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What George Lucas did for science-fiction with “Star Wars,” David Bertolino did for horror with “Spookyworld.”

 

In the 1990s, “Spookyworld” in Berlin, Massachusetts, was the Halloween equivalent of Walt Disney World turned upside down and inside out, showing off all its pulsating internal organs and blood-spurting body parts.

 

Spookyworld was the (demented) brainchild of the aforementioned David Bertolino.

 

Not only did Bertolino put the sleepy town of Berlin, Mass. (population 2,100), on the map, he hired a majority of the town’s residents and municipal government officials to work for him as costumed ghouls, candy-passing witches, haunted house carpenters, even his trusted heads of his crowd controlling and alcohol confiscating security team and hands-over-fist money counters.

 

Open only in October, “Spookyworld” operated on 26-acres of the former Risi farm at 100 River Road in Berlin from 1991 to 1998.

 

In its “haunted hayride” heyday, “Spookyworld” attracted 5,000 to 7,000 visitors each evening. With a year-round staff of 10 workers, “Spookyworld” swelled to about 500 workers for the month it was open for business.

Starting off with a 20-minute hayride with 12 frightening stops along the way, “Spookyworld” also featured six unique haunted houses with scares at every turn.

 

Over the years, attractions at “Spookyworld” included The American Horror Museum (with original props and displays from horror films), Elvira's Nightmare, Circus Funhouse, 3D Disco Haunted House and the Phantom Mine Shaft, while always ending with a haunted barn where you could hobnob with horror celebrities.

Not only that, the self-proclaimed "hauntrepreneur" captured the hearts and imagination of impressionable, VHS horror movies-loving youths, including Spencer Charnas, who grew up to become the singer of Ice Nine Kills and creator of the Silver Scream Con, and John Krasinski, the future director, co-writer and co-star of the modern-day horror classic “A Quiet Place.”

A perfect companion piece to the critically acclaimed documentary and film festival favorite “Spooktacular! Behind the Screams of America’s Original Horror Theme Park,” Bertolino’s macabre memoirs, “Spookyworld: A Lighthearted Tale about Monsters, Sex, Drugs and Politics,” is an unabashed, eye-opening and occasional jaw-dropping account on how a timid Catholic school kid from a tight-knit, Italian-American family came up with the idea to create America’s premiere horror theme park.

 

Bertolino’s accessible, appealing style of prose is very conversational and familiar in tone (in a good way) and his story unfolds with an uninhibited intimacy and refreshing candor usually saved for lifelong friends catching up on lost time or blood brothers that once shared bunk beds.
 

Even if you don’t like horror or Halloween, there’s plenty to love about this book.

 

While its main selling point and appeal will be the behind the scenes look into the inner-workers of “Spookyworld,” this colorful and entertaining page-turner is also a fascinating examination and, in many ways celebration, of the unfiltered and unorthodox “American Dream” realized.

 

For anyone who ever fantasized about conquering the world with something as offbeat as a “spooky hayride” with costumed characters, hammy actors, cool animatronics, practical special-effects, and plenty of jump scares, “Spookyworld,” the book, is a must.

 

And, in what makes it perfect fodder for the basis of an episodic TV or streaming drama, “Spookyworld” (the book) is also drenched in rich and genuine ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s nostalgia.

 

Before cashing in on people’s inherent fears of clowns, creepy crawlers, reanimated corpses, meat clever-clenching psychos, culinary appendaged, nightmare-plaguing demons and chainsaw wielding, inbred killers, Bertolino _ a self-made man who’s business plan is a cross between P.T. Barnum and H.P. Lovecraft _ conquered the Halloween costume business when he was a teenager before becoming the undisputed kingpin of horror theme parks a decade or so later.

 

In addition to the meteoric rise of “Spookyworld” (which makes up the majority of the book), the most fascinating stories here are Bertolino’s real-life tales of growing up in Boston, which includes honing his people’s and his slight at hand skills at “Little Jack Horner Joke Shop,” which his brother Carl and father owned (and was a stone throw away from Boston’s infamous “Combat Zone,” which the young Bertolino often visited), once trying to sell a whoopee cushion to “the most trusted man in America” (aka Walter Cronkite), and regularly butting heads with a convent of nuns at St. Patrick’s High School who kept getting in the way of Bertolino’s lofty (but always amusingly successful) business ventures.

 

The book introduces us to Bertolino _ an unassuming, fat-faced, bow-tie wearing, God-fearing wonderkid at 15 who turned glass baby bottle refitted into bongs, homemade incense he made down in his cellar, rolling papers he bought well below wholesale, and aquarium lights repackaged as black lights into a lucrative business venture with many of his Catholic schoolmates on the payroll.

 

And when he turns 16, life is sweet indeed. Bertolino becomes a key player at the legendary Rubie’s Costume Company, received a crash course in love from a knockout tradeshow model double his age, wining, dining and winning over big corporate clients at ass-paddling S&M bars, and earning enough money to buy his first house in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

 

In addition to being an expose of the horror theme park, “Spookyworld” (the book) doubles as an unlikely but true American success story.

