Troll smash!

Our tenth anniversary year was a year of carrying on tradition and of adapting to change. After nine years of haunted houses at the Marshall Civic Center, we took the haunted out of the house and moved outdoors into the trail and woods along Marshall's Riverwalk for The Nightmare Crusade: A Haunted Trail. Though we were in a very different location, we still put on an unusual haunted event that told a story and scared our visitors at the same time.

In medieval England, a group of evil witches known as The Sisters of the Moon have attacked the king's castle and stolen The Red Stone, an item of great power that, if they were to unlock its secrets, would grant the witches sovereignty over the country. Our customers formed a posse under the leadership of Sir Alexander, the last remaining knight who hasn't already chased after the witches, to hunt down and retrieve The Red Stone. Also accompanying them was Alexander's young squire, Thomas, and the apprentice sorceress, Faedyn.

The quarrelsome crew battled their way through a batch of zombies, werewolves, trolls, and ghosts before making their way to the witches' forest. There, Faedyn left the group, fearing the sisters would sense her power.

Haylea, the leader of The Sisters of the Moon.

Inside the woods, Alexander fought with the dreaded Black Knight and slew him. Then the group met Sir Edmund, a knight who had been captured by the witches and had managed to escape. Alexander forced the reluctant Edmund to lead the group back to the witches and, after an encounter with a vampire, he did.

Edmund had claimed that the witches were asleep and that Alexander would easily be able to retrieve the Red Stone. In truth, Edmund was under the spell of the Sisters and had led his comrades into a trap.

The witches wiped Edmund's mind blank, and were about to do the same to Alexander and Thomas when Faedyn returned, channeling the spirit of her teacher, the great wizard Balthazaar. The combined power of the two wizards sent the Sisters of the Moon running for shelter and the heroes successfully retrieved the Stone.

Click here for a Nightmare Crusade gallery.