Cache Valley offers a variety of spooky seasonal attractions

By Rebekah Bradway

October 26, 2007 | With mistletoe and peppermint candy canes now coloring stores red, green and white, it's definitely the best time for taking advantage of the current holiday season: Halloween. Yep, the nerve-wracking, pee-your-pants-you're-so-scared holiday is one not to miss. And why would anyone want to with all the local attractions available?

As an all-scary-things fanatic myself, I thought I'd do my best to absorb a few Cache Valley Halloween attractions before the temperature drops even more and the warm and fuzzy family feeling replaces those of mystery and thrill.

Going into most of these places, I had no idea what to expect. And while I was both surprised and let down at times, my main discovery overall was how diverse the Halloween options are here in the valley.

Green Canyon Corn Maze:
This was definitely a corn maze. Nothing more, nothing less. Walking into the maze, the corn stalks rose around my friend and me with only the moonlight to keep us "on track," if you could call it that. Well, it at least kept us on the dirt paths.

We started our journey and turned left, straight to a dead end. Went back, took some more turns. Dead end. Passed another 20 rows of corn down the path. And what do you know? Dead end. Nothing but corn and mud stood in our way, but there was more than enough of both.

And so went the next 45 minutes through the maze, with progression moving slowly. Luckily my friend and I had about a half hour's worth of Halloween costume brainstorming to do, him finally deciding on Hugh Heffner as his best bet for the coming night and me still unsure.

So while the maze made for conversation and getting-to-know-you time, that's pretty much all it had to offer to a couple college students with an urge for spooky excitement and willingness to find it. The maze itself was challenging with all its ñ you guessed it ñ dead ends, yet it didn't seem nearly as difficult as coming up with enough costume ideas to fill the time walking through it.

Price: $6, $5 with student ID
Location: 2850 N. 50 East, North Logan Hours: 5 to 11 p.m. Monday through Saturday
Age Recommendation: 12 and up, especially on "haunted" weekends, when the maze has dressed-up employees who hide and wait to spook the next wanderer.

Little Bear River Bottoms:
Being a little disappointed with my 45-minute maze run, I couldn't resist testing out a few other types of mazes this attraction has to offer. Along with its two corn mazes, Little Bear River Bottoms features a jungle-grass maze and string maze.

Unfortunately, however, these mazes did nothing to raise confidence in my maze abilities. The jungle-grass maze was as easy as it was quick, as my friend and I finished it in less than 10 minutes. The maze weaved through two grass sections: one about a foot high and the other standing about 5 feet, and the paths led almost straight to the end, with no interesting twists or long paths to dead ends. But the trail did boast a grass walkway, rather than a lane of mud ready to smother my shoes and eventually the floor mat in my car.

After the 10 effortless minutes, I needed a challenge. No, not a silly string maze I could completely see from the outside, as the employee suggested, but a real challenge. But because the employee recommended it, I thought, "Might as well get another warm-up in."

Well, that warm-up ended up being the attraction of the night for me.

The string maze is pretty basic: Two strings, one near the ground and the other about 3 feet off it, are tied from pole to pole, the poles sticking out of the grass. And just like any other maze, people try to make it through while running into dead ends and finding themselves on the same paths over and over.

The maze, about a third of the size of a football field, took us a confusing 25 minutes to get through. Because we could see above and through the string, the entire maze was visible at all times, yet the correct path seemed completely the opposite. My friend and I probably went over each section of the maze at least three times before finding the final path toward the exit.

The contrast of the simple poles and string with the actual complexity of the maze led it to the most frustrating yet rewarding maze for me in the end.

Little Bear River Bottoms also features a Haunted River Trail, Spooky Barn Ride and fort made of hay bails.

Price: $6 for all mazes, plus $2 for each additional activity. Students get $1 off with ID.
Location: 1/2 mile south of the Wellsville Burger King on Highway 89/91
Hours: 5:30 to 9:30 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 5:30 to 11 p.m. Fridays; 4 to 11 p.m. Saturdays
Age Recommendation: Due to its variety of activities, there is something for all ages, whether it be the fort for toddlers or string maze for teenagers and adults.
For more information, go to www.cachevalleyturf.com.

Deads End Haunted Attraction:
Of all the attractions I sampled, I found this one to be the most slow-paced as well as the most interesting. Deads End is actually a free tour through a yard of a family's house in the Island. Before speaking to one of the family members, who lead the tours, the house simply appeared to be something for passersby to look at, but in reality, it's its own haunted town compacted into one yard.

The attraction, separated into three parts, has handmade, life-size figures created from movies, legends and the makers' imaginations. The family members make them out of chicken wire and paper-towel paper mache.

So in going through the yard, from the cemetery to the London scene in the back, a group of demons, the an over-sized tarantula and brewing witches had me interested in the figures, while the legends told kept me intrigued.

While some "Thriller" zombies, as some call them, looked as if they were roaming the yard, I was told the legend of where the jack-o-lantern's name came from, where the mothman's skeleton was found in West Virginia and how the wolf-man attacked his prey. The mood was of mystery, perfect for a night of trick-or-treating, watching a scary movie or telling ghost stories.

Price: free
Location: 905 Canyon Road in Logan Hours: 4 to 9 p.m. every day except Sundays
Age Recommendation: All ages. The figures and stories are perfect for spooking the kids, while learning the legends and seeing the art of the figures make the tour interested for adults.

Richmond Haunted Mansion:
I can't deny that this haunted house actually put the "Whee!" in Halloween. The mansion, as it's called, mostly uses the surprise tactic to scare as vampires, werewolves and other creatures leap out in the darkness at visitors. And what can I say? The idea worked marvelously.

But besides that, the location was the only other exceptional part of this attraction. Out in the boonies away from Main Street in Richmond, the old building looks like it came straight from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," very isolated, run-down and quiet. Walking up to the door alone had me grabbing the arm of my neighbor, waiting to see if any visitors actually came out of the building.

Unfortunately, once inside, the whole place got a little less scary and quite a bit funnier. The dirty floor and low lights set the mood of eeriness, but there was a definite cheesiness to a lot of the props, such as dead Frankenstein-looking man or the flying ghost corpse. Luckily, some attention was taken away from the phoniness of it all when a robed skeleton would jump out from behind a wall and follow my group for part of our 25-minute excursion. And while the jumps and screams may have made the walk worth the time, unfortunately, they didn't make it worth the $12 each person spent on admission.

Price: $14, $12 with donated items, listed on the attraction's Web site.
Location: 500 W. Main in Richmond Hours: 7:30 to 11 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 7:30 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Fridays and Saturdays; closed Sundays.
Age Recommendation: 12 and older, as some of the characters are likely to be a little too frightening for those younger.
For more information, go to www.richmondmansion.com.

Overall, the valley has something to offer for every Halloween fan, whether they prefer hearing legends or being startled. So let's take advantage of what we can now, before the gold stars and shiny ornaments out-sparkle those gleaming demon eyes and Hugh Heffner robes.