Haunted Hayrides/Houses

Expect to experience:

• Difficulty finding it
• Packed Shuttle bus
• Average age 19
• Smell of BO

Finding Pennhurst in the first place was a little bit of a debacle. GPS got us far enough to where we saw signs for the place on the narrow streets of Royersford (I think). Once we finally thought we were making some real progress in finding the Asylum, we got detoured into some residential neighborhood where we basically followed the flow of traffic right into a really creepy looking parking lot filled with old junk cars and an abandoned garage. Swarms of teenage-looking kids energetically filtered their way through the lot around the parked cars and up towards the road where they filed neatly into a ominously long line. As I stood there looking at this curiously, (and came to grips with the fact that I’m twice the age of 99% of these people) I wondered why on earth they would be standing beside the road in such a long line. Then I saw a yellow school bus approach the kids (as if it were a pub crawl vehicle on St Pats Day) and at that point realized we were facing a shuttle bus situation. I really hate shuttles. Whether its an offsite work event, or a vacation situation, I just cant stand them. I kept my complaints to myself as my friends and I took our place in line, and after three buses filled up, we finally got on board. The trip was about 10 minutes, mostly through a forest. This would have been a nice effect to add a precursory creepiness towards the event, but……we were packed on a school bus with about 100 teenagers. As our bus finally pulled up in front of the asylum, excitement built as we saw foreboding and imposing buildings at the entrance. That image alone was probably my favorite part. The buildings just look sinister and some are kept deliberately run down for an extra eerie atmosphere.

The asylum tour begins with a familiar technique of gathering several attendees into a room and one of the hyped-up and loud female performers instructs and warns the guests about what to expect and how to behave. The usual ranting and berating of attendees ensued, and then the scares began as the signal was given to proceed from one room to the next. My buddy Joel found himself leading the way for the entire group and no less than 10 seconds into this, it was funny to see him reel back in horror as a caged woman angrily yelled at him. The shocks came from all different directions as performers were even stationed on the floor, and occasional arms would come up and do their best to catch you off guard. My girlfriend Kate probably caught the worst of the abuse as her non-stop screaming, ducking and attempted evasion of the performers only served to make her a bigger target. Some performers were very loud with shoving tendencies and others would relentlessly stay on your trail doing nothing but gently caressing your hair. Be warned, the smell of BO is probably more rampant here than any other event of its kind.

Towards the end of the asylum tour I started getting an uneasy feeling, but probably not for the reason you would expect. After the Asylum and all throughout the Dungeon of Lost Souls, the feeling became even harder to ignore. I’m not an activist by any stretch and I avoid making ethical commentary about these things, but an old memory of controversial debate surrounding Pennhurst suddenly became connected in my mind with what was unfolding right in front of me. Pennhurst has many true stories of abuse during its run as a real-life mental treatment operation many years ago. The long-standing controversy about this place is that its current-day private owners used the concept of actual abuse to create the attraction they have today. The behavior of the patients is exaggerated to an extreme level (I suppose the techniques of abusers too) for the purpose of entertainment. Regardless of how realistic any of the current show actually is….this event is making a profit off the misfortunes of the mentally ill and overall, I left with a bad taste in my mouth. One example is a very large man with no shirt and excessive body hair wandering around with child-like mannerisms and wearing what looked like a diaper. Another female performer in a cage reaches into a toilet and pulls out what looks like crap. She then taunts the guests as if she is going to throw it. This kind of stuff isn’t scary, its just gross and insulting to the people they are portraying.

As you might have guessed, I probably wont be back anytime soon. If it were possible to come back sometime in the summer when the haunted event is NOT going on and no one were around, it would be much scarier.

Attractions Selected: Asylum and Dungeon of Lost Souls
Paid: $30 per person x 4–Total $142 after tax and handling
Attended with: My girlfriend Kate, my friend Joel and his wife Jenn.

