Field of Fear is a farm-based haunt that plants new scare-seeds to harvest a different yield of fear every year. They commendably re-theme, reimagine, and reconstruct their four attractions annually. Each attraction wends its way through a narrow path of intimidatingly massive corn stalks.
This year, we discovered a real corn maze (with dead ends, fake-outs, and circular loops as opposed to a simple one-way path through the stalks) in the Corny Clown Maze and dodged murderous country folk on the Hillbilly Hell hayride. Two trails, Kampground Killers (terror in tents and trailers) and Fallout (fun with apocalypses) were top of the class for this season’s offerings and proved to be scarier, better, and more intense than anything else we’ve seen in our other two trips to Field of Fear.
As we said in our last review from two years ago, the watch word here is fun! And at the heart of the fun is the cast of crazies who produce a bumper crop of it. Onward to the cast.
Final overall score for each attraction –
Corny Clown Maze: 6.77
Hillbilly Hell: 8.11
Kampground Killers: 8.96
Fallout: 8.55
We have found the Field of Fear cast to be energetic, interactive, well trained, and full of interesting dialogue in past visits, and this trip was no exception. They understood their characters and seemed to have some level of backstory developed. For instance, a clown regaled us with a story, involving murder of course, about how they came to be in the maze.
We observed plenty of different personalities playing out before us, from depraved to goofy, sadistic to a bit sad and pathetic, and many points in between. The range of vocal performances similarly went from quiet to loud, guttural to shrieky, and incorporated growls, screams, squeaks, yips, and foreign accents. Some of them thrived on invading our space while others let their yelling do the talking, but everyone made it a point to do something affecting.
While we heard a few instances of the tiresome chestnut “Where ya goin’,” one maniac immediately followed it up with: “You goin’ to die, that’s where you goin’!! Wanna know why? Cuz I’m the man, no I’m the god around here! Now RUN!” That’s one way to freshen up “Where ya goin’”!
A couple of particularly engaging roaming actors that we found around the midway and popping up in some of the attractions included an axe-wielding psycho and Herbert the Pooper, a toilet-lidded mess dipping into a Ziploc colostomy bag like a pouch of chaw.
Corny Clown Maze: The maze clowns were the most restrained group. Their main objective seemed to be causing confusion and misdirection as they pointed us in various wrong directions. But each one had a distinct personality: sly clown, seemingly trustworthy clown, insanely violent clown, storytelling clown, crabwalking gymnast clown.
Hillbilly Hell: The hayride hayseeds embraced their redneck characters with gusto. Most of them displayed a preference for cannibalistic cuisine, as we were asked if we could give our intestines to make a nice soup, if we could rate our tastiness, and if we could describe ourselves as a cut of meat. What are you going to say to that?? We said pork chops and got corrected, they told us we looked more like brisket. A couple of sinister sisters even threatened to turn us into bacon bits. These were some hungry hillbillies!
They attacked the wagon with enthusiasm. The crazed country dwellers poked at us with farm implements, got right up into riders’ faces, and one of them even threw fried meal worms all over us. Were they real? Who knows, they felt like it! One crawling victim allowed themselves to be pulled off the wagon feet first in an impressive bit of commitment, seemingly bouncing their face off the ground at the end.
Kampground Killers: The killers let it all hang out. A troubled new mother with the baby still connected to her sobbed and screamed in a most disquieting way. One goofball asked if they could eat up our hair like spaghetti and another, in the middle of a trailer that looked like it was ground zero for a massacre, calmly asked if we wanted a sandwich. A human-sized rabbit with a cartoon voice said something about meat and liking freshly rolled ankles; it must have been a carnivore bunny? The butcher tried persuading us to show our fingers, but we kept our digits hidden. A giggling actor eating a corpse’s guts said they would dissect us and take us apart piece by piece for a fun game. Elsewhere, a plaintive dad was calling out for his six-year-old boy by a pier, to which the axe psycho responded “I’m always about creating a new drowning victim!” and “I want to use your guts as fish chum!”
