Feartek Catalog Surfaces

The "Wizard" as he appears in Feartek's catalog (left), or "Merlin" (right) as he was better known in West Edmonton Mall's now-walled-off and abandoned "Merlin's Haunted Laboratory" attraction.

Feartek productions was not a Canadian company, rather being based in New York City, however they supplied theming to some of Canada's most famous haunted attractions.  Feartek was founded sometime in the late 70's by James and Earle Goodman, two brothers who had worked under the legendary Fred Mahana along the amusement-rich Jersey Shore.  Mahana's attractions were so creative and successful that he garnered the nickname "Fast Buck Freddy" amongst amusement operators for how fast his attractions could return a profit.  Mahana was a visionary with a keen eye for horror specifically, creating an iconic, cartoonish art style that came to define East Coast amusement piers and attractions.

"Blackbeard" figure created by Mahana for Brigantine Castle in Brigantine, NJ.

The coffin hallway in Mahana's "Morbid Manor" attraction in Ocean City, Maryland.

The Goodmans would combine this art style with a more modern take on prop design and digital technology to create high tech attractions with Feartek.  Their most high-profile and well known attraction on Canadian soil, which you can still visit today, is The Haunted House on Clifton Hill, which opened in 1984 in a former section of what was once the World's Largest Gift Shop underneath the Honeymoon City Motel (now Travelodge).  Speculation flew for years around the true creators of this attraction.  Early theories included Freddy Mahana himself, as well as his cousins' company, due to the identical art style found on the attraction's facade to several of the Mahanas' other attractions.

Fred Mahana's famous Haunted House attraction on Morey's Pier in Wildwood, NJ. The clear influence on Feartek's "The Haunted House" on Clifton Hill is striking.

Clifton Hill's Haunted House prior to minor renovations in the mid-2010's.

It wasn't until a Feartek ghost identical to one that can be found in The Haunted House was found in Waldameer Park's legendary Wacky Shack, that the full story became clear.  Several ghouls from The Haunted House can be seen in this newly surfaced 1981 Feartek prop catalog courtesy of Reddit user Ok-storage3530.  Bits and pieces of this catalog have been floating around the internet the past year, but seeing the full product line tells us a lot more about Feartek, and The Haunted House, than was previously known.

The ghost figure seen in both the Wacky Shack and The Haunted House that finally tied the mystery together. In The Haunted House, two identical copies of this figure appear and disappear on either side of guests via a mirror trick.

The "Wheel of Death", "Apparition" and several more of the prop skeletons, skulls, creatures and even background sets are all longtime mainstays of The Haunted House.  There's also speculation this company designed The Fun House next door, which also took up a portion of the former gift shop space and opened the same year under the same owners.  The Fun House originally contained a wide variety of murals and artwork that matched the cartoonish style, and there's even unconfirmed claims that at one point, the attraction featured a skeleton scene at the end despite not being a haunted attraction.  All these signs definitely point towards Feartek designing the attraction, however concrete evidence is yet to surface. 

Skeleton props matching the style of ghouls hanging around The Haunted House.

Background set components that can be found throughout The Haunted House.

"The Wheel of Death" in Feartek's catalog.

The "Wheel of Death" in The Haunted House. Several of The Haunted House's props have slight cosmetic difference to the versions shown in the catalog. This is likely due to the fact the attraction opened 3 years after this catalog was printed, implying these are early versions.

Feartek's 80's polish, high-tech (for the early 80's) motion detection technology, and larger-than life sets and props created a middle ground between the classic boardwalk haunts of the 70's and the modern props we see in the haunted attraction industry today.  Tributes to Mahana can be found throughout The Haunted House, but this cartoonish art style crossed with a clear 80's dark fantasy influence, create a style unique to Feartek that resembles an 80's Saturday morning cartoon (the likes of He-Man, Dungeons and Dragons, and the short-lived series based on the Dragon's Lair arcade game come to mind.)

Feartek's rare and impressive "Troll King".

Speaking of the fantasy genre, a much more obscure, but much more infamous Canadian Feartek attraction lives on in the memories, and nightmares, of Edmonton-area locals.  West Edmonton Mall's Fantasyland amusement park once featured a little-known haunted attraction named "Merlin's Haunted Laboratory"; a labyrinth of twisting caves housed inside a faux rock cliff face.  The attraction took guests past baby dragons, dungeon-dwelling creatures, and most infamously, Merlin himself.  The animatronic wizard reportedly became a legendary piece of nightmare-fuel amongst young visitors due to his sudden appearance, towering stature, and close proximity to guests.  Most inexplicably, the attraction was located in the children's area of the park, only adding fuel to the warped memories and trauma the attraction left in it's wake.

