Albany Fright Nights are back | PHOTOS

ALBANY — After taking the Halloween season off last year, Albany Fright Nights has returned and will once again be scaring up a good time when this year’s Fright Nights Haunted House tomorrow night.

Mobile users click here for photos

Visitors to this year’s haunted house, which has moved to a new location inside the old Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Store next to Toys R Us, are in for quite a chilling adventure as they traverse the haunted house’s maze-like interior and encounter a horde of terrifying characters and scenes.

According to Tim Thompson, who is the director of Fright Nights, this year’s haunted house features more than 30 “scare scenes” depicting any number of horror-related themes, including a scary barn, a cemetery, a surgical area and an abandoned gas station.

There are also rooms and sections devoted to horror movies and television shows such as those inspired by “The Exorcist,” “Sinister,” and “The Walking Dead.”

Additionally the haunted house, or “haunt,” as Thompson calls it, has areas designed to create feelings of claustrophobia and disorientation.

The new and improved Fright Nights haunt also has an extensive area made up to look like a demented carnival complete with scary clowns and circus attractions.

“We’ve got a little bit of everything,” said Thompson. “We’ve always considered ourselves like a flea market; we give them the space to set their table up and put out all their wares. Everybody basically already has their scenes and they’ve been doing it for years, so you basically give them their space.”

Those people that Thompson is referring to are the other members of Albany Fright Nights, all of whom are volunteers that work on the haunt in their free time.

In fact, Thompson said he and the other members essentially work on Fright Nights year round, spending off months collecting and building items to use in the following year’s haunts.

“We all have a passion for this,” said Thompson. “We started working on this year’s haunt back in January.”

Thompson said there are about 50 volunteers involved, all of whom contribute to both the building and the scene acting during the Fright Nights run and all of them have different areas of expertise.

“It’s weird,” Thompson said. “We just found each other. I can build anything with wood, but like the electrical and stuff like that, I don’t touch that. Guys were just like, ‘well I can do this,’ or ‘I’d love to add that.’ And that’s how it all came together. “I started this in 2000 and I didn’t know any of (the other volunteers). We did this for the Lion’s Club back then and then the next thing I know I started meeting people through this thing. It’s amazing how the Halloween season brought so many of us weird people together that all share this same fascination.”

For Thompson that fascination with the season and with haunted houses in particular was fostered when as a young man he volunteered to work at a large haunted house in the Miami area where he grew up.

“I volunteered as a monster and l loved it so much the next year they asked me if I wanted to join the building committee, so I was on the building committee and helped them put the stuff together,” said Thompson. “That’s when I started saying, ‘well that’s how it’s done, that’s how you do that.’ That first one was back in 83, so we’re going on like 33 years now.”

And while Thompson admits that after more than 30 years working on haunted houses some of what he does is old hat, but despite that he has continued to learn new things and develop fresh ideas as trend have changed and evolved.

“I’ve been doing this for a long time,” said Thompson. “From the days when haunted houses used to be where the grapes were eyeballs and the spaghetti noodles were the brains and you just put your hand in a box. That’s the way it used to be back in the day. And the costumes used to be those Cooper costumes with rubber bands around the mask and a vinyl suit.

“Now everything’s gotten more technical. Everything is high tech. You’ve got to use pneumatics and all that mess to do it. It changes every year and gets a little bit more technical.”

As technology has continued to evolve Thompson said the Fright Nights crew has not only learned to adapt but has also gotten good at working on a budget to develop exciting new things for each haunted house.

Not only does Fright Night use a variety of animatronic characters and lighting rigs, it even uses things that are completely unique to Southwest Georgia, like the spinning tunnel that was introduced three years ago and has become a crowd favorite.

Thompson said a store-bought spinning tunnel would cost over $8,000, but volunteers manged to build one for Albany, which is the only spinning tunnel at any haunted house within 150 miles, for roughly $1,000.

“These guys are amazing,” said Thompson. “They do an awesome job.”

Because of the hard work of those volunteers Thompson estimates that Albany Fright Nights will entertain an average of 1,000 guests a night for the seven nights it is in operation, meaning that the by the end of Halloween night between 6,500 and 8,000 people will venture through.

Thompson also had great praise for this year’s event sponsor, the In Bound Gymnastics Booster Club, which took over hosting duties this year as part of its fundraising efforts.

“The proceeds are going to several places,” said booster club spokesperson Jamie Ginter. “We’re going to make monetary donations to Mission Change and the Lily Pad. Those are the two organizations that we chose to donate to as the booster club. The other remaining money is going to go back to our girls to go to local, state and national championships throughout the season. Gymnastics is not a cheap sport, especially when you start competing. These parents can spend $500-600 to go out of town for one three-hour competition. Hopefully this will be the best fundraiser we’ve ever done.”

This year’s Albany Fright Nights Haunted House will open tonight and will run each Friday and Saturday night from 7-11 p.m. through Halloween night.

The cost to enter the haunted house is $10 per person and while there is no age limit organizers strongly discourage children under 9 years old.

“Ultimately we leave it up to the parent but we strongly recommend nobody less than nine come in,” said Thompson. “We’re not going to water it down and we can’t guarantee these children are going to make it through. We’ve had a lot of kids that can’t and we end up having to rescue them.”

Thompson said the haunted house is also not recommended for anyone with heart problems, seizures brought on by flashing lights or pregnant woman.

This weekend Fright Nights is offering a special admission rate of $5 to area first responders such as police, fire, and EMS workers, and also extending that special rate to active and retired military with a valid ID.

The new location for Fright Nights is 2601 Dawson Road Suite H2 in Albany.