admission is $14 for all four haunted houses. For more information, call 440-954-4551 or visit http://Nightmare.S5.com.


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Meet real ghosts from dusk 'til dawn
By MEGAN POINSKI
Staff Writer
PAINESVILLE - Michael Pattison is inviting northeast Ohio to a haunted sleepover. But it's a sleepover with a catch: the guests have to spend the night with "awakened" ghosts, and are allowed no light but a flashlight.
Pattison, as well as the entire Nightmare in Painesville staff, is convinced the building of the Manor of Lost Souls is haunted. The spirits only come out in October, when the fairgrounds turn into a haunted extravaganza and the ghosts come out to play.
Some of the supernatural occurrences that have taken place in the haunted house are illegible writing on the wall, changing radio stations, moving furniture and chilling feelings, staff members said.
Pattison said he did research on the fairgrounds and found they had been closed for a few years because of poor attendance. An old historian told him the rumor that the fairgrounds had really been closed because snow on the roof of a schoolhouse caused it to collapse, killing children and teachers inside. This story is not existent in records, the historian said, because in those days, newspapers did not print bad news. The building put on the school's site is the Manor of Lost Souls now.
The house has been haunted since Pattison began Nightmare in Painesville at the fairgrounds, but the staff kept quiet about it, fearing they'd be called crazy. After hearing the schoolhouse rumor, Pattison decided to make it public. He has invited a renowned "ghost finder" to look for wandering spirits in the house, and he's inviting brave (living) souls to spend a night there.
After certifying that people are of sound mind and body, Pattison said he would shut them in the haunted house with a security guard from sunset to sunrise.
Pattison received more than 200 phone calls about this invitation, and the first four overnight guests stayed Thursday. Pattison, the brains behind Nightmare in Painesville since its inception, thinks this is a very frightening proposition.
"I wouldn't do it," he said resolutely. He wants people who would to call him at 440-255-4948.