Just as sure as the winters are gray and rainy in the Pacific Northwest, come October, the Kitsap County Fairgrounds becomes a haunted “wonderland.”

But these wonders aren’t friendly. They’re just plain scary.

And this year the Haunted Fairgrounds will take on the look of New Orleans, which is said by some to be the most haunted city in America, according to Bruce Waterbury, event specialist with the Kitsap County Parks Department.

“We’re planning some great Mardi Gras voodoo,” said Waterbury. “And there’ll be above ground tombs, a scary back woods Louisiana bayou and many other thrills.”

The Haunted Fairgrounds has been a favorite of locals since it began on the fairgrounds in 2003. Prior to that, its originator, James Tubberville, and others created a haunt in an open field. The event gets as many as 7,200 visitors each season.

In all, there are 22,000 square feet of haunts, and it encompasses three buildings on the fairgrounds. Visitors start at the VanZee building where they buy tickets and line up for their chance to make their way through the haunt.

While in line, visitors can buy concessions and will be entertained with some ghoulish dancing by students of The Gallery School of Music and Dance of Port Orchard.

And then when it’s their turn, they’ll be led to the cat barn which had been transformed into a black light area with larger than life murals that jump off the walls.

“Participants get 3D glasses,” Waterbury said. “So everything pops out at them.”

Another area includes the dot room, where people in dot costumes fade into the wall, “that is, until they jump out at you,” Waterbury added.

“We try to give everyone a good scare,” he said. “And I believe we do it. Every year we have a different theme. We mix it up and visitors experience something different every year.”

Many more thrills wait for visitors in both the cat barn and the sheep barn, including a haunted graveyard, “the nursery,” with bloody babies, the thrown of pain, and a vortex spinning tunnel.

In one area, there’s a mild-looking streetscape of a typical New Orleans sidewalk cafe, complete with a sign the reads “Bourbon Street.”

“Who knows what might happen there,” Waterbury said.

All of it is only possible, Waterbury said, through the hard work of a group of dedicated volunteers. They operate under a nonprofit called Kitsap Haunted Productions.

“As soon as the fair ends (in August) and things get put away, they begin setting up the haunt,” he said. “They put in hours and hours.”

According to Vickie Josal, volunteer coordinator for the event, from 150 to 200 volunteers put in as many as 3,000 hours creating the haunt. About 6,000 sheets of plywood and 2,000 2-by-4s were used in the creation of this year’s haunt.

“Not only do the volunteers set all this up,” Waterbury said. “But many of them give all their weekends in October dressing up and becoming the scary actors needed for all this to happen.”

That accounts for about another 3,000 hours, she said. There are from 70 to 80 actors staffing the haunt each night.

“And then we have a crew of six makeup artists who work every night, too,” she said.

Josal has been part of the haunt since 2004. She and her husband used to create a haunted house in their garage for the neighborhood kids.

“We’d have fog roll down the hill and the kids would be afraid to come down our driveway,” she said.

But in 2003, she and her husband visited the first Haunted Fairgrounds and that was it.

“We said, ‘We want to be a part of that,'” she said.

Now each year she keeps all the volunteer engaged and spends her evenings during the event helping with the makeup and punching tickets.

Waterbury, who himself dresses up and takes part in the haunt, said the event has a very safe record.

“In all the years, we’ve only had two injuries and those were minor,” he said.

Every actor goes through safety training, many know CPR, and the entire haunt is previewed by both the county’s risk manager and a team from the Central Kitsap Fire & Rescue district.

“We make sure that there’s no crowding or running through it,” he said. “And the staff knows of various exit ways, if somebody’s too scared to continue through.”

For the younger crowd, there is a “lights-on, no scare haunt” from 5 to 6 p.m. each Friday and Saturday night.

Full scare tours begin at 6 p.m. and continue to 11 p.m.

Part of what makes the haunted fairgrounds so scary is the sounds and smells that are added, Waterbury said.

“But we never need to use a scream soundtrack,” he said. “The visitors do that for us.”

For the volunteers and actors, there’s no paycheck. All the proceeds of the event are used for the following year’s haunt and to make improvements at the fairgrounds. The Kingston – North Kitsap Rotary Club is a partner in the Haunted Fairgrounds and members sell tickets and keep the books. The Club gets its cut, which goes back into its community service work.

Waterbury thinks the Haunted Fairgrounds is the largest haunt in the state — and one of the scariest.

“You can go to Seattle to haunted houses,” he said. “But there’s nothing there that you’re not going to get here. And here, we’ve got lots of space and multiple buildings.”