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Camp Anderson festival attracts horror-themed group

Mirror photo by Ryan Brown / Hannah Vancas (foreground) along with Sydnee Tomlinson, both of Altoona, take aim at “zombies” while Tiffany Merritts and Roger Ward Jr. look on Saturday at the Camp Anderson Fear Fest.

TYRONE — The noises came from all around as guests walked down a dark trail: a machine gun-like rat-tat-tat, a chainsaw revving, a child shouting “Oh my God!”

“I think I hit one of them,” Hannah Vancas of Altoona said after she stopped a horde of volunteer zombies with a paintball gun. “Sorry, zombie.”

Hundreds gathered Saturday on the sprawling property of Camp Anderson near Tyrone, bussed in by the dozens to take in the camp’s annual Fear Fest. The Halloween event — now in its ninth year — has expanded significantly this time around, with a zombie shooting gallery and an escape room added to its longstanding haunted house.

“It’s only going to get nutsier as the night goes on,” Camp Anderson Property Chairman Mike Yeaton said, as twilight turned to dark.

The two-weekend festival is the camp’s biggest fundraiser, Yeaton said, and an important event for a site now operating on its own. In the past year, the Boy Scouts of America’s Laurel Highland Council sold the woodland property to a group of locals who volunteer to keep it running.

Working with area companies like Urban War Zone, a paintball venue, the organizers have expanded the festival while maintaining a family atmosphere.

“It’s really a youth-safe place to go,” Yeaton said.

The new additions are in keeping with horror trends. Zombies remain a cultural force as the TV show “The Walking Dead” enters its eighth season, and escape rooms — in which visitors solve puzzles and seek clues to gain their freedom — have popped up across the country.

The festival attracts longtime horror fans, as well. Waiting in line for a shuttle bus outside the camp, Brad and Teri Miner of Bellefonte said they had never attended Fear Fest but would seek out just about anything horror-themed.

“This is like my Christmas,” Brad said, noting that they spent their honeymoon at a shuttered asylum in eastern Pennsylvania.

Lines stretched across a nearby parking lot as bus drivers shuttled raucous guests to the camp. Friday night was the most successful first Friday in the festival’s history, Publicity Director Scott Soisson said.

The carnival atmosphere showed little sign of quieting Saturday evening; children and teenagers jumped at camouflaged workers in the shadows and families gathered to warm themselves around bonfires. Some 75 workers were on hand, Yeaton estimated.

“The locals have basically kept the camp alive,” he said. Or at least undead.

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