Trail of Fears 2024 – The Clearing, the Build and then the Panic

Ever have those things just hanging over your head that you just never seen to get time to address? Some of those are due to not wanting to deal with a painful grind to get it taken care, some you just know are going to be a rabbit hole of issues once you pop the top and then there are those things that just take time that isn’t there. That is the case with this series of posts. I am once again delinquent on the recap of our annual haunted Halloween trail. The 2024 Trail of Fears was held the last weekend of September – we are nearing almost a solid year behind and now this year’s scarefest is just around the corner. I don’t mind getting behind on my photo queue, but don’t want that to happen on the haunt front as we use these as references for the next year (what went right, what went wrong, how we go bigger – normal postmortem activities). If there is one advantage to being laid up, it’s being able to address the busy work. Brace yourselves, we are going to burn through your browser cache in these posts!

Hit the jump for a behind the scenes look at how this event all comes together. They say it isn’t work if you enjoy what you are doing and without question we live for all things orange and black!

I often start past this point for the recap, but doing that skips over a lot of the early heavy lifting, especially for the 2024 trail. We are on the go during the first part of the year. By the time everything shifts to start thinking about the trail we are well into May-June. Mother Nature waits for no one and their reclamation from man’s hands starts early. It is hard to tell in the following shot, but the growing season is well underway with the weeds and brush already past the knee in the trail areas (past the culvert).

Need to clear out all the fallen trees, clean up all the branches – especially from the Locust Trees that will put a spike through you with one misstep and then spend the day with the brush hog followed by multiple days of trimming and sprucing.

Eventually the trail takes shape. There are two more mowing and trimming sessions before the big weekend, the last being within one week of the date so our guests can easily navigate the mile long trail.

This year brought with it added grooming work. We have been promising an easier method to get in and out of the valley that the trail encompasses. I appreciated the extra hill training while building the trail as there is always an ultra-trail race within a week or two after the trail. I am unable to get long runs in as I need the time getting the trail ready, but like the fact I was still working the lungs. I understand our guests may not have that same viewpoint ha! This was the year we FINALLY got the switchbacks cut in.

This ended up being a tremendous amount of work. I had actually started it for the 2023 season, but didn’t get anywhere close to getting it done and had to revert to the original path at the last minute. This year I started on it as soon as we got back from our Texas trip in March/April. To minimize the impact to the woods, the switchback paths were meticulously planned to limit the amount of tree damage and leveraging as much of the natural terrain as possible. The trails were then cleared by hand. Once all the required trees and roots were removed, the path was then tilled to make a flat (as possible) path for the cross lengths. Till up slope and then rake the dirt across to remove the down slope. Quite the workout for the previous year’s broken elbow. From there, mulch was put down on the path one 5 gallon bucket at a time – not big enough to get full vehicles down. I made a video of the finished switchbacks to remind myself of what this project took out of me ha! Including the video here just as documentation for the trail – do not feel obligated to watch it, pretty uneventful as a finished product.

Trail prep work mostly behind us – it was time to start the trail planning process. It all starts with a layout of the core haunt scenes. The switchbacks are near the start of the trail (right side). Notice there is a dashed line to the right – that is the original hill which is still used for a lot of the prop transporting. Evident from the rendering is how much ADDITIONAL trail we had this year. This ended up being a bit of concern as we needed to bring a lot of the props forward to fill that gap – thankfully we added a bunch of new custom and purchased items this year so everything worked out well.

Just a quick look at some of the new items. This Home Depot clown was really nice. Oversized, great sound pack and really good movement. This was a great purchase and our guests really liked it.

Wait, we can make it even scarier!! (that’s my brother Ron ha).

Most of our purchased props come AFTER Halloween where we can pick them up at a reduced price – this trail is free for our guests so we do our best to keep costs within reason. This Scarecrow was from Spirit’s clearance sales from the following year. Maybe one of my favorite additions for 2024.

I had my eye on the Dragon line at Home Deport for some time. These props are expensive (~$400) and each year opted to spend that money on a multitude of other props. Linda convinced me to pull the trigger this year (she’s the best!).

Ron picked up several “selfie station” frames he found at Home Goods. Thought this would be fun for our younger guests…umm… maybe some of the older one too!