 

Smitten by tinted-blue-hair, Jersey girl Linda Ferretti, who he meets at a Halloween costume convention in San Antonio (and the two get married soon afterwards), Bertolino claims his birth rite and follows his true calling in life as “hauntrepreneur.”

 

Starting on page “66” (but begging for a double-strike key so the page reads a more appropriate “666”), Bertolino amusingly describes how the idea of “Spookyworld” came from witnessing the overwhelming success of “The Exorcist” and “a lame hayride” in Egg Harbor, N.J., that he readily admits of ripping off.

 

Bertolino was the first one to bring horror celebrities to the masses and he did it at “Spookyworld.” This lists includes Adrienne Barbeau, Linda Blair, Butch Patrick (aka Eddie of “The Munsters”), chart-topping shock rocker Alice Cooper, Robert Englund, Elvira, Bobby “Boris” Pickett, Kane Hodder (Jason Voorhees in the “Friday the 13th” franchise), Lisa Loring (the original Wednesday Addams on “The Addams Family”), ukelele-strumming, tulip-tiptoeing, pop culture oddity Tiny Tim and even pint-size matinee idol Mickey Rooney (the theme park’s nastiest celebrity ever) for autographs and photo ops.

With an uncanny ability to reach people on a basic level, Bertolino has a candid story to go with each and every “Spookyworld” celebrity guests. And he doesn’t pull any punches. For these stories alone, it’s worth the price of the book.

The book also tells the real story behind some of the key players in the “Spookyworld” inner-circle, as well as the quirky characters that unleash their inner-freak at the horror theme park, including smalltown girl turned national sensation Ruth “Ruthie” Phelps, aka the “Mouse Girl,” the most photographed attraction at “Spookyworld.”

 

And with every brave, new “Spookyworld,” there are many memorable, unforgettable events, including the chaos caused when a power transformer exploded on a crowd-packed Columbus Day weekend; “Naked Friday,” in which three of Bertolino’s most trusted employees, who happened to be all female, showed up completely naked to work one day due to an off-the-cuff remark he made; a pregnant woman whose water broke refusing to leave the autograph line because she wanted to meet her idol Alice Cooper, Tiny Tim’s doomed wedding nuptials broadcast live on “The Tonight Show with Jay Leno,” and Willard Scott singlehandedly securing “Spookyworld” in the annals of pop culture with his “Today Show” daily weather forecast broadcast live from Berlin.
 

Dedicated to Tom Savini of “Dawn of the Dead” fame, the book celebrates the horror make-up and special-effects master for his contribution to “Spookyworld.”

Named after its creator, the “Tom Savini Haunted House” further enhanced “Spookyworld” with ingenious blend of practical special effects and legitimate scares that were often made “on the cheap, but not cheaply.”

Not only does Bertolino graciously credits Savini as “one of the main reasons” for the success of “Spookyworld,” it was Savini who coined the name for the premiere horror theme park.

More fascination than the horror guests, ghoulish attractions and haunted happenings of “Spookyworld” is tales of its overwhelming success that practically took place overnight.

 

Instead of growing wheat and corn, Bertolino decided goalie mask-wearing psychopaths, decaying zombies and pasty-faced vampires to be his seasonal killer crop.

 

To open “Spookyworld,” Bertolino took out a 10-year loan for $150,000 in September 1991 & was able to pay off the creditors completely that October, plus $20,000 for one month's interest and prepaid penalty.

 

Bertolino thought “Spookyworld” would break even at 200 people a night. On opening night, he had ten times that. And, then, every day, for 31 days, “Spookyworld never had less than a two thousand people.

 

By the fifth night, Bertolino did something that he never thought he would need to do, put out a humongous sign out at the highway exit saying “Spookyworld Sold Out Tonight.”

 

By the first weekend, “Spookyworld” couldn't handle the crowd, couldn't handle the parking. So Bertolino added more hay wagons, more capacity, more haunted houses & more attractions, and everything Bertolino did at “Spookyworld” just increased the number of people who wanted to come & enjoy a good fright.

 

A true innovator, Bertolino, who later founded the Haunted Attraction Association, originated the idea of horror theme amusement park, which, today, is a mainstream staple in pop culture. And, middle-class suburbia ate it up like a horde of hungry George A. Romero zombies feasting on one’s steaming entrails.

 

Alas, all good things, including this book, eventually comes to an end.

 

After a well-publicized butting of heads with town officials over safety and fire code violations after years of putting a majority of them on the payroll, Bertolino filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and moved the attraction to a site near Foxboro Stadium.

Despite selling off the “Spookyworld” brand in 2005, Bertolino will always be known as the beating heart and (lost) soul of “Spookyworld.”
 

Even today, more than 30 years later, people fondly remember the thrills and chills they had while visiting “Spookyworld.”

For those who attended “Spookyworld,” prepare to relive it all over again with this book, while stirring up some precious memories of the past.

 

As for those who never had a chance to go to “Spookyworld,” here’s a firsthand account that will make you feel like you did so in a past life and help explain to you what all the fuss was about.

 

In the end, Bertolino transformed an abandoned farm in a sleepy town into the premier horror theme park and the national amusement industry and the unsuspecting world took notice.