I’m not surprised that you’re asking for clarification on my job duties.  I usually have to do some explaining when I tell someone that my full official title is Head of On-Site Security.

Most people assume that the title means that I’m in charge of all aspects of security at the amusement park I’m employed at.  That isn’t actually the case.  The security department is divided into two divisions.  The division that I’m in charge of, On-Site Security, is the one that goes out into the park itself and handles issues that come up.  The majority of the time that means dealing with park guests.  We take care of things like personal belongings being stolen, breaking up arguments and fights, and removing drunk people from the park.  Those sorts of things.

The other division, Operations Security, handles more of the backend issues, the ones that are more business-related.  Verification of park passes, loss prevention in the stores and restaurants, monitoring employee activities, and so on.  You’d be surprised at how little overlap there is between the two sides of the Security department.

The big exception to this is during the annual Halloween events that are held in the park, specifically those that take place after sundown.  This is by far the most difficult time of the year for my department.  It requires both divisions to be temporarily combined into one to make sure that there’s enough coverage and manpower for the issues that always seem to crop up.  There’s a tricky balance that has to be maintained between allowing guests to have a good time during the more adult-oriented event and making sure that both they and the park are safe while they do so.

Before I go any further, I should probably mention that I’m bound by a large number of non-disclosure agreements.  Breaking those would inevitably lead to a number of lawsuits and probably some kind of criminal prosecution.  I’m giving this interview because what I have to say needs to be heard, but I also have a family that I need to think about.  Because of this, I can’t give the name of the amusement park that I work for or use any real names.

With that said, there should be enough here to connect the dots.  I can’t be held responsible if you figure things out on your own, right?

What I can say is that, while it’s a smaller park than, say, the various Disney and Universal parks, it’s large enough that it attracts a high number of visitors every year.  It’s very much a seasonal park, though, which means that the number of guests goes down sharply once school starts in the fall.  Due to this decline the park shifts to only being open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays until it eventually shuts down completely the first week of November.

Starting in September, the park is given a Halloween-themed makeover.  That makeover is kept family-friendly during the daylight operating hours.  The mascot characters that wander the park wear costumes and decorations cover pretty much everything.  Tents are set up that children can trick-or-treat at.  By this point the water rides are closed for the season, but the water inside of them is dyed orange and green to fit with the theme.  There’s even a big maze made of hay bales set up near the front entrance.  The kids love it, and the parents are happy to have somewhere to take them that fits with their age group.

Just before sundown, the park is closed for an hour.  Crews use this time to remove or modify many of the decorations to make the park look and feel a lot more sinister.  A small army of actors arrive dressed in some pretty macabre costumes.  New haunted house attractions are prepped for visitors, and menus at the various restaurants and food stops are changed to include less food and more alcohol.

This is the park’s annual Nights of Fear promotion.  A number of different places use that name, so I’m hoping that I’m still on the right side of my NDAs.  It’s open to anyone eighteen and older, and it’s a huge moneymaker.  It’s also a huge pain in the ass for security, but that part comes later.

The atmosphere is designed to be creepy as well as very adult-oriented.  The actors that are brought in for the season roam the park in designated areas called scare zones, where they jump out at unsuspecting guests and try to look threatening.  Other works inside of attractions that are basically flashier versions of those haunted houses or haunted walks that pop up all over the place around Halloween.

Here’s how this all breaks down to what’s going on in the park now.  You have a security team that has been greatly reduced in size because the park is only open three days a week, not to mention one that isn’t used to working together as it’s been cobbled together from two different divisions.  The event takes place at night, which is far more difficult to monitor than the activities that take place during the day.  There’s an influx of temporary employees in the form of the scare actors.  The park itself has been decorated, often with large and complex displays that block cameras and create blind spots.

Finally, there’s the alcohol.  Lots and lots of alcohol.

It’s a difficult situation for everyone behind the scenes.  The security staff is stretched thin.  Too thin.  There’s not nearly enough people to handle all the incidents that occur every single night.  Half the time we don’t find out that something happened until the next day.  Saying it’s an all-hands-on-deck situation is putting it mildly.

