We should have known better than to listen to the nosy old lady with three teeth and a Marlboro red hanging from her lips.
You see, it was supposed to be a fun night in the corn maze near Shallowater, but that didn’t turn out so well. It took us an hour to find the place, and since it closed in half an hour, seven minutes later the five of us found ourselves at the end of the maze with nothing to do.
“You boys oughta go over to the haunted woods in Smyer,” Agnes, the old lady said.
Why not? Smyer wasn’t far away.
Pulling up into the worn-down, dirty trailer park where the “Haunted Woods” sign told us to go was almost as scary as the woods themselves. We all wanted to get out of there and never talk about it again. That is, until we rolled down the window and heard people screaming in terror and decided we had to go.
We signed the release form required, and one of the guys (we’ll call him Bud) received the flashlight from Olga, the owner of the woods. I just want to stress the on flashlight for future reference.
Bud got nervous about the woods and wouldn’t walk forward, so I took the flashlight from him and started walking. Five steps in I was already screaming and kicking as the forest floor was made of trampolines or something covered in sand causing me to sink. Everyone behind me was laughing at me and wondering what was happening until they stepped into it and almost started crying.
We got to a fork in the path–one way led to a tent and campfire, and the other led to a guy we could clearly see standing in the trees. One of the other guys, Sammy, wanted to go the obvious trap at the campfire, and we convinced him he was dumb and headed toward Bob (the man who we could clearly see “hiding” in the trees), who jumped at us and failed at any fear factor.
About halfway in was a bunch of trash bags cut up and hanging out of the trees like remnants of a tornado. On the other side of the trash bags was a strobe light and fog machine. I stopped and asked Bud to go first until something came out of the trees behind me, and I took off sprinting, leaving everyone without a light. Bud started yelling “Jack! Jack! Get back here!”, and I slowly crept back to Sammy, tackling Bud and our other friend Stan, trying to refrain from punching the little kid that scared him to death.
We eventually got to a big open area, which Stan didn’t trust. I know this because he told us right before he started screaming at the man riding a horse toward us. We weren’t as afraid of the guy on the horse as we were afraid of being trampled. Freddy Krueger then ran at us out of the trees, and we had to stop and wait for the group ahead of us to go farther into the nightmare.
Robert (the man with the Freddy Krueger outfit) started talking to us about what it was like and how often he gets socked in the face by terrified grown men. His son then crawled out of the trees in a leprechaun outfit and scared Stan.
We eventually were allowed to go forward to the destroyed house. It had one window open, and we all thought “Oh wow. How original? A guy is going to jump out of the window.” I shone the light on the window until we were convinced that nothing was going to jump out.
As soon as I turned around I saw a guy in a Predator mask running at me out of the trees. I almost swung at him, but got distracted by the guy jumping out of the window. I never turned around to look, but I could hear Sammy screaming like a little girl.
Bud and I took off around the corner of the house, where I looked to see if anything was going to jump at me and saw an empty doorway except for a tiny, red gas can which looked peculiar.
A foot started coming through the door and Bud and I started screaming and sprinting toward the exit of the maze without noticing that it was a guy with a chainsaw.
When we got out and turned around, Sammy and Stan weren’t with us, so we just waited and caught our breath. About a minute later Stan ran out yelling, “I left Sammy! They had him on the ground screaming!”
We waited until he ran out followed by Wolfman. He didn’t know Wolfy was there, so I let him catch his breath before telling him. He screamed, and Wolfy laughed and went back home to his haunted woods.
Overall we were surprised that we got as scared as we did, and we all decided it was worth the five bucks.
It turns out you can trust old ladies who eavesdrop…and apparently we were lucky because the kid who came out after us said to his friend, “It was way bettter than last year, fool.”