WILMINGTON — For most people, planning for Halloween starts in October – finding the perfect costume, watching scary movies, gorging on candy, and planning the perfect Halloween party, but for Jonathan Lewkowicz, founder of Phobia Haunted Trail, planning began Nov. 1 of last year.
Although Phobia doesn’t official open until Sept. 29, Lewkowicz has been busy preparing the set and building props. He has just 28 days to set up the haunted house starting Sept. 1, so for now, he is building as much as he can at home.
Lewkowicz started Phobia just last year after he and his wife, who are both fans of haunted houses realized there were no attractions in Wilmington. Although they had no previous experience with haunted houses, they decided to take matters into their own hands and created Phobia.
“My wife and I are big haunted house fans and we came down from New York a couple of years ago and there was nothing in town. I guess Panic Attack was the big haunted house before … but it closed down,” he said.
The idea for their haunted house happened when the two were looking to start a different business, and out of sheer chance, they stumbled on the idea.
“We actually wanted to open a different business and we were looking at this one building and we both looked at each other and said, wow this looks like a haunted house and the next thing you know we started talking to that person about a haunted house, it didn’t work out with him and then we found the place next to the bowling alley,” Lewkowicz said.
Last year, the Phobia suffered a setback after Hurricane Matthew destroyed most of the setup – but Lewkowicz managed to rebuild and reopen, he said. This year, after taking the advice from friends and guests, he has big plans.
The haunted house will consist of several elements, going from the parking lot and heading into the woods before returning participants back to the structure. The theme for this year is an evil carnival and will be stocked with evil clowns and other carnival related scares.
Lewkowicz is also looking for new ways to offer visitors a scare, from hiring more actors to more motion activated attractions.
“It is going to be like four attractions, we will have a built structure with some cool animatronics and different things in there … then we are going to go out to the woods, where we will have some carnival type of attractions with some live actors out there as well,” he said.
Phobia Haunted Trail will be open from 8 p.m. – midnight, starting Sept. 29 and until Oct. 31, the full schedule and hours of operation can be found online. Phobia is located in the Cardinal Lanes parking lot, 3907 Shipyard Blvd.
Michael Praats can be contacted via email at Michael.p@localvoicemedia.com.