What I’m saying is that it’s rough even under normal conditions.  What’s going on there now…  Well, it’s very much not normal.

As far as I can tell, it started nine days ago.  We had just passed the eleven o’clock mark.  Normally I patrol the park with the majority of the other security guards during event nights.  There’s a lot of ground to cover and not many people to do it with.  With regards to my position, that means coordinating security while also being a body out in the field.  You know, it’s strange, but that’s one of the few things that I enjoy about Nights of Fear.  I get to be outside in the fresh air instead of stuck behind my desk.

I had just returned to the security office to swap out a dead walkie-talkie.  We typically use cellphones to communicate, but some of the haunted house attractions don’t play well with digital signals so we carry the walkies as well.  I belted on the new unit and turned to go back out the door, but before I could do so one of the two guards watching the security camera feeds called me over.

He quickly rewound a clip and played it back for me.  It was in black and white, which was typical when the cameras were switched over to night vision mode.  A small group of people walked by a store that I recognized as one of the gift shops in the back half of the park.  There didn’t seem to be anything out of the ordinary, and I opened my mouth to say so.  I closed it again and frowned as a figure walked into view.

It was a person dressed in a costume.  It was hard to tell from the position of the camera, but he seemed to be wearing a pumpkin-like mask and was dressed in a formal suit and tie.  Again, it was difficult to know for sure, but he looked fairly short.

I picked up a clipboard that was hanging from a nearby hook and quickly scanned through the contents.  On the paper was a complete listing of all the actors in the park and the costumes they had been assigned.  Every costume was themed to the particular area of the park the actor would be in.  Zombie costumes outside of the Rave from the Grave haunted house, werewolf costumes for the Pack Hunt scare zone.  You get what I’m saying.  There was nothing on the list that fit the description of the person I was seeing on the video.

With an annoyed sigh I went back out into the park.  If it wasn’t one of the actors, it was a guest wearing a costume.  There were strict rules against that to make sure that everyone knew who was part of the event and who wasn’t.  During the day hours the children were allowed to dress up, but no adults were permitted to wear costumes at any time.

Most of the other guards in the park were busy, and the office wasn’t far from the place where the camera was located.  I decided that I’d take care of it myself.  It likely wouldn’t take long, and from that general area of the park I could easily make my way over to the heavier traffic areas when I was finished.

I radioed for the control room to send a copy of the video over to my phone.  If the guest was no longer wearing the mask, I might still be able to track him down based on the suit he was wearing.

As I walked past the entrance to one of the roller coasters, an actor dressed as a deranged clown stepped out of the shrubs.  I nodded at him and pointed at the green glow-in-the-dark lanyard around my neck.  He returned the nod and went back into the bushes.

All of the park staff wear the same lanyard during Nights of Fear.  They’re a variation on the lanyards that guests can purchase if they don’t want to be jump scared in the various scare zones throughout the park.  Those guests are issued orange ones, however, while staff wear green.

I followed the path as it warped around the roller coaster, passing by groups of guests as I went.  I looked closely at each person as they drew closer, but I didn’t see anyone that matched what I had seen on the camera feed.

Roughly ten minutes after leaving the office, I arrived at my destination.  The store wasn’t one of the ones open for the event.  The windows were dark, and a large ‘Closed’ sign hung on the door.

I hadn’t really expected the costumed guest to still be there, so I wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t.  Still, it was the best place to start.

My cellphone vibrated as it received the camera feed video.  I stepped off the path and into the store doorway so that I was out of the way of the crowd.  Digging my phone out of my pocked, I watched the video again.

I noticed something that I hadn’t the first time.  Right before the figure walked out of the frame, he turned slightly and headed off at an angle that would take him away from the main path.  I looked in the direction he had gone in.  There was a gate in the fence that separated the public from a maintenance area.  The gate was closed, but the padlock was lying on the concrete in front of it.

I retrieved the lock and examined it closely.  It hadn’t been unlocked.  It had been broken.

