Review:Trail Of Terror Yields A Five Scream Rating

Our own Megan Wirts ( Center) and her entourage visit Trail of Terror

Review:Trail Of Terror Yields A Five Scream Rating
​By Megan Wirts

The sounds of screams filled the air as we drove up to the Trail of Terror located in Holton. This is the 12th year of the horror filled fright fest, but it was the first experience for me and the other victims, I mean, members of my family that scared up the courage to give it a try. 

​Our group totaled 8 and ranged in age from 9 years old to grandma and as any good mother would say to her children before their very first haunted trail experience, my final words before our arrival were...

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...“If you have nightmares, it’s not my fault, you wanted to do this!”

While waiting in line for our turn to enter the taunting trail of terror, we were entertained by the friendly staff with tales of the horrors of Halloween’s past. It left some of our group feeling a little nervous about what they were going to find once we went through the black curtain.
 
Admittedly, I was feeling quite apprehensive about the whole thing. I have difficulty with my balance and vertigo and I was about to walk through the woods with tree roots and uneven surfaces while strobe lights flickered throughout the darkened trail.

What was I thinking?!? My anxiety was pretty high already, so the creatures I might encounter were just a secondary fear. We tried using my wheelchair, but as soon as we started to go into the trail, my wheels got stuck and we could tell that this would be more trouble than it was worth. So, I abandoned the chair and was flanked by my son, my cousin and her husband while my mother and my daughter followed behind us with our teenaged cousin and his girlfriend.

As we walked through black curtain and entered the trail we immediately encountered some horrible person with a big axe and as we walked on he followed so closely behind that I could feel his breath on my neck. Every few seconds I would turn to look behind me and scream as I saw his masked face peering straight at mine, while my son declared very loudly, “I AM NOT SCARED!”, repeatedly.

Soon we came upon a wooden maze that we were made to enter after a tiny horrible panda bear came running at us at warp speed while I screamed, “NO! NO! NO! NO!”.

Throughout the wooden maze ghoulish banshees screeched in our faces as we walked by.  We never knew what we would encounter when rounding each dark corner.  When we finally escaped that nightmare, we were brought back out into the forest only to be met with more terrifying creatures. Finally, the other foursome from our larger group caught up to us and the eight of us huddled together as we shuffled past the frightening figures.

Now, many of you may not know this about me, but I can be a little bit overly dramatic.

I know, shocker.

You may wonder where I got that wonderful part of my personality and I can tell you without a doubt, that my mother passed that gene on to me and I have passed it on to my own sweet daughter. Not only did my mother use her own nephew as a human shield to protect herself from the sinister creatures, she gave his girlfriend a bloody lip at some point during the terror filled trek.

Let me paint you a picture. Our group was slowly making its way towards what appeared to be a cabin in the woods. Outside the cabin was a girl slumped over in a wheelchair with blood all over her and body parts were strewn about the ground. As we walked by she looked up and began screaming, “HELP ME! HELP ME!” and from behind a sheet on the clothesline next to the house, we heard a chainsaw start up and a masked man came charging at us. The smell of gasoline filled the air and ahead of us was another sheet covered in blood with another masked chainsaw maniac on the other side.

This is where I am sure I peed a little and my mother lost her mind. There was sheet after bloody sheet and what seemed like dozens of chainsaw killers surrounding us. My mom was screaming our names and went from person to person as if she were the ball in a pinball machine. At one point, she grabbed ahold of me and screamed at the masked man, “SHE’S DISABLED! LEAVE HER ALONE!!!!”.

Each time we had to go through another sheet, my mother, frozen in fear would declare, “I CAN’T GO ON! JUST LEAVE ME! SAVE YOURSELVES!!!”. Someone in our group would then push her through and the masked men would wave their chainsaws in our faces and laugh maniacally as we would shriek and cower in fear.

​When we made it out of the chainsaw massacre nightmare we had a few moments to gather ourselves and laugh nervously about the horrors that we had just encountered before the next ghastly episode occurred.  Soon we were surrounded by disturbing little girls asking us if we wanted to play and singing nursery rhymes in an ominous tone. Then, as we turned our last corner and were nearing the end, the evil clowns came out to play.

My cousin, already possessed with a serious fear of clowns, pulled up her coat and zipped it over her face while her husband led her through the crowd of killer clowns. My small people clung to either side of me and my mom attached herself to the back of one of our unsuspecting family members and we all just screamed our ever-loving heads off as we moved as fast as we could to get out of there.

As we stumbled out of the trail and made our way back to our vehicles tears from laughter streamed down our faces as we recounted what we had just experienced. The over the top reactions from my mom were nothing but fantastically hilarious and we have all agreed that this must be a new tradition. All of us, including my mother, had the most terrifically terrifying time and would absolutely do it again. And, no, my small people haven’t had any nightmares…yet. Muwahahahahaha!
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Don’t miss your chance to get your scare on! The Tail of Terror’s final weekend is October 28-29, open dusk to 11pm weather permitting. Tickets are $14 for regular admission or you can upgrade to VIP for $5, a portion of proceeds goes to the Dakota Dean Murphy scholarship fund. The Trail of Terror is located at 7582 Crocker Rd. in Holton MI.

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