That ship atop the pier? There's a story behind it

WILDWOOD - Jack Morey really wants to show you the exploding toilet.

He wants to show you how he can take a cleaver and - pow! - chop the head off a squirting rubber chicken. ("We tell the kids they're seagulls," he says.)

He wants to get you with the blast of random air, splatter you with puke from the animatronic skeleton, and lead you through the claustrophobic room that closes in on all who enter.

But Morey's scariest trick was putting Terry O'Brien - a karaoke host from Cape May best known for killing off his crooners in short stories, collected and published as Murder-Oke - at the helm of his most beloved offspring. That's Morey's Piers' new $3 million haunted dark ride, Ghost Ship, on Mariner's Landing in Wildwood.

Also known as the Ignis Fatuus and the secretive Project 5292010, the 14,000-square-foot cargo ship is based on the Philadelphia Experiment, a conspiracy theory that goes something like this:

On Oct. 28, 1943, a U.S. destroyer escort was made invisible and teleported from Philly to Norfolk, Va., and back. The newly invisible sailors went mad, the legend goes. At the very least, they lodged themselves in Morey's imagination.

"It started as the Philadelphia Experiment," said Morey, one-half of the Morey brothers who inherited the amusement business from their father, Will. "Terry stepped in and made it the Terry Experiment. And I'm here cleaning it up. It's a hell of a spill."

Indeed, to spend any length of time with Morey, 49, and O'Brien, 40, as they gallivant around their new project - Jack determined to stay a kid, Terry trying to transition from the only job more childish than managing a haunted ship - is to know that neither one really knows how this tale will end.

Or, as O'Brien summed up his predicament in a half-sentence (about all he really has time for now): "To make a short story long."

It did all start as a short story, which, along with karaoke, is O'Brien's specialty.

Morey had been dreaming about this kind of idiosyncratic ride for years, and he asked O'Brien to write a short story to market the ride to a group of dark-ride enthusiasts.

The two knew each other through friend Jack Wright, publisher of Exit Zero, a free weekly publication in Cape May in which O'Brien had been killing off his friends and only vaguely disguising his enemies for years.

Wright had helped the Moreys with a 2009 book commemorating their 50 years at the piers - a book that was published with two editions: one with a title and cover that the right-brain brother, Jack, had approved (A Wild Ride), the other OKd by left-brain big brother Will Jr. (Fab-O-Rama).

O'Brien's story, which turned out to be not so short, ended up being published as a 44-page novella of sorts and handed out during the ride's VIP preview May 29.

At some point, O'Brien started hinting to Morey that maybe he could run the whole thing, as well as provide its fictional underpinnings.

The fact that the ship has at its heart a backstory - a back novella - shows that Jack Morey, despite his kidlike manner, is trying for something beyond the scope of what most people associate with run-amok Wildwood.

In fact, when you hang out with Morey and O'Brien, talk can turn to architectural philosophies, mentors like the late Philadelphia architect guru Steven Izenour, and the narrative integrity of Ghost Ship.

And then it dawns on you:

These jokers are more thinly veiled intellectuals than the let's-dress-up-like-zombies characters they pretend to be. In Wildwood, that may be the slickest trick of all.

"We'd never want to admit to being sophisticated," Morey said. "We just take tacky to a new level. These attractions are really hard to do, labor-intensive. We'll see how we do from a business perspective. For Wildwood, for us, for our brand of culture, this is real."

There was a time when the Moreys aspired to be Disney, but Izenour - who famously embraced the zeitgeist of Las Vegas - got hold of Jack's brain.

"He said, 'Do the opposite of theme parks,' " Morey said. "Morey's is a public space. It's ad hoc, impulsive. It's the juxtaposition of the rides, the ordinary carnival rides, the roller coaster over my head. We always protect the views of the ocean.

"There's no entry fee, there's no gate, no parking lot. There's an ocean, a beach, a boardwalk, people walking in and out. It's more, well, urban."

With Ghost Ship, the Morey brothers embraced a favored local tradition, the dark ride - an enclosed space in which you walk, or are transported, through a maze of rooms. The last dark ride in Wildwood, the beloved Castle Dracula, had gone up in smoke a few years back when it burned to the ground.

Rather than use ride designers, the Moreys consulted naval architects. Rather than hire an experienced ride manager, they brought in a short-story guy to build the narrative.

The Moreys even tried to keep the project under wraps - literally, though at first they could not find a shroud big enough to cover the 50-foot structure - but information started leaking like a sinking ship.

The result, wedged into the pier on the site of the old mini-golf course designed by Will Sr., is a 20-minute tour through narrow ship corridors and themed rooms with special effects, animatronic characters, and actors.

Meanwhile, O'Brien is embracing the corporate end of his new life, attending organizational-behavior seminars and overseeing the employees. ("First opening that wasn't a total panic in days," he wrote on Facebook a week ago.)

"There's two of me - one who has a better handle on the corporate end, and one the creative end," O'Brien said. "Those two people are becoming one."

He and Jack Morey are still tinkering with how much story line to work into the frights. The ride has been well-received by dark-ride enthusiasts. (Al Stromer, event coordinator with the group Darkride and Funhouse Enthusiasts, called Ghost Ship a "long, exciting walk-through" and thought the "size and detail of the facade" was especially impressive.) But everyone acknowledges there's room for improvement.

"I overprepared with story line," said O'Brien.

Not to worry. He still has an editor, only now it's a guy who grew up running around the Wildwood piers.

"Is it appropriate for a zombie to be in there, or a NAPS agent?" Morey asked, referring to the North Atlantic Paranormal Society investigators who populate the ship.

"We're working on a bit where the NAPS agent gets grabbed by the zombie," said O'Brien. "We have to staff it."

And produce 1,500 words.