The 2024 season was year twenty-eight for Legends of Fear. The two attractions here, a Haunted Hayride and The Hallow trail, are both highly theatrical and enjoyable, melding state of the art effects with spectacular sets, and the old-school pleasures of inspired actors going all out.

We finished our season here on November 2nd and, holy smokes, what a way to go out! Legends of Fear came in as our highest rated review of the year. There’s a whole lot to discuss about why and how it was so great, so let’s get right to it.

We have been to haunts after Halloween where the actors did not show up, either physically or mentally. Not so here. The World Series was over by this point, but the Legends of Fear cast at least looked like it was fielding a full team, and they were still hitting it out of the park. These monsters came to play hard on the last night of their season.

The hayride started out with a mad scientist complaining about how the head on his creature didn’t work right, and now he needed to find a new one. Could an ideal one be on the wagon? Of course it could! Then, the scientist laughed in a crazed tone. In a Poltergeist-inspired scene, a medium tried to control a floating, flying phantom, and warned the little kids sitting on a couch not to get too close to the staticky TV set.

A boarding party of pirates swaggered onto the wagon waving about their sabers and other weapons, lustily cursing us scalawags and landlubbers. The manager at a meat packaging plant told us we looked like roadkill, and we knew they were gonna process every last one of us anyways, because they were so dedicated to their jobs. Michael from Halloween and Sam from Trick ‘r Treat had their movements down cold.

Approaching colonial surroundings, a town crier rang the hand bell and did the “hear ye, hear ye” bit, announcing how they were going to burn a witch before the witch got to burn down the town with us in it. Some townspeople got into the act, swinging pitchforks and yelling that the only good witch was a dead witch. Soon after, we witnessed a coven of kid-obsessed hags taking a page out of Hansel and Gretel. They cried out, “We need more children to brew our potion, I’ll find one here!” and “I’ll make you dance, dance until you die!”

The final portion involved a full-scale clown invasion, where the circus sickos climbed over the wagon rails to mug and threaten us. They jumped up and down to make the wagon bounce, got right up in everyone’s faces, ran around like crazy people, and attacked with chainsaws. One of them would cry “heads up!” and do the head-coming-right-at-your-face-on-an-elastic-line trick. That was a wild couple of minutes!

The acting shenanigans kept right on going through the trail, and more cackling witchery! The head witch rose up from behind a counter to greet us with a rhyming couplet, saying, “Greetings little mouse, who is creeping around my house?” On our way out, this same witch thundered, “I call on dark magic to waken the monsters of the woods. It’s feeding time!” And as we backed out of the hut, they indicated a team member, and finished up with, “You should leave this one behind, she’ll only slow you down. I have a nice cage for her!” Quite an awesome oration.

We got invited to a tea party by a little girl character who alternated their voice between a tiny toddler squeak and a full-throated, gravelly, growl-shout. “You’ll come to my tea party? Yay! BUT DON’T MAKE MY MOM ANGRY!” And, pointing to a stuffed animal: “Do you like Coco? TOO BAD, COCO IS *MY* FRIEND!” Inside, what we took to be the girl’s mom, asked if we had cooties and sang us a song about making sure to get our cootie shots, resembling the daughter’s speech patterns by starting off in a sing-song voice and ending with a yell. Great fun!

A group of vampires clutched at us from upright coffins, and cried out in ravenous agony when they saw us. “We are thirsty for your blood!” “So hungry!” “I’m starving!” We believed them. An overalls-clad, whooping yokel made contact with us multiple times, running ahead, and coming back out of a door or dark corner, becoming increasingly agitated as the bumpkin added another whoop or line of dialogue on each visit. “Y’all gonna die in here, ah’m tellin’ ya!…Better watch out for those saws, they gonna git you! …They gonna kill you fer shore!”

Patients in the asylum acted seriously disturbed, asking if we had come for a sleepover, letting out loose peals of lunatic laughter, and randomly screaming, while one chanted “be my friend, try this medicine.” Clowns in the funhouse learned our names and then tortured us with them. They followed us outside where one sic’d a ‘doggy’ on us (an actor crawling around on all fours), one told corny jokes, and one bent their body in painful looking directions.

We have to mention the twisted group of nuns acting their buns off, which will be addressed more in the Scare Factor section. This was indeed a super, active, interactive, entertaining, zealous bunch of actors, bringing their A game!

As a rule, the costuming looked outstanding. Makeup/masks and ensembles were ably applied, complete, believable, and identifiable.

The mad scientist strode about in a shabby, blood-smeared lab coat while one of the others in the scene, probably supposed to be the doctor’s creature, stood out in loopy spectacles that looked fashioned out of glow sticks. Michael looked suitably daunting; It’s always ideal to get your tallest actors in the role, and more impressively, the harder-to-get-right Sam looked spot-on. The best look of the night belonged to a red-skulled creature in a hazmat suit. It looked like a creepy cross between Scooby Doo’s Space Kook and Black Flame from the Hellboy comics, but with its own unholy flavor. Can’t believe we didn’t get a picture of that, but you can see it on the attraction’s Facebook page.

