Legend of the Bunny Man - Miner's Revenge replacement

[Pretzel Kaiser]

The legend of the Bunny Man is a local legend that has (relativly) mundane origins but has grown into something more sinister by word of mouth.  Let's start out with the origins and I'll just take what Wiki says.

The first incident was reported the evening of October 19, 1970 by U.S. Air Force Academy Cadet Bob Bennett and his fiancée who were visiting relatives on Guinea Road in Burke. Around midnight, while returning from a football game, they parked their car in a field on Guinea Road to talk. As they sat in the front seat with the car running, they noticed something moving outside the rear window. Moments later the front passenger window was smashed and there was a white-clad figure standing near the broken window. Bennett turned the car around while the man screamed at them about trespassing, including "You're on private property and I have your tag number." As they drove down the road they discovered a hatchet on the car floor.


The second reported sighting occurred on the evening of October 29, 1970, when construction security guard Paul Phillips approached a man standing on the porch of an unfinished home in Kings Park West on Guinea Road. Phillips said the man was wearing a gray, black, and white bunny suit and was about 20 years old, 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m) tall, and weighed about 175 pounds (79 kg). The man began chopping at a porch post with a long-handled axe, saying "All you people trespass around here. If you don't get out of here, I'm going to bust you on the head."

That's the official story, the one that has official police documentation and the one that has already been verified.  Due to human's remarkable ability to grab onto something and make it larger than life, we also have the legend.

This version states that in 1904, an asylum prison in Clifton, Virginia was shut down by successful petition of the growing population of residents in Fairfax County. During the transfer of inmates to a new facility, the transport carrying the inmates crashed; some prisoners escaped or were found dead. A search party found all but one of them.

During this time, locals allegedly began to find hundreds of cleanly skinned, half-eaten carcasses of rabbits hanging from the trees in the surrounding areas. Another search of the area was ordered and the police located the remains of Marcus Wallster, left in a similar fashion to the rabbit carcasses hanging in a nearby tree or under a bridge overpass—known locally as the "Bunny Man Bridge"—along the railroad tracks at Colchester Road. Officials name the last missing inmate, Douglas J. Grifon, as their suspect and call him "the bunny man".

In this version, officials finally manage to locate Grifon but, during their attempt to apprehend him at the overpass, he nearly escapes before being hit by an oncoming train where the original transport crashed. They say after the train passed the police said that they heard laughter coming from the site. It is eventually revealed that Grifon was institutionalized for killing his family and children on Easter Sunday.

For years after the "Bunny Man's" death, in the time approaching Halloween carcasses are said to be found hanging from the overpass and surrounding areas. A figure is reportedly seen by passersby making their way through the one lane bridge tunnel.

This version is easily proven false, but that hasn't stopped hundreds of people from visiting the tunnel each year during Halloween.  I can't blame them either, in an area so rich in historical legends, something supernatural and sinster in the DC area is more than welcome.   As far as the maze goes, we can easily take from both the origin and the legend.

This would actually be pretty simple to pull off in the location of Miner's Revenge.  Scare actors would be in various "rabbit" outfits (I won't say "bunny outfit" because that is something else entirely) and the props would be simple backwoods stuff.  Animal corpses should be hanging from the trees as well to go along with the legend.  Now one cool thing that I would like to see done is the inclusion of victim actors.  I would actually go so far as to say they should be in KD uniforms so you can push a story that followers of the Bunny Man have moved in.  The victims would be restricted to the maze only to avoid any confusion.  

The cave should remain, but include a facade of the overpass since the tunnel is fairly intergal to the story.  You could have an occasional loud train horn recording go off as a jump scare.  Inside the cave, various alters in worship to the Bunny Man would be put up to tell the story that he is something of a god to these people and his lingering spirit commands it.  It would be great if they could get some sort of giant monsterous humanoid rabit (as a DJ, clearly) for the end, a build up like that is something that's rarly seen in houses.

Just like Doll Factory, the warped iconagraphy of a normall harmless rabit being could set quite a scary atmosphere.  Plus the fact that it's using a local legend will help the local image they've been trying to push this year along with the fact that it would be perfect for the Old Virginia theme.  I think having a video in the queue to explain the story would do wonders as well, it might help with the fear if guests are convinced that these things happened.  There wouldn't be that many new props required for this as well, just some crude costumes in additon to the standard maze fare.

 

[Jonquil]

Yes! BUNNYMAN Haunt!

And that bridge/tunnel is very creepy!

 

[Jonquil]

This version is easily proven false, but that hasn't stopped hundreds of people from visiting the tunnel each year during Halloween. I can't blame them either, in an area so rich in historical legends, something supernatural and sinster in the DC area is more than welcome. As far as the maze goes, we can easily take from both the origin and the legend.

Oh I think there's a lot of supernatural and sinister going on in DC, just not of the sort that would make a good maze