(4) ä Special effects artist Dan Click of Newton Falls, right, does makeup on Stephen Lelesch of Newton Falls, who plays Bonkers the Clown at Fear Forest on Tod Ave. SW in Lordstown. Click said haunts are fun to work because while he has to be quick, he can also be creative with makeup.

YOUNGSTOWN — The big, stone building across the street from Ursuline High School was already a little spooky — it was, after all, the McVean & Hughes Funeral Home for about 70 years — so it is no wonder that owner Erik Engartner had wanted for several years to turn it into a haunted house.

“I always thought the house was kind of perfect with the turn-of-the-century architecture, both inside and outside the building, and it was just calling to me to be a haunted house,” Engartner said.

Now, the 121-year-old house-turned-funeral home-turned-event center has taken its place among the local haunts as Nine Lives at The Wickyards, running from 7 to 11 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays in October.

Attendees of Nine Lives at The Wickyards walk through the entire house, including the parts that were used for funeral preparation, while also traveling through a storyline revolving around a mad scientist whose experiments aren’t going so well, Engartner said.

Local bands play an intermission performance around 9 p.m. each night. Upcoming performances are Lilith Mors on Friday and The Head Trips on Saturday.

Engartner said the haunt is good for families because most kids can handle its level of scare.

“It’s not something you’re going to have nightmares over, but it definitely gives you a thrill of just being scared and going through an erie, creepy mansion,” he said.

Plus, the old house is known to have some actual ghosts — Engartner said paranormal investigators have picked up activity there.

SCARY STATE

While Nine Lives may be the Mahoning Valley’s newest haunt, and seemingly the only that involves navigating an actual funeral home, it is far from the only place to get a good scare.

The whole state of Ohio is a pretty scary place to be, at least in October.

The state is among the top in the U.S. for haunted houses. In fact, online haunted house directory The Scare Factor lists Ohio as the state with the most haunted houses — 127, to California’s 120 and Pennsylvania’s 101.

The states with the fewest haunts, by the way, are Alaska, with just two, Hawaii with three and Wyoming with four, according to The Scare Factor. Puerto Rico rings in at the bottom of the barrel with just one listed haunted house.

While The Scare Factor’s numbers might not be exact, there is no doubt that haunts are popular in Ohio, with at least half a dozen trails, houses and hayrides operating in the Valley alone.

MANUFACTURING FEAR

Allen Tura of the Warren area has been in the haunt business since the late 1990s, when he started designing for a haunt in Canfield, he said.

Tura makes Halloween props such as mechanical alligators and dinosaurs, and builds spinning vortex tunnels through his company, GEP Productions. He started because he felt the props on the market weren’t good enough quality.

“I don’t have any diplomas. I don’t have any certifications. I just have a good imagination and a mindset to design mechanical items,” Tura said.

He and his wife, Juliana, opened Fear Forest in Lordstown in 2004, first as a haunted hayride and eventually as a haunted hayride, house, trail and corn maze — “four terrifying attractions.”

On any given night, the haunt has around 80 actors, most dressed in terrifying costumes.

Jeremy Cross of Warren, a veteran performer at Fear Forest, has spent October weekned nights for the past seven years in a metal casket in a cornfield, waiting to pop up and scare passersby.

“It’s actually a lot of fun to scare people,” Cross said. “Each of us, we kind of just do it in our own way.”

Cross, whose favorite holiday is Halloween, wears a full-face of zombie makeup, which is applied by either Sarah Rizer or Dan Click of Newton Falls. The special effects artists give Fear Forest’s legion of monster actors their frightening looks with face paint, latex scars and plenty of fake blood. The pair has worked on movies, but said they enjoy haunts just as much.

“The haunts are fun. You have to be quick but can also be creative,” Click said.

Back at the Wickyards, the building has been an event space for about six-and-a-half years, but the haunted house is very different from the concerts and photoshoots it usually hosts.

Engartner said that while concerts involve entertaining one group for several hours, the haunt is about moving multiple groups of people through the building. It features about 11 actors, many who did not have scare experience before.

“We had a few training sessions just to familiarize the cast with the environment and let them be creative in their own way,” Engartner said. “They have ideas I won’t have have, and they can share amongst each other.”

Jeffrey Jiang of Cortland, who has overseen Maniacs in the Woods, a Boy Scout-run haunted trail at the Bazetta Optimist Club, for six years, said it’s no small task putting on a haunt.

He said the scouts put about four months of preparation into the event, planning a theme and maping out the flow of roughly 15 scenes scattered along the trail at the Bazetta Optimist Club. They shop for new props every November, when Halloween items go on sale.

“The amount of work that goes into it is astonishing,” Jiang said.

LONGSTANDING POPULARITY

The work, it seems, has been paying off as haunted houses across the state remain popular. But, what keeps the crowds coming?

Haunted houses have been popular since I was a young kid,” Tura said. He remembers going to the local Warren Jaycees haunted house near the Hot Dog Shoppe.

Cross likewise recalled his family hosting a haunted house at Skyway Drive-In in Warren when he was young, and his uncle running Hotel of Horror in Sharon, Pa.

“People like to be scared,” Tura said. “They like that level of intensity.”

Jiang chalks the popularity of haunts in Ohio up to people staying occupied in the fall: “I think haunted houses are a way for us to explore before the winter comes,” he said.

He agrees, though, that people like to be scared — it’s a matter of excitement and adventure, he said.

“I have people that come every single night who are absolutely terrified to be there, but can’t stop themselves.”

And why stop, when there’s so much fright to go around?

Other haunts in the valley include Fearhaven Haunted Forest in Niles, Hubbard Haunted Woods, and Nightmare at the Canfield Scare Grounds.

avugrincic@tribtoday.com