Denise Souza sprinted outside entrance D of Fenway Park and hid behind a random woman standing on the street. She tightly clutched the woman’s leather brown jacket, closed her eyes and muttered, “f—ing clowns,” several times under her breath.
As she looked up at the stranger, whose jacket she was clasping onto for dear life, she said with staggered breath, “I’m so sorry, I don’t even know you, but. . .”
Before Souza could finish her sentence, a clown with blue hair and a painted white face tinted with “blood,” who was lurking behind the D entrance, waved at her.
“Oh f—,” she said. “The clowns are the worst. People shouldn’t come if they are afraid of clowns because 99 percent of this thing is clowns.”
Just as Souza let go of the female’s leather jacket, the clown exited the park and began walking toward her. “Oh no – Well, thanks again!” she yelled to the woman, as she ran down the street until the clown could no longer chase after her.
Souza, of Taunton, Mass., was one of the thousands who flocked to – and just as quickly away from – SpookyWorld Nightmare New England’s “The Fear of Fenway” Halloween attraction this weekend.
While Fenway Park is normally home to the Red Sox, from Thursday, Oct. 20 through Sunday Oct. 23 and Friday, Oct. 28 through Sunday, Nov. 6., the park transformed into a haunted house for monsters, zombies, ghosts and of course, clowns.
“What’s your name, little pretty?” asked Hester, a zombie with a fake broken neck, wearing a long white cloak with bloodstains. “Can we be friends?”
“We can play ring around the rosy,” said Lucy, another zombie, to a different group entering the park. “I like it because we all fall down in the end.”
After being greeted at the door by “the walking dead,” attendees are taken through three levels of haunt: 3-D Freakout, Hancock Hill Cemetery and Brigham Manor.
Upon entering the “3-D Freakout,” Spooky World-goers are given 3-D glasses to help the neon art on the walls pop out. “Creatures” are hidden in the hallways, lurking behind gravestones and waiting at the next corner to scare attendees. The 3-D Freakout leads attendees to a spinning tunnel and into the Hancock Hill Cemetery, based off a historical landmark in New England. Next, at Brigham Manor, which is based off one of the oldest manors in the Commonwealth, attendees lurk through hallways of the replica haunted house.
But even while walking toward the exit, which takes attendees through a brightly lit but eerily empty hallway, mummies and werewolves jump out from nowhere.
Fourteen-year-old Jacob Larsen, of Duxbury, Mass., said he walked into the attraction feeling afraid and left feeling very happy it was over.
“The scariest part was this freaky person who was walking around . . . it was like a he-she. It was really thin and had blood all over it.”
Larsen said some of the “creatures” even followed and screamed at him.
Larsen’s friend, 13-year-old Scott Callahan, also from Duxbury, Mass., said though the attraction was shorter than he expected, he enjoyed it.
“The best part was the spinny thing that made you feel like you were going like this,” he said, tilting from side to side to imitate the motion.
Connor McClain, 14, of Duxbury, Mass., agreed with both Callahan and Larsen but said his favorite part was the “claustrophobic tunnel” that led SpookyWorld-goers to the Fenway Park field.
Shana Dobbins, of Maine, drove to Boston with her boyfriend to see the attraction because a friend recommended it to them.
“There are a lot of different people that are in there and they are interacting with the audience,” she said. “I was looking around every corner”
“She was pulling on me a lot,” her boyfriend joked.
“No – that’s a lie, he was pulling on me,” Dobbins added.
Others said they went to Fear at Fenway to get into the Halloween spirit.
“We haven’t done anything this festive for this fall and we were looking for something that was going to be scary and there was nothing in Providence,” said Jessica Kennedy, of Providence, R.I. “I liked the 3-D effects best – just the glasses made the walls pop out. It was distracting so it was cool because you couldn’t see.”
Although it is the first year SpookyWorld is being held at Fenway Park, the attraction has been in the Northeast since 1991. Tickets for SpookyWorld are $35 on Friday and VIP tickets are $59. Thursday through Sunday, college and military IDs receive $15 off. The park is open Thursday – Sunday from 5:30 – 11 p.m.
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