This haunted hayride story comes from the fall I spent jumping out of the dark for twelve dollars an hour. We had nine actors on the roster that night, and on the last run I counted ten.
I worked one season at a haunted hayride outside of Lancaster.
It was a farm that did pumpkins in the day and scares at night. Fridays and Saturdays, seven to midnight.
I was twenty. I needed gas money. The pay was cash in an envelope.
The ride was a tractor pulling a flat wagon stacked with hay bales. It went out along the cornfield, through a strip of woods, along a creek, and back to the barn.
There were nine stations. Nine actors. Each one had a spot and a number painted on a wooden stake.
I was station 6. Chainsaw with no chain. Coveralls. A rubber mask that smelled like a pool float.
My spot was right before the bridge over the creek. Past the bridge, the trail curved through the trees to station 8, the guy with the coffin.
There was no station 7.
There used to be. The first week, Rhonda, who ran the whole thing, told me that station 7 was on the far side of the bridge, in a little clearing. They closed it two years ago because the ground turned to mud every time it rained and somebody twisted an ankle.
The stake was still there. You could see it from the wagon if you knew to look. A gray post with a faded 7 on it, sticking out of the weeds.
Nobody went out there.
The Coldest Night on the Haunted Hayride
The last Saturday in October was cold. Really cold. Thirty-four degrees by ten o’clock.
You could see every actor’s breath. That was part of the fun, honestly. You’d be crouched in the dark and you could see your own fog coming out of the mouth hole of your mask.
Around ten thirty, Dale, the tractor driver, stopped at my station after a run and leaned off the seat.
“Who’s on seven?” he said.
I said nobody was on seven.
He said, “Somebody’s on seven.”
I figured it was one of the guys from the barn crew, bored, messing around. I said so. Dale shrugged and drove on.
Two runs later, I heard it from my spot.
The wagon would go over the bridge. The planks would knock. The riders would laugh, the nervous kind.
Then, right where the old clearing was, they’d scream.
Not my scream. Not station 8 yet. Too early for 8.
I radioed Rhonda. She said everyone was accounted for. She said she’d count heads at break.
At break, eleven o’clock, we all sat in the barn with paper cups of cider. I counted. Nine. Me, the coffin guy, the clown, the two sisters who did the swamp, everybody.
Rhonda counted too. Nine.
She said, “Probably a customer who snuck back out. It happens.” She said she’d have security walk the trail.
Security was her nephew with a flashlight.
The Last Run Over the Bridge
The last run went out at 11:40.
I was in my spot. Chainsaw ready. I could hear the tractor coming, the low diesel sound, the wagon creaking.
I did my scare. The riders screamed. I followed the wagon a few steps the way I always did, then stopped at the bridge.
The wagon rolled over the planks.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
And past the bridge, in the clearing by the gray post, somebody was standing.
He had on a mask like ours. Burlap, I think. Rope around the neck.
He wasn’t jumping. He wasn’t swinging anything. He was just standing at the edge of the trail, facing the wagon as it went by.
The riders screamed anyway. They thought he was part of it.
The wagon went around the curve toward station 8.
He stayed.
Then he turned and looked across the creek at me.
I could see him pretty well. Dale had a work light on the back of the wagon and it lit up the clearing for a second as it went past.
I could see my own breath coming out of my mask.
I couldn’t see his.
Thirty-four degrees. Everybody’s breath was a cloud that night. Mine. Dale’s. The kids on the wagon.
Nothing came out of his.
He took one step toward the bridge. The planks didn’t make a sound. Then he spoke. Not loud. The creek should have covered it.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
I don’t remember dropping the chainsaw. I remember the smell of the creek, that wet mud smell, and the cold coming through my gloves when I grabbed the post at my station.
I ran back up the trail toward the barn. Through the cornfield. Not along the path, straight through the stalks.
I got to the barn and Rhonda was counting the cash box.
I told her. She called her nephew. He went out with the flashlight and came back twenty minutes later.
Nobody in the clearing.
Nobody on the bridge.
My chainsaw was lying on the trail where I dropped it, and next to it, standing straight up in the dirt, was the gray stake with the 7 on it.
It had been pulled out of the clearing and pushed into the ground at my station.
Rhonda said it was the barn crew. She said it with a straight face, and none of the barn crew said it wasn’t them, and none of them said it was.
I finished the season. There was only one more weekend.
I took my envelope and I never went back.
I still think about what he said. Not because it was creepy. Because he said it to me like he meant it.
Like I was standing in his spot.
Have you ever worked a haunted attraction and counted one more actor than the roster? Share your haunted hayride story, or any Halloween horror story from a seasonal job, in the comments below.
How scary was it?
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