We were screamed at to get out of trailers, go down slides, contribute tripe (intestines) to the mystery meat sizzling on a grill, and invited to join the fun of working with wood chippers. This campground crew brought full in-tents-ity to the proceedings!
Fallout: The Fallout freakiness commenced with a desperate military person gasping about how they’d had a spill (chemical or bioweapon?) and everybody was abandoning their posts. A German scientist advised us to escape through the gate, but outside the camp it was an even worse situation. We met a weirdo in the woods who crashed a plane … on purpose? “I just had a feeling to do it,” was the reason given. Well, okay then – you do you, my friend. The pilot and another survivor warned us “No touch-a de plane!” and then scolded us when the aeronautical equivalent of a car alarm went off. It wasn’t us, we swear. We don’t go around touching strange crashed airplanes.
An ambulance driver was scared of us, convinced we were infected. And a little kid character shrouded entirely in the darkness of an abandoned school bus hit us in the feels with a hilarious and touching conversation that started with unnerving laughter, then moved on to talking about holding hands with their newfound friends (us) on a field trip. We could feel the sadness they projected when we left because they couldn’t get off the bus, and were cheered by their excited childlike cries of “yay, yay, yay!” when we promised to return. That was a neat short story in less than 30 seconds.
As in our previous visits, Field of Fear dabbled in a little bit of everything to outfit its cast. The queue actors always appear fabulous. Herbert the Pooper looked a right mess wearing an aggressively stained portable commode accented by ragged scraps of toilet paper. The aforementioned axe psycho showed off an Otis Firefly-like skull makeup job to go with blood-spattered clothing. We were thrilled to once more see the awesome scarecrow/melonhead creature on stilts and the skull-headed cowpoke in stetson and duster, which we think is the badazz mofo (the Reaper) featured in the attraction’s logo.
Corny Clown Maze: Just as each clown in the maze had an individual personality, they all sported distinctive and stylish looks too. This was the darkest attraction, making it the hardest one to peep out costumes, but there was enough natural light to make out details. Many had colorful circus gear, others donned more formal looks like the clown with a natty bow tie. The violent clown bared fangs while boisterously shaking some kind of noisemaker. The gymnastic clown was done up with a black and white harlequin sort of look. A lot of them brandished weaponry like a sledge hammer.
Hillbilly Hell: We watched a wardrobe full of bumpkin wear go by on the hayride, a steady stream of flannel shirts, overalls, straw hats, and farm dresses worn by folks in streaked blood and ghoul makeup. They carried a veritable arsenal of implements to bash us into submission, or maybe tenderize us for the rotisserie: hammers, scythe, blades, cattle prods, and more.
Kampground Killers: Lots of actors with lots of looks paraded past us in the campgrounds. We witnessed a collision of trailer trash chic (gaudy short dresses, metal band tees, bandannas) with more outlandish styles like a gnarly face full of prosthetic fangs exploding out of the mouth area and the giant bunny looking like little Ralphie in his aunt’s rabbit outfit if A Christmas Story was a horror movie.
Fallout: Fallout exhibited a diverse array of looks befitting a post-apocalyptic nightmarescape. The opening actor’s conventional army gear gave way to the sinister scientist’s very cool sci-fi monocle and then increasingly chaotic ensembles as civilization imploded, as embodied by the bloodied survivors of car and airplane crashes.
Field of Fear is located in Monclova, Ohio, 20 minutes southwest of Toledo. Attendants guided us to free parking on grass. We’ve got to say the crew here is one of the nicest and friendliest we get to see. The attraction fields a good, informative website with online ticket purchasing. You can also catch them on Facebook.
Make sure you put on good footwear, especially if it has been raining. This is a farm and can get muddy. Even when dry, you’ll be walking on bumpy farmland. All the attractions go through the rows of corn and fallen stalks can litter the path.
Take care because there are a lot of steps on the two trails, many of them of uneven heights, and at least one was semi-hidden in darkness which almost caused a stumble. And it’s also time for our annual plea for actors to let customers negotiate steps before messing with them. No scares on stairs, please!
