Article Contributed on: 10/10/2006 5:59:16 PM
The living dead went for a drive Saturday at Six Flags Elitch Gardens' first Casket Race.
The race, which consisted of "corpse" drivers and homemade coffins, intended to kick off Six Flag's Fright Fest. According to the PR manager for the park, Brooke Brasker, the Casket Race and the Hearse Parade that preceded it hoped to, "get the community involved and get the word out about the month-long celebration of Halloween."
A casket race, explained Amber Wiggs-Walker, a Metropolitan State College of Denver student and PR marketing intern for Six Flags, is "taking a coffin and turning it into a racing machine." The teams consist of two to three runners and one driver, or "corpse." The teams travel down a track outlined by bales of hay being pushed by the runners.
The corpses are not permitted to steer.
The caskets and their runners must then round a U-turn in opposite directions before crossing the finish line as the champion.
The race began promptly after the Hearse Parade at 12:30 p.m. amid a nice-sized group of spectators and, of course, corpses. Both teams entered in the race sped down the track directed only by their runners. One team's casket,The Forbidden Corpse, made a sudden detour into a nearby bale of hay before catching up to Team Two's, The White One, as it rounded the U-turn. Narrowly escaping a side-swiping by either team, the caskets raced towards the finish line within inches of each other. In the final moments, The White One swept sideways in front of The Forbidden Corpse causing runner Jason Weber to tumble to the ground as his team claimed victory.
Quickly recovering from his minor injuries, Weber joined his teammates to receive a plaque and season tickets for the Six Flags 2007 season.
The competing teams brought their own caskets complete with decorations including plastic doll heads and oozing blood. The Forbidden Corpse team, a family from Lakewood, designed their casket from "old plywood, screws and wheels," according to runner Tony Herman. Completing the look was a large doll's head attached to the front of the casket. Second runner for the team, Consuelo Lunsford, explained their admission into the contest and their creation as sounding "like something crazy."
Three of the hearses from the preceding parade produced the second team Michael Osburn and friends Jason "Demon Dog" Weber and Mike Roble. Their casket, The White One, was complete with a metal frame, gold trim and paper blood coming out the top.
Weber's mother, Anita VanDerEyken, was among the spectators after arriving in her purple '58 Oldsmobile hearse with a license plate reading "1FOOTIN." When asked about her family's involvement in the parade and race she said they'd "always been into this kind of stuff, even before Goth stuff existed." VanDerEyken also noted "We look for any reason to drive our hearse."
Other viewers of the race included hearse-parade participants Victor Branstetter and Jamie Villanueva, both MSCD students. The two arrived in a black hearse decorated with red and orange flames, one of two hearses owned by Branstetter's family whom he described as "enthusiastic about service cars." When asked whether he would attend the Casket Race and Hearse Parade next year, Branstetter confirmed he would.