Where does one begin with this solid group of talented and amazing creeps? Right from the start, we knew that every single actor and actress in this glorious place was put right in the spots they were born to be in. They tell me that they have more or less 180 actors on their roster and I believe it because we lost count maybe a quarter of the way into the hayride. We found out that they have actors as young as five years old and as old as’ well’ older than most haunt actors I’ve seen. Part of the charm of Legends of Fear is this indescribable feeling of crossing paths with these actors and questioning if the acting actually starts when they take the makeup off.
The haunted hayride presented quite a few different characters in their scenes. Much like most haunted hayrides we have gone to, there is always a large variety of evil creatures and menacing killers. Unlike most hayrides we have experienced, Legends of Fear takes pride in developing some unique characters. I particularly enjoyed what I can only describe as a classical voodoo witch scene. After a long and convincing enchantment spell from two witches, multiple zombies emerged from beneath the stage and attacked the wagon. In true classic zombie fashion, these were not the flesh-eating walking dead types that we have grown up with. These were the zombies summoned by voodoo magic to do the bidding of their masters like zombies were in the good old days. We could tell the difference in their body language and the way they stared into our eyes. This was much more of a ‘we must strangle you’ look than a ‘we want to eat you’ look.
We can’t get enough of a good hillbilly scene and Legends of Fear hit us with a big serving of hillbilly love to start off the night. I am not always a fan of characters yelling over each other, but when they start shouting things like ‘Y’all city folk look mighty tasty tonight,’ and ‘Yer gonna meet all my brothers and sisters and cousins and aunts down there! They gonna like the smell of you,’ it’s really hard to keep a dead face.
Probably my favorite part of Legend’s hayride from the year before thankfully made a return. It has been a very rare occasion when a victim actor hides amongst the guests for protection, even more rare to find it on a hayride, and when a little girl jumps up on a hay wagon begging for help and running away from a family of meat clever-happy butchers, things get slightly more realistic for a few seconds. She kicked and screamed and cried in a way that I hope to only see at an attraction and nowhere else.
There were about twelve fairly decent-sized scenes on the hayride. Each one of them contained at least a handful of dedicated actors. Each one of them looked and acted like they were made for their part. Even a crazy chainsaw girl made an appearance, which is something I do not see as often as I should!
The Hallow haunted trail is divided into five sections. The Melon Head Revenge trail consists mostly of backwoods, dirty, cannibalistic beings. Not quite hillbilly rednecks and not quite branch and twig hut witches. Every actor and actress in this beginning section of the trail had two goals, convince us they were crazy lunatics and that they wanted to eat us. First one we bumped into took great interest in our eyeballs, which I thought was a weird place to start on the cannibal menu, but I liked it.
After dodging an army of crazy people eaters, we made our way to the brand-new funhouse debuting this year. The actors in this crazy place were phenomenal! Three or four actors guided us into the new building, each one of them with their own unique carnie character. Inside we met a hilarious clown who spared no expense teasing our inability to escape the door room. I shamefully admit that he got me with a simple ‘boo,’ which is the only time that will ever happen to this guy (maybe).
The Hemlock Manor Mortuary brought a whole new breed of grim characters that I will never forget. After being introduced to the Manor, we were encouraged to take a self-guided tour through the mortuary. There were just too many casualties on the trail that night for the mortician to spare a moment with us, so away we went. For the first few minutes, the actors seemed to hold onto a feeling of grief and emptiness as if they had lost someone close to them. They made me drop my guard for the rest of the house which mainly consisted of insane lunatic doctors cutting away bits and pieces of their victims before trying to add us to their collection.
Onto the Pine Hills Parish where I experienced some of the creepiest moments in my entire haunt traveling life. Thanks to the success of nuns finding a fresh breath of life in the horror community, we can now expect to see at least one at almost every haunt we go to. As abundant as they have been for me over the season, I was not prepared for a church full of them. The greatest thing about a nun character is the fact that they can just stare at you with their judgmental eyes and make you feel like something wicked is coming for you. I felt this from at least ten nuns that night. Also, the one actually playing the Hammond Organ didn’t help make it any less creepy for us.
And finally, the Dark Harvest Trail finishes The Hallow haunted trail walk with a bang. We encountered demons, little children playing, camp counselors and campers being kidnapped by crazy woodsmen. I was thoroughly impressed with the camp counselors. Although we saw a wide variety of characters that night, after the nuns, we figured there was no way they could introduce another completely different type of scare actor. The camp counselors that pretend everything is perfectly normal when they tell you to just keep an eye out for missing campers really made the last part of the trail worthwhile. A character doesn’t always have to induce some sort of fear, these actors proved it can be just as important to set up a scare for later. We walked through a summer camp being told to have fun and play and watch out for any signs of missing campers who have all gone missing, you know… just normal stuff. Running into the campers later on and failing to protect them from the woodsmen set up their scene perfectly.
The trail ended with chainsaw maniacs chasing us through their crazy carcass-filled saw mill. Not once did we see any actor or actress give up on trying to scare us or gross us out or just plain entertain us for a moment. This is what makes great haunt actors – never giving up and doing everything you can to get a reaction. Wonderful job well done by the crazies at Legends of Fear.
See Less
