Lake Elsinore Field Of Screams: The Making Of Macabre

“For what we are about to see next, we must enter quietly into the realm of genius.” -- Dr. Frederick Frankenstein, Young Frankenstein (1974)

Chelsea Wiggins is afraid of the monsters she creates.

“I can make them up but I can’t go out there,” she said.

Wiggins, 20, is a head makeup artist for the Lake Elsinore “Field of Screams” running Thursday through Sunday nights until Halloween at The Diamond in Lake Elsinore.

The annual haunted stadium features actors made up as evil clowns and butchered victims lurking in shadowy mazes, ready to frighten the life out of unsuspecting visitors.

This year’s production is the brainchild of Temecula twins Zachary and Jeromy Ball, affectionately known as The Bloodshed Brothers (“Ever since we were little we loved Halloween.”)

Their mom, Veronica Ball, 48, was on hand Friday night. She’s a self-titled “costume mom” who designs the deathly garb for Field of Screams performers. She’s also an organizer who assists the show each week by wrangling about 150 young people eager for the opportunity to be transformed into ghouls.

“They get community service hours if they volunteer,” Ball explained.

For Wiggins, Field of Screams is truly chilling.

“I won’t walk through it,” she said, explaining she’s afraid her “creations” will scare her.

But she’s undaunted by the mechanics of making fake blood and guts: “For the victims … we’ll either use latex to create the wound [with] tissue and cotton balls, or we’ll use silicon, which creates the thinner cuts.” The gouges and gashes are colored, and “then we’ll use a thicker blood and have the wound dripping with the runny blood.”

The wicked clowns are more complex because makeup lines are so precise. They take about 10 minutes to do up; victims about 5 minutes – unless they’re “going over the top” on gore, Wiggins said. (Click on the attached slideshow to see how two performers are transformed into monsters.)

On any given performance night, there can be dozens of actors to make up, with the work spread between Wiggins, another head artist, and a handful of volunteers.

Menifee resident Brittany Hume, 21, was portraying one of Wiggins’ mutilated victims Friday night. She calls the experience "amazing," despite the never-ending funeral parlor organ music and bloodcurdling screams in the background. Very-scary-clown Sean Riegler, 18, of Menifee agrees, saying he does the job “mostly for fun.”

Wiggins also loves her work.

“You get to mess around and experiment a lot here,” she said. “It’s like a school in itself. You get to learn.”

Field of Screams is a proving ground for Wiggins, who hopes to someday leave her home in Lake Elsinore for makeup work in the film industry.

For now, however, fake death becomes her.

“It’s a great experience to not be under so much pressure.” 

Field of Screams runs Thursday and Sunday nights, 7 - 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday nights, 7 - 11 p.m. Click here for more info.