Hylands Fear Fest Extreme Review (2026)

While this is a new haunt, we did find quite a lot of helpful information on their website. The creators have two types of events, one labelled “Extreme” and the other “Spooky Trail” and there’s easily accessible information on their website on the difference between the two and who each of the trails are meant for. There are also helpful FAQs, including parking information. Speaking of which, there is plenty of parking on the site, with helpful signage all the way from the moment you park up until the moment you exit the attraction.

We found all the staff on the site helpful and professional, having some lovely chats with quite a few of them during our travels. The only area of guest experience we suggest the creators improve upon is the entertainment of the guests in the queue waiting to enter the trail. While the staff here were helpful, and while there was a spooky ambient soundtrack playing in the background, this entrance could have been done with some variety of performers or actors interacting with guests.

The outdoor portion of Hylands Fear Fest was rather immersive, with light, sound and specially placed props and mannequins all around the site. We loved some of the more built-up vignettes, such as a tunnel of spider webs or an entire lake filled with floating corpses and creepily lit. Other areas of the outdoor path could have done with a bit more decor, especially a fence hoarding with a few body parts, or the numerous gravesites which could have done with something active living within. We struggled a bit with the immersive factor of the interior maze. The light was so bright you could tell the entire maze was built of temporary metal hoarding. However, we did enjoy the digital projections in the maze and do think that despite the brightness of the maze they were still effective in distracting and scaring us!

What impressed us the most at this light trail was certainly the use of sound. For such an expansive site, it was fantastic to hear a consistent soundtrack everywhere, with dissonant music following us throughout, and with some scene specific sounds along the way, including the sound of scuttling spiders and creatures moaning. Beautiful illumination lit our entire journey, with memorable moments including fun lights on a path that changed when you stepped on them, a section of the trail with green lasers that proved very magical, and even gobo lights through smoke that created interesting shapes. There were also many projections, including moving spiders, an eerie monster making his way through the woods, and fun projection mapping on the front of Hylands House itself. One of the most fun parts of the interior maze was a few buttons you got to press within which led to quite a surprise!

Admittedly we would have liked the number of actors we encountered on the site two or three times, but we understand how difficult this is due to just how expensive the park really is. However, the monsters we did stumble across did a great job at creeping us out, especially creepy clowns who stalked us several times along our route, a scarecrow with a freaky mask and covered with hay, and a skeletal lady with bones sticking out of her costume which made it look like she was decomposing. While more of a presence than interactive, these cast still did a good job of blending into their environment and providing effective scares where they counted.

Some of our favorite cast members were within the interior maze, including a plague doctor who at one point danced in front of us before beckoning us and pressing a red button bound for chaos. There were also two characters with terrifying freaky doll masks, who ran at us with murderous intent, sometimes even crawling speedily towards us or jumping in our way. The cast in this maze were active, with a perfect balance between playful and terrifying, and we enjoyed every second of trying to escape them!

Most of the actors along the spooky trail relied upon stalking as their main scare tactics, often standing statuesque at a distance in our path before running at us with full force, or sometimes just letting us pass and then continuing to follow us. We did see other groups in front of us as victims of jump scares, with a skeletal lady jumping out of a cabin or a hooded figure launching themselves at another group who thought he was a prop behind a roped off section. In the forested sections actors would burst out from behind greenery and follow up with long stretches of stalking.

The main scares for us, however, were in the interior maze section, with lots of shocks from hidden areas. Some scares were from devices within which we pressed had horrific results. Diversion was also used here, with the strobe and sound coming from a prop skeleton distracting us from the even more terrible, masked actor who ran at us from a completely different direction. We found the finale the most successful scare of the night – with a playful plague doctor pressing another ominous red button, unleashing a deluge of chaos as several characters attack, launching themselves towards us with speed and crawling towards us on hands and knees. We’ve previously mentioned that this interior haunt was too brightly lit, but even with this being the case we found the end quite effectively alarming.

At just under £20 a ticket and with a total walkthrough time of 21 minutes including both the light trail and interior maze, we do think this experience is well worth the ticket price. If you’re looking for extreme scares this might not quite hit the mark, but we were effectively scared quite a few times during our trek, and we enjoyed the lovely lit paths and spooky decor of the trail. For a first haunt we thought this attraction was a lot of fun and provided a variety of different experiences and frights, with the outdoor trail quite magically spooky and the interior maze providing some classical jump scares. There was also a lovely little fairground at the end of the trail too, with quite a few ride options along with food and drink. We’d love to see how this event grows in the future, and with a few more actors and a bit more interior maze design we think this could really be a new gem of a haunt!