Sra 194 - Haunted Trail Experience

Matthew Powell

SRA 194

11/04/2016

Haunted Trail Experience

        I attended the Haunted Trail Experience at Avent Park on October 26th. At this event, the students were assigned to be tour guides for the guests of the trail. Our duties were to make sure everyone kept moving fast and in line so that every person got the full effectiveness of each scene. It was a very interesting experience and a very well ran program for the community.

        The leadership of the event, from what I could tell, was very well educated on how to run such an event. They have obviously done the event in previous years; therefore it is an extremely well run event.  Everybody working the trail knew their role before the arrived to event. Their goals for the event was to provide a Halloween themed entertainment experience and to try to “scare the pee” out of people. Clowns are my biggest fear; therefore the leadership succeeded that goal every time I had to guide the guests into the clown area of the trail. The people in charge of the event were very helpful in providing information to us tour guides. There was plenty of pizza for the workers to eat, which is always a good thing. They seemed to do a good job promoting the event because a good bit of people came to the event despite it being a Wednesday night church night.

        The venue of this event was on a bike/running trail that led up to the woods of Avent Park. In my opinion, you cannot ask for a better spot for doing a holiday themed event like this one. Despite the decorations, the environment in the woods brought a “spooky” feel to the event. All of the decorations, lights, etc. were already in place and where they needed to be before we arrived. The actors for the trail already knew their role and where they were performing in the trail. Each scene had a different theme to it. The themes ranged from graveyard, hospital-like, circus/clowns, etc. There was creepy music playing while the guests were waiting in line to walk into the trail. I feel like all of these things really tied in the whole event making it a successful event.

        The equipment, like I mentioned in the previous paragraph, obviously was well thought out prior to the event. The actors were either wearing face paint or wearing a scary mask and had excellent costumes for each themed scene of the trail. I really like how they set up the clown scene with the circus themed decorations and all the actors they had in it. I think I went through the trail six or seven times and I jumped every single time I walked through that scene.

        The changes in each scene were done pretty well. There was usually a boundary or curtain that separated each scene and always somebody waiting for you on the other side of it ready to scare you. The first scene was the graveyard. There was somebody kneeling down in a creepy mask saying, “welcome to the graveyard” in a creepy voice. Once you walked through there you entered a “doctor” themed scene. There was somebody yelling “help me, I need to get out of here”. Right when we would look over at him, a person wearing a Jason mask in scrubs would come sprinting down the hill causing everybody’s blood pressure to rise.  It was important that we kept the guests close together, so they could all get scared at once, rather than only the people in the front getting the full experience of the scene. I am not really sure what kind of theme the next scene was. I remember a tall person with a bunny mask on really creeping everybody out for some reason. Later in the trail was the infamous clown scene. Once you walked in there was a girl dressed as a clown making this dark laughter that would make chills go down your spine. There was also a grandmother sitting in a rocking chair that would try to grab you if you looked in her direction. Throughout this scene there were people popping their head into the walls scaring you. If you did not die of a heart attack by the time you finished this scene, you got to experience the guy with the chain saw representing himself as the famous “Texas Chainsaw Massacre”. Every scene was well planned and executed to perfection in my opinion. The timing of the actors was excellent.