Twisted Pumpkin is a family-run, non-profit organisation in the Midlands that creates scare mazes in support of charities and community projects. They have a dedicated team of actors, staff, and creators who volunteer their time to make their scare experiences a reality.
Having previously run scare mazes and scare trails in Walsall and Wolverhampton, this year they returned for the second time, running a haunt at Sandwell Valley Visitors Centre in West Bromwich with an event titled “The Circus of Curiosities”. In the day, the scare maze dials it down a bit with a kid-friendly offering. In the night, taking over a building at the centre, Twisted Pumpkin has created approximately twelve different horrific zones for audiences to encounter, amounting to twenty-three minutes of laughs, thrills, and plenty of disturbing content, all benefitting this year’s charity, The Midlands Air Ambulance.
The cast of characters at Twisted Pumpkin was very large, especially given how compact the space was. Each room was inhabited by beings drawn from the depths of evil, whose interactivity and hands-on nature made them incredibly unsettling in the best possible way.
We were greeted by the Ticket Taker, who enthusiastically insulted us, setting a playful, yet fear-tinged tone for the evening. We had a great interaction with him, including special little messages written on our wristbands – for we were wimps for coming before sundown! At the doors to the haunt, an evil harlequin with a sharped toothed ventriloquist dummy assistant had a foreboding conversation with us, preparing us to meet the horrors within.
Inside the maze, the cast was superbly creative and interactive. Characters ranged from a lady giving a dolly’s tea party, to a duo of deranged clowns who made us play carnival games, dance, hula hoop, and dowse us in silly string. As we went deeper into the maze, the cast became more vicious and ominous, including a prisoner being fried upon the electric chair to deathly screams. The most interactive character was by far the pig slaughterer, who got up close and personal with us – read further in the Scare Factor section of this review to learn more about this insanely physical actor! Finally, of importance was a character in a gas mask who encouraged us to find a key to a lock before poisonous gas filled our room, constantly berating us for our terrible searching skills and forcing us to put our hands in disgusting concoctions.
Costuming at Twisted Pumpkin is thematically on point, with characters in each of their zones perfectly matching the environment around them. Their fortune teller was covered in a richly coloured, flowing robe, while the clowns were decked out in fun, neon, multi-coloured jester-esque costumes. The Black Window was dressed in an elegant black dress fitting with her venomous domain.
The costumes were simple but put together well, creating cohesive characters from top to toe. We were especially impressed with the black-and-white dressed ventriloquist clown at the start of the maze, whose makeup was complex and superbly done, with her terrifying clown puppet tethered firmly to her side, expelling its vitriolic jokes.
There weren’t many masks of use here, with most characters utilising makeup, but the gorilla mask near the end of the maze impressed us the most, with glowing red eyes that almost popped out of their sockets.
We can not applaud Twisted Pumpkin enough for their customer service. From our digital interactions with them online before our visit, to our in-person conversations, each staff member was so welcoming and really cared about their event and truly wanted every audience member to enjoy themselves. We spoke with almost all the staff members there as we arrived before the event was open, and it was fantastic to hear the background and history of the company, and to see so many volunteers who were so dedicated to their team and the adventure they were creating. The amount of information available on their website was also exceedingly helpful, with clear information on the nature and extremity of the experience, dates of availability, prices, and all information about their work with charities in the area.
Our only struggle was in finding the location – we were a bit lost on where the visitors centre was actually located in the park, as there was no signage in sight in regards to the event, or even a sign posting the building itself. But silly us: we then looked on their social media and there was an actual tutorial of how to find the entrance to their event, so we can only praise them for having this available and knowing it would be slightly confusing for audiences to find! We were also a bit confused about whether or not we had to pay for parking, so having this clearly explained on the website and briefing the staff at the ticket desk would have been helpful, but overall, the service here was impeccable.
Seeing as we were the first attendees of their adult scare experience this year, not everything was set up yet on our arrival, although we were shown to a lovely courtyard with a bar. There was also a lovely pre-haunt atmosphere just before diving into the haunted house, with fun interactions with both the Ticket Taker and the Ventriloquist Clown up front, who welcomed us to the experience and provided a good bit of fun before the horror that awaited us.
Interaction and immersion were key in this haunt. Audiences were brought in in extremely small batches, allowing for one-to-one experiences within each zone of the maze. Whether it was taking tea in a room covered in dolls, having to participate in carnival games, or being asked to turn the electricity off at the electric chair, each of the zones we experienced had some kind of physical and verbal interaction between actor and audience member. The experience was amazingly theatrical – it felt much more dark immersive theatre than your generic pop-up scare house. We weren’t sent through and grunted at like cattle, but instead had interactive experiences that felt valuable, even though at times they were unsettling, frightening, and at times extremely disgusting!
For a small charity run haunt, we were absolutely amazed at the level of special effects, from lights and smoke spilling from a man being electrocuted, to a room being filled with toxic smoke pumped through a pipe while we were searching for a key to escape. Perhaps even more memorable was a padded room with an insane asylum inmate, who kept throwing discoloured toilet water at us while smearing things on our hands – utterly disgusting. We were also impressed with a homemade birth canal near the end of the maze, created from tarps and forced air. It was extremely fun to experience!
For a haunt created in such a small space, the company was able to achieve so much, with incredibly detailed set designs. We loved the intimacy of a padded corridor completely covered in spiderwebs and spiders, where a black widow killed her husbands and put their souls within the spiders – and which even included a spider that jumped out and attacked us – twice! We can’t think of a single room that wasn’t incredibly detailed, from the fortune teller’s office, to the child’s tea party, the padded cell mentioned above, or even a gorilla’s den with giant bananas.
21. How scary was it? (35% of score): 7.5
22. How well did they provide scares to everyone in the group? (15% of score): 10
23. How predictable were the scares? (25% of score): 7.5
24. How well did they provide a wide variety (types) of scares? (10% of score): 6.5
25. How strong was the ending / finale? (15% of score): 7.5
There was a real range of experiences in this maze, with a super fun chat with some clowns as we played carnival games, to fighting for our lives as we searched for ways to escape from a poison-filled room. None of these rooms were as frightening as the slaughter room, which proved to be quite a memorable experience. After walking through a red room full of mannequins and body parts, we entered a chamber with a woman in a hospital gown tied to a bed, a tray of surgical instruments lying on the side. It was here we met the slaughterer – a killer in a pig’s mask who threw us against the wall, pinned us by our throats, and drew surgical lines all across our face, preparing us for a horrifying operation. Suddenly, he forced us to watch as the woman on the operating table became conscious, before viciously attacking her before our very eyes. We’ve seen a lot of horror in our times as reviewers, but this vignette was shocking, and incredibly terrifying. The other scenes before could not prepare us for the extreme nature of this segment, and especially how close we too came to be his victims!
This twenty-three-minute experience is only a tenner, which is the most affordable ticket price we’ve seen at a haunt in years, with incredible minute-per-pound value. And while this is a charity fundraiser, the quality of the haunt is extremely professional and well worth a visit for any scare attraction fan.
With interactive vignettes in every zone, we came out thrilled with our experience, and amazed that this was put together with an army of volunteers hidden away at a visitors centre in the Midlands. While there isn’t much outside the main attraction, the loveliness of the staff members and actors, and the availability of a drink at the bar, more than make up for it. And with adult-only slots available as early as 4:30 pm, in close driving distance of many other Midlands horror attractions, this is the perfect start to a night of haunting!
Salter's Lane, West Bromwich, United Kingdom B71 4BG
