Tours in Schenectady highlight buildings and locales where ghosts are said to linger. The haunted museum at the state museum is bigger and better than ever, and The Liberty Ridge corn maze once again has horrors lurking in the stalks.
The area apparently is a natural fit for people who like frights. Maureen Gebert, who leads some of the ghost tours in Schenectady’s Stockade district, said people on the tour commonly share stories of houses and buildings in the city that they’ve heard are haunted.
But it takes more than that for a location to be included in the tour.
We research all our stories, she said. `We don’t just take any story people give us.`
Gebert, for example, spoke to a man who recently saw a ghost at the Van Dyck restaurant, she said. The eatery was reportedly once a brothel, and one of the employees hung herself there. Now, she frequently shows up to haunt the building, Gebert said.
Gebert is part of the Schenectady Heritage Area, and she is joined in giving the tours by an array of volunteers, including several drama students at Schenectady County Community College. The guides are free to wear costumes and to adopt personalities for the tours — `I tell them to be themselves and tell the story they want to tell,` Gebert said.
The Stockade tours are held each Friday in October, leaving every 30 minutes from Clinton’s Ditch, 112 S. College St. The price is $10 and reservations are necessary, as groups are capped at 30 to ensure everyone can hear. Reservations can be made by calling Clinton’s Ditch at 346-8376.
Gebert said that while the experience is educational, touching on a lot of the history of the Stockade, younger children enjoy it because `there’s enough ghoulish stories to keep them interested.`
The only people who might want to take a pass on the tour is those who have trouble walking, she said, noting that the tour is about a mile long and includes hills.
There’s considerably less walking involved at the state museum’s `haunted museum of unnatural history,` which visitors can walk through in about 15 minutes. The attraction was the brainchild of museum educator Truemaster Trimingham, who decided seven years ago to stage a haunted museum for kids taking part in after-school programs at the museum. The next year, museum staff also got to enjoy Trimingham’s handiwork, and the consensus was that it should be open to the public.
Now, many of the kids who Trimingham first sought to entertain help him put the haunted museum together, constructing theme rooms such as `The Meat Locker` and `Die Laughing` from `junk just laying around` the museum.
`I’ll be like, ‘Those trunks! They look old. Let’s include them,’` Trimingham said. `I’ve always had a kind of creepy imagination.`
Using recycled museum exhibits help make the haunted museum cost effective, Trimingham said. Admission is $7 (except on Halloween, when sponsor National Grid will pick up the tab) and helps fund the museum’s after-school programs. The haunted museum will open in exhibition hall, on the museum’s first floor, for two weekends, Oct. 18 and 19 and Oct. 25 and 26, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Halloween night, Friday, Oct. 31, from 6 to 10 p.m.
About 6,000 people passed through the haunted museum and an accompanying pumpkin patch geared at younger kids last year, Trimingham said. The crowd frequently includes families, and the haunted museum has been catching on with high school and college students, too.
`We’re a growing phenomenon,` Trimingham said.
Cynthia and Robert Gifford know a thing or two about growing a Halloween attraction. About a decade ago, the owners of Liberty Ridge Farms in Schagticoke were looking for ways to make more revenue on their farm when they read about corn mazes in a newspaper’s travel section. Since the couple was already growing corn, they decided to take a shot at hosting a corn maze, pairing with a company in Utah called The Maize. The Giffords grow their corn on a grid, and The Maize uses a special computer program to determine how the Giffords should cut the corn to achieve their desired design.
The Giffords do their cutting in June, spending about a week in the fields with a special mower and other tools. In August, they have a helicopter fly over to make sure the design has grown in properly — `We haven’t made a mistake yet,` Cynthia Gifford said with a laugh.
When autumn rolls around, the corn maze, which features an election theme this year, is open to the public and school groups during the week. But on weekends in October, it transforms into a haunted corn maze that Gifford recommends is suitable only for those 10 and older, noting that the maze’s fear factor has gotten high marks from participants in years past.
`It’s the anticipation when you’re out in the corn,` Cynthia said. `You never know if somebody’s going to be jumping out around the next corner.`
The Giffords have hired more than 25 actors to staff the maze at 29 Bevis Road. They will serve up scares each Friday and Saturday night until Saturday, Nov. 1. Admission is $15 and includes the `Forest of Fear` and the `Fort Hunter Stockade,` a labyrinth of fences.“