From the parking field, we simply followed the lights and sounds to the ticket booth. Just outside the kiosk, the four attractions were advertised on a large wooden fence. The midway held entry and exit points for all four attractions, a merch tent, food vendors (we enjoyed fantastic, freshly baked pretzels, lemonade, and iced tea, plus dinner-worthy food items are available), and picnic benches in a hub area filled with fog, eerie lighting, roaming actors, and props.
Corny Clown Maze: Just the tall stalks, the stars overhead, and having the objective of finding the way out (at which we are pitifully poor, it has been repeatedly proven), while being distracted and misguided by a bunch of clowns at first kept us in the right headspace. Going past and through the same areas and encountering the same characters took us out of the experience after a while, however.
Hillbilly Hell: The queue passed the trailer residence of Jebediah Jones At Your Service, Sir (or Ma’am as the case may be). This motor-mouthed, plunger-wielding miscreant harassed passersby and verbally dueled with a horned demon who was apparently the lad’s mother. And somehow JJ died in an armed bank robbery at the age of three, but … kept growing into an adult? Sounded like a tall tale being spun out of whole cloth and more than a bit convoluted.
Like the other attractions, the quite constricted way through the towering corn delivered a suitably focused journey. Riders became intent on sussing out where the next attack might be coming from and then surviving the next wave of countryfied combatants. Paced portions of sets and props helped set off a few lengthy dead spots.
Kampground Killers: A gaggle of trailer homes parked around the entrance let us know what waited in store. Speedy pacing, disturbing sets, and urgent actors feeding a steady diet of lunacy kept us on point. The only detractions were some dead spots slogging through the corn and some visible A/V equipment.
Fallout: We found this attraction a comparable experience to the campground, but with a few less actors and not quite the same level of relentless pacing.
All attractions exited back into the midway hub.
Corny Clown Maze: The huge corn stalks were the main “effect” here. They loomed large at an estimated nine to ten feet tall. We appreciate the time, planning, design acumen, and effort it must have taken to build an actual maze, but otherwise this was the attraction lightest on effects. A few lights and noisemakers perked things up, as well as a series of differently colored glowing cubes that we think served as placeholders so maze runners could tell where they’d been already, but mostly it was just a stroll through the corn.
Hillbilly Hell: Field of Fear scattered appropriately rustic props and sets amongst our cruise through the corn. Farm equipment included a tractor pulling a trailer filled with caskets. Derelict vehicles like an old truck and a horse trailer sat on the outskirts. We passed severed heads set on pikes, various corpses, and a hooded hanging victim still twitching on the gallows. Cages and pillories … some of them in use … augured our fate if we were to be captured by the conniving cannibals.
Kampground Killers: Effective and gruesome props and sets marked our way along this murderous trip through, in, and around trailer homes and tents. The pier was very well done and suggestive of a fishing environment even without any water. We got to whee! down a slide and visited a playground with another slide and a swing set. The ominous, lived-in-looking trailers were cluttered with realistic details and received moody lighting, colored fog, and macabre touches such as a legless human carcass impaled on a pitchfork and a table set with plates of hands and feet. We got assaulted by a serious air cannon and a smoking barrel stinking of sulfur, we tiptoed through a gross hazmat area, and we viewed the silhouette of an unfortunate camper in a zipped-up tent with a knife or screwdriver sticking out of their neck.
This attraction had the best sound effects. We heard honks, horns, whistles, UFO-like whoop-whoop-whoop noises, sirens, klaxons, machine gun clackers, bells, frog croaks, and bug trills/chirrups. These campgrounds impressed us with a full slate of effects funnery.
Fallout: This wasteland walkthrough featured the most impressive effects. A crashed, smashed-up car in the corn provided a surprise – at least the horn still worked, but that was nothing compared to seeing an entire plane crash landed in the stalks! Continuing the transport theme, we had to climb through an ambulance and navigate our way inside a pitch black bus.
