Don't mess with a scarer...

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: LISA KELLY
She's got a scream that can pierce the night sky and she can convince you to open up her cage.

…Or she’ll laugh at you?

Fanshawe student Lisa Kelly has a part-time job of scaring people at Kustermans Family Farm’s Haunted Trail in Mount Brydges.

The corn maze’s story features a farmer whose kidnapped daughter was never found and whose wife committed suicide in the barn out of depression. The farmer goes crazy and starts killing anything on his farm.

While Kelly herself doesn’t like scary movies, she says she still enjoys her job.

“I can’t stand anything scary at all, but I love scaring people,” she said. “The hardest part of the job is not laughing at people when they’re scared. But it’s a really good acting role because you have to stay in character.”

Kelly plays a farm customer who has been kidnapped and locked in a cage by the farmer.

“I bang on the cage and I scream at [customers] to let me out,” she said. “That’s my thing.”

Kelly got the job when Kusterman’s sent out a newsletter looking for actors.

“You get paid to scare people – obviously I’m going to try for this,” she said. “When I showed up [to the audition] they looked at me and I’m this cutesy fashion girl and they were like, ‘You’re not going to be able to do it.’”

“They were very surprised such a psychotic scream could come from me.”

The hardest part of the job is trying not to crack up, Kelly said.

“There was a group of high school girls and I scared the crap out of them,” she said. “I started laughing, so I [had] to make it seem like I was getting hysterical – hysterically crying to mask the fact that I was actually busting a gut at these people.”

It may be a part-time gig, but with pressures of school piling up, she says it’s been a good way to get some release.

“It’s nice, especially for my program, which is a graduate program – to have something to do every day … it’s nice to go out and have a good time,” she said. “And to have that added bonus of getting paid to have fun.”

It sounds like fun and games for people who work there, but Kelly admits she’s had a scare or two at work.

“The scary thing is the corn,” she said. “When the wind blows through it … it seems like there’s someone near you.”

“Sometimes there will be lulls in between when people are walking through, so you’ll just be sitting there and there’s scary music… so you hear scary music and it’ll seem like someone’s coming near you and it’s not a customer and you’re just like, ‘I’m going to die right now!’”

But what is there not to like about this gig?

“I just find it very humourous to scare people,” Kelly said. “I have that weird humour where I enjoy stuff like that … I find it hilarious when people scream. It’s a fun job.”

The Haunted Trail runs until October 31. Visit the farm’s website at kustermans.ca for more information.