Can’t remember for sure, but think he originally bought 4 and then we went back and picked up another. This year we want to do something that encourages finding these stations and submitting their pictures – let us know in the comments if you have any great ideas we can use in that effort.

The theme for this year was “Big Scares”. Continuing with a trend we started seeing the year before, it is clear that the bigger the prop the bigger the fright. We added a number of big props (like the Dragon above) which I’ll try to point out as we go.

Time to start building the trail! This event does not happen without the help of others. It has grown waaay too big for one person and thankfully we have a number of volunteers that enjoy Halloween as much as I do. Ron is a huge part of both the off season prop building and then the yeoman’s work of getting everything hauled down and set up. Here is with his son, Derek, getting ready to take a load down into the valley.

Brad (passenger seat) is another mainstay of our build team. We all started the same day at our place of employment (that includes my wife). He had recently retired a month before and was able to help out even more! We used to plan new props on our breaks – and our coworkers thought those were IT architecture diagrams hehehe).

Took a quick break for a picture – that’s brad and Derek to my left. This was just hours before the party was to begin and fatigue was starting to take hold of me.

As mentioned, it was bigger the better this year and nothing fits that criteria better than the 12′ Inferno Skeleton from Home Depot. We had this for the previous year, but we added the little Infernos minions at its feet for this year. This officially marks the start of the trail which proceeds down into the switchbacks to the left.

Next thing is our huge pumpkin arch. You can read all about the making of this monstrosity on the Intrigued mothership (link here). Our haunt department also just put out an in depth video on YouTube showing how to make those huge pumpkins (link here).

And now officially into the switchbacks. For those not familiar with how the trail is put together, we try our best to make it an enjoyable event for all ages. As the trail progresses, the scares become more “mature” in nature. The start is geared more to young audience with inflatables and more traditional props.

More shots of the finished switchback – notice the mulch has down. We go rain or shine and with the freshly cut trails it would have been pretty muddy without it had the weather gods not cooperated.

My partner in haunt Paul is a huge contributor to the props along the trail. He has his own section which I’ll point out as we go, but he also has a lot of the inflatables on this first part of the trial. That pumpkin arch was a new one for this year (he actually had two of those thanks to the first being replace by the manufacturer – told him to keep the broken one so he just fixed it!).

Another one of his oversized air blown props – pumpkin head is 12 feet high and a guest favorite. Look for his huge orange dragon when we get to the night shots.

The new addition to our Dragon’s Lair. With all the chaos that happened right before the guests were to arrive (more coming on that), we forgot to get the fog machine hooked up to the dragon – it is supposed to have fog coming out of its mouth when it gets triggered – this is one of the top items to address for this year.

A big emphasis for the 2024 trail and for this year is the continued build out of the Trail of Fears cemetery. We have a larger clearing for this scene and wanted to fill up as much of that space as we could. This is why we have been working hard on our large tombstones over the years and why Ron and I decided to make a new cemetery entrance gate (admittedly, we started that way too close to the event ha). Those are the column in the background, I’ll point that out once we get it set up.

You can never have too many scarecrows! Our new prop is ready to scare our guests!

Another member of our haunt squad. Dan is another long time friend from work. He is still in the grind, but gracious enough to spend his vacation days to help us out. Here he is with our new Stranger Things prop. For that record, that prop was an absolute pain in the ass to put together. It was picked up at Walmart at a reduced price after Halloween last year. The vendor has been noted and there will be no more purchases from them – directions were awful and it took Ron and I close to 4 hours to get the damn thing together thanks to the middle part that held it all together being poorly designed.

More props being added to the trail. This will eventually be full of clown related props. Before you question me on this – yes I HATE clowns, yes, I have LOTS of clowns on our trail because we can think of no terrifying genre to have in a dark forbidding woods.

Clowns asylum taking shape. Planning a new CarnEvil themed entrance for this year

Now we are getting into Paul’s section. We used to intermix our props, but caused a lot of confusion during tear down, especially when we had help that wasn’t familiar with whose had what. To solve this, he has a whole section of trail dedicated to his scares.

Still in build out, of course, but this area is affectionately referred to as the Hellscape. The whole area is bathed in red light and there skeletons everywhere you have to navigate around. Add in all his other props and this area is definitely not for the impressionable ones prone to nightmares.

