Halloween is the season of jack-o-lanterns, trick or treating and, if you’re brave enough, visiting a haunted attraction.
For thousands of people, that has become a fall tradition.
And many of them venture to “Field of Screams” on North Tyler Road in Maize. It’s one of the largest haunted attractions in the state and draws people from across Kansas and the Midwest who like a good scare.
Field of Screams’ backstory has a gentler beginning: It was a pumpkin patch aimed at kids and families.
Kip and Jody Scott started it shortly after moving back to Wichita from Los Angeles in 2001. Kip was tired of chasing an acting career, and their first son, Aidan, had just been born.
Kip’s father, Bob Scott, had run the successful Prairie Pines Christmas Tree Farm on the 80-acre property for more than 20 years. Kip and Jody wondered whether there was room for another seasonal event.
“We tried our hand at pumpkin farming and doing the kids events in the daytime,” Kip Scott said. “That was more difficult than what we realized, to try to get the pumpkins to live, to get families to come out and be happy in the daytime.
“And so we said, ‘Let's go ahead and look into the haunted attraction venue.’ ”
Jody Scott went to a national convention for haunted attractions — yes, there is such a thing — and they visited other haunted houses to do research, including one in Salt Lake City.
They launched Field of Screams for three nights in 2003. The scariest thing? The lack of attendance.
They planted a sorghum field in 2004 and tried again.
“We opened up for, I think, 10 nights, and we had pretty good crowds,” Kip Scott recalled. “And by the time we got to Halloween, I mean, we had a few hundred people a night, and our heads were spinning trying to think, ‘OK, how do we manage a few hundred people going through?’ ”
Business doubled in 2005 and tripled in 2006. It was a screaming success, helped in part by timing — a previous Wichita haunted attraction had closed — and fueled by word of mouth on a new fad: social media.
“Most haunted attractions, like most businesses, only last for a couple years,” Kip Scott said. “A lot of people get into it. They think it's going to be super easy. All you have to do is find a dark place, and you can go buy your masks at Walmart and get some actors out there, and you can probably put on an event.
“We realized that we were going to have to beef it up quite a bit.”
This year, the Scotts expect to attract about 25,000 people over 20 mostly weekend dates that started in late September and run through Nov. 1.
Kip Scott said the nightly operation now involves more than 100 employees, including parking staff, security and makeup artists. An array of computer screens in a hidden room onsite gives employees access to cameras placed around the attraction to keep tabs on customers and actors.
“We've been extremely lucky because if we didn't have Field of Screams, we would not be able to keep the farm open,” Scott said. “It's that successful.
“So, Field of Screams banks a lot of our other events throughout the year: the theater, the lavender (farm), Christmas trees and everything else.”
Because so many people who visit Field of Screams are repeat customers, the Scotts try to change 25 to 30% of the attraction every year. The staff added a haunted gas station this year.
But they don’t mess with the basics.
“One year, when we ran Watson Park (“Wicked Island”), we tried to get rid of the chainsaws,” Kip Scott said. “We tried to be a little bit more cerebral with it and tell a story. And that didn't work.
“So, you got to have those chainsaws. That's what everybody expects. Give them what they want at Halloween.”
It’s the people wielding those chainsaws who give Field of Screams its frightening charm.
— popping out of the sorghum field to scare patrons, or hanging out in the creepy buildings along the path, like Clown Town.
They’re a mix of ages and backgrounds. Some are longtime actors who have worked in community theater. Others are students. And some just like dressing up for Halloween and yelling, “Boo.”
Scott said he holds actor auditions every August.
“It's really more of a screening process … than an audition,” said Scott, who has a Theater Performance degree from Wichita State University and has worked the fields in the past.
“We do want to see how creative people are, and how athletic they are, and what they could add. But it's people who are well balanced, who are well tempered, because you're going to get kind of aggressive crowds coming through at different times.”
On a recent Friday night, the actors began arriving around 6 p.m., about an hour before the gates opened. That gives them time to get their makeup done and get into costume.
While they wait for their turn in makeup, they lounge in folding chairs, eating snacks and chatting. A mixture of creepy clowns, demons and zombies.
They also take time to put on bug spray. As one undead character said, “Those bugs are murder.”
All of the characters have their own backstory, like Pappy, who said he was dropped on his head as a child.
“There was this one incident where the drop was very strong, and Mama had no choice but to take a piece of the vortex itself and put it in my head, which, you know — side effects happen,” he said. “That's why Pappy has so many different versions of himself.
“You might have, like a 50-50 chance of catching the good side of me, or might get something else happening to you, if you catch my drift.”
When he’s not wearing demonic makeup and contacts that give him one red eye and one blue one, Pappy is known as Chester. He’s a 51-year-old father of two who spent decades working in local theater.
Chester plans to work every night this season, except the one he reserves to take his family through Field of Screams. But it’s not the $70 per shift that motivates him.
“I love doing it,” he said. “... If (they) will let me come back every year, I will keep coming back.
“I don't want to ever stop. I don't ever want to stop being an actor.”
Based on the crowds, he won’t have to worry about that anytime soon. People seem eager to spend up to $30 to get the daylights scared out of them.
It might seem an odd way to have fun, but not to Omri Gillath. He’s a psychology professor at the University of Kansas.
Gillath said things like haunted houses or roller coasters allow us to push beyond our boundaries and experience something out of the ordinary. But in a controlled way.
“So, you can engage in … this threat because in your head, you're saying, ‘I'm fine. It's not real. I can do all that,’” he said. “ ‘And, yes, there is a guy with a chainsaw, but I know that he's not actually going to do anything to me, right?’
“So, you're enjoying that because it's all in a safe sort of environment.”
Plus, those fight-or-flight moments we face when scared can result in a soothing feeling when the crisis is over, sort of like a runner’s high.
“So, we can run away … or we can stand and fight,” Gillath said. “But after that, the body is releasing all of these feel-good neurotransmitters who are allowing you to basically relax and reach this level of like … a boost that people enjoy.”
Kaelyn, a student at Andover High School, put it in less scientific terms after walking through Field of Screams with some of her classmates.
“My heart's … beating at like 200 beats a minute,” she said.
“It's fun, and I like the adrenaline rush.”
Bailey was another student in the Andover group. She said she comes every year, even though she spends most of the evening screaming.
“It's like the spirit of Halloween, I guess,” she said. “Gotta get scared."
