It's Wisconsin Feargrounds' 20th season, brought to you by a guy who feared haunted houses

WAUKESHA - Beneath the fall's first full moon, frightening characters emerge from the shadows abruptly, startling people who, frankly, should have been expecting it, and were.

They're dressed oddly, somewhat ragged and certainly in a threatening manner, with a demeanor that might seem belligerent — that is, if you hadn't paid them to act as such. Still, there was that bright harvest moon overhead. Could that be a part of this Friday night fright?

Somehow the setting and timing seemed perfect. Call it a good omen — as omens go for Halloween season attractions — for the Wisconsin Feargrounds' 20th season, which opened Sept. 29 at the Waukesha County Expo Center and which in recent times has played to unhappy omens such as a pandemic in its struggle to survive.

The scares survive with new ideas

Actually, Chad Franks has no complaints. In his fourth season of ownership, Franks, who runs the show with his wife Brenda, "managed to pay the bills" in their first season, the COVID-tainted Halloween season of 2020, then proceeded to think up new ways to scare people in an era when that takes a little more thought compared to the Feargrounds' earliest incarnation in 2004.

"A jump scare is always jump scare. Startle is always going to get someone," Franks said. "But with the evolution of gaming and things like that, it becomes more difficult because people's sensory (inputs) are on overload. An old gag scare — like the mirror-and-ghost scare — that really doesn't get people any more. So it really has to be over-the-top acting to make them be more immersed in the situation, just like they are in their video games."

Part of the strategy Franks has taken is to create a Feargrounds attraction that doesn't restrict itself too much to deliver fright-filled ideas.

Though he admired the efforts of his predecessors, Ann Marie and Timmer Gavinski, who retired in 2019 and subsequently sold the business to Frank, a longtime employee, and his wife in 2020, he shifted to a broader concept.

"I'd say the biggest difference (over the past 20 years) is in theming," Franks said. "Back then, it was Victorian-style: It was Morgan Manor, everything was period, all the antiques inside were on point and of that era. ... Now that it's 'The Compound,' if you think like it's the end of the world, you use whatever you can to survive."

The Compound and its 'Mad Max" style survival theme fills one of the "houses." (A video that previewed the 2020 event played off the idea that the "monsters" who inhabited the old haunts didn't want to see some "suits" buy and take over their home, so they took the venue over.)

Sketchy's Chambers is the theme of the other haunted house. The scary-clown Sketchy has declared himself the ruler of the Wisconsin Feargrounds, which he rules from his habitat, depicting a 1970s mobile home, where the rooms each offer something "crazy," Franks said.

He is relying on a traditional theater approach for the attraction's two haunted houses, as opposed to the CGI elements some venues have moved toward in this video-gaming era.

"That's cool, but I feel there should still be a realism to it, and there's still some element to human nature," Franks said, though he doesn't want to say too much about how he accomplishes that. "You gotta come to find that out."

Getting ready for the Wisconsin Feargrounds season is an eternal task

On Sept. 29, the Franks ushered in the 2023 12-date season optimistically as workers scurried in and out of the two Feargrounds buildings on the far end of the Waukesha County Expo Center, 1000 Northview Road, installing last-minute details for the expected crowd. But, in reality, the preparations are unending.

For one, the ideas that go into the scares come from many sources, though Franks maintains a selective approach.

"I'll see something, whether it's a day-to-day thing or from a movie, that will make me say, oh, I can make something similar to that, but with a Wisconsin Feargrounds twist to it," Franks said. "We want to stay as far away as possible from, you know, 'The Nightmare on Elm Street' or all those originals. Those are good, but they're just not us."

He can also count on industry traditions. "Is there something new under the sun? No, it's just how you realize and adapt it," he said.

The physical work itself can be frightening. Unlike permanent haunted-house venues, the Franks start from scratch each season, using a kind of stagecraft to convert two long expo center buildings into the attraction. Such an approach, which consumes every weekend in the two months leading up to opening night, has its advantages too: What's presented each year is always fresh, even if the theme remains similar, Franks said.

People seem to respond to the roughly half-hour escapism of more scary things happening around the world each year, he added, leaving him repeatedly satisfied with the number of ticket buyers by season's end.

His childhood background belies his current haunt-filled nature

True or false: Is he Mr. Halloween? That's not an easy answer.

While some kids grow up in an atmosphere in which their families immerse themselves in Halloween decorations and dark traditions every year, Franks was raised in a conservative Christian background. But the family nonetheless had a spiritual sense of fun that, ironically, he didn't immediately share.

"When I was young, my dad loved to go to haunted houses. I did not. I was a chicken," he said. In fact, the queue-line actors, providing frights to those waiting to enter (as the Feargrounds ghouls likewise do), were enough to leave him in tears, seeking solitude in the family's car while his father, mother and sister enjoyed the scares.

It didn't end there.

His father was also an Alfred Hitchcock fan, extending beyond Hitchcock's famous thriller movies. The director also was associated with LP vinyl records, which the elder Franks enjoyed playing in a room with all the lights off in the house. "As kids, I can remember us putting our feet up off the ground and thinking, I don't know what's going on right now, but I'm just freaked out," Franks recalled.

Yeah, it's safe to say Halloween grew on him, aside from the "dark and demonic" stuff that some people crave (and he doesn't).

"I look at Halloween as entertainment and having fun," Franks said.

He's glad to carry on a Waukesha tradition

The "dressing up" and the "scaring parts" of the season eventually led to Franks becoming a part of the Gavinskis' crew, both as an actor and general helper, making use of his trade carpentry skills as well.

But his involvement with Wisconsin Feargrounds was more directly the result of his brother-in law's company, Haunted Media, which filmed haunted house attractions nationally and produced DVDs to sell. When his brother-in-law opted to film the Wisconsin Feargrounds attraction around 2006, Franks agreed to help him out. The Gavinskis, seeing Franks' interest and close proximity to their venue, invited him to step into their haunted housing the following season.

Their retirement to Florida opened the door further for him to invest in their tradition, a seasonal standout in Waukesha County, in his view.

That investment opportunity included Brenda Franks, who takes care of the books and helps the show go on behind the scenes. Does she get into the acting end, as well?

"No, she does not," Brenda responds voluntarily from the background. "Between him and the boys, they love taking care of that, and that's fine with me."

In fact, like her husband before her during his childhood, she's not one to opt-in to the fear sensations of her venue. "Actually no, I don't enjoy walking through our haunted houses when the actors are in it, because they know they are going to scare me. And they do. I know where they are and I know where they'll be coming from, and still they scare me all the time," she acknowledged. "But I love doing the decorating and that side of it."

Opening the season under the harvest moon was a good way to start the season, even if it was more summer-like for an early fall day. (Good for standing in line. But not quite in line with seasonal traditions.)

"There's that whole idea that people act differently under a full moon," Franks noted, fitting for the goings-on at the Feargrounds.

Contact Jim Riccioli at (262) 446-6635 or  james.riccioli@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @jariccioli.

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Scary stuff: Wisconsin Feargrounds enters 20th season in Waukesha