Farley Wacken’s Gonna Get Ya! The Chester Haunted School

With Cindy Chinn of the Center of Creativity
Intro by Less Lee Moore

The Chester Haunted School in Chester, NE is not your run-of-the-mill haunted house. Like radio shows from the 1950s, it utilizes narration to scare its listeners, but also adds a modern touch: an ingenious light show which depicts the action. Instead of monsters jumping out at you, however, your imagination is allowed to run wild with what you think you see: Farley Wacken, the evil headmaster, roaming the halls with his deadly yardstick.

Watch the video on YouTube and then read about how this unique attraction came into being.

From idea to reality

It all started as a small Halloween decoration with scary backlit images in the windows of the school, which is actually my home. Then I asked an electrician friend, Thomas Russell, if I could put timers on the lights, which turned into the purchase of the first Light-O-Rama 16-light controller and software. We have since bought three more, giving us a total of 62 channels. Then I asked Tom, “How do I add audio to it?” such as scary sounds, etc. He suggested a low frequency FM broadcast, which we borrowed from a local radio station (we bought one of our own with donation money).

Once we had the technology in place, I decided to tell a story. . . so I wrote it and talked my brother, an actor in L.A., Allen Andrews, into narrating it. The next step was tricking—or should I say, forcing—a friend’s kids (the Petersen Boys) to record audio clips for me. Then I added other sound effects and background music, syncing everything together to produce a 12-minute feature. The whole thing from start to finish, took us about three weeks to put together. Tom ran the mile of wires and set up the 20 flood lights and FM audio while I put 30 yards of fabric over all the windows and cut images out of cardboard, wrote the story, edited the audio, and synced the lights.

From reality to popularity

2007 was our first production. We also did a huge Christmas show, increasing our 16 channels to 62 through local donations. We plan to make an annual event of it, hoping to grow it more each year.

We invited the community to come see it and ran it on the hour for a couple of weeks leading up to Halloween. Halloween night we had a live show, with people from the community sneaking in and running out of the school while the show ran. We also had live actors in the windows. We had great turn-out once everyone started talking about the show; people from miles away were coming to see it. We did little to no advertising.

Is Farley Wacken a real person?

The story is totally made up: Farley is my friend’s Golden Retriever and Wacken had a nice ring, tying into the whole swinging yardstick thing. When we bought the school, there were yardsticks in every room, which I thought was very odd. I have been here almost two years and I still find yardsticks hidden in corners.

Some of the characters in the story are local: Mary Tipton, Farley’s love interest, was a kindergarten teacher here for many years and still lives in the community. The “Neutch Boy” is proud to tell you that he was always in trouble. During one show I heard someone yell from their car, “You Go Dad!” when his name was mentioned.

Was the school ever considered haunted?

No, unfortunately, the school is not haunted. I have had people contact me, wanting to do a “reading” of the school. There isn’t anything to read, though. The only scary thing here is my dog Tosh’s bark.

Additional Resources:

The Chester Haunted School shows nightly, from dusk until midnight, from October 18 through 31. The new production will be a series of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems. Please visit the website for more information.