| Erie Times-News
A shriek, a howl and a well-timed jump scare are a few ways Renea Waychoff tries to elicit fear in visitors who negotiate their way through darkened corridors at the Eeriebyss Factory of Terror.
When unsuspecting Halloween scare-seekers make their way into her domain — the living doll room — the 29-year-old Titusville resident revels in hearing and seeing women, children and men shudder with fright.
When the popular Erie spookfest at 1053 W. 12th St. opened Friday evening, visitors made their way through a half-mile tour of frightful-themed holiday attractions.
About 25 costumed actors/creatures/monsters jumped out from hidden nooks or pawed at visitors as they traversed through attractions like the funeral parlor, graveyard room, Frankenstein room, icons of horror, voodoo room, forest witch realm, jail room and the grave robber room.
And no haunted attraction would be complete without a few deranged clowns stirring up evil.
“Putting the effort and work into scaring people is a whole different experience,” Waychoff said. “It’s high energy hearing the customers going through different rooms. As you’re waiting, you get eager and ready to scare the living daylights out of them. When you get your own scare, it’s definitely thrilling. You get that pride and you’re feeling like ‘I want to do more and bring it on,'”
Waychoff portrayed a voodoo witch at the Eeriebyss Factory of Terror in 2018 and 2019. Now she has graduated to the living doll room.
Don’t expect Barbie.
“I’ll do a jump scare and I’ll hide around the corner, but mostly I’m more of an in-your-face type — like stay with me,” Waychoff said in describing her scare methodology. “I’ll keep you and try to creep you out. I always like to keep my victims.”
Visitors are taken on a 30-minute, half-mile walking tour of scary sights that take up 25,000 square feet over two floors of the four-story, 123-year-old building.
“We like to keep the themes different,” said Autumn Coverdale, 49, manager of the haunted house-like attraction. “Some of them we keep, like the clowns, because people love them, and some of them we change up and some we use for a few years and we retire them for a little while and bring them back later.”
Greg Sutterlin, who owns the Factory of Terror building, opened Eeriebyss in 2013. City of Erie officials closed Eeriebyss after it was opened for one week in 2016 because of code enforcement issues.
Eeriebyss reopened in 2018 after Sutterlin revamped the haunted attraction.
“My birthday is on Halloween and this is an exciting time of the year for me,” said Sutterlin, 57, a Conneaut Lake resident. “When I was a young boy, I built haunted houses in my garage. It’s been in the blood for a long time.”
About 3,000 have visited the Eeriebyss attraction annually, Sutterlin said.
“I’m hoping this will allow people to have a much-needed frightful and scary break from their daily routine,” Sutterlin said.
Preparing for the opening of another season of frights is Coverdale’s passion.
“The highlight of my year is opening this building,” she said. “I’m very excited and I get to enjoy hearing the screams.”
Eeriebyss is open Fridays and Saturdays from 7 p.m. to midnight and Sundays from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. through Nov. 1. Admission is $20. Tickets can be purchased at the door or online at www.eeriebyss.com.
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, occupancy will be reduced to 50 percent capacity, and staff will maintain social distancing among guests by limiting tour groups to six people or fewer, Coverdale said.
More than 50 costumed actors have participated in Eeriebyss in previous years, but only about 25 will dress up for events this month, Coverdale said.
“Everybody is required to wear masks and the actors are, too,” Coverdale said. “If the actors are wearing a rubber mask, they’re wearing a small mask underneath it. We want our actors to be safe as well as our patrons. It’s important to us.”
“We’re going to sanitize before everyone gets here, we’ll sanitize throughout the evening and when we shut down, and all the actors have hand sanitizer available to them at all times,” Coverdale said. “We have sanitizing stations for the patrons and hand-wash stations outside.”
Tour groups will be spaced about 5 minutes apart to maintain social distancing, Coverdale said.
“You’re in pretty far on the tour before the next group comes, so you’re not going to be in contact with them,” Coverdale said.
She’ll dress up as a demon this month.
“The times are really scary outside of here right now and I hope this provides kind of a fun scare instead of everything going on outside that is actually scary,” Coverdale said. “I’m hoping this will be something fun. I hope everybody can come out and relax a little bit.”
When blood-curdling shrieks and screams fill the cavernous facility, Coverdale knows she and her staff are doing their jobs.
“Screaming is my favorite sound,” Coverdale said with a laugh. “When the patrons are screaming and the guys are screaming and falling on the ground, I know I did everything I possibly could right. It’s just awesome how scared some people get.”
Waychoff takes pride in being responsible for producing some of that fear. She sees every level of fright as a costumed actor.
“Guys get scared so easy,” Waychoff said. “It’s surprising because you’ll see this big guy and expect him to be like, ‘Oh, this is nothing,’ and then you jump-scare them or get too close to them and they cower. It’s not just the ladies. There are men who will hide behind their wives. The guys who scream are my favorite ones. There have been a few who have screamed like a girl. You have to stay in character because you just want to bust out in laughter.”
Contact Ron Leonardi at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter@ETNleonardi.
If you go:
Eeriebyss Factory of Terror
1053 W. 12th St., Erie
www.Eeriebyss.com; 814-213-0120
