Scenes of Horror Haunt Berkley on Halloween

What is real and what is fantasy?

It was hard to tell Monday night at the Detroit Nightmare haunted house in Berkley, where the screams of actors intermingled with cries of terror emanating from visitors.

Approximately twenty costumed ghouls peppered a foggy path winding through the yard and around the back of a home in the 2300 block of Cummings. They depicted scenes of horror and depravity, leaped out unexpectedly or stared with vacant, haunting eyes.

It's little wonder then that Detroit Nightmare organizer Charles Brandt majored in psychology at Western Michigan University and is an aficionado of horror films.

"I actually have hundreds of horror movies," he said. "It's a passion of mine to know what's scary."

Brandt said he has put on Detroit Nightmare at its current location for the past 4 years – with the help of friends who portray the attraction's creepy characters – and did so previously at his parents' house in Huntington Woods. He estimated that he has spent between $2,000 and $3,000 amassing props over the years.

Visitor Renee McCurdy said Brandt definitely hit his mark.

"It is like every horror movie you've ever seen," said the rattled chaperone after exiting the haunted house.

Trick-or-treater Phenix McCurdy agreed: "I thought it was so unpredictable. You would hear screams and you couldn't tell whether the screams were the actors or the people.

"It was free, but if it wasn't, it would be worth the money," she said.