Thursday, October 27, 2011

Memory Journal: Haunted Trail of Tears

Yesterday, my eyes died.  No, not my baby blues; my Halloween spooky eyes - the ones that were hanging in our living room window and blinking on and off like menacing creatures in the dark - they broke.  The ill-timed loss of one of our central October decorations made me feel pretty bummed because I love Halloween.  I may not have the time or willingness to celebrate like this family, but I love everything about Halloween: the colorful leaves, the chubby pumpkins, the sticky spiderwebs stretched across neighbors' porches, and morning show hosts debating the sexiness of this year’s Halloween costumes.  ‘Tis the season.  

So when I decided to plan a weekend trip to Michigan with my dear friend, Kelly, and our significant others in late October 2009, I thought we should partake in at least one Halloween-themed activity. I suggested we go to a haunted house of some sort. We settled on the New Salem Haunted Woods in Dorr, Michigan.  And here’s what happened:

On Saturday night, the four of us - me, Ian, Kelly, and her husband, Mike - piled into Kelly’s red Jeep and programmed “Dorr, Michigan” into the GPS on her dashboard.  In true October fashion, it had been raining nonstop since we arrived the day before, but the skies cleared up on Saturday night.  So we left the wet roads of Saugatuck and headed east into the body of the state.  With only bright headlights and spotty GPS service to guide us, we arrived at our destination an hour later only to discover that the Halloween attraction I had chosen was located on a damp farm in the middle-of-nowhere, Michigan.  The littleness of the location comforted me because How scary can this really be?  

We parked the car, stepped out onto the soggy mud and immediately regretted our choice of footwear for the evening.  Slopping through the parking lot/field, we made our way into the fluorescent-lit barn all cheerful with its picnic tables, pumpkins, and hot chocolate for sale.  This looks family-friendly, I thought to myself, They’re even selling apple cider.  But we bypassed the seasonal items and went up to the counter to purchase our tickets.  There we noticed that this farm offers two Halloween attractions - the Haunted Woods and the Haunted Corn Maze - but the nice teenager at the cash box advised us against the Corn Maze because, as she put it,  “I don’t think you have the right shoes for it.”  Fair enough.  So we bought four tickets for the Haunted Woods and exited into the darkness outside where the only light came from the door of the ticket barn and the silver-lit metal of the animal sheds in the distance.  The newly-clear sky had chilled the air and the dampness around us, so we bundled up with gloves and hats and waited for the hayride to take us to the entrance to the Haunted Woods.  

The twenty-minute hayride renewed our sense of just how in-the-middle-of-nowhere we were.  The tractor driver dropped us off by a single bonfire, bordered on one side by woods and another by vast fields of corn, and above us a night sky dotted with many more stars than us city-folk are used to seeing.  Scanning the forest line on our left for the entrance to the Haunted Woods, I could see a single staff member directing groups to enter one at a time by crossing over a covered bridge painted a deep red.  Or bright red - I couldn’t really distinguish shades of colors because it was so dark out there.  The only light source was the bonfire, which was muddled at best because of the fifty-or-so visitors huddling around it for warmth.  It felt like Valley Forge meets Amityville Horror.

With a bit of wait ahead of us, I made a decision that negatively impacted the rest of the night:  I decided to pass our wait time by retelling the story of the movie Paranormal Activity to Kelly and Mike, who promised that that they had no interest in seeing it in the movie theater.  So I tilted my head from right shoulder to left and stretched out my arms, and I put on my best scary-storytelling face. As we gradually moved away from the bonfire towards the covered bridge entrance to the Haunted Woods, my scary story progressed through demon possessions and phantom Ouija boards, and the random shrieks of fear and frightened laughter echoing from the woods peppered the plot with real-life frights.  

I timed my storytelling so well that when I come to the conclusion -  “And then she leans over the body and LEAPS at the camera with blood all over her” - we found ourselves in front of the covered bridge waiting for the staff member to give us the go-ahead.  By then the four of us were chockablock full of adrenaline from the retelling of the scary movie and had not done enough emotional push-ups before the haunted triathlon that was now upon us.  Oops.

“Okay, you can go!”  Said the enthusiastic staff member.  So the four of us stepped forward, alone from the crowd.

We knew the covered bridge was safe because we had seen numerous groups of people cross it uneventfully before us.  So with the light of the bonfire nearly indistinguishable at our starting point, we headed onto the bridge and found that it was covered in sticky spiderwebs.  The fake kind, of course, but impressive nonetheless.  This was the first moment I realized that the production value on this little haunted shin-dig might not be as crappy as the location initially suggested.

After the covered bridge, a small barn awaited us on the edge of the black woods.  Already spooked by the storytelling and the spiderwebs, the Who Goes First question inevitable came up.  In my first and last display of bravery that night, I nominated myself to go first through the door of this scary building because this whole trip to the Haunted Woods was my idea, after all.  

