‘I just love hearing them scream’: Bluenose Ghost Festival haunts Alderney Landing
The Helen Creighton Crypt ride is exactly the sort of attraction that elevates the 18th annual Bluenose Ghost Festival from a scary-good time to a creepy cultural exploration of Maritime folklore.
“You hear a story from Helen Creighton about someone who was buried alive, and you actually get in a real coffin, and it uses movement to make you feel like you’re being taken to the cemetery and then buried alive,” says Joseph McAllister, who works in marketing and communications at Alderney Landing. “Lots of people have been saying it’s terrifying.”
The festival website says the ride uses sound, movement and “chilling effects” to make you feel like you’ve been laid to rest and warns it’s not for the claustrophobic.
Dr. Helen Creighton (1899-1989) was a folklorist from Dartmouth. She collected more than 4,000 songs and ballads and wrote 13 books of traditional songs and stories. Parks Canada honoured her as a person of national significance with a commemorative plaque, unveiled at Alderney Landing in 2018. The festival is named for Creighton’s best-known book, Bluenose Ghosts.
The centrepiece of the event is the haunted house. This year’s is the Hitchcock-inspired Manor Motel.
“It’s kind of creepy,” says Lori Fitzsimmons, a crew member with East Coast Scares, the company that builds spooky sets and brings them to life every October at Alderney Landing. “We’ve done houses and manors in the past but we’re always trying to evolve.”
Fitzsimmons says the crew breaks for a couple of months after Halloween but they start planning for the following year in January.
“We like to change it up, so we tear down walls from the previous year and start again,” she says. “One of us has an idea and we just build off one another.”
They are still making modifications Sunday evening, when the Post tours the festival site, a few hours before production ends and the show begins.
“There’s a large amount of carpentry involved, but it’s also a full-scale performance every night,” says McAllister. “We have a good group of volunteers every year.”
The “scare actors” who bring the motel to life are mostly young people who see it as an opportunity to have fun while getting volunteer experience.
“Others just love Halloween,” McAllister says.
The rest of the crew at East Coast Scares love it enough to make it a hobby all year, says Fitzsimmons, who joined the company 14 years ago.
“I just love hearing them scream,” says Fitzsimmons. “This is my Christmas.”
Founders Randy Matthews and Mike MacGillivary started in their driveway and built haunted houses in other locations before finding a home at Alderney Landing. What sets their creations apart, like Creighton’s stories, is their local connection.
“We’re very Dartmouth pride here," McAllister says. Creighton travelled Nova Scotia interviewing people about their supernatural encounters, he says. “It’s haunted stories from the perspective of people who never sought out notoriety from their experience. She was a detective of sorts.”
He says her stories are unmistakably Maritime. “It’s always lighthouses and fishermen."
In addition to the haunted house ($15) and the crypt ride ($5), festival attractions include an escape room ($5), readings from local mediums ($10) and a free spooky selfie photo studio laid out in the parking lot. Proceeds help pay for some of Alderney Landing’s free events through the summer, McAllister says.
“Scary things seem to be so dark, but everybody leaves feeling light,” he says. “There’s so much laughter that happens, and that really is a huge reason why I feel like it’s worth doing. Somehow it gets scarier every year.”
The Bluenose Ghosts Festival runs Oct. 8–11, 15–18 and 21–31 at Alderney Landing.