Dead North is a haunted event in North Danville in its 19th year. It features animatronics and special effects and live actors, and it sells out every time. Mike Boudreau is the owner and operator of Dead North, which is right next to his Great Vermont Corn Maze, which independent producer Erica Heilman tried last year, without success. So she gave the haunted option a shot.
I went to Dead North, on a beautiful night for a haunted house ... I guess.
Dead North is not a haunted house, as I learned that night. It’s an awful and dark mile through cornfields and haunted buildings and, scariest of all, Danville residents. Neighbors like JP and Bill and Logger Dave, only tonight they’re psychotic clowns, and serial killers.
Here’s Mike Boudreau.
Mike Boudreau: “So as you’re going through the haunt, and the screams are happening, and the monsters are coming at you, they’re actually neighbors, friends and families. We don't have any actors. We actually have just Joe and Jill, neighbors down the street who’ve been helping us for 19 years.”
So Mike set me up with a group, one of whom was Jon from Stowe, who’s been coming here for years.
Me: Why are you doing this?
Jon: “I love being scared. My first date with my husband was to [Amityville II]. I love this. The very first time I came, I came with a friend of mine, who screamed the whole way, ‘I have a heart condition, stop doing this to me!’ He doesn’t really have a heart condition. I wouldn’t miss this, even if I'm by myself. At this point, Mike’s setting me up with some screaming local wives and you ... And I’m delighted.”
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Me: “Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. Here we go people.”
There's spooky music. People are screaming.
Mike: “Denise, who is a real estate agent and a bus driver, she’s driven my kids for years, right as they went through school, her big thing is, she knows she’s not real tall, so she always likes a taller vantage point to drop down on people.”
Dogs are barking.
Mike: “Now Bill has been with us since day one. Great neighbor. He also runs a chainsaw. He's done a variety of different scares. He now comes with his son who is also helping in the clown area. Bill is normally, he works with the town crew taking care of our roads, keeping everything passable around here. And then on these weekends he comes out, and ... the women in his family loved to be scared, so when they come through, he and pretty much all of us get to have a double-scare on family members. So it’s a win-win for everybody.”
Me: “Oh my god I’ve lost the group. I think I’m outside. OK now we’re getting into the corn here… OK we’re in the corn. There’s just so much corn. Oh my god, miles of corn. I better be getting paid a lot for this. It’s not entirely clear if I’m in a path. “
A chainsaw starts.
Me: “OH MY GOD!"
Mike: “Then we have Logger Dave, who actually does our logging on the farm, to take care of our forest management program. So Logger Dave offered to lend a hand — he made the mistake of offering. And he went out with his chainsaw, he and his son, and they were immediately hooked. So Logger Dave runs our chainsaws. And now recently he brought his daughter this year. So the chainsaw area is covered by Logger Dave and his family.”
There is lots of screaming from ... me.
Me: “Oh my god, there’s pumpkin heads! Oh my god!”
Mike: “So another resident that’s been with us for years, since day one for 19 years, is JP, who is now a retired state police officer. But for years, he was in charge of all the deaths and murders in Vermont, so he had a pretty stressful job. This is one of his getaways. There were times he’d take a week vacation to come help. He ran chainsaws for years. This year he actually took over our new toxic dump. He actually built the first toxic dump. All day long he’d come up, walk around and just take junk off the farm and put it where it needed to be, and created all sorts of horrific, shadowy places for it to hide in.”
Me: “OK, we’re in the grass, it seems to be outside. It appears we’re in a western town. We're entering a saloon...Oh no!”
There’s scary laughing, more chainsaws.
Me: “Oh my god! It’s Jason, everybody! Oh my god! Oh geezum crow! Oh, get me out!”
Mike: “Occasionally we meet up with people who just fit in perfectly. In the clown section we had a man named Henry, and he and his wife really enjoyed psychotic clowns after they went through the haunt one year. We got talking... now for the last few years, Henry and his wife and his kids all come and live in our psychotic circus area.”
Me: “I need a cocktail.”
Mike: “He works with traffic control most of the year. And he’s a part-time wrestler as well. This is just something that, it's coincidence, they love psycho clowns. And they didn’t want to do anything else but that. And they just come in and they just destroy the psycho circus.”
Me: “Scary clowns!”
Mike: “Henry’s been with us now for several years, but again it’s just great, ‘cause it’s something they can do as a family.”
Me: “Oh please don’t hurt me…”
Mike: “It’s really nice to think that in the small little town, little corner of Vermont, where you might expect maybe somebody in a sheet to say ‘boo’, we’ve created something that people can be really proud of, knowing they’ve all been out in the dark and the rain or the moonlight or in the dirt, screaming and yelling at people…”
Me: “WE’VE GOT TO GO FASTER.”
Mike: “And we’re still making more nightmares every year, and we’re already working on next year’s nightmares.”
Never, ever again.
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