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About The TerrorFest
The TerrorFest is invading the Brewery District of Columbus! Experience 2 terrifying Haunted attractions! One Attraction right after the other:
Butcher's Realm: Experience D.R. Frightner's Twisted and tangled house of nightmares! From the opulence of the ballroom and library to the dingy asylum and operating room this state of the art attraction puts you into the demented nightmares experienced by one of the nation's first serial killers.
The Brewery Butcher 3D: Can you survive the gruesome mystery of the Brewery Butcher in ALL NEW 3D? During the heyday of Columbus' thriving brewery district The Butcher murdered more than 38 people! Now he's back and he's waiting for you! Visit the brewery along with the many crypts that encase his victims.
The Legend of the Brewery Butcher:
David R. Hoster (May 16, 1860 – October 31, 1905), better known under the alias of D R Frightner, The Brewery Butcher, was an American serial killer. Frightner worked in a brewery in Columbus at the turn of the century. While he confessed to 38 murders, of which 9 were confirmed, his true body count is likely significantly higher.
The case was notorious in its time and received wide publicity via a series of articles in William Randolph Hearst's newspapers. Interest in Frightners' crimes is revived in 2009 by the opening of The Terrorfest a haunted attraction that features the Brewery Butcher and his house of nightmares.
Early life
David R Hoster was born in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of 3 his family moved to Columbus, Ohio as his family was descended from among the first settlers to the area. He grew up with a father who was a strict disciplinarian, and he was often bullied as a child. He claimed that, as a child, he had been forced by other students to view and touch a human skeleton after they found out about his fear of the local doctor's office. The bullies had initially brought him there to scare him, but instead he was utterly fascinated. No one knows for sure what D R stood for but most think Demented and Rotten. As a young boy he had no friends. Even his own family wanted little to do with him. D R grew up with major insecurities and was constantly looking for attention and affection. As time went by, he started to become nothing but a bully. No friends and little affection led to a terrible childhood. His future was destined to be nothing but trouble.
Columbus and "The Brewery Butcher"
Let’s fast forward to the year 1901, D R at the age of 41. D R still has no friends, little or no family contact and no interaction with the opposite sex. One good thing finally happened, he lucked into a job. He got a job as an apprentice at a local brewery. Still a bully, his coworkers barely tolerated him. Everything came to a head on September 25th, 1902. Still unable to get a date, D R resorted to hiring, Sally Lawrence, a Brewery District prostitute, but the experience was a disaster. D R was crushed and something snapped. He couldn’t control himself and he hit poor Sally over her head with a brass lamp. This one strike, took her life. D R knew that he had to dispose of the body. He waited until late that night and carried her body out the back of the hotel and to the brewery. There he put her into a vat of chemicals where over time her remains disintegrated.
The memory of Sally haunted D R—he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Her death invigorated him, which led to his master plan to kill everyone who had laughed at him or treated him poorly. Over the next three years 37 people met their demise. Each of his victims was brought back to the brewery, which became their final resting place.
Capture and arrest
D R was arrested in 1905 when police discovered his connection to a life-insurance fraud scheme involving his business associate, Benjamin Pitezel, whom he had murdered.
Pitezel had agreed to fake his own death so that his wife could collect on the $10,000 policy, which she was to split with Frightner and a shady attorney. They schemed that Pitezel would fake his own death. The plan included Pitezel setting himself up as an inventor, under the name B. F. Perry, who would be killed and disfigured in a brewery explosion. Frightner was to find an appropriate cadaver to play the role of Pitezel. Frightner instead killed Pitezel, although some have argued that Pitezel, an alcoholic and chronic depressive, might in fact have committed suicide. Frightner proceeded to collect on the policy on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse until his escapade ended when he was finally arrested in Columbus on October 31, 1905.
The number of his victims has typically been estimated between 38 and 100. However the number has been reported to be as high as 230, based upon missing persons reports of the time as well as the testimony of Frightners's neighbors who reported seeing him accompany unidentified young women into his apartment—young women whom they never saw exit. The discrepancy in numbers can perhaps best be attributed to the fact that a great many people came to Columbus but, for one reason or another, never returned home. The only verified number is 38, although police had commented that some of the bodies in the brewery were so badly dismembered and decomposed that it was difficult to tell how many bodies there actually were. Frightners' victims were primarily women (and primarily blonde) but included some men and children.
Demise
Frightner was brought to the Ohio Penitentiary in Columbus for interrogation. He gave various contradictory accounts of his life, initially claiming innocence, and later that he was possessed by Satan. Eventually, Frightner confessed to 38 killings without showing any remorse. He was placed in solitary confinement. Later that evening, a prison guard found Frightner’s dead body hanging by his belt.