The pirates paraded around in tricorn hats, bandannas, and corsair boots. The captain wore head feathers and resembled old illustrations we’ve seen of Blackbeard. The ‘burn the witch’ folks dressed up in period-appropriate garb. All the clowns and vampires, of which there were plenty, looked distinct with separate colors, hair, outfits, and masks or, makeup.

The nightmarish nuns suitably had similar looks to each other, but they were all ghastly in their own way! Same with the wicked witches, who rocked that classic witchy look with peaked black hats, but had little differentiators for some individuality.

Legends of Fear is located in Shelton, Connecticut, on the grounds of a tree farm. Parking is free. A platoon of attendants waved us to our spot. The entry layout, outlined like the hub in stringed lights, could be a bit confusing for first-timers. Luckily, the parking people were just as talented at directing foot traffic as vehicle traffic, and we soon found the ticketing booth.

Next, it was on to the hub. Everything was clearly laid out and signed: concessions (omg get those fresh donuts), merch, the hayride and trail entrances, and bathrooms. Their pristine port-a-potties were clean, brightly lighted, and smelled like pine. Quite a delightful surprise for the last night of the season!

Security was visible on the premises and we moved through metal detecting. We did not come upon any safety concerns, and footing issues were few on the trail, other than some minor step-ups for structures. The trail path itself was smooth and wide for the most part.

Legends of Fear manages an informative website and a few social media channels, including Facebook, Instagram, and whatever Twitter is calling itself today.

The outside-the-attractions areas of Legends of Fear leaned more into the festive and fun side of Halloween, than the dark and disturbing aspect; although some grisly accouterments could still be seen. We found the atmosphere appealing, and totally dug the vibe. Orange and purple string lights illuminated a tidy and well organized hub. Hay bales, corn stalks, jack o’lanterns, props, and photo ops filled the area. Metal and rock-pop favorites played.

Once in a while, a staff member would come over the speakers with an amusingly cheerful/snarky/violent announcement like “Attention Legends of Fear guests, if you are holding tickets for the last time slot on The Hallow, please go to the trailhead now or we will be forced to kill you.” Team members staffing the merch stand or acting as managers also appeared as queue actors of a sort, interacting with customers and looking as good as the attraction monsters. The roaming red-skull creature absolutely terrorized patrons with its nightmarish appearance, stealthy habits, and the thumping pop of a potato gun.

There is a certain artificiality to being on a hayride. Getting passively carted around instead of navigating your own way through takes off some of the immersive edge, but the stunning sets and effects, and the all-in actors mostly kept us focused.

At least on a hayride you do not have to worry about bumping into groups in front or behind you, which happened to us wherever we went over the Halloween weekend, including here on the trail. But other than being conga lined at some points, immersion stayed high. It seemed far away from civilization, unlike some trails we’d been to this year where we could see houses, businesses, or roads while walking around. The super realistic, heavily detailed scenes, featuring actors on top of their game, kept our eyes on the prize.

Exiting for the trail led right back to the hub. Likewise, the hayride made a loop, and brought us back to the wagon loading area adjacent to the hub.

Buckle up because we have a buuuunch to talk about for sfx. Stupendous sets, gasp-inducing, hi-tech effects, immense and realistic facades, and painstakingly detailed scenes highlighted the magnificent mastery of effects here. We came away mighty impressed by the overall quality and many individual jaw-dropping moments.

The wagon ride came bookended by awesome looking haunted houses, the last of which presented a sign congratulating us for surviving Legends of Fear. The super-sized sets looked incredible, and invested us in the action.

We approached a barn at the start, where a door near the top flipped open to reveal an animatronic skelly, with glowing red eyes that delivered a welcome (or is that unwelcome?) message, followed by blasts of pyro. We went right through the doors of the Poltergeist house to see the interior decorated with skeletons, jack o’lanterns, and a towering TV set, which the little kids watched with their backs to us on an enormous couch, while a spectral prop danced and darted in the air.

One of the best scenes began with a throng of luminescent jack o’lanterns hanging from above. We came to rest before a house exterior in a storm simulation. Sam rang the doorbell and turned out the lights. The pirate ship was another absolute show-stopper. This big boat, custom built to scale, featured an animatronic talker and a laser swamp to simulate the roiling ocean, all capped off by a cannon shot! It was preceded by another animatronic buccaneer instructing us how to repel boarders (thanks guy but it didn’t work, the pirates overran us anyway) and signed off by repeating that piratical adage, dead men tell no tales.

We observed another very cool laser fog effect when we rode through a circular cone of the stuff, and it felt like being in a space warp or interdimensional portal. The meat factory featured an assembly line where carcasses zip-lined over our heads, and dropped into processing equipment. The witch house looked fabulous, with a cauldron magically stirring itself, and a trap door that popped open to uncover a caged, screaming captive.

