WTOP’s Jason Fraley braves the Workhouse Haunt (Part 1)
The Workhouse Arts Center is celebrating a decade of creative, spooky and haunted trails in Lorton, Virginia.
The 10th annual Workhouse Haunt walking experience delivers one more weekend of frights this Friday, Saturday and Sunday before closing with a grand finale on Tuesday night for Halloween.
“The haunted trail was started by our performing arts program in 2014,” director of performing arts Joseph Wallen told WTOP. “The Workhouse Arts Center is located on the site of a former part of the D.C. prison system. The buildings there are close to 100 years old. … The haunted trail started as a fundraiser for our performing arts program and it’s literally become a beast and it’s become bigger, so it covers the entire campus at this point.”
Every year, the team of artists concocts an original story behind the jump scares.
“Rather than having random folks hiding and jumping to scare you … our approach is to do it from a storytelling approach,” Wallen said. “Our back story this year is about Evelyn Revenant and her two kids — twins. In London in 1955, they happen across a curiosity shop. … It opens a portal to the underworld where all of these fantastical creatures and evil, demonic things come into our world through every copy of every board game or video game.”
Thus, this year’s theme is “Game Over,” riffing on board games from Connect Four to Twister.
“We’re asking guests to come play along with us,” Wallen said. “They’re seeing semi-familiar versions of games that we might have in our own homes. … There might be a room that has a rich uncle character [like ‘Monopoly’], there might be a room that’s a mystery game [like ‘Clue’] … there’s things that involve dice. … Our guests walk away thinking, ‘Hey, I feel like that was ‘D&D ‘ … this reminds me of that video game [‘Tetris’] with the falling blocks.”
It truly takes an army of artists to put something this expansive together.
“This year, we have about 180 folks working with us: a combination of our creative team, the designers, the builders, the scare actors, the techies and support, all of the front-of-house people, the ticket takers, the bartenders,” Wallen said. “We have about 80 people each night that make it happen. … It’s about 60 or so scare actors on any given night. The scare actors are given scenes grouped into what’s called ‘neighborhoods.’”
On Friday and Saturday, gates open at 6:30 p.m. with the final group dispatched by 10:30 p.m. On Sunday, gates open at 6:30 p.m. with the final group dispatched by 9:30 p.m. On Halloween, gates open at 6 p.m. with the final group dispatched by 8:30 p.m. Guests are encouraged to buy tickets ahead of time online to stagger timed entries.
While you wait to be dispatched, you can enjoy a bar with live music Friday, Saturday and Halloween night in the center courtyard located between the old prison buildings.
“They can just hang out … in our large waiting area, a large tented pavilion,” Wallen said. “We’ve got live bands most nights, we also have food trucks, a bar set up with soft drinks, beer, wine, cocktails, snacks and drinks.”
Once you’re dispatched, you’ll move through the trail in groups of six to eight people.
The trail covers approximately a mile and takes about 20 minutes to complete.
Tickets are $30 per person. You can also donate canned goods to the Lorton Community Action Center food bank for admission.
Find more information here.
WTOP’s Jason Fraley braves the Workhouse Haunt (Part 2)
Listen to our full conversation here.