Haunted Trail of Tears 2022 – Night Terrors

I will admit, I forgot how much work it is to get these Haunted Trail recaps out. Feels like an endurance race but instead of legs you move yourself along with your fingers on a keyboard. Fortunately, it gives me a big boost of Halloween adrenaline to keep me motivated while I’m working on new props in the lab for this year’s event…which is coming up waaaaaaay tooo fast. So far, I’ve made it through the prop/build phase (link here) and the day walker tour (link here). Turn the lights out, it is time for a walk on the darkside.

Hit the jump to experience some of the sights and sounds of our annual Haunted Trail.

The weather gods decided to make up for all the rains they brought down for the previous year’s haunt. Not sure we could have asked for any better conditions – even leading up to the event was dry making the build phase a whole lot easier. Slightly cool out and little to no wind – perfect conditions to bring out Paul’s giant penguin!

The signature prop for 2021 was the new entrance. I’ve covered all aspects of this prop by now and happy to bring you shots from the night of its big debut.

Threw some light on it so you could see the columns and the full profiles of the pumpkins above. As the night went on, it became quite spooktacular as all you could see was the lit up faces floating in the air above the start of the trail. We received really nice comments about this new addition (if they only knew the months and months it took to bring this to life).

The Evil Red Clown (per the day walker post) was the first Posey we ever created for the trail (link here). My, how far we have come since that first production. Our hockey mask ghosts were actually our first ever prop and still holds a place of honor in our hearts. There is another one at the road to greet our guests and let them know where to turn into our driveway.

For this year, we tried to give extra attention to the early part of the trail – we keep that less scary for the kids of all ages. Typically my focus is on the more gruesome elements and decided to make a conscious effort to spice up the other areas.

With all the new additions, we decided to move our coven of witches further down the trail. In its place we whipped together some basic (smaller) Posies with children’s costumes on them. Here is one of them.

The light up masks work out really well on the trail.

The first part is loaded with blow-ups. Those are kid friendly and provide a lot of light for the steep walk down into the valley. This is Linda’s favorite one – a huge Minion fan.

More of the blow-ups further down the descent into the valley.

Probably time to respray the fabric on these props, they’ve been with us since the early days of the trail.

Linda’s niece brought us this gator skeleton to add to the trail this year. We asked him where he wanted to spend the night and he picked a location next to the other prehistoric creatures. A perfect fit!

The dragons were well represented on the trail this year. Two were protecting their lair.

..and Paul’s giant dragon was keeping an eye for anyone that wandered too far off the trail – we forgot to feed it before the guests started showing up.

The trail’s “Walmart Greeter” was busy all night helping guests to stay on the trail.

Paul’s black widow blow-up is incredibly bright, so we put it to good use by our bridge crossing. Don’t want any of our guests getting hurt (we do our best to prevent any injuries with a heavy use of caution tape and other natural barriers where there is a chance of any issues).

It’s a Chucky Christmas!

I promised you better shots of Brad’s 12′ foot skeleton. It does lose a bit of its scale in this shot.

He welcomes everyone to the Emerald Forest. This is the first year we have been able to capture the effect with a camera. Imagine being surrounded by millions of green lights wherever you look. Have to say, of all the props on the trail, this effect gets the most amazed comments. One of those scenes you really need to be there to fully experience.

Another shot of the Big Guy. Brad gets credit for all the skeleton placements – mentioned in the day walk, he has a gift.

Apparently the other skeletons are pretty afraid of our oversized addition.

More handiwork from Brad.

Here is our new home for the witches! For the third year in a row I forgot to put the water mister in the cauldron. Soooo many things to remember leading up to the big night(s)

The spiders were loving their new webbing. Will definitely have more of that for future events.

Next up the new Grim Reaper for the trail this year. If you recall from the day walk, the head is actually black until it is triggered and then the skull glows through and the lantern lights up. Linda has a keen eye for good props for the trail and picked this one up on clearance the year before.

Taking a big jump forward now. There are a lot of props lining the trail up to the cemetery. Almost all of those were covered in the posts from prior years. Our Gargoyle once again stood sentry over the cemetery entrance. Brad is working on a larger area ground fogger for the next event which will help compliment the fog coming from the sentry. As much as he tries, our sentry just doesn’t have enough breath to cover the entire graveyard.

This is the first year our Coffin Opening Skeleton was moved down into the trail. We wanted to keep an eye on it as it was being powered by a voltage regulator that we usually use as a temporary power source in the lab. Now that has been replaced by powerful LiPos so it can take its rightful place with the other graveyard props.

Thanks to some additional supports (see, you can’t even see them in the dark) and smoother movement, this prop worked perfectly both nights – for the observant, this picture shows we did replace the red foam connectors with white ones as mentioned in the day walk post. Will likely corpse the inside skeleton for a little added scare during our next event.

One of the new stones for this year – the downside of your parents giving you an easily misspelled name.

The projector enclosure/gravestone turned out really nice. Ron had a great idea to make it Edgar Allen Poe’s marker and add Nevermore to the cross to play off the Raven. I wasn’t able to get a good shot of the video screen (see the day walk post), but that turned out really nice as well.

It isn’t all scares, sometime we bring the humor..sick and twisted, but still funny.

Another new stone. Ran out of time to get the distressing down right – these will look better next event.

Adding the black lettering in the off season really help the look of Alford’s stone. I already upgraded his controller so no longer any worries with this prop and rain – the electronics were somewhat exposed before.