So I pushed the door open into the dark barn to enter a dim, red-lighted room with a bubbling cauldron in the middle and no one else in sight.  Then, with my three guests behind me and my hand still on the door knob, I felt the door stop prematurely behind my hand.  It hadn’t hit the wall.  No, the door had run up against something much softer and pliant.   A person maybe.  But as soon as I realized the threat from behind, one emerged from the front.  A demented school teacher jumped out from behind the cauldron to scare the bejeesus out of us, followed in close coordination by the door creature from behind.  After a couple of high-pitched “Eeks!” from me and Kelly and manly congratulations of “Good one!” and “Nice scare!” from Ian and Mike , the two witches bid us a frightful welcome to their cauldron project, each with unblinking eyes and deep, throaty voices.  

Hightailing it out of the back door of the cauldron building, we re-entered the dark outdoors and saw our next destination a hundred feet ahead of us, the building that would take us deep into the Haunted Woods.  With bright moon and cornstalks on our right and black forest and scarecrows on our left, we set out on the straw-and-mud path to Building 2.  Fearful of an unexpected attack, I intertwined my arm with Ian’s and began to push him toward the cornfields (his side) away from the scarecrows (my side).  

Double whammy again.  

Someone jumped out of the cornfield on our right and the four of us screamed and jumped left.  The Child of the Corn was chasing after Kelly and Mike ahead of us and then BAM! one of the scarecrows came to life on my left side and began to run at me and Ian in his black robes and demonic face paint.  I dug my face into Ian’s left shoulder to make it all go away.  But it didn’t.  Scarecrow Man was following us.  Following me, more specifically.  He was hovering over me about 4 inches from my body.  So I squished my head and my eyes into Ian’s shoulder even more as we walked slowly towards Building 2.  And I waited until it was safe to look up again ...

A few moments later, I carefully tilted my eyes up to meet Ian’s and timidly asked, “Is he still there?”  

“Yes.”

Perhaps out of a sense of learned politeness or maybe just our of fear-induced insanity, I felt the need to acknowledge his presence at this moment.  When Ian replied in the affirmative that Scarecrow Man was, indeed, still hovering over my left shoulder, I turned to face my attacker.  

We locked eyes for a moment before he unleashed the most frightening of screams directly in my face.

I let out a horrifying-yet-girly scream and flung myself back into the safety of Ian’s left arm.  Scarecrow Man broke character for one second to let out a little laugh of triumph before turning around to prepare for his next batch of victims.  

And then something happened.  It wasn’t a personal choice towards emotion or dramatics, but rather a purely physiological reaction to the intense fear I was feeling:  I threw my hands up over my mouth and started bawling.  I bawled all the way to Building 2, where we met up with Mike and Kelly, who had narrowly escaped Corn Monster by running away.  “Can we” - gasp - “please” - gasp - “go back?  I don’t like” - gasp - “this anymore.”  The boys said no, and they were right (That would have looked really lame to walk back through the entrance).  So Kelly put her hand on my shoulder, looked me in the eyes and reassured me that she was feeling just as frightened: “I’m right there with you.”

So we persevered through the Haunted Woods, from Building 2 to Building 20 and all the scary trails in between, and I cried the whole way through.  I cried as we shrieked together in the haunted graveyard as our feet sunk into simulated mud.  I cried when Kelly hit a Scary Tree Man with her purse.  And I cried while the four of us, blinded by the lights in the strobe-lit cavern, jumped back in unison when we opened the door to see a pitch black room.  We argued for a minute about who would go first before realizing that it wasn’t a room at all; it was the outside.  

So this little haunted attraction in this little Michigan town gave us the biggest scares.  Kelly whacked her purse around in front of her trying to physically fend off any threats; Mike laughed defensively and held onto Kelly; Ian congratulated the actors on fine performances; and I cried.  A lot.  But we all made it through.

The four of us like to reminisce about this story. I've heard that scary experiences bind people together, and this one certainly tied our friendship knots even tighter.  So even though the Haunted Woods filled each of us up on as much “scary” as we’ll need for the next few years, it gave us a fun life story to share with each other.  Plus, it gave Scarecrow Man a fun story to tell his buddies: “Remember that one time at the Haunted Woods that I made that woman cry?  That was awesome.”  Yes, it was.

2 comments:

Julie said...

Oh my goodness! I hate being scared I would have cried with you. I can't even watch scary movies. I have been kicked out of 2 haunted attractions due to punching. Apparently, when someone jumps in my face and scares me my reflex is to punch (I blame this on having 3 older brothers). I am glad you survived.

Anne said...

Too funny about the punching, Julie! I think it's a VERY natural reaction, especially because Kelly was hitting people with her purse the whole way through!