Written by Bryce Ethridge, Staff Writer

Halloween is one of the biggest holidays of the year. People are either doing the scaring or getting out in the streets waiting for free candy. One of the main attractions around this time of year are haunted houses, of which the world we live in is not lacking.

Unfortunately, Valdosta only has a few to go to this year, but that’s made up for with stuff that’ll haunt your nightmares. First up is Wild Adventures’ Terror in the Wild. For Halloween, Wild Adventures is turning certain parts of the park into haunted attractions, experiences and scare zones.

There are four of each, all with a unique theme to terrorize your mind. In order of least scary to most scary in attractions is Lost Land, Drained, Camp Hack-A-Way, and Clown Chaos. Lost Land did not have much going on inside the attraction with the exception of the animatronic dinosaurs making noise as you walked by. It’s only until the end when someone dressed as a zombie or crazy caveman pops out at you or invades your personal space. It’s more so scary for kids than teenagers or college students.

Drained isn’t so much as scary, but it is startling. Employees dressed up as psychopaths or mutants bang on fences and occasionally roar to scare the people who dare pass through their domain. The part of this attraction that makes it scary is the fog machine that reduces your field of vision so you won’t know what’s coming and the strobe light that makes it appear like you are in a horror movie while making you a bit dizzy.

Camp Hack-A-Way takes you through a boardwalk in the forest with random people in either camouflage or an asylum escapee popping out as you walk by. The attraction takes you through the den of a homicidal maniac where you see many severed limbs, skeletons, shrunken heads, and tortured people along the many. Along the way you encounter several psychopaths who hide in the crevasses waiting to get at you and at the end, a crazed lunatic with a chainsaw chases you away.

Clown Chaos is the scariest out of all the attractions playing on the phobia of clowns. The attraction takes you through a maze, passing through multiple crazy and psychopathic clowns. The most interesting part about this attraction is how the maze leads to two rooms where your vision is taken away and all you can see is the few glow in the dark spots around the room. It’s hard to find the exit out of both rooms, as it blends in with the wall and you have to worry about the clowns all around you, especially the one that crawls around your feet. Overall it gets a 7.5 out of 10.

The next haunted house is Moody Haunted House, which is a very interactive attraction. This haunted house quite popular with the locals and if you come too late, there will be a long line. While you stand in line, various employees dressed as either a creepy clown, Mike Meyers, or chainsaw wielding psychopath will come to scare you.

If they feel like you’re really scared of them, they’ll follow you through the haunted house. Inside of the attraction are four zones. They are: the scary forest, disaster zone, clown zone, and the insane asylum zone.

The first you pass through is the asylum zone where you hear monsters and patients bang on walls, scream from electroshock therapy, or watch them in cages. It eventually leads you to a patient attempting to hang themselves right before the next zone which is the clown zone.

In here your field of vision is lowered and clowns wait for you in crevasses of darkness. The next zone is the scary forest where you walk across a rickety bridge filled with a thick fog and monsters roar in the background. Make sure you watch out for some of the monsters on the bridge though.

The last zone is the disaster zone where you see what happens when you drink, drive, then die. For those of you with arachnophobia who thought you were safe, think again because you get to see a giant spider web up a car. At the end of it all you’re chased out by the chainsaw wielding psychopath. Overall it gets a 8.5 out of 10. While these attractions are out there, VSU’s very own haunted trail is open from October 24th through the 28th. Go out and get your Halloween spirit on.