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Show C1 Life Is The Emery County Review, Tuesday, October 28, 2008 Swell Emery and Carbon Counties, Utah SWELL RECIPES ‘Branching Out’ With Your Recipes u Living in the San Rafael Swell Area u C3 Photos by James L. Davis A not terribly friendly looking clown awaits visitors to Ottosen Hollow’s Haunted Forest. Ottosen Hollow A love of Halloween leads family to create a haunted forest in their own back yard James L. Davis Halloween is a major holiday in the Collard home and this Halloween it is even more so. In the living room of Dean and Christy Collard, an odd assortment of goblins and ghouls, monsters and murderers are loitering about, waiting for their chance for a little makeup so they can slip away into the darkness, intent on scaring a scream or two out of their latest victim. It’s a half an hour before Right, a ghoul stands ready to scare. Below, a chainsaw wielding clown stalks the hollow. the lights go out on Ottosen Hollow’s Haunted Forest and the monsters are restless. “Where did the blood go?” asks Katie Brady as she puts the finishing touches on a volunteer monster for their little haunted forest. It’s the second night for the haunted forest and she is nervous, perhaps even a little more nervous than she was the first night they gathered together to give a few friendly scares to the community. Sitting in one chair at the kitchen counter is Katie’s grandpa, Earl Farley. Wearing what appears to be a lady’s dress, his daughter, Christy Collard, applies beastly makeup and he slips on a monster mask to finish out an image that is, well, a little strange. Dean Collard is wandering around the house already in full monster makeup and in a hurry to get out to the hollow to scare people. Katie is a little bit frustrated. “Halloween has always been like this. It’s always been a big deal. I always wanted to be a princess for Halloween, but I couldn’t be a princess, I had to be something scary,” Katie said, finishing one monster and moving on to the next. On the Collard property on Highway 31 in Huntington Canyon, Ottosen Hollow weaves its way through. Named after a Collard descendant, it is a low area of twisted trees and winding trails that can be spooky in the sunlight, but in the dark it is a place where nightmares are easily imagined. “After school activities the school bus would drop me off up the road and I had to walk home along the wash and there are raccoons and deer and birds that live in there and I would walk along and you’d hear them and you’d say ‘there’s nothing there that wasn’t there in the light,’ but you would want to run and you couldn’t run because there wasn’t any light and you would crash, but you run anyway and you crash, of course,” Katie explained, pausing to breathe…barely. Since they were young, Katie and her brother, Bevan Collard, wanted to make a spook alley out of the hollow, but every year Halloween would come and A monster awaits visitors to the haunted forest. go and the idea remained just that, an idea. This year the brother and sister decided that the time had come to let their frightening imaginations run wild. Enlisting their ever ready parents, Bevan’s wife, Sarah, and Katie’s husband, Lance, the family gathered up a small army of volunteers and set about making the hollow even creepier than it already was. Along the winding path of the hollow that takes you right back to where you started, they set up stations for mad ghouls, crazed chainsaw wielding killers and of course, the always necessary killer clowns. The group seemed to have as much fun creating the haunted forest as they do performing in it. When creating the different frightening sights they sometimes ran into some unexpected, and unwanted, help, such as when they tried to place the bones of a deer along the path and found that the family dogs were forever dragging them away again. Katie and her grandpa Earl act as guides, taking groups of visitors through the darkness to be met by Earl Farley practices his scary faces while waiting while his daughter, Christy Collard, applies makeup. the actors who enthusiastically get into their roles as creatures of your nightmares. The haunted forest had its first run-through last weekend and the brother and sister creators of the event were surprised at the initial turnout. Katie said for advertising they only put up flyers and then tried the novel approach of sending a text message to all of their friends about the haunted forest and asked them to forward the text on to their circle of friends. Katie said she was surprised to see how many people came out from Price because they didn’t advertise in the Price area. The Ottosen Hollow’s Haunted Forest runs on Oct. 30-31 from 7:30 p.m. – midnight. It can be found at 1555 West, Highway 31, in Huntington Canyon. With the makeup on and the monsters and ghouls in place, the first visitors for the evening are led down through the hollow and the screaming begins. Add one more tradition to the Collard family Halloween celebration. |