MANSFIELD — Santa Claus gets all the positive PR this time of year.
Krampus ain’t happy about it, either.
The horned anthropomorphic figure accompanied St. Nicholas in nocturnal visits to children, according to European Alpine folklore.
Saint Nicholas rewarded well-behaved children with small gifts. Krampus punished badly behaved ones with birch rods, perhaps scaring them back onto the right path — or kidnapping those who failed to see the light.
Krampus and dozens of live actors will be ready to punish all visitors Friday and Saturday nights at the former Ohio State Reformatory as Blood Prison stages its fourth-annual two-night “Christmas Incarceration.”
Hours of operation are 7 to 11 p.m. and tickets are available at www.bloodprison.com. All ticket sales are online. Gates open nightly at 6:45.
Blood Prison owner Vic Amesquita said the weekend haunt will allow visitors to turn holiday stress into holiday screams as the old prison mixes in a bit of terrifying history into the season of yule logs, candy canes and eggnog.
“We keep adding more and more every year,” he said.
“The Warden’s Widow changes herself to the Christmas Widow and still delivers her famous screams,” Amesquita said.
“We also have a lot of evil elves and of course the main man, Krampus,” he said.
The fact is Halloween haunts have become so popular in the last decade that the frightening fun has been extended into other holidays, including the most wonderful time of the year.
“It has bled over into the holidays,” Amesquita said with a laugh. “We’re Blood Prison. We do a lot of bleeding.
“A lot of other attractions do many different things from Christmas to Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc. Christmas is probably the biggest one because it’s a big holiday and there’s so many themes.”
The haunt itself is a scaled-back and less expensive version of the popular Halloween haunt since the cell block areas are being used for tours and other things during December.
“It’s a different vibe when you jump into a Christmas haunt. It’s not all the same Halloween people. You get some Christmas people that come so you get a kind of a different mixture of people that come in for this event.
“It’s very well-received. We really theme out the haunt for Christmas. I’ve never had a complaint,” he said.
“It’s a short, little Christmas event. But it’s a lot of fun.”
(Photos from Blood Prison’s “Christmas Incarceration.”)
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