The Day After

Ok! So I went to the Haunted Forrest last night. The place was just across the river in Maryland so I was able to hop the ferry and get there in 20 minutes. About 56 people showed and we hung outside of the entrance for about an hour while we waited for everyone to show up. Turns out about 8 more people showed up then payed so that took a while to get sorted out as well. At one point all 56 of us were lined up in a line, it felt like grade school again.

We are standing in this line, right, and we hear this screaming and two girls come running out of the forrest like they are afraid for their lives...then right behind them comes this chick dressed all in black on this big ass black arabian horse chasing them. One girl stumbled and the horse kinda pushed her with it's head. It was f'ing awesome!

Finally we have everyone together and our guide (an older dude in a zombie costume) gathers us all around. He starts by saying 'This is your last change to turn around...' and then his cell phone rings and he steps away to take the call. Classic.

He leads us in through the central area which is like a little town. They have about five big ass bonefires with a small fence around each one and benches to sit on for those waiting to be called to hang out at. Around the perimeter are concession stands, bathrooms, a zip line thing about 30 feet in the air, a rock climbing wall to get to the zip line, a haunted hay ride and some other stuff. You can see flames shooting off in the forrest and people screaming and the sound of chainsaws. Good times.

The dude leads us to a private bonefire we paid for back in the forrest a bit. There we hang out for about 10 minutes before our group is called, then we head over to the entrace. We have to split into groups of 4 or 5 to do the trail. I break off with one chick I met at an earlier event and two others I never met before.

The trail itself was pretty cool. It was about a 1/2 mile long and took about 20 minutes or so to work your way through it. It was lit by candle light in little buckets so that they would temporarily blind you and then crap would jump out at you. There was one area where they had all of these really cool pumpkins carved and I was looking real close at one and this dude jumped in front of me and scared the crap out of me. Good stuff.

The end of the train was by far the coolest. I mentioned chain saws? Well, the entire time you are walking the trail you hear these things going and people screaming. I figure there was one guy running around chasing people, right? We get up to this little house where the two trails merge (there were two trails so they could get people through faster) and there are zombies and crap following close behind you. Then out of nowhere like 3 people show up, including the dude right behind us, with real chainsaws minus the rotating blade, and start chasing you. Mass havoc! People running all over the place to get away. They heard you towards an overturned bus with a strobe light going. You make your way through that with people grabbing your legs and slamming on the side of the bus into this scene straight out of Mad Max's Thundedome. Blaringly loud death metal playing, smoke and strobe lights, people jumping out of the corners and crap falling from the ceiling. It was totally awesome.

And then it was over. Most of the trail was kinda blah but the end was fantastic. Definitely doing it again next year.