this is thriller night

Halloween Haunts Offer Scary Fun

By J. Gelband, 10-14-07

There are three big haunted adventures in Boise every year around Halloween.

For the last several years I’ve gone to the Haunted Woods, a fundraiser for the Eagle Volunteer Firefighter Association that’s a mile-long path through the woods along the Boise River. Tiki torches light the path and ghoulishly dressed actors jump out of the woods and chase visitors.

For ten bucks a pop, the firefighters do a great job with their scare fest. But supposedly it is the least scary of the three haunts.

I’m kind of a wimp when it comes to flying surprise props and crazed actors attacking me in the middle of the night on a moderately worn path. But after a couple of years of the Haunted Woods, I was ready for a more frightening experience.

I wrangled a few friends over the weekend to check out the Field of Screams at the MAiZE, a haunted corn maze in Meridian that is supposed to up the Haunted Woods on the scary scale. 

No way. My adult friends weren’t down with just a mediocre scare, they wanted to hit up the haunt that is widely regarded as the scariest Halloween activity in town: the Haunted World in Nampa.

Gulp. Uh, OK.

This is the place that in years past made visitors sign wavers before entering. And signs suggest young kids, pregnant women and those with heart problems shouldn’t play. I’m none of those things, but it makes me justifiably nervous. Not nervous enough to skip it though.

The Haunted World, an outside path that is probably a mile long stretched over a 25-acre farm, costs $13 and includes a trip through the neighboring un-haunted corn maze.

The half-hour drive to Nampa was kind of scary itself at dusk, around 7:30 p.m. But it just upped the excitement.
The place is enormous with extravagant scary decorations and a giant movie screen showing bull riding to entertain the throngs of customers in line for the haunt.

The line was short the night nine of my friends and I went. We separated into two groups because the trail is narrow. I went in the second pack and watched my friends wave goodbye as they slipped through the black curtains commencing the path.

I wasn’t really terrified once I saw a gruesome-looming victim actor roaming the line beneath the floodlights of the waiting area, but my adrenaline was popping the same way it does when I’m in line for a roller coaster – scared but I like the feeling.

When we finally made it through the black curtains I kept looking for goblins and witches and other characters to run from the ten-foot corn around the path. Anticipating the fright was almost scarier than the face-painted teens hired to run after us hissing and breathing heavily.

Obviously I won’t reveal exactly what we experienced along the path, though I’ll vow that it was great fun and satisfyingly scary. But since it is only mid-October and the haunts run through the end of the month, there is plenty of time to hit up the others, even if I’ve become a seasoned Halloween adventurer.

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