West Edmonton Mall's Fantasyland in 1983. Merlin's Haunted Laboratory was located just out of shot near the dominoes on the right.

While obviously meant to be an all-ages attraction with a cute and lighthearted tone, the low ceilings, lack of lighting, and median age of the audience who experienced it made this attraction go down in history as an obscure but haunting part of West Edmonton Mall history.  The attraction closed in 1995 when the park renovated, and for years only lived on as whispers on Edmonton schoolyards, mentions on old park maps, and lost internet users posting into the online void in an attempt to find anyone else who survived the attraction without repressing the memory.

That is until Best Edmonton Mall's documentary series "From Fantasy to Galaxy" uncovered the first images of inside the attraction's walls ever found, but these were not 30 year old, historical photographs, these were of the attraction as it looks today.  In a horrifying turn of events that only adds fuel to the nightmarish legend of this attraction, it turns out after the attraction closed in 1995, it wasn't demolished, but walled off and abandoned for nearly three decades, where it remains rotting away to this day.  These horrifying photos not only show just how eerie this attraction would have been when it was operational, but also the decrepit state its in today.  An incredibly sad end for such a legendary attraction, but perhaps a fitting one, as it has only helped further its secretive and legendary status.  While the aforementioned baby dragons aren't included in this photo set, if they even still exist (part of the attraction may have been demolished, as despite these developments, there's still a lot that isn't known about what else this attraction contained), photos of the dungeon creatures as well as Merlin himself surfaced, sitting in their rotted and melting state.

Merlin behind glass, his white beard now dark grey with dust.

Dungeon-dwelling creatures peer out from their nest in a small cave in the rock walls.

This brings us back to Feartek.  Going through the catalog, we find the exact Merlin animatronic that sists abandoned at West Edmonton Mall.  It also turns out that Fantasyland's dungeon critters were actually referred to as "Nerfs" by Feartek.  These connections, as well as the fantasy theme which Feartek specialized in (their logo even contained a dragon), no doubt place Feartek as the true wizards behind this mythical Canadian attraction.  

Merlin as he would have looked before three decades of dust.

This is also where the catalog and the photos of Merlin's Haunted Laboratory start to fill in gaps for each other.  The catalog gives a name to these creatures, and also describes what their animation would have been (the catalog states their heads bobbed up and down as well as side to side), going on to describe that "an amusing soundtrack has a nest of Nerfs talking about the viewers, sniffling and coughing and wheezing in alarm".  The catalog states however that the heads pictured are unfinished props, and that each would be attached to a "furry, baggy body" and situated in a nest.  These bodies as well as the nest can be seen in the photos of the abandoned figures at WEM, giving a strong sense of what this scene would have appeared like, albeit with a little melted latex that's deteriorated over time and given the Nerfs long snouts.

Feartek's catalog page for the Nerfs.

The Fantasy Excursion Railway (later renamed "Fantasyland Express"), the original train ride which took guests through the park, contained a horror themed section inside a tunnel as the train passed through the same rock cliff facade which housed Merlin's.  Even less is known about this area than Merlin's, as the darkness of the tunnel combined with poor home video recording capabilities at the time has left nothing but questions.  Several people remember a Werewolf, severed heads, and Frankenstein's Monster.  If Feartek supplied the theming for Merlin's, it stands to reason that this area's props would be their handywork as well, and sure enough, all of the props so far remembered as being in this haunted tunnel identically match ones found in this catalog.

Could this be the Werewolf that once hunted the guests aboard Fantasyland's train?

Hanging severed heads offered by Feartek.

Feartek eventually disappeared sometime around the mid-late 80's shortly after these attractions opened, leaving little paper trail.  Fortunately, their props, which seem to have been more popular sold individually rather than as part of entire attractions like these, can still be found littered around North America in haunted attractions, dark rides, and carnival spook houses.  They were an early innovator in a new age of haunted attraction theming that would fully form by the dawn of the 90's with companies like Distortions Unlimited, Lifeformations, and Scarefactory.  Perhaps they just existed in too much of an in-between for their own good, with their over-the-top props being a little too ahead of their time, yet being a little too early to catch the wave that later companies would in the latter half of the 80's.

Feartek's 7-foot-tall "Frankenstein Jr." prop.