Fear finds room

With more than 15-years’ experience, the crew at Belfield’s Crypt Keepers Haunted House has expanded to new, larger digs at 316 Main St. S, so with double the size comes twice the thrills, chills and frights for Halloween night. The expanded footprint, however, doesn’t make each step less scary, volunteers say, and with dozens of volunteers now holding down the fort throughout the maze-of-mayhem the group is closing in on another record year for attendees.
“It’s our dream location, and this is the biggest location I think we’ve had so far,” organizer Darcie Dennis said. “Our actors have grown a lot, and even our new ones that we’ve never had before – like Gage and Molly – they’ve never done this before but they’ve just picked it up and they are so good; we move them around every single night and tell them, ‘Now you’re in this room, now you’re in this room,’ and they’ve just killed t every single night.”
“I mean, just in this house we have 30 volunteers just to fill it, so that’s probably the most we’ve ever had,” said Ashley Gross, a younger volunteer involved in the project with her Dad, Dana Gross. “It’s getting up there close to the most we’ve had and we’re hoping to break [the record] again.”
Now that she isn’t the youngest member of the group, Ashley also has been mentoring the new additions.
“It’s not really all on one person, and we all kind of band together and if something’s not working, normally the kids are smart enough,” Ashley Gross said. “They’ll come let us know and we can try to work with them and help them kind of figure it out, but yeah, it’s nice though because the more kids we have and the more that they want to be in this, it kind of takes some of the pressure off the older geezers.”
The haunted house will be open on Friday and Saturday, Oct. 30 and Halloween night, so visitors have a couple more occasions to enjoy the show. The thrill-ride opens at 6 p.m. and volunteers stay until the final person, while people have visited from as far away as Colorado, Fargo, Billings, Mont., and some locals coming between three and five times throughout the season.
“I would say this year with having the amount of rooms that we did, we had to get really creative on coming up with new ideas and fresh stuff,” Dennis said. “We’ve got some stuff in here that’s never been done.
“We want to thank all the people that have come through and have given us great reviews and have talked to their friends into coming, and I mean, we could do this all day, but if nobody shows up, we can’t keep it going.”
The lines can get long, so the organization has a movie projector set up outside showing Halloween favorites, there are burn-barrels and heating fans in case it gets cold and Dakota Jack’s has a food truck on-site in case anybody gets peckish.
Dennis said dozens of volunteers and area businesses have been involved throughout the years and many offer everything from remnant lumber to financial support. Among the donations and offerings, Belfield Automotive Supply, Shenanigan Motors and Hall Trucking offered monetary support, while Burly’s Rough Rider and Burger Junction have pitched in with food.
Carpet World in Fargo has contributed supplies for the interior and the Dickinson Rural Fire Department donated wood over the course of the expansion, building process and improvements. Hall Trucking, Stoppleworth & Sons, NAPA, the I Don’t Know Bar and Jimmy’s Turn and Burn also have reached out to lend a hand or a donation.
“Be ready to get scared,” Dana Gross added while advising everybody to watch out for “Stilts-Man.”
For more information about the Crypt Keepers haunted House, please visit the Facebook page at www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100076499884317.