This is day 56 of our 61-day Hauntathon counting down to Halloween. Jessica Merico joins us to talk about The Haunted Road experience and what is new for this year.
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Ticket Information
Tickets are available online at TheHauntedRoad.com. You can book one of two events, the regular Haunted Road event with an optional add-on for their new experience The Barn, or an after midnight drive down the Haunted Road. All dates and information can be found on their website, tickets are available through the first week of November 2021.
What Is the Haunted Road Attraction?
Jessica: The Haunted Road is a drive-thru Halloween experience. It is a ghost sighting adventure. We have figured out which parts of the land are the most haunted, and you can go to these different ghost sighting areas and try to sight ghosts for yourselves. We’ve also tested different radio stations to see which ones are most likely to be interrupted by ghosts, and you can tune into those radio stations and see if you can not only see the ghosts, but also hear them. It’s about a 30-to-40-minute experience.
Then at the end of the road you can stop off at our Barnyard, which is an add on experience; it’s basically a walk-in haunted experience where you can attempt to awaken the spirit of the butcher. We also have bar food, we have a haunt market with a lot of local artistic haunt vendors selling their products, as well as live music and pop-up performances; we have fire performances, LED performers and more.
What Is the Barnyard Experience?
Jessica: There’s an abandoned barn on the property, and it’s been here since the late 1800s, it’s just sat empty. There was a butcher who ended up abusing his son, and one day the son just had enough of it and killed his own father. In order to hide the murder, he chopped the body parts up and he hung those parts up among all of that animal meats. A lot of people have gone missing on this property since then, and we believe that he has done the same thing to them. So, now our guests go in there and see what it’s like for themselves.
Why a Drive-Thru Experience?
Jessica: We were born from, the pandemic, and so we wanted to create an immersive experience that was also safe during COVID times. So, that’s how we came up with this drive-thru experience, and we wrote a full-blown theatrical show. So, then we found this amazing property and we like plopped it on the property and opened up. We had a great time doing it, but when we were here, we realized that this place was actually scary. So, we decided that instead of creating a theatrical show, we were going to really investigate the history of the property and let people experience it for themselves.
Philip: Why did you decide to keep the car this year?
Jessica: We heard from our guests from last year, and a lot of them were still scared about COVID. We did open some things up, like the Barnyard is an open air experience where you get out of your car. We have some interactive moments this year where you do roll your windows down, but we still wanted it to be safe for those people who are still a little worried about COVID, and also just wanted to create a different experience. There are so many haunted houses, just straight up walk through haunted houses. We wanted to create something that was unique and just something that was unexpected for people
What Is the Future for the Haunted Road Attraction?
Jessica: We have so many ideas about what we might want to do. There’s a lot of this land that was really untouched. This year one of the experiences we added on was that the guests get to not only drive down a Haunted Road, but they get to drive through corn fields. I love the Butcher Barn experience and I want to bring more of those types of experiences to the experience next year.
