Haunted Hayride Gets an Unexpected Visitor..
From the ages of 16-26 years old, I spent a full decade of October months in the woods. I mastered being a scream queen at the local haunted hayride! It was always my favorite time of year and luckily everyone that worked at the hayride was either family or family friends you grew up with. We enjoyed nights full of scares, laughs and friendship gathered around those burn barrels in between tractors.
We rode 4-wheelers, side by side, radioed over our walkie talkies to tell which side of the wagon to scare the most, told stories and watched each other’s skits. We could always tell where that tractor was by the sounds…… “oh, hes at Dustin’s” (the clowns could get the greatest screams) , “oh, he’s at terrys” (the cabin)….. we knew our track like the back of our hand and sure nuff not afraid to be in the dark. We have many odd stories that took place, but one cold night couldn’t ever be explained.
I remember it started like any other night. We were in our busy final stretch on a 3rd weekend in October. “Tractor number 3’s rolling out……” , sounds of chainsaws, screams from high school girls, distant sounds of someone tossing wood in a barrel. Normal. Or so we thought. The night rocked on with no problem until a stretch between our final hour (11p-12a).
It wasn’t uncommon for us scarers to walk the track. So my skit teammates and me didn’t think much as we watched people walk by as we knew everyone. I did know however when HE….. walked by. I felt like someone had been watching us for awhile, everything just felt heavy. I see someone coming down the path out of the corner of my eye and didn’t fully turn to look until they were right across from our skit. It looked like a man, a man in dark clothes.
He wore what looked like a black hoodie or some kind of drape, but you could tell he had something covering the top of his head. His face however was too shadowed to make out who he was. The fire from the burn barrel didn’t even help uncover his identity. I remember, he didn’t make a sound. I thought this odd as we always threw a hand up or spoke as we passed each others skits. He eventually walked out of site. About 10 minutes past ….. “WHO WAS THAT?!?”
Adam several skits past us radioed over. The system went wild. We weren’t alone! I tell you traffic control wasn’t on duty that night because you couldn’t get a word in edgewise! NOONE, knew who this person was! We explored the option of some customer coming through, front gate security let no one in on foot… was it a prank? No one but scarers came back up through that gate that night.
It would have been pretty hard to have gotten to where we were all stationed without coming by tractor, or some kind of ATV. We never did figure out who or what that was that night, but our hayride family to this day still has a story to tell about how even monsters, clowns and slasher killers can get scared at their own game