Eddie was one of his new props for this year – if you know your heavy rock, you know what he comes from. A bit out of picture, but the small doghouse on the left side of the image was the “Prop of the Year” for 2024. There is indeed a rabid dog in that house that rapidly pops out from inside the house – if you watch Paul’s recap video from the trail you will see a kid getting absolutely scared to death from that – cracks us up every time (link here).

Okay, starting to get closer to the event kickoff. These pictures are a bit out of order but there is a big reason for that and that is the “Panic” part in the title. Traditionally, we have time before the guests to take a run through to make sure everything is the way we want it and to take some final shots in the daylight. This year we had TWO major catastrophes that tested our resolve. I tell everyone that 60% of the work to put this event on is in the building out of the trail and the other 70% is troubleshooting (I’m aware). Over the years we have become well seasoned to mishaps, but usually those involve a particular prop that needs some attention or maybe a small stretch of power that is flaky due to water or bad connector – we actually had a splitter go bad once which I had never heard of before then.

Well, we had issues on a whole different level that year. One I’ll get to a bit later. The other happened just a few hours before the guests were scheduled to start arriving. We can handle just about any catastrophe short of a complete power failure. We do have a lot of battery operated elements in the trail, but the core of the lighting and signature props is AC power. We have two trunks that power the trail – left side is powered directly from the house and the right side utilized a power line we added while putting in our new well in the valley several years ago. All of a sudden we lost the entire circuit on right side. What the hell! Jumped into problem solving mode and eventually let my nose lead me to the issue. There was a tremendous burnt ozone odor coming from the back of the cemetery – that was NOT planned ha. Made our way to the main outlet near the well. Opened up the box and discovered a quarter size hole had been burnt all the way through the GFI outlet. Yikes – that was a new one. Luckily we had a spare (but still sent Linda to pick up a couple more just in case). Managed to get that swapped out and got the power back – no issues after that. That was a close one.

Another new prop for this year. You knew that Linda had to get the recently released companion dog to the 12′ Skelly. She had a great idea to pick up an oversized tennis ball at 5 Below to add to the scene. Forgot to mention, this year we had two 12′ foot Skellies to greet our guests as then came into the Emerald Forest (see shot a couple back). One was Brad’s but we picked up another one when we ordered the dragon – go big or go home.

Our custom 8 foot spiders were back in action this year. We added sound to them for this trail event – lesson learned, we need to increase the volume of that sound pack for the 2024 event as it got lost with all the other sounds in that area.

Another look at the oversized spiders. Yeah, we like them a lot – took a long time to build, but worth it.

I never know what the end results of the trail build will be until I do the final walk through just before the guests arrive. I let our help be creative in their various sections and they never fail to impress me.

Brad is our “Skeleton Guy” and always has amazing scenes that always cracks us up. Give him tubs and tubs of various skeletons and stand back ha.

Our 10′ Birdman from last year was back in the emerald forest. He had some off-season work done on him to address some arm linkages that broke. The wind was whipping him around pretty good and had to fix his clothes and wings from time to time – main thing is he stayed up in 20+ mph winds that were cruising down the valley that first night.

More shots from trail – you will notice how good the trail looks for the event – far cry from the jungle a few months prior.

Another shot as you head toward the cemetery area – the guests actually go right here to get there and then the rope lights in the back direct them into the next section – golden rule of the trail – NEVER cross a rope light or go behind a prop. Heed those rules and you will never get lost and will make it out alive.

Linda picked up the reaper below at Costco a couple of years ago. It was on sale and she has a good eye for quality props. Very happy with this one – loud sound pack and the face is all black until it lights up.

And then we have our custom reaper just before making it to the cemetery. The year before, Dan and I added about 3 feet it its height – did I mention yet bigger the prop the better the scare?

Now at the cemetery. I have to state that this a whole lot better at night with the fog rolling over the tombstones and the rest of the lights playing off that. This is a good look at the cemetery columns and gates Ron and I put together a few weeks before the event. Ron also picked up the candelabras and the other decorations like the cemetery sign. We got a lot of compliments on that addition. This year I have a set of lanterns to put on the fronts of the columns which should look really nice.

Another purchase from Home Depot were the bat skeletons. They ended up being hard to see in the dark being all black, so we put them in places that additional lighting like this rope light we had to direct people to the entrance gates.

