It’s off the main highway, down a country road, but just follow the screaming and you’ll get there. Now in it’s 17th year, the Haunted Trail in Grissettown promises to carry on its tradition of safely scaring the general public while raising funds to support operations of the Longwood Fire and Rescue Department.
The Haunted Trail is at the station, 758 Longwood Rd NW, near Ocean Isle Beach and open every Friday and Saturday in October as well as Halloween Night from 7-11 pm. It’s a huge fundraiser for the department, of course, and has become one of the must-do activities in an already crowded fall schedule of events in Brunswick County.
The Grissettown-Longwood Department doesn’t cover any municipal areas, but serves approximately 30 square miles in the county, including U.S. 17. Chief Tal Grissett said that last year’s numbers showed that the department had the fifth lowest budget in the county but the third highest number of calls; it’s also the only nonprofit department in the county with an ISO rating of 2, the second-highest rating possible. There are eight firefighters on the roster, and three juniors. The Chief said he staggers their shifts so they have round-the-clock coverage. Grissett shares his family name with the Department and the unincorporated community, with family in the area back to the 1830s or so. One of his ancestors is buried in the old church cemetery that is now in the Ocean Ridge community. The Department started operations in 1985, and Grissett has worked with the Department since 2001.
The Department used to do turkey shoot fundraisers, Grissett said, but looked for something new as costs increased and other departments started having safety issues with similar events. So in 2009, they started with their first-ever haunted trail. That first year, they put it on for a month and saw about 400 people, Grissett said, “Back then, it was just silly little props and stuff that we just put together.”
Now it’s a much more sophisticated event and work on the Haunted Trail is not all fun and games. Members of the department build everything in-house, so while they’re working on fundraising for the department, they’re also working on learning and refining construction and other skills.
“We buy all the components, the actuators, the cylinders, the boxes that you can program to run everything,” the Chief said. He said his sister does a good job teaching the programming. Preparations for opening the Trail start in the summer, but there is usually a lot of activity the last two weeks before opening, Grissett said. They’ll also make changes during October when the Trail is operating, if they see something that needs tweaking or need to change out some lights.
Different features on the Trail also provide training opportunities, the Chief explained. They can use the building as a nightclub, for example, and play out different scenarios that firefighters may face. Set as a nightclub, with the distractions of music and lights, means a firefighter can get hurt if not using the correct safety measures if there were an active shooter, he explained. “Then they become victims. We’ve had a whole class laid down in there,” he said. They can also use the staircases for firefighters to practice moving people, he said. “We try to keep it interesting,” he said.
The Trail is about four times as long now as it was in 2009, and sees quite a few more thrill-seekers, with last year’s operation bringing in approximately $90,000 with 5,400 visitors. About 50-60 volunteers work on any given night, with people working in the attraction itself, in concessions and selling tickets, and monitoring activity on the trail and in the parking lot. The Brunswick County Sheriff’s Office also helps with security. Grissett said he usually gets stuck working the parking lot, where he can kind of keep an eye on things, and that may have something to do with why he says the concession stand is his favorite part of the trail. The department sells all the typical festival-type food, including funnel cake, fried Oreos, nachos and cheese fries.
The Trail takes 25 to 30 minutes to go through, Grissett said. “It just depends on how fast you want to run.”
And run they do. Lining up for the beginning of the Trail gives a great view of the end of the trail, which is sometimes a shipping container with Friday the 13th’s Jason and his chainsaw. It doesn’t matter how long people wait in line and how many times they hear that chainsaw and the screaming that follows. When they get to that last scene, they become the screamers and come running out of the container, to the delight of the next groups waiting in line.
“It gets people excited. They hear the chainsaw and they think about what else could be going on in there. It adds to the curiosity and the excitement, and the nerves,” Grissett said. Some of the volunteers will work at a section of the Trail but not walk through the length of it, just not able to do it.
Grissett’s daughter Madison is in 9th grade at West Brunswick High School, and she works in the room that leans, where people step in and seem to fall down and roll around a lot. But her favorite attraction is the insane asylum. “There’s a lot of screaming in there,” she said.
“We’ve had people run into trees,” Grissett said. “You’d be surprised at how silly they sometimes act. Sometimes we get punched.”
Besides getting new and repeat customers from Brunswick County, Grissett said the Trail has a bit of a following from other states as well.
“We’ve had people travel a long way,” he said. “We had a guy who came from Ohio so he could propose to his fiancé. We had an area picked out. We were going to have some characters picked out and hold him. She didn’t understand that and she kept going, so we had to go and get her and bring her back.”
Some nights, a portion of proceeds is used to benefit area schools. This year, Union Elementary’s night is Oct. 10, Jesse Mae Monroe Elementary is Oct. 17 and Oct. 24 is for Waccamaw Elementary.
“We have a good time with it. I hope it continues,” Grissett said.