This was no longer a simple matter of a guest wearing a costume.  I pulled the walkie-talkie off my belt and radioed the control room to request backup.  One of the most important rules of Nights of Fear security was to never go into a potentially dangerous situation alone.

It took a while for anyone to answer, much longer than it should have.  When someone finally got back to me, I was informed that a brawl had broken out between two groups of college-age kids at the other side of the park.  Everyone was either committed to breaking that up or was dealing with one of a number of other smaller issues that had sprung up.

That meant that I had a choice to make.  Either I continued my search alone, going against both my own policy and common sense, or I gave up on pursuing the trespasser for the moment and risked losing him completely.  Under normal circumstances I would have gladly opted for the latter instead of the former.

The issue was that this wasn’t normal circumstances.  The maintenance area that had been broken into went directly under the largest roller coaster in the park.  If you’re familiar with it, that area is safe enough.  If you’re not, though, there are multiple places where the coaster track comes down to ground level at the bottom of hills.  At the speed they travel at, the cars can easily injure or kill a person in their path.  There’s a very good reason why even the staff only uses those maintenance areas when the ride is shut down.

Even if the trespasser was able to avoid being struck by the ride, what if he damaged the ride or obstructed the track?  He could be putting riders in danger.

I considered things for a moment before swearing in frustration and radioing the office to have the roller coast temporarily stopped.  I needed to go in, sweep the area to make sure that no one was still there, and lock it back down.  There was a time limit as well.  A lot of inebriated people would be waiting in line for the ride, and for the sake of the park employees operating it, it was best to make sure those people weren’t waiting too long.

After a few minutes I received confirmation from the office that the ride was stopped and that all the cars were off the track.  At the same time, I watched as the green lights above the roller coaster’s station turned red.  Nodding to myself, I took out my flashlight and proceeded into the maintenance area.

It was oddly quiet.  Out in the main areas of the park, the guests and rides kept up a constant high level of noise.  Even when you got used to it, it was like a constant buzz that you were still vaguely aware of.  The maintenance area was fenced off, and it muted much of the cacophony of sound.  It was almost a shock when I realized that I could hear my own footsteps.

I had only been looking around for a minute or two when I noticed another noise.  It was the sound of metal scraping on concrete.  Because of the way it echoed, it was difficult to pin down the direction it was coming from.  I stopped and listened while I got my bearings.  Most of the area under the roller coaster was hard compacted dirt rather than concrete.  The only places where the sound could possibly be coming from were around the ride support struts, which didn’t seem likely, or the large poured pad that the maintenance sheds were secured to.

There weren’t a lot of lights, and the ones that were spaced through the maintenance area didn’t do much.  I’m used to walking through the park at night long after the last guest has departed.  A lot of park employees find that unnerving or, I don’t know, creepy, I guess, but I’ve always found it to be relaxing.

This was different.  I grew more and more nervous with each step, and I started to get jumpy around every shadow.  I stopped walking and mentally scolded myself for acting like a child before continuing on.

The noise stopped as I came to the sheds.  It was replaced by a new sound, a low and almost inaudible whimpering.  I hurried forward.  Someone was clearly hurt.

I came to a six-foot wide gap between two of the sheds and abruptly halted.  I couldn’t tell what I was looking at.  The space was dark, but I could just make out a short figure, maybe five feet tall at the absolute tallest, standing at the far end with his back turned towards me.  Remembering the flashlight that I was holding, I shined the beam forward just in time to see the person raise his arm up over his head.

The light reflected off something metal in the person’s hand as the arm swung downward.  It was a thick piece of rebar.  The pole struck something on the ground with a wet thunk.  The whimpering I had been hearing abruptly ceased.

I pulled my taser free from its holster.  While security at the park doesn’t typically carry weapons of any kind, an exception is made during the Nights of Fear event.  This is because the crimes that happen during these events are often more violent and are sometimes threatening to the security guards themselves.

I verbally identified myself and ordered the figure to turn around and face me.  There was a long pause where nothing happened.  I was just about to give the order again when the man slowly looked over his shoulder towards me.