An inside joke from my fellow coworkers. I used to keep an email folder for all the emails I got on a daily basis addressed to Brain.

A shot of our illuminated tombstones. This one was built for the 2023 event, but we did create 3 new ones for 2024. You can learn about how we create the 2023 stones here and the 2024 ones in our recent tutorial here. There will be a YouTube video coming out in the future as well.

For reference, the second shot in this post (pre clearing) is taken from the other side looking into this area.

The backside of the cemetery. This was going to lead into our big custom signature prop that immortalized the elbow breaking incident from the year before starting with the tombstone made the year it happened.

One of our three new tombstones for 2024. 10 out of 10 skeletons approve.

Okay, now to reveal the 2 major catastrophe that befell us for 2024. We spent a good majority of the year building a haunted tree. This stood 9 feet tall with branches that stretched over 10 feet wide. This thing was huge and we were incredibly excited to show it off to everyone. Brad and I got it all set up about an hour before the start of the event. Planned to get to it earlier, but the power issue screwed up all our timings. Go the two pieces of the trunk together and the arms attached. We turned our backs for a brief moment to grab the dead leaf garland and we hear a loud crash. We were experiencing 20mph gusts coming down the valley and one had just managed to weave its way through the trees and slam into the prop. It literally snapped in half at the joint and crashed straight to the ground damaging the arms with it. The winds were forecasted to continue through the night so we opted to cut our losses and keep it apart. Removed the arms as they were likely to continue to break now that they had been cracked. Wow, was that heartbreaking moment.

We ended up putting the two next to each other like stumps, added two tree themed candelabras and the all important severed foot under the Root of All Evil (thank Tim coining that term – link here). I didn’t get a chance to get the Coffin Opener prop working until the second day. Completely overhauled the servos in the skeleton arms and it works really nice now. Apologies to our Friday guests for not having this operational – one of the reason we always recommend our guests come both nights!

From the cemetery, our guests are guided into the zombie containment area. This also happens to be the darkest area on the trail – doesn’t look too foreboding in the light, but when the light drops…well, watch your back.

Another view from the zombie gauntlet.

The Demogorgon finally assembled and out on the trail. Note, this was purchased primarily for my great niece who is a big fan of Stranger Things. One of these days we are going to officially scare her with something – so far she has laughed off all our attempts (she is still in grade school).

Back in Paul’s area. Nothing scarier than just a girl enjoying a leisurely swinging on the haunted trail

Starting to see the Hellscape take shape. Hopefully you will get a better feel for the red wash on the night walk-through post.

A better look at the jump scare dog house and his owner Eddie. I have to say, off all the things on the trail, the twin little girls over Eddie’s left shoulder may creep me out more than anything – the things they are horrifying. State for the record again, we are NOT responsible for any nightmares anyone might have as a result of walking our trails.

I strongly suggest you DO NOT take candy from strangers or scarecrows sitting in a lawn chair in the middle of the night in a dark woods. In fact, better just to stay clear of this particular family.

And now the other huge custom prop we built for this year. This thing took me absolutely forever. I’ll be making a tutorial on him that shows all the work that went into it, but I really ran out of time to put the finishing touches on it. Not happy with the wings at all as they were supposed to be more propped up (like a butterfly), but the PVC connection I put on the back didn’t take well to the added weight of the fabric on the wings – and we went with the lighter weight fabric for that very reason. I am hoping to have some time to fix it up for this year. Maybe a new carved head, better hands, more realistic wings. I also have a tail for it I need to finish that was going to swing back and forth and I now have the head linkage done for it to rotate from side to side. Add in my new sound pack controllers and I think it will be a winner. Just a bit of a letdown for 2024 for all the work I put into it.

The last prop on the trail is always our headless horsemen. Since we have been doing this prop, the guests are always excited to take in the lighting of the pumpkin. This shot was taken the next day so the pumpkin had already been burned the previous night. Swap that out for a new carved pumpkin for the following night and we are good to go!

If you made it this far I want to thank you for taking such an interest in our haunted trail. This is the highlight of our year and we get excited about telling everyone about it. There will be a companion post coming soon that has some shots taken during the night that hopefully shows you the transformation that happens once the sun drops. It never captures the full atmosphere and certainly not all the scenes on the trail, but does give a good feel.

Take care everyone – stay calm and haunt on.