I was standing at the entrance of the Portrait Gallery, peeking around the corner into the Hall of Faces for fresh victims when the idea hit me. My hand fell on the odd drawstring bag that hung from the belt around my waist, and a sly, crafty smile snaked across my face. Had my face really been the bony skull it appeared to be, the smile would have cracked it.

I was a Halloween monster – Freddy Kruger and Michael Myers wrapped in one rather dashing package – charged with a never-ending supply of energy, a Wolfman Jack-type voice, one chilling ghoul laugh, and some awesome, spine-tingling magic.

But I wasn't alone.

I turned and searched the length of the long, narrow gallery dully lit in eerie blue light, absently noting the pictures in worn-eaten wooden frames that covered the walls. The low, dreary strains of an unseen organ wafted through the air. As I peered through the gloom, the pictures began an odd metamorphosis. The people in the portraits were slowly turning into monsters as if some invisible demon were repainting them with an unseen brush.

But I wasn't paying attention to this strange transformation. What I was looking for was huddled in a dark corner at the end of the gallery where it turned into another leg of the corridor. It was a black, nearly indistinguishable shape. But I knew what it was. It was Amy wrapped in a black cloak with the hood pulled over her face.

I smiled with satisfaction. I didn't need to see around the corner to know that Joe was there too, lurking in the darkness. I pushed myself away from the wall and hurried down the gallery as the pictures transformed again. I'd need them both for what I had in mind.

It was October 6, 2001 and we were working the lower levels of "The Factory of Fears." Joe, Amy and I were what were known as "talent." We were three of the 450 actors hired to don costumes, make-up and grisly latex masks to play monsters in the seven mazes built in and around the Queen Mary during her month-long Halloween "terrorfest" called Shipwreck.

Shipwreck isn't an amusement park dark ride filled with clever animatronic characters or some new type of roller coaster. It is a unique, month long event during which a team of designers, carpenters and special effects experts transform the historic ocean liner and the dock area surrounding her into an eerily lighted, fog-enshrouded world of Halloween nightmares.

As the monsters inhabiting the mazes the designers have built, our mission is simple: scare the "ship" out of guests and leave them in a "wreck." Period. Aside from getting used to moving around in the heavy make we wear, it isn't a difficult task at all. Most of the people who come to Shipwreck want to be scared. They're paying for the delicious fantasy of being a participant in a live horror movie. They know we aren't really monsters, but they put that information on hold while they're here. They suspend disbelief to be threatened in a totally non-threatening way, which means that they get to be the idiot in a scary movie who opens the wrong door with reckless abandon, only they get to survive. This is Halloween to the extreme, and the crowds – nearly 65,000 of them annually – flock to the call. That's a lot of willing victims.

Amy lifted the hood of her cloak as I approached. By day, she was a tall, shapely and very pretty college co-ed who worked part-time at a bank. But you couldn't tell that from the face that peered at me from under the hood. It looked like it belonged to a burn victim who had put out the flames with a fork.

"Is another group coming?" she asked.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's clear for the moment."

Joe popped out from around the corner. The make-up artists had done a better job on him than they had on Amy or me. He looked like some sort of bizarre cyborg. There were wires jutting from open wounds in his face and electrodes jutting from his forehead. His hair was spiked and he was dressed in a workman's jumpsuit. This seemed oddly appropriate, since he's an electrician by day.

"What's up?" he asked, absent-mindedly rattling the shaker can he was holding.

"Since you're both here," I said, looking back and forth between them, "I've got an idea for a really cool tag-team scare."

"Oh yeah?" Joe said curiously. Joe and I had been doubling up on victims for a couple of nights. Some of the results had been spectacular.

I nodded; reaching down to unhooked the pouch hanging from my belt.

They had both seen Maxwell, of course, but they watched curiously as I pulled it out of the pouch. Maxwell is the name I gave to the prototype levitation illusion called "The Floating Ghost." It looks like a diminutive ghost about two-and-a-half inches wide, round at the top and covered with a foot long flowing white shroud that literally glows under black lights.

The reason I called this particular illusion "The Floating Ghost" is because Maxwell floats in mid air by itself. I knew it would be useful when I brought it to Shipwreck. But I'm still not sure if it's more popular with victims or monsters.

"So whatcha got in mind?" Joe asked, staring at ghost in my right hand.

I smiled mischievously. "I want to stand in the center of the gallery when the next group comes in," I said. "Amy will be over in the corner, and you'll be back where you were behind the wall. When the people come in, they'll be so busy watching the ghost that they'll never notice either of you."