Summary:

The ticket office issues each group a pumpkin themed Halloween bucket with a light in it. They caution you not to use flashlights as it could temporarily blind the actors. The area is very dark and once the sun was down this bucket provided barely enough light to see the path at your feet. The haunt is a trail through the woods. The total distance is stated as 1.5 miles. Based on the time to walk the trail this distance seems accurate. Despite the dark, the path seemed easy to follow. I would recommend people with mobility issues avoid this haunt since the walking path has a number of areas that have suffered some washouts so the ground is uneven. There are also sections with muddy areas along the path. In those areas wood chips were distributed but you should be careful to stay on the chip covered sections.

The haunt starts with one of several canopies along the route. The first area is a section with tombstones. The challenge with such a long wooded path is that there is very little access to power so there was not much lighting to see any of the props that were placed along the path. As you walked through the woods the darkness made it easy for actors to get very close to the group before they could be seen. One thing I noticed the actors did well was that with groups close enough to be able to hear each other they did not try to jump out at every group. Allowing some to pass unscathed. They would move around the woods or even make some grunting noises. This set up the next group since they were not ready. The slight sounds in the woods were also very effective at inducing anxiety in our group since we could not be certain if someone was getting ready to pounce.

I felt the haunt was at its best when they used the woods as part of the adventure.

Since, there is little power along the path the appearance of lights made it obvious when scenes were coming. The result is that it was easy to relax in some of the long stretches between scenes since you could prepare yourself once you saw lights. The haunt experienced staff shortages during the first weekend and had to close early both nights. It is not clear if this also affected the number of actors in the haunt but there did seem to be stretches of the trail where there were no actors. One of the best sets was a shack that was well lit inside so the color shown through the slats. This is a charity haunt that benefits local causes. At the end you can also stop at one of the buildings in the scout camp to purchase food prepared by the scouts that benefits the scout camp.

Hats off to the scouts and the volunteers who put this event together and keep it running. It's nice to see the next generation of haunters starting with a good cause such as this one. We look forward to seeing how they grow as haunters in the years to come.

To find out more about this event, visit:

https://dacey-s-hollow.webnode.com/