Paul Crenshaw walks through the “mansion” at the back of the Stoney Point Fire Department. This building has stood for years since a local dentist donated the building to the Stoney Point Fire Department’s Trail of Terror event. It has become a staple of the event.
Crenshaw walks into the first room and then says he’s going to kill the white lights inside the building to give a more realistic view of what the trail will look like on Friday and Saturday nights in October. The rooms go black except for shallow lighting that reflects off broken doll faces and cobwebs. The music kicks on and the hum of low voices can be heard throughout the room.
Despite Crenshaw’s title as part of the special effects team for the Trail of Terror, he does not like haunts.
“I despise scary things,” he says, walking through the dimly lit hallways. “I do this because I love the fire station.”
He maneuvers through the first few rooms in the mansion. Creepy dummies, lights and paintings adorn each new space. Each room Crenshaw passes between is a spookier scene than the last.
Crenshaw, who is also a volunteer firefighter for the station, takes a turn into two hallways that run parallel to each other. Inside, the only light that can be seen are a couple of spots where green lasers are placed.
“When I pump the fog in, it looks like a swamp in here,” he says. “I’m in the midst of getting all the lasers in here. The lasers will actually … hold on.”
He stops for a second, has an idea and pulls his vape from his pocket. After a puff, he blows the smoke in the area where the lasers are focused revealing swirling clouds of smoke that resemble the look of murky green water. Crenshaw admits he needs to put more lasers in this portion of the trail before the first weekend in October, the opening weekend for the trail. Behind Crenshaw is Cynthia Buie, a member of the Stoney Point Auxiliary and social media coordinator for the Trail of Terror. She has more of a grin on her face than the determined, focused one Crenshaw wears. Buie likes haunts, she says.
The Trail of Terror is the main fundraiser for the Stoney Point Fire Department — an event that brought the station about $200,000 in funds last year. Aside from the tax dollars, these are the only funds the firefighters at this station use to add on and keep all of their equipment. The Trail is run by volunteers, including a little more than 100 actors from local schools who volunteer their time from after school until about midnight on the nights when the trail is open.
“On our good nights, we’ll have roughly 100 actors. It seems like a lot but the trail is so big,” Buie says.
Like most years, Buie and Crenshaw say the trail has to change up a little bit. This year they will have some of the regular favorites on the trail like the butcher, a clown scene and the asylum but they changed some individual pieces throughout and added in a large new addition — an abandoned mine. And of course, there’s the regular room they have where people often get lost trying to navigate their way through — adding to the thrill and panic of it all.
“There’s so much fog in here that you can’t see,” Crenshaw says.
The crew who work on the Trail of Terror begin the process around March or April each year, spending hundreds of hours creating new additions or building new sites onto the show. This year, they have transitioned to a computer-controlled audio system. Crenshaw says this gives them a huge opportunity to be truly interactive throughout the entire trail.
“It’s a pretty good upgrade.”
What Crenshaw has been working on steadily is the abandoned mine. The idea came because the makeup artist for the trail asked what special effects he could bring to a new addition to help drum up ideas for what they wanted to add to the show.
“I said, ‘I can blow stuff up.’”
Eventually that led to creating a mine.
The walls of the walking space for the mine themselves took more than a month to build. It’s a large tangle of dark hallways and will be full of “hellacious” noises once the trail is completely up and running. For now, they are testing out the pressure pads and special effects to make sure the construction, the artistry of decoration and sound effects all come
together well.
“It all has to come together to put on a great show,” Buie says, pointing to the 3D shapes sticking out of the wall of the mine. “You want to give them their money’s worth for sure.”
This is also why Buie says they really try to focus on what pieces that are well-loved to keep and how to change up other portions so the repeat trailgoers can have new experiences year after year. She and Crenshaw finally step out of the mine and make their way toward the end of the trail —through a few more scenes, of course.
At the end of the trail, they say they have a few surprises planned for those attending, like a popular actor sporting a Pennywise costume. With a chunk of the special effects not up and the actors not on the trail, it took Crenshaw and Buie about 25 minutes to walk the scenes together. Buie looks back at the trail that sprawls all throughout the woods.
“It’s roughly about 40 minutes but if you run, you can get it done quicker,” she says with a laugh.
The trail has no age restrictions even though Buie and others recommend it for about ages 12 and up. According to Buie, the people who come out are kids who come in on their parents’ hips all the way to guests who are in their 70s. The trail has been made accessible for the handicapped goers as well, Crenshaw adds. Stoney Point Fire Station is located at 7221 Stoney Point Road. The trail will begin the first weekend of October and run each Friday and Saturday night as well as Halloween night itself.
Buie looks back at the building that will soon be filled with 100 to 140 actors and 4 or 5 makeup artists. They get ready in there, she points, and then they hang out in the bays of the fire department. Once the clock hits 9 p.m. on those nights, someone will call out that the trail is “hot,” and the monsters will be ready to play.
For more information or for tickets, visit https://www.undeadfd.com. VIP passes will also be available allowing eventgoers to skip the line and go straight to the trail.

(Photos by Kathleen Ramsey)