The Niles Star

Niles resident designs and builds spooky attractions

Joe Leach, the construction and design manager of the Niles Haunted House Scream Park, has been busy the past month getting the park ready to open Sept. 17. Leach works year round on improving the theme park. (Daily Star photo/AARON MUELLER)

By AARON MUELLER

Niles Daily Star

It’s been a long day of travel for Pete Karlowicz, the manager of the Niles Haunted House Scream Park. He has spent the last several days touring haunted houses on the other side of the country in order to formulate his own new ideas.

All he wants to do is take a nap on the flight home, but his associate Joe Leach won’t shut up.

Leach is vigorously scribbling on a napkin, trying to explain his ideas for new additions to the Scream Park. Karlowicz doesn’t really care how the contraptions are going to work. He just wants them to look cool.

But that doesn’t stop the man, who is known around the Scream Park as “The Wizard.” His brain just never stops.

“The guys just drips with enthusiasm and dedication,” Karlowicz says of Leach, the construction and design manager for the park. “He pretty much can build and design anything.”

The only problem he has with Leach is he just doesn’t know when to stop talking.

“If I have an idea, I want that to be the end of the discussion, but he wants to tell me exactly how he’s going to do it,” Karlowicz said with a laugh.

Leach, who has been working for the Scream Park for nearly 30 years, has taught himself how to build and wire the electronics for various spooky scenes.

“None of it is book knowledge,” Karlowicz said. “He just wakes up in the middle of the night solving these problems. It just comes through osmosis. I have no idea how he figures this stuff out.”

Leach, a Niles resident, is also the mastermind behind many of the ideas for the various haunts, including a new curtain maze with dizzying strobe lights and a teetering bridge in the Field of Screams.

He is currently working on programming the large fire-breathing dragon on the haunted hayride to talk.

“And it’s not some Walt Disney thing with a huge budget,” Karlowicz said. “It’s something he designed in a pole barn with some junk parts. What this guy does with old bicycle parts and stuff is nothing short of amazing.”

His creepy contraptions have earned him respect nationally and helped put Niles on the map.

“He is known throughout the country,” Karlowicz said. “He invents things that no one else can.”

So how does this self-taught “Wizard” do it?

“I guess I’m just creative,” Leach offers.

Scream Park volunteer Tim Goodrich has another explanation.

“He’s a genius,” he said.

The Scream Park, which opens Friday, Sept. 17, is open on weekends for less than two months a year, but Leach’s work is ongoing.

“We never stop,” he said. “We take a week break (when it closes) and get right back into it. People expect to see something different every year.”

Leach compares it to a community theater producing new plays every year.

“What we do here is similar to a play but the sets are much shorter and quicker,” he said. “And to entertain that many people is quite an accomplishment.”

Nearly 114,000 people came to take in Leach’s “theater” last year and about 900,000 since 1981.

But the interesting thing is Leach doesn’t see the play as a horror.

“It’s comedy,” Leach said. “If I scare them, later on they’ll have a huge smile on their face. They’ll be laughing when they tell you about it.”

When the Scream Park opens Sept. 17, Leach will be able to take a bit of a breather and watch the drama unfold. But rest assured, his brain and napkin scribbling won’t take a vacation.