TONIGHT is the most terrifying night of the year but a country park in Basildon has been spreading fear among its visitors for the past fortnight.

Reporter, Sam Drury, took a disturbing trip to Wat Tyler Country Park in Pitsea to find out all about its fright night, Cursed, and to meet the people behind it.

He was also brave enough to tackle the five horror mazes.

The themed attractions included Work Chop, The Nag Inn, Contaminated, Toy Shop and the main event, Cell 13.

Cell 13 is a disorientating tour through a misused lunatic asylum. Through dark corridors and forgotten cells, chained inmates fly into your vision with a psychedelic lighting show that leaves you unsure where the next scare will come from.

There was also the AmphiFEARtre at the park which hosted a range of circus acts and more extreme events such as sword swallowing.

The first haunt was Toy Shop, a creepy take on all of your worst childhood fears.

Squeezing between tight walls, with only the smiles of stuffed bears and beheaded children’s toys for company, you are greeted by screaming creatures and ghostly figures which send a shiver down your spine with every corner you turn.

Toy Shop is a subtler scare than the other experiences at Cursed.

Rather than the trained actors who work for weeks before the event to jump out at you from angles you would never expect, your own mind creates the horrors inside the maze.

The Nag Inn and Contaminated were both filled with unexpected turns, but, with more reliance upon the actors inside to create terrifying moments.

Speaking about the actors and the work that goes into preparing for the fright night, Richard Moss, 55, site organiser for Cursed, said: “As soon as we are finished with an event, we are already in planning for the next one.

“Around six months of work goes into working everything out so that we know what we are doing in terms of the mazes. Three months prior, building will start for the mazes and how they are going to look. Every year we change two of the mazes so next year the ‘AmphiFEARtre’ will be moved and a bigger maze will go over there.

“We try to change it year on year so that we can carry on improving.”

The most terrifying of the lot was Work Chop, a terror maze set inside a slaughterhouse. Introduced by a character based upon the evil Mrs Lovett, the pie maker and love interest of the demon barber of Fleet Street, Sweeney Todd, you walk behind the shelves of her pie shop and into a world of horror.

In the most terrifying moment of the night, a masked butcher, bearing a meat cleaver in hand with blood smeared across his jacket crowded an unsuspecting victim into a corner and let out a blood curdling scream, with his helpless victim unable to escape.

The dark turns and obstacles in the shape of meat hanging from the ceilings provide a terrifying experience with ominous figures to direct you through the maze.

The actors who are trained to scare the life out of the park’s visitors undergo intense training to make sure they are show ready for the annual haunt.

Mr Moss said: “Their training starts in September. We have two professional actors come in, they go through how to scare people, how to get away and how to make sure they do not get too in people’s faces and also to recognise when they should stop. We do the classes individually and in groups. We have two or three scare schools where we invite the actors down and they have to try and scare each other. Some people, they can do it at home, but it is a bit different when you have someone who is 6ft 3in in front of you and you have to try and scare them.”

Cursed provided a night of terror, frightful enough for anyone to jump out of their skin at least once. The five mazes and roaming actors gave every visitor the terrifying experience that they had came to the park for on the night.

The attractions showed that fear can come from many different places. For anyone who has visited the park this Halloween it was a perfect celebration of the most terrifying time in the calendar.