The Sleepy Hollow Hayride
Expect to Experience:

• Disorganized (but free) parking
• A LONG haunted hayride
• Live bands/bonfires/food
• Port-a-potty only

With Shady Brook Farm’s Hayride of Horror being my favorite haunted hayride of all time, its not surprising that it took me so long to finally give The Sleepy Hollow Hayride at Active Acres a try. The two places are virtually right next to each other, and given a choice, obsessive tendencies typically favor the known commodity. This year though, I reluctantly broke tradition and tried the alternative. Having a $3 coupon to Sleepy Hollow may have influenced me just a little…..sometimes cheapness supersedes tradition. It was difficult to resist doing Shady Brook one more time…..I literally drove past the road for it on the way to Sleepy Hollow, but winding backroads beckoned to try something new. Upon arrival, a peculiarly stationed farmhouse sits right at the entrance of Sleepy Hollow. Beyond that was a mess of cars parked at all different angles and no one giving any sort of direction whatsoever. The gated entrance had one opening big enough for cars to enter, but then other cars were trying to exit out of the same spot. After edging my way through the entrance and nearly scraping against an exiting car, I settled for one angled space and walked down a lengthy row of other haphazardly parked cars toward the ticket windows. The line for the ride wasn’t too unbearable. We waited maybe 15 minutes on a Saturday night as wagons with giant steel cages rolled up to the front of the line. One note here….try to be mindful not to sit with your back right up against the “cage” behind you. As various psychos ambush the wagon during the ride, they tend to jump up on the side and shake it around. This can cause some minor back pain. One other note here in reference to the parking situation….you are driving on uneven ground and this could be a problem for some vehicles. Don’t bring your Lamborghini here.

Once on the wagon, we took a leisurely ride through some fresh-smelling countryside in Bucks County. As haunted hayrides go, I didn’t find this to be especially scary, but fun nevertheless. You could classify this in the ranks of the more suspenseful type, as the ride is long and their props aren’t as shocking as you would see on the nearby Shadybrook Farm. In fact, the props do look a little older and somewhat dated. While I do enjoy seeing a giant mechanical rat thrown into the mix, years of seeing other mechanical rats have mitigated any remaining shock value this guy might have had. The performers seemed a little disorganized at times–one stop was to observe brown-robed characters gathered before a dimly lit backdrop presumably to perform some sort of act of heinous shadiness on a reluctant victim. There was an audio accompaniment to the whole scene as the characters were wearing microphones, but the dialogue was muffled and hard to understand. It was an interesting idea, but enthusiasts of ritual killing re-enactments may not appreciate being left in the dark when it comes to determining exactly who was presiding over the ceremony. I’ll cut these guys some slack though. It was early October, before they had a real chance to perfect their performance. The best and most effective scare was the close collision with a menacing-looking farm vehicle towards the end. Alright, I wont give anymore away.

All-in-all, a worthwhile experience. My sister Adrienne was a quiet observer throughout, but said she enjoyed it. You probably wont find this event truly scary (unless you are very young or this is the first ride you ever do), but the length of the ride on a nice October night will make you feel like you got your money’s worth.

Attractions Selected: Hayride only
Paid: $30 for 2 tickets (although I found a $3 discount coupon which was good from years ago)
Attended with: My sister Adrienne

Expect to experience

• My Personal Favorite Hayride
• A jolting hydraulic platform
• Possible graphic-looking violence
• Painfully annoying karaoke

My first and favorite haunted hayride! If you live anywhere within 90-minutes of this event, it is well worth the trip! I take 95 north, and right off the exit at Yardley, PA are wide open cornfields, which look especially ominous under a moonlit sky. If that didn’t give you chills, surely the karaoke near the entry area will. If there could be one complaint about Shady Brook, it would be the seemingly unnecessary amateur singing hour. I know a certain amount of kitsch is necessary at these things, but karaoke seems like an unexpectedly odd thing to see. My last time there, the performances ranged from the woefully desperate to the obliviously terrible. Just to add another pathetic layer to my last experience….the middle-aged man running the karaoke got in a fight with two 12-year olds because they insisted on incorporating profanity into their otherwise innocent song choices. Dan Band recruits maybe?

