A ghoul reveals all: one-on-one with a bug-eating monster

Six Flags Great Adventure’s Fright Fest is one of New Jersey’s most popular Halloween attractions. One of Fright Fest’s finest, senior Theodore Dalley, a psychology major from Jackson, N.J., sat down to share some of his horror stories.

Q: What do you do at Fright Fest?

A: I pull out one of the old covered wagons that are set up as a hearse; there’s a change in music and the ghouls break out through the crowd causing everybody to scatter and then I head off to my section. I’m in a special area known as the terror trail. It’s an actual junkyard, we just cleared a way through and it gives [the trail] an even creepier feel to it.

Q: What’s your favorite way to frighten your victims?

A: There is a fog machine that I use to my advantage so I can move around without being seen. Usually what I try to do is get right in front of someone’s face so when they see me they don’t know what’s there. Or, I try to get behind someone and growl behind them in their ear, they turn around and I am able to maneuver in front of them so when they come around they touch nose to nose with me and it just really disorients them.

Q: Did anyone ever get physical with you?

A: Yeah, actually I have a broken nose as we speak. There was a girl on the bridge, we sectioned her off from her group so it was just her and three of us [ghouls]. I got close and I scared her and as she spun around she back-handed me right in the nose. It cracked to the side and it started bleeding.

Q: Do you have a memorable victim or reaction that you received?

A: There’s actually two, and they are from this year. The first was an old woman that me and another ghoul gave a heart attack. We felt bad about that until we knew she was all right. And the other one was a guy we had go over the bridge last Saturday that actually lost control of his bowels on the bridge. I actually had to hose the bridge down.

Q: What types of people do you like to scare?

A: I really like scaring the big jocks in front of their girlfriends because then they get really, really angry that they got scared. And I also like scaring full-grown adults because they are with their kids and they’re supposed to be like ‘don’t be scared, don’t be scared’ then they scream and their kids laugh at them.

Q: What makes this job different or stand out?

A: I ate a Madagascar Hissing cockroach last Saturday. One of the kids was doing a behind the scenes video and he had me crawl up like lizard man and I ate it. It was about 21/2 inches long. To make sure it didn’t crawl out of my mouth I crushed its head a little bit before I ate it so it wouldn’t be moving around as I’m biting it. It reminded me of creamy milk mixed with hot dogs; it’s a hard flavor to explain. The hardest part [to eat] were the legs because they’d hook onto your tonsils and you’d have to drink something to get them off. I drank a couple sips of 7-Up just to get the exoskeleton down. I got other ghouls to pretty much throw-up while I was doing it because I had the insides hanging off my lip then I sucked them in.