A concrete bunker with a recorded voice saying “Warning!” over and over pounded home the theme, reinforced by tornado sirens, ringing bells, and an amplified echoey/screaming groan. Other fun stuff included a puking skeleton and a vibrating floor. Kudos to Field of Fear for making an awesome looking and sounding apocalypse.
21. How scary was it? (35% of score): 7.63
22. How well did they provide scares to everyone in the group? (15% of score): 8.6
23. How predictable were the scares? (25% of score): 7.73
24. How well did they provide a wide variety (types) of scares? (10% of score): 7.55
25. How strong was the ending / finale? (15% of score): 7.15
Corny Clown Maze: Apart from some startles as clowns popped out of hiding spots and a few effects devices popped to life, the corn maze was low impact when it came to frightfulness. Seeing the same monsters and other mazegoers as we trod past the same intersection took away the fear of the unknown. As noted in the Cast section, the clowns here functioned more as confusers than scarers. The violent clown with the noisemaker delivered some consistent jolts with unpredictable behavior and outbursts, though.
Hillbilly Hell: The hayride’s quite narrow corn row path gave actors great opportunities to hop on the side of the wagon or just appear out of the stalks and break into a quick run for a good scare. Threatening, aggressive actors leaping about on the wagon had riders shrinking away. A couple actors who seemed to appear physically constrained broke their bonds and pursued the wagon for an unexpected fright. It was a little one-note with most of the scenarios pushing fear of physical injury/death and/or being eaten, with some other phobias sprinkled around like fear of icky bugs via the meal worms thrown on us. A couple good prop scares rounded out what turned out to be a little more scarier than usual hayride.
Kampground Killers: The campground’s trailers supplied excellent hiding spots, and the actors varied the set-ups and kept us guessing by changing up tactics and the directions from which they attacked. Staring at the carnage of a tent filled with bloody victims totally distracted us from a scare that came from behind us, a well executed ambush. This attraction had the best ending scare, which was of the same sort of traditional finale (chainsaw) as the others but performed with considerable verve and crack timing.
Fallout: The interesting variety of terrors collected here included nuclear devastation, contagions, vehicular mayhem, foreign others, science run amok, and the claustrophobia of a small crawl space. Disorienting angles and effects, weird music and sounds, and the oddest actor performances of the evening contributed to a gripping experience that felt almost surreal.
It took us more than an hour to file through Field of Fear! The 66 minutes we spent in its attractions broke down as follows: Corny Clown Maze – 22 minutes, Hillbilly Hell – 12 minutes, Kampground Killers – 18 minutes, Fallout – 14 minutes.
That total base number is really solid, but mileage will vary depending on how long you spend in the corn maze. The 22 minutes are an average of two groups we had in the maze. The main group took nearly a half hour and still had to be helped out at the end (we really are the worst at true mazes and felt like the true clowns in the corn). The other group of younger, apparently smarter people …well, they were college kids, after all … dashed through in 15 minutes.
The price has not gone up one solitary cent since we were here in 2023, but our previous visit was shorter by more than 20 minutes! That improves considerably on what was an already very good value. While there was some padding in the total time from wandering around the maze like doofuses, we need to note that the other two walking attractions were also notably and noticeably longer.
Factoring in the $30 general admission combo to experience all four attractions, the MPD (minutes of haunt time per dollar spent) comes to 2.2. Anything approaching the ‘double the time vs the money spent’ threshold is outstanding, let alone being above it. That’s a great time-to-ticket-price ratio and a solid chunk of time on its own, so count on spending a long part of your night here.
Fast pass is $45. Cash, Venmo, and cards are accepted (a processing fee applies for cards). Field of Fear is also open on Sundays and some Thursdays in October for $23.75 general admission, but the hayride does not operate on these nights. A limited number of season passes are available for $85.
Bottom line: get yourself down on the farm for some frightful fun at Field of Fear!
3001 S Crissey Road, Monclova, Ohio 43542