'How much blood do you want on your face?': Haunted-house performers revel in roles - TribLIVE

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“Do you want me to dress like this for the wedding?” Holli Stiltenpole asked.

Fake blood was splattered all over Stiltenpole’s straitjacket, one eye appeared glazed and useless thanks to a colored contact lens and a cross was crudely “carved” into her forehead with makeup.

Tiarra Shank of Ligonier started laughing. “Definitely,” she said.

Stiltenpole, a Kecksburg resident, will be Shank’s maid of honor in her upcoming nuptials, and both women’s laughing and joking is indicative of just how much fun the Lonesome Valley Farms’ Valley of Terror cast has scaring people all month long.

This year, planning for the event hit an unexpected snag in March with the coronavirus pandemic, necessitating the Valley of Terror’s first year as a drive-thru haunted attraction.

That also means performers like Stiltenpole and Shank need to switch up their usual scare tactics.

There’s no more clamoring up onto a hayride wagon to get in customers’ faces.

“I’m moving around, but it’s a little bit faster, and I have to be moving around at all times,” Stiltenpole said. “Before, I was able to jump on things and hang on things, and now it’s a lot more standing.”

“Now it’s like, how can I taunt them as they’re moving along, because you can’t get right at them,” Shank said.

Alex Martin is a Seton Hill University student from the Philadelphia area. This is his second year working as a Lonesome Valley performer.

“The part of haunts people normally don’t see is a lot of us like to hang out with other scarers. I get to hang out with two other guys and we have a blast while we’re scaring,” Martin said as he pulled on furry wool pants and a bull’s head, completing his minotaur costume. “As a car goes by, we get to observe each other, how we’re doing and the reactions we get.”

As a massive cloud ushers dusk over the hill past the empty Westmoreland Fairgrounds on Friday evening, the bodies walking around Lonesome Valley Farms start taking on a much creepier quality.

A face mask with the rictus grin of Twisty the Clown, from the F/X series “American Horror Story,” is pulling double-duty for Haley Forringer of Jeannette, completing her costume and hiding the face mask she wears to keep to health and safety guidelines.

But lest things get too grim, Forringer is giving a little humorous last-minute help to Shank.

“How much blood do you want on your face?” she asks while covering a few gloved fingers in the dark-red stage blood and flinging it in Shank’s direction.

For Jeff Johns, who has operated the spooky event at his Mt. Pleasant Township farm for 33 years, the Valley of Terror is a year-round pursuit.

“This starts again just about as soon as it’s over,” Johns said. “We start planning for the next year: What you want to change, what you can do better.”

Lonesome Valley Farms is open Fridays and Saturdays in October from 7:30 p.m.-10:30 p.m. at 180 Fairgrounds Road in Mt. Pleasant Township.

For more, see LonesomeValleyFarms.com.

Patrick Varine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Patrick at 724-850-2862, pvarine@triblive.com or via Twitter .

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