He was wearing a large mask.  At least I think it was a mask.  Whatever it was, it was shaped like a large rotting pumpkin.  There were flecks of light orange in some places, but the majority of it was a sickly gray color.  The front was carved to show a hideous jagged grin and two misshapen eye holes.

Beyond those holes…  Jesus, I’ve never seen eyes like that.  They were open so wide that I thought they might pop out of the sockets.  Veins stretched out across the white areas, and the pupil was completely black.  They stared at me so intensely that they seemed to vibrate in their sockets.

He turned all the way around.  He was wearing a black suit with an orange tie, and it was covered in blood splatter.  My eyes moved down to the piece of rebar he was holding, and more of the ichor was dripping from it.  There were also bits of hair and flesh stuck to the metal.

Just beyond him, lying in a heap on the ground, was something that was once human.  Now it was just a ruined pile of remains, twisted and contorted in ways that I never would have thought possible.  To my amazement it stirred every so slightly.  The man standing over it quickly turned back towards it and brought the rebar down hard to silence it before returning his attention to me.

We both stood there staring at each other for a long moment before the short man started towards me, his carved pumpkin head tilted slightly to one side.  With every step he took forward, I took two back.  I still had the taser pointed at him, but there was this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me it wouldn’t do any good.  I didn’t have any logical reason for thinking this.  He was quite a bit smaller than me, and I doubted that his clothing would offer much protection.  Still, I just had this feeling, you know?

I had to try, though, and it needed to be before he got too close.  I pointed the taser at his center of mass and fired.  The probes sank deep into his bloodstained shirt next to his tie, and the electricity began to flow.  The man stopped moving and looked down at the wires.  He brushed at them with his hand like they were flies, and they easily popped out of him before clattering to the ground.  With that done, he started to come towards me once again, the rebar still clutched in his hand.

I hurriedly backed out of the way as he approached, ready to run at any moment.  My foot caught on the edge of the concrete pad, and I fell hard onto the dirt ground beyond it.  I started to try to scramble back to my feet, but the pumpkinheaded man was suddenly looming over me.

I thought that I was dead.  I knew with absolute certainty that he was going to cave my skull in with the piece of rebar, probably after he had his fun destroying my body piece by piece like the lump of flesh behind him.

Instead, though, he simply reached into his suit coat pocket and produced a small candy bar.  He handed it down to me, and I took it from him in complete confusion.  Before I could even begin to process what had just happened, he continued on his way and disappeared around the side of the sheds.

I’m not sure how long I stared after him.  It could have been seconds, or it could have been hours.  Whatever the case, I eventually snapped out of my stupor and got back up before hurrying over to the body on the ground.  I almost couldn’t stand to look at it.  The bludgeoning had been so thorough that it wasn’t even possible to determine things such as gender and age.  There was barely anything left to identify it as having once been human.

I reached for my radio, but I found that I had broken it when I had fallen over.  I placed it back on my belt and stared at the small piece of candy that the pumpkinheaded man had given me.

I thought back to his eyes, those wild intense eyes, and I shuddered.

The remains of the person died a few minutes later.  There wasn’t anything that I could do for them except to make sure that they didn’t die alone.

Once they were gone, I left the space between the sheds to try to find any indication of where the killer might have gone.  I didn’t find anything, not even a footprint.  With my radio broken and cell phone reception spotty I didn’t have much of a choice about how to proceed.  I half-walked, half-ran back to the security office and called the local police.

Over the next few hours, my staff and I looked through the security camera footage as closely as possible.  There was no sign of the man, and we couldn’t find any video of him leaving the maintenance area.  The police eventually arrived and searched that section of the park for the rest of the night and into the morning.  They came up empty-handed as well.  Everyone was at a loss as to how he had disappeared.

Because of what had happened, the local police began to patrol with the security staff every night the park was open.  Like I said way back in the beginning, that was nine days ago.

