R Adventure Park in Hocking Hills offers a variety of haunted attractions for the first time this Halloween season.
Athens is known for its haunted sites, but this year a park nestled in nearby Hocking Hills is drawing crowds looking for a variety of Halloween horrors.
For the first time, R Adventure Park, located in Logan, is offering a host of haunted experiences — ranging from a family-friendly ropes course to a fright-filled maze — in Hocking Hills for the Halloween season.
Cody Broughton, an ATV guide on a typical day at the park, masqueraded as a “chainsaw wielding maniac” Thursday night, greeting people in the parking lot with Marilyn Manson-like colored contacts and a glowing mask. Broughton said getting into character is important.
“You’ve got to really feel the character you’ve made for yourself," Broughton said. “I run around with a chainsaw, put my contacts in, paint my face, put my crazy mask on. Whenever I get ready to go haunt somebody I put on some music that I like that gets me into the zone and feeling all scary. Then I run around and chase people with a chainsaw.”
Broughton said bands like heavy metal group Mushroomhead help him get in the chainsaw-wielding spirit.
“We had a group come through last week and they said it was better than the Haunted Hoochie,” he said, referencing a haunted attraction outside Columbus.
Other actors, some from Logan High School, volunteered to become zombies and endured a steady stream of paintballs every weekend throughout the month thanks to the park’s most popular attraction, a zombie paintball shoot. Guests can shoot “zombies” from the safety of wooden benches in a wagon using mounted paintball guns.
“I just brought people up there that wanted to try out for it and I shot them with paintballs for about three minutes to make sure they could take a hit,” Curtis West, paintball field manager, said. “If you think about it, you’re going to be out there, 12 guns are mounted on the wagon, they’re driving fast, you’re going to get shot a lot so I had to make sure they could take a hit instead of just getting shot once and saying ‘I quit!’ "
The R Adventure Park team built the "Kryptic Kreek" maze, planned the routes for guests and goblins, then prepared to scare with face paint, costumes and props.
“It takes a lot of time,” Broughton said. “It’s a lot of planning.”
R Adventure Park spent around $8,000 assembling its Halloween production. Lighting was the largest expense, according to park manager Michelle Conn.
So far, the attractions have brought in about half that much, Conn said in an email.
“This year we’re not looking to make a profit, this year we’re looking to build customer relationships and see what people like,” Conn said.
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On Thursday night, a family of four opted for the "Hangman’s Hollow” experience, taking on the haunted rope course high above the muddy terrain. April Dossett said her family chose the course to avoid the fear factor typically associated with haunted attractions.
“The last haunted house I did they had to carry me out,” Dossett said. “I don’t do scary.”
Though the family-friendly attractions were popular, R Adventure Park hopes to include more options for thrill seekers in the future.
“Next year we can add on, make it a little bit more extreme,” Conn said.
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