Haunting Memories : Ghost Walk at Santa Paula Airport will scare up historic spirits.

You’ve heard of haunted houses. How about haunted hangars?

That spooky time of year is creeping up again, and the Santa Paula Airport is the place to be for chills and thrills--and we don’t mean the aviation kind.

The Santa Paula Theater Center is staging Ghost Walk ’98 at the airport, starting Saturday. Halloween weekend, the theater itself will be the setting for “Tales to Tremble By,” a re-created 1940s radio program.

This is the fifth year the theater group has put on the Ghost Walk, a series of scary, often goofball skits that draw on Santa Paula area history. The vignettes are written fresh each year by locals who have no qualms about mingling fact with fiction. That’s part of the fun for the audience, according to cast member Linda Livingston. “People don’t know if it’s all true or partly true.”

Of all the settings the group has chosen for the Ghost Walk, this year’s may be the spookiest. The airport shuts down at night, and without any lights, the place is dark and creepy, organizers say.

The guided tours take a little more than an hour. Adding to the eerie ambience, Nita Arant and the Class-eeks will perform a musical, “Another Haunting--Another Show,” at the airport on Oct. 23 and 30.The tours often sell out, so reservations are recommended.

Those on the tour will stroll the airport grounds and along the way meet up with ghosts who have met their demise in mysterious, tragic and sometimes silly ways.

One vignette, “The Damp Thing,” rekindles memories of the 1928 St. Francis Dam disaster. Written by artist Wendell Dowling, it introduces a muck-covered victim who didn’t survive the flood waters that carried him to a watery grave beneath the airport. Now the poor soul is both water- and airplane-phobic.

The airport was built just two years after the St. Francis Dam spilled its waters down the Santa Clara Valley. Some of the skits mine the airport’s history, its assortment of aviation characters and its reputation as a home to vintage planes. For those who want a different step back in time, the Santa Paula Theater will take on the look of a 1945 radio station as the actors prepare for the broadcast “Tales to Tremble By.” It’s sort of a play within a play that retells three of Edgar Allan Poe’s works.r

BE THERE

Ghost Walk ’98 will be held at the Santa Paula Airport Saturday and Sunday, and Oct. 16, 17, 18; Oct. 23, 24, 25; and Oct. 30. Tours depart every 15 minutes from 6 to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $7 for adults; and $4 for students and children under 12. For information, call 525-3073. The airport is in Santa Paula at the south end of 8th Street; take the Palm Avenue or 10th Street exit off Highway 126.

“Tales to Tremble By,” will be performed at the Santa Paula Theater Center, 125 S. 7th St., Santa Paula, Oct. 30, 8 p.m.; Oct. 31, 5 and 8 p.m.; and Nov. 1, 5 p.m. Tickets are $12.50. (805) 525-4645.