Two new clowns were added this year!

We always hit the pop up stores after Halloween looking for good bargains to add to the trail the following year – our haunts are held the last weekend of September so we have to wait a full year to enjoy them on the trail.

Ah, now to the Evil Red Clown. Next year it will be upgraded to the latest Posey line.

Mentioned in the day walk we did some major work on the Clown in the Box in the off season. The lighter head and reducing the amount of “spring” was the answer to our issues in previous year – worked great the entire time.

Have I mentioned it is dark in the valley!?! The tree canopy keeps a lot of the ambient light down and those moonless country nights can be coal black. To help with that we started adding a lot of rope lighting on the trail. Not only does it light the trail up, it also helps the guests navigate easily to the various areas. Looks like we are electrocuting this particular skeleton.

More fencing – these came from clearance at Spirits after Halloween. I do not recommend buying these (even at discount) very flimsy, be we made them work by putting green plastic rods on the back and using those to stake it to the ground. It did the job of keeping the guests on the right path.

One of three scarecrows on the trail, granted most guests only find two as the largest one usually hangs up higher in the trees.

Here is the Grave Digger Posey. Forgot to mention, almost all of the mechanical Posies were “hardened” in the off season. We would always experience damage on the way down to the trail during the build phase – usually easy to fix, just annoying and took up valuable time. Now all the joints are locked together with screws and mechanics reinforced for the bumpy ride. I don’t remember having to put anything back on them this year after they were hauled down.

Really happy how the new Spiked Zombie looked on the trail this year… well, once it made it to the trail ha. This was a major rework of our first ground breaker prop. All new mechanics, higher quality costume and a healthy dose of gore!

Witches were brewing up a nice batch of kiddie soup – their signature dish. Next year will remember to put the misters in the cauldron.

Servo Man, the first Posey from the Westworld 2.0 Line also worked perfectly for both nights thanks to an upgrade of its mechanics and I think it also benefited from the frame hardening as well. Are you getting the feeling there is a lot of work that goes on during the off months ha.

Freddy’s new needle fingers looking really good in the UV lights. Think I will fatten him up a bit, you need to be strong to carry those fingers around.

This is one of our static Posies. Oh, this shot reminds me, all of our Posies wear running shoes ..so they won’t get hurt as they are chasing down their victims!

The demons started their human sacrifice early this year. Not sure where they got their victim, but all our guests were accounted for safe and sound this year.

Ned had a great two days as well. The issues with the motor that spins the little girl up in his web were resolved. He does get a little lost in the woods due to the brown corpse treatment on the bones. I think the new more solid webbing will really help make him more visible.

Now we are in to Paul’s haunting area. His stones are smaller in scale than mine, so he creates his own graveyard for those.

I believe he picked up this girl from Spirit last year – there is just something about a little girl hanging out in a graveyard you just can’t trust.

The Ghoul Family was back for another fun evening out with the kids. Note the caution tape is there because of a large stream right past it we didn’t want anyone accidentally falling into.

Okay, we might have been down ONE guest.

Who doesn’t want free candy!?! Actually, our guests might want to think twice about that offer.

Paul has an impressive collection of hanging props. To give them an extra pop on the trail, he hits them with UV reactive spray paint which reacts stunningly well when hit with the UV flashlights we give all our guests.

I love this upgraded Posey from Paul. Hey, I just noticed the two headed dog he had down at its feet – goes to show you how easy it is too miss some of the finer details.

We’ve come to our last prop on the trail – Talkie Tina. Guests are left with the haunting saying from the Twilight Movie it is taken from “My name is Talkie Tina and I’m going to kill you!”. She’s always kidding like that, she rarely goes through with it.

One of the props we keep up at the house is the Headless Horseman – just seems prudent with a real pumpkin that spews out 5′ of flame.

Here is a little better picture of the Horseman and his evil zombie horse.

For those that have not seen this prop from our previous trail walk-thrus, you can check out a small video here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNN6hD_Bi70) or the prop build post (link here).

This year we had an extra pumpkin – they NEVER go to waste in our haunts!

That’s it for the trail tour. Hope you got a feel for what it is all about and what our guests are treated to for those willing to brave the trail. I mentioned previously that the teardown used to happen that night (back when it was a single day event). Being retired and all the controllers/props being weather tolerant, we can now shut it all down and instead, get some badly needed sleep.

Over the course of the next 4 to 5 days, all the decorations are hauled back up to the storage facility.

This tends to go a LOT faster than the build phase – we have all off season to take care of anything we might accidentally get a little rough with.

It is BIG help when we can get some of the older ghouls to drive the vehicles for us.

So glad we went ahead and upgraded our ATV to a UTV a few years back.

Linda is especially happy as she doesn’t have to hang off the back anymore ha.

Actually, I am still not sure the word happy applies – she doesn’t actually enjoy the teardown process as it usually means she gets to carry the signature pieces out.

Eventually everything makes it up to the storage building. I like to let them sit out a few days just to make sure they all dry out from any moisture they might have collected during the nights.

90% of all the props will be put in storage tubs and loaded onto the shelving in the back corner – compactness is a key principle for us during our prop design/building. 5% go in the next bay behind the shelving and then 5% make it into the lab (in the house) for off season work.

…and that’s a wrap for the 2022 haunt season. Hard to believe we are a mere 3 months from doing this all again – where does all the time go!?!