I have now successfully managed to attend 3 haunted houses before October has even started. The only real downside to going to these things on the first night they're open is that the "actors" haven't yet honed their craft, and many are reasonably unprepared at times when they should be quietly creeping towards you in the dark. But how much can you really ask from high school kids? So anyway, haunted house number three for the season was the Payne's Asylum (and accompanying hayride) from Midnight Productions in Newtown, PA. I'd been to this twice before (in 2002 and 2003) but those years it was made up like a hotel rather than an asylum. The hayride came first. It was, as with most hayrides, rather long and largely bland in terms of scariness. The weather was nice, which is always a bonus, but there were a lot of long stretches of tractor riding where you didn't see much of anything at all. Some of the few highlights were a man actually riding up alongside the cart on a live horse (which seems no small task in the dark!), a very flamboyant clown, and being chased by a giant, hay bailing farm implement. But for the most part it was uneventful. The asylum portion was definitely much cooler. They have rigged up some sophisticated tricks in this house that most other places can't pull off. There were some awesome talking holograms (not pre-recorded either, as they called us by name... which I'll get to later), a talking severed head on a table (achieved through very clever use of mirrors), and a cloaked man on stilts who rose out of a hole in the ground. He was particularly cool because, at first, he appeared to be a regular-sized person crouching on the ground. Then he stood up. Then he seemed to stand up AGAIN and was suddenly 8 feet tall and chasing us with a scythe. The other neat thing this place does involves making everyone fill out an asylum application when they show up. This allows them to get the names of the people in the group and distribute them around the house so that everyone you encounter knows who you are. I, having been to this farm's attractions twice prior, saw this coming so I filled out my form under the psuedonym "Byron LeForge." A few times during the trip, spirits were calling out to Byron and this was endlessly funny to us. In the end, I was quite happy with the haunted house. Just like last week the hayride was a bit of a bore, but I think they attraction would've gone by too fast had we not done both. Perhaps I can start skipping the hayrides and just trying to get to two different haunted houses in the same night! |