Volunteers prepare Haunted Fortress for autumn scares

STANFORDVILLE — Throughout August and September, in the woods off Creamery Road in Stanfordville, volunteers are needed to cut back overgrowth, repair sets, and prepare the Haunted Fortress for its October opening.

Greg Arent, a Clinton Corners resident who serves as the leader of the haunted attraction’s volunteers, is spending weekends in the latter half of the summer prepping for the coming fall. Volunteers are encouraged to join through August and September on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

In the summer, Stanfordville’s Haunted Fortress nearly disappears into the landscape. There are no lights, no actors, no sounds aside from birds and insects. Pathways vanish behind trees and structures sag under vines. What will become a carefully orchestrated maze of fear feels, instead, like something abandoned.

“We let Mother Nature take care of everything,” Arent said, gesturing toward the overgrowth. There is no mowing, weeding, or pruning in the summer. “By October this will all be dead.”

As he steps onto the swamp walk — the winding path visitors take before entering the Fortress — it’s quiet enough to hear his footsteps.

Arent, the head of operations for the Haunted Fortress, brings a background in set-building to the role. “I know some people don’t love Halloween,” he said with a shrug. “But to us, it’s just different.”

The Fortress unfolds as a series of spaces stitched together along a winding path — houses, yards, tunnels, and rooms that shift in theme but share the same handmade, slightly off-kilter feel. In October, visitors move through it piece by piece. In summer, it reads more like a landscape of remnants.

And, at the beginning of the tour, sits the pirate ship — one of the last structures built by Peter Wing.

Wing, who died in 2014, created the Haunted Fortress, originally called Frankenstein’s Fortress, in Millbrook in the 1990s before eventually moving it to Stanford. His vision, Arent understands, was less about jump scares and more about atmosphere — “the psychological spooky thing.”

Arent never met Wing, but the Fortress is still full of his presence.

“One of my favorite things Pete Wing did is reclaim and reuse material,” Arent said. Much of what stands here was not bought new, but salvaged and repurposed. It’s a philosophy that continues. “Guys who work at dumps set things aside for me,” Arent said. The Fortress is not polished. It resists symmetry. “There are no straight lines or right angles,” Arent said.

In October, that work becomes visible.

On the best nights, the Fortress runs with 50 or more volunteer actors. There is no audition process; roles — zombies, witches, ghouls, vampires — are assigned. Esther Evans, known locally as the “queen of costumes,” outfits actors with pieces she designs or refurbishes.

Funding comes through the town’s recreation department, but the operation is entirely volunteer-driven. In August and September, volunteers meet on Sundays — workdays dedicated to maintenance, repair, and small-scale construction. The tasks range from the mundane to the complex: roofing, landscaping, rewiring lights, repairing props.

“We definitely need more help,” Arent said. “We’re always looking for volunteers with carpentry skills. But also just whatever people are interested in or curious learning about.”

The work never really stops — planning, building, rehearsing, then performance. This October will include 13 nighttime shows and two sensory-friendly daytime walkthroughs. Then comes cleanup, reflection, and the cycle begins again.

“It is always Fortress season,” Arent said through laughs.

Despite the scale of the operation, much of the Fortress remains structurally unchanged from Wing’s original vision. When Wing’s family visited, years after his death, “they were just happy that we were maintaining his vision,” Arent says.

That vision isn’t always named. Many newer volunteers don’t know Wing’s story. What remains instead are fragments — techniques, structures, even phrases passed down informally. Before the attraction opens each night, Arent reminds actors: “Silence is creepy.” It’s the kind of note that feels less like instruction and more like inheritance.

Why do people keep coming back? Arent laughs at the question. “That’s a question for a psychiatrist.”

But then he answers it anyway. Some come for a scare. Others for the chance to build, to act, to create. One volunteer described it simply: “This is free therapy.”

Families return year after year. Children come as visitors and grow into actors. Others arrive by accident: one year, three women from New York City came as guests, learned it was volunteer-run, and showed up the next night to perform as witches. “They were some of the best witches we had,” Arent laughed.

In the end, the Haunted Fortress is not just a place to be scared. It is a place maintained and reimagined by people who choose, repeatedly, to return to it.

What Wing would recognize if he walked through today is impossible to say. But the materials are still rough, salvaged. The lines still crooked. The atmosphere still built more on suggestion than shock. “We don’t do jump scares,” Arent reminds me.

And the work — the steady, often invisible work of maintaining it — continues.

Sunday volunteering dates

Volunteers can join the maintenance effort on Sundays through August and September from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on the following dates:

— Aug. 9
— Aug. 23
— Sept. 13
— Sept. 20
— Sept. 27

The Haunted Fortress is located at 11 Creamery Road in Stanfordville. Email hauntedfortress@stanfordny.gov if interested in volunteering.