Karaoke aside, Shady Brook Farm has been a Halloween staple of mine since 1998. Its fun to see the changes which have come and gone since then. A few years ago while riding the wagon, I saw one of the most daring and grisly effects that I have ever seen at one of these things. Along the ride, there is a stop at a deserted house on the trail. The view of the front of the house shows a door busting open onto a front deck as a female character runs out screaming hysterically “Nooooo! Nooooo! Heeeelllllp!”. Right on her heels is your typical horror movie deranged-looking madman. Before you know it, the psycho catches up to her, and from behind, reaches his hand in front of her neck while holding a rather large hunting knife. Its obvious that it wont end well for the lady, and from that point I figured we would see some kind of brief struggle as the wagon pulls away and your imagination would fill in the blanks. Instead……the wagon goes nowhere until we get a full scene of the madman slitting that poor woman’s throat from side to side, and her lifeless body drops to the deck like a sack of bricks. What on earth did we just see? I did a quick gaze up and down the wagon benches and noted several children on board. The whole thing looked so realistic, yet no one seemed all that phased. I’m still not sure how I feel about that horrifying image being part of the ride, but I can say that it did not occur during my most recent visit last year (2014).

At the end of the ride, there are many opportunities to indulge in tasteful but fattening boardwalk-style food. Several firepits are stationed around the premises, which make it great for warming up or toasting marshmallows. You can also reserve tables with your friends and family to have parties right on the property. There are other components to the “farm” including a haunted barn and corn maze, but the hayride itself is the only part of it that I have experienced so far.

Expect to experience

• A high-level production
• Hundreds of actors
• Highly-historic surroundings
• People screaming in your face
• Actors grabbing/pushing you (optional)
• Authentic pee (if you are faint of heart)

Some 10 years ago, a receptionist in my dentist’s office swore that Terror Behind the Walls at the Eastern State Penitentiary was the scariest Halloween event she ever experienced. With eyes as big as the moon, she begged me not to put myself through the same trauma as she did, one fateful October night. In fact, she was so overwhelmed by fear at the Penn, she conceded that she literally peed her pants in the first couple of minutes and had to forego the rest of the tour. She added that her accompanying friends refused to end their tour early and help their poor, wet-pantsed partner find an early exit. Instead they signaled one of the “Terror” workers to do the job of escorting her out. Things went from bad to worse as she had to wait alone outside the prison walls, with a sideshow of bloody, costumed lunatics also prowling the exterior. Why do I mention all this? TBTW has a BIG reputation for scaring the crap out of people and that girl’s story is more or less a microcosm of its legendary frightfulness.

Fast forward to 2010…..my first Eastern State experience. The night was already off to a horrifying start…..the hellish parking situation in that area is a nightmare scenario in its own right. After much navigation of narrow, one-way streets, I found parking about 5 blocks away. In the crisp, autumn evening we made our way up Fairmount Street towards the large hulking wall surrounding vast acres of land, deep within Philly. It made me wonder what this area looked like at the time of the prison’s construction. 2 blocks away…..something interesting happened. As you would expect, several people were gathered on the sidewalk near the entrance. What I did not expect was to see blood-soaked TBTW employees roaming around the outer walls in full costume, scaring anyone who crossed their path. Even random neighborhood people walking down the sidewalk got free scares! To me, giving people a show before they even pay is a great concept….I had never seen this before. I grinned as I imagined what the other side of the wall had in the way of scares or at least attempted scares. Anticipating what the actual event will be like is half the fun. The line at the entrance was pretty lengthy, and as I waited and watched busloads of people being dumped off from who knows where…..that’s when the experience became a little less fun for me. How can you expect to be scared by anything when you have a giant mob of people around you?

To this day, after two times through, I still cant make up my mind about this place. The problem is that I don’t leave here feeling like I experienced anything scary. TBTW is basically an endurance test of how much screaming, yelling, flashing lights and 100 decibel noise you can handle. If you are in the mood for a little psycho groping…..they will give you a colored bracelet (or some kind of accessory) which gives the go ahead for the actors to grab you or shove you! Thing is though, at no point is there ever any build up to create any genuine scares. You would at least expect some kind of an underlying creepiness considering the building’s history and the creeps that were chained up within. I really find that it just has the feel of an obnoxious (albeit expensive) country fair/carnival type of experience crammed inside a few chained-off corridors of an empty prison. With that said, I wouldn’t discourage anyone from going. I will give it this……it probably tries harder and invests more than most other area exhibits to over-stimulate the crap out of you. Its on the pricey side, but for the amount of props and employees they have running the show, you do get a lot for your money. Just to get inside this Fairmount-area monstrosity is worth a few bucks. There are people who genuinely fear this place and really get freaked out by the end of the tour. I would go back again myself for a refresher, but after seeing it twice already, it would have to be with a free ticket.