A week after the first killing, we caught sight of the man, still adorned with the rotting pumpkin, on the security cameras again.  It was in a different part of the park, this time just outside one of the haunted house attractions.  I rushed over to the attraction, two of my men and one of the police officers with me, but he was gone again by the time we got there.  Behind the house, pushed up against a dumpster and hidden from view of the guests, was another dead body.

The next day there was a meeting held at the park’s main office.  It was just myself, the chairman of the board that owns the park, the city’s chief of police, and the mayor.  Despite my best efforts and strong objections, the other people present voted to keep the park open.  I found out later that same day that I would no longer be attending any further meetings about the matter.

Two nights ago was the third killing.  The staff watching the cameras didn’t seen the man initially, but a mutilated corpse was found at the top of a waterfall in one of the water attractions  We reviewed the tapes, and we discovered a clip of less than a second where you could see the pumpkinheaded man walk behind one of the fake rocks built into the attraction.

Last night, a member of my staff and one of the police officers managed to catch the man in the act.  He had dragged a woman in her early twenties behind a carousel by her hair.  They got there just as he was about to stab her with a broken bottle.

The officer immediately opened fire with his sidearm.  Two of the shots connected, and the man staggered before falling to one knee.  The officer put his empty gun back into its holster and took out a pair of handcuffs to proceed with the arrest.  The security guard radioed into the office for backup and to have the ride stopped.

The man suddenly hopped up to his feet and grabbed the approaching officer by the jacket.  Before anyone could react, he gave the officer a hard shove towards the still-spinning carousel and released his grip on the jacket.  One of the horses came racing by as the officer’s head went over the edge of the ride.  It slammed into the side of his head and crushed it inward as the impact lifted the body off the ground and flung it off to one side.

I could hear the riders screaming all the way from the park entrance.

None of this was caught by the cameras.  The story was relayed to me by the security guard that witnessed the whole thing.  That psychotic little man left him alive for reasons that I simply don’t understand.  He did, however, pause long enough to jam the remains of the broken bottle into the woman’s chest before tossing a lollipop at the guard’s feet and once again disappearing into the night.

Today is Sunday.  The park will be closed for the next four days.  When Friday comes around again, though, I’m sure that there will be more killings.  I’m sure of it.

Before I came to you to tell you my story, I put in a call to my immediate supervisor, the Head of Operations for both the park and its parent company.  He was the only person at that point that I hadn’t practically begged to shut down the park.  I was hoping that he of all people could be persuaded to see reason.

I was told in no uncertain terms that, despite five people being murdered, the park won’t be canceling the remainder of the Nights of Fear event.  He talked about not wanting to disappoint both the attending guests as well as the local community, and there was a mention of additional security being added.  Truth be told, I stopped listening about halfway through.  I’m not an idiot.  I know why the park isn’t closing.

It all comes down to dollars and cents, you see.  This is one of the most profitable times of the year not just for the park, but also for the surrounding town.  More tourism means more money, and we’re not talking about a small amount here.  We’re talking about millions.  Both the park higher-ups and the local government don’t want to lose the cash cow.

In fact, park attendance has gone up since the killings began.  I don’t know if people think that it’s just some sort of sick publicity stunt, or if it somehow makes it more exciting for them to think that they’re in the presence of a real serial killer.  I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand that, and that I think it’s more than a little disgusting.

I’m going to be ordering my staff not to engage with the short man wearing the carved pumpkin head.  So far he hasn’t attacked any of us.  I’m still trying to figure out why he didn’t kill me when I used my taser on him, but whatever the case, he hasn’t come after any of us park employees.  I’m looking to keep it that way.  We’re going to stay back and hope that the police presence will be enough to stop him.  I’m not willing to needlessly throw away the lives of my people.

Obviously I’m not enough to convince the people in power that everything needs to be shut down for the safety of everyone involved.  I’ve tried and tried and tried, and I’ve gotten nowhere.  That’s why I agreed to this interview.  I need you to find some way, any way, to make them close those gates.  It’s the only way to protect people.

Look, the bottom line is this: it has to be you, because someone, or something, is stalking the Nights of Fear, and there’s not a damn thing any of us there can do about it.