Skeletons scaled the trees in a black light-lit area with giant tarot cards suspended in the air. Near the end, the clown attack happened at a theater showing a Killer Clowns movie, where we heard the familiar trumpeting fanfare that signals a film about to start.

We could tell the trail would be another treat when it opened with a string of jack o’lanterns lining the way up to an arch, containing a laughing pumpkin- creature animatronic. More killer sets waited ahead…the cunningly designed funhouse held wacky clown animatronics and dummies, mirrors and slanted floors, and sounds of screaming and organ grinding music.

At the Camp Melonhead Massacre Museum, we observed pictures, videos, and other exhibits of a fictional slaughter that must have taken place in the sixties, because we could hear Purple Haze playing in the background. It even had a museum-logoed car with a huge skull on top! This was followed by the actual abandoned (except for psycho killers, of course) camp equipped with canoes, bikes, and other staples of summer camp.

The cemetery had glowing tombstones and we saw yet another neat laser fog effect, where we walked through a smoky boundary/barrier…the transition zone between living and dead, perhaps?

The dollhouse’s collection of gloomy, grimy toys, the asylum with its arrhythmic pounding noises, and a New England style white clapboard church, concealed a horrid swarm of nuns, who all held their own charms, and helped make this one of the most memorable of trails we’d be on this season.

There were other swell sets, that we will leave as a surprise for haunt goers, who dare to visit. Suffice to say, Legends of Fear put on an effects clinic of the highest order.

We really appreciate when a hayride can deliver some quality jabs of fearfulness. That is an uncommon occurrence in our experience, so we felt well satisfied when Legends of Fear’s hayride supplied more than its fair share of scares.

The opening blasts of pyro gave the riders a quick jolt, and another early fright was a boar’s head actormatronic suddenly invading the wagon space. The two little girl characters in the Poltergeist house made surprising use of a prop for an effective startle. Giant werewolf animatronics leaping toward the vehicle made for a fur-real scare. In the Sam scene, strobes went off and the Halloween theme started playing as Michael tore out of the door, where Sam had been trick-or-treating, and then slashed at the wagon riders. The onboarding pirates bum rushed both sides of the wagon seats, waving their weapons. The clowns caused chaos to break out on the wagon with their hyperintense hijinks, as detailed in the Cast section. Screams, laughs, and the buzzing roars of chainsaws, echoed in the chill air after that most fitting finale.

On the trail, the richly detailed, realistic sets illuminated by atmospheric lighting, and created effective distractions, eerie settings, and shadowy hiding spots to be exploited by opportunistic actors doing their damned-est. The funhouse clowns took advantage of the tricky layout in the funhouse to repeatedly get us, and the dollhouse concealed several nasty surprises in a small space. The witch hut, too, held multiple characters materializing out of sneaky ambush spots, starting with the mother witch, rising from the floor when we entered.

The asylum patients’ unsettling and unpredictable behavior rattled us. A lurker hiding in the darkness freaked us out with whispers instead of screams, and the vamps tried to grab us for a midnight snack, having us jumping out of their way.

The most frightening moments of the whole night belonged to the cursed church. It served as a crowd control queue, where a nun guarded the door. We tried to talk with this gruesome gatekeeper, but the sinister sister was having ‘nun’ of it! The nasty thing simply stared us down, turned the cross they were holding upside down, then imperiously beckoned one of us forward to enter the church alone. What a spot for a separation.

The interior was packed with a small horde of hideous nuns. We think there were five or six of them, all doing something different and dreadful. One crawled over the pews, one slammed on a casket lid, one came up close to us, bearing teeth and chittering, and one let out a hellacious screechy-scream, that can only be described as unearthly. All this, while being serenaded by sounds of ominous chanting, coming over the speakers. Absolutely unnerving.

The trail’s multi-chainsaw finale featured energetic, sprinting maniacs, who pursued us and other visitors far past the exit; and provided a great finish to a superb attraction, and another satisfying haunt season.

The hayride lasted twenty-nine minutes and the trail took thirty-three minutes, for an impressive grand total of sixty-two minutes. Wow! A solid hour plus of prime haunt entertainment is not easy to come by. Granted, the tickets are far from cheap – general admission for our visit cost $67 (although during the season it could be as low as $58, depending on the date) – but still represent solid value. How do we figure that?

We came across the same thing at Reaper’s Revenge last year: a lofty purchase price with correspondingly gargantuan attraction durations, alongside top-of-the-line effects, and excellent actors giving it their all. We typically look for a satisfactory 1-to-1 ratio of dollars to minutes spent in the attraction(s), or MPD (minutes per dollar). At 0.93, Legends of Fear came within spitting distance of our target.

We must also factor in quality, entertainment level, and enjoyment. On those criteria, Legends of Fear unquestionably represents a peak haunt experience. Bucket lister, must-do, or whatever term you want to use, it’s right up there with other titans of the industry. If you’ve never been there, you owe it to yourself to make 2025 your year to experience Legends of Fear!