Fort Fright returns to Colonial Michilimackinac Oct. 6-7
MACKINAW CITY — Be wary of werewolves and look out for lutins as you walk the lantern-lit path along the shore of Lake Michigan to Colonial Michilimackinac for Fort Fright during the evenings of Oct. 6 and 7.
From 6:30-9:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, 18th-century French-Canadian folklore comes to life.
Visitors will share the historical fort with all manner of monsters. Look closely at the British Redcoats, you'll see that they're not ordinary soldiers, but skeletons. And in the upper stories of the wooden buildings, mythical creatures will throw open shutters and cackle, howl or prowl around the palisade.
Around campfires, visitors will find French fur traders and voyageurs telling tales, singing songs played to traditional music of the 1700s, and visiting with guests.
Other frightening features include the Demon Walk, boasting vicious monsters waiting to trick you out of fortune and pull you into the underworld, and the Werewolf Walk, where the most terrifying of the creatures in the fort prowl and hunt for you in the dark.
“The majority of the activities at Fort Fright will be suitable for the entire family,” said Steve Brisson, Mackinac State Historic Parks director. “But we’ll also have a number of interesting and scary activities designed to appeal to older children and adults.”
Organizers said a tour of the haunted rowhouse, a custom designed exhibit for this occasion, will not be easily forgotten.
In other wooden buildings within the fort and fur trading village, colonial residents will serve autumn treats like homemade cookies and toffee. Guests can learn about death and burial in the 1700s, and the various traditions and ceremonies for the dead from over 250 years ago in the church.
Fort Fright isn’t meant to simply scare visitors. Organizers said there’s an eerie but real background to the event, which stems from French-Canadian tales that were passed on from person-to-person as voyageurs and other people traveled. As such, there’s a strong history of oral tradition behind Fort Fright. That oral history is shared around campfires much in the same way it was shared over two-and-a-half centuries ago.
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The characters that roam Fort Fright, such as werewolves, lutins, and Le Dame Blanche, meaning White Lady, are drawn from a book called "Were-Wolves and Will-o-the-Wisps: French Tales of Mackinac Retold" by Dirk Gringhuis. The collection of short stories, published by Mackinac State Historic Parks, is based on French-Canadian folktales brought to the Mackinac Straits area by the voyageurs during the height of the French fur trade.
Admission to Fort Fright is $12 per adult, $8 for children ages 5-12, and free for children age 4 and under and Mackinac Associates members (excluding Heritage Level). Tickets are available now online. Last admission on both nights is at 8:30 p.m. Call (231) 436-4100 for more information.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Fort Fright returns to Colonial Michilimackinac Oct. 6-7
