REVIEW: FEAR FARM

OCTOBER 17, 2023

review: FEAR FARM

As we spend this week celebrating the incredible creativity that exists outside of LA in the Apple Valley area, we would like to now talk about how much we love Fear Farm. We have been attending this haunt for decades, literally since it was a small hayride on a tractor through a yard where you would actually run over people! Ever since then it has slowly morphed through different mazes and locations before landing back in Phelan. Fear Farm is now a small theme park-like town, with Western decor and flats similar to Knott’s Ghost Town, that includes two mazes and a hayride that absolutely buries its competitor, the LA Haunted Hayride.

If you attended Midsummer Scream (MSS) or Season’s Screamings, you likely know who Fear Farm is. Every year they have built mazes and displays for each event that showcased the most decadent exteriors, whose heights almost reached the ceiling, that would shoot out smoke and lasers across the Hall of Shadows. These mammoth builds were inhabited by their trademark stilt-walking scare actors, who included many amazing characters like our favorite - the spooky Gingerbread Man! These builds often are expanded once they return to Phelan for the Halloween season. Last year's MSS jungle themed maze, the Chamber of the Damned, has now grown and is filled with even more scare actors than before. This maze is on par with their second maze - the notorious Sundown Manor.

The Manor has accompanied Fear Farm for a long time as they moved throughout multiple locations. Its exterior, now complete with an animated ghost bride in the window, emits a menacing red light that pours forth from the mansion. Within exists one of our favorite illusions, exclusive to the Manor, that involves entering into a laser swamp room where a man is sitting down staring at you from across the room. You begin to walk down and sink into the floor as he seemingly begins to float above you as he stands up and moves around. This illusion is created simply with a ramp and the scare actor on stilts, but never fails to make our jaws drop with its superior execution.

The main attraction, the Haunted Hayride, is an incredible journey on an old, vintage tractor that drags you through the darkness of the desert. As you drive through the sets, characters hop on board with chainsaws and even throw dead bodies into the trailer from above. It's a really exhilarating, high octane ride that you would never get from its competitor - the LA Haunted Hayride.

Fear Farm is a mandatory visit this season. We guarantee that anyone from LA will have a wonderful time pairing up their evening with Fear Farm, All Saints Lunatic Asylum, and Jordan's High Desert Haunt. You will have the time of your life visiting these three amazing haunts that are over the top this season!

VC

October 17, 2023

Hauntsofla.com

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