Friends of mine have been going to the Headless Horseman Hayrides and Haunted Houses, H5 as some call it apparently, for years. But, this weekend was my first eerie experience at the 45-acre Ulster Park location.
Is it worth the $33 admission, the hour drive, and the option of a $25 Scream Pass for bypassing the usually long lines as you go between the seven different spooky sites? Yes. But, unlike my friends, I do not plan to go back annually.
I love to be scared so I went in expecting a lot and I don’t think they quite delivered, honestly.
But, as my boyfriend pointed out, the details are amazing. We definitely aren’t talking about a place that uses spaghetti for fake brains, as some of my neighborhoods’ haunted houses do.
The hayrides’ storyline of the escaped murderous prisoner sets the mysterious mood for the evening with an electrocution and visit from the Headless Horseman along the way. But, I found thy hayride kind of cluttered since it has a prison, a sea yard, a chemically-infected village, a living dead graveyard, and other random stops all along meandering way in the spooky woods. I think they should have stuck with one theme, the prison, and done more with that.
Still, it was memorable, way better than other hayrides I have been on, and definitely scary enough where I would not bring a child along.
I have a feeling we were lucky on the night we went since the lines were not too long. At the next stop, we maybe waited 15 minutes to enter the Lunar Motel. But there were chained-off areas for lines that surely would have taken at least an hour to wait in, which is probably why they estimate the entire visit will take three hours. But we did everything in less than two.
I liked the werewolf creature in the Motel. It, along with other aspects in the Nightshade Greenhouse, Blood Inn and Flesh They Crave haunted houses, could have been used on a movie set.
As we waited in line for the Blood Inn, I found the Original Synners Sideshow with John Shaw and Lady Diabala to be very entertaining with raunchy jokes, whips, and sword swallowing.
The H5 creepy cast did a good job of making things go bump in the night in the Evil Reaping corn maze. I just wish the corn was a bit higher so it’d be that much scarier.
And the eyes of one of the “surgeons” in the Glutton’s Slaughterhouse is still beaming into my soul.
H5 has been named #1 in multiple publications, including #1 Hayride in America by American Airlines Magazine and #1 Haunted Attraction in the country by Haunt World Magazine.
I’m pretty sure H5s operators did everything in their power to scare the bejesus out of every single visitor. I think it may just take more to scare me, but I did enjoy myself. Probably does not help that I grew up watching and reading Stephen King movies and books.
New for this season they have a Dead Memories Photo Experience. I like that they seem to keep things fresh, as it were. So, I have a feeling I’ll be visiting again in a couple of years to see what else they’ve dug up.
I topped off the evening with a devilish dessert. H5 is only 10 miles from Sonic so I got a scary shake, peanut butter fudge – mmmm, my favorite.
Ok, I’ll stop using so many scary adjectives now…
You can have your own haunted Halloween experience by visiting headlesshorseman.com or calling 845-339-2666. They are located at 778 Broadway, Route 9W in Ulster Park. They are open 7 p.m. Thursday through Sunday until the weekend after Halloween.