Field of Screams (Part I)

Because this story is quite lengthy, I have divided it into two parts.

Part I:

Tonight (tonight being 10/23 when I originally wrote this post) Katie, her friend Karissa, and I went to a place called “Field of Screams” (F.o.S.) in nearby (40 minutes away) Lancaster. Karissa received a few “complimentary tickets” from a neighbor of hers. Though, at first glance, it obviously appears to be a benevolent, kind gift on the part of her neighbor, after experiencing F.o.S. I am not sure how truly benevolent the gift was.

I did not know much of anything about F.o.S. other than the fact that it is a haunted attraction field/park/hell-on-earth that comes and goes with that ironic holiday (“holy-day”?) that we call Halloween. I figured people come to this place, pay a few bucks, walk around a haunted house or ride around on a haunted hay ride (who came up with that idea by the way?), get scared, and then safely return home to their non-haunted placed of residence. I was, for the most part, pretty accurate in my assumption. But don’t let the predictability of the aforementioned assumption skew your expectations as I delve into the details of that interesting night. Because it wasn’t quite as simple.

So we had been planning on going to F.o.S. on Friday for the whole week. However, as the weekend approached, so did adverse weather conditions. It started raining on Thursday night and that rain continued all the way through Friday night. And this was no cute, sprinkly rain. This was full on rain. Not quite Noah and the Ark type proportions but still…RAIN.

So Karissa, Katie, and I gathered at Katie’s house with our complimentary tickets in hand, ready to begin our journey. I realize now how much power those complimentary tickets held in influencing our decision. Looking back on it now it seems so illogical. We were going to drive 40 minutes (at least) in torrential rainfall to a place called “Field of Screams” of which we knew next to nothing about, save for the facts that were obvious because of the name alone: that it was a field, and therefore outdoors, and that there would be screaming, and therefore fright, pain, terror, destruction, anxiety, and other brightly connotated words. But we were obligated to go because we could not let the complimentary tickets go to waste. The risks of death or serious mental trauma were worth the value of redeeming those golden complimentary tickets.

So, we set out on our journey. And, being the idiot that I am, I volunteered to drive. I volunteered to drive my car with the tires that were balder than the heads of all the males on my mother’s side of the family (and therefore balder than my future head will be L). A brief side-note: I had already experienced a couple of “white-knuckle” moments where my car lost traction momentarily. Once while trying to accelerate up a not-so-steep incline after a brief rain, once while trying to pull out of the Susquehanna Post Office, and a couple of times while driving in the snow on my way to visit John at Cornell. So all that to say this: my kind gesture may have been exactly that, kind, but it was also dumb.

So, as we get on the freeway and begin to “Follow the screams to Field of Screams” (the local radio ad slogan) I am already kind of nervous about how hard it’s raining. I have the windshield wipers going full boar and I’m going five MPH less than the speed limit (which in most of PA is 55 MPH). I’m driving with both my hands on the wheel, ten o’clock and two o’clock (which I never do), my knuckles are white from gripping so hard, my gaze is focused, my mind sharp, my demeanor…kind of nervous. I’m not that great of a conversationalist is this mode so although there may have been attempts to include me in conversation or to ask me questions, these attempts were not ignored, they were simply not even heard because all of my information intake capacities were currently being occupied. I was one with my car which I was hoping would remain one with the road.

Adding to my nervousness is the fact that the PA highways seem so inadequately lit. I’m sure that the fact that there was already limited visibility due to the rain was a factor, but I couldn’t help thinking to myself, “Wow, I wish that this highway was a little bit more lit, just a little bit.” Things went okay for the most part. No serious hydroplaning episodes. One near-crash experience though: as we neared an off-ramp to get onto another freeway. Again, because of the raining-cats-and-dogs precipitation, and because of the lack of light (thank you sun; thank you state of PA), and because of the poor engineering of this particular off-ramp (Again, thank you state of PA) the off-ramp approached at a much quicker rate than was expected. So as I merged to get into the off-ramp lane, no quicker did I look in front of me did I see big, yellow arrow signs point to the right which also corresponded, as they usually do, with a dramatic change in the composition of the road. What was once straight now was very much less straight. I basically had to slam on my breaks to slow down enough to make the curve. Now, remember back to the parts of this story where I mentioned the amount of rain and the amount of baldness of my tires. Well these things were not comforting in the moment that we were basically gliding across the top of the road like Michelle Kwan. Miraculously, we did not end up in a ditch on the side of the highway and we slowed down enough to make the turn (thank you Jesus).

So, we eventually made it to our destination…well almost. In order to get to the parking lot, we had to drive around the whole field. Again, not knowing what to expect or where to go, as we are driving around on this muddy road we see a man in a bright orange vest with one of those orange baton things that you see the guys on the tarmac at the airports waving. As we approached, Katie and Karissa joked about whether the guy with all the orange going on was actually a parking attendant or whether he was one of the “actors” in F.o.S. and this was just “part of the show” and he was going to try to scare us. So I pulled up next to him and rolled down my window to ask where to go. The answer to whether the man was an actor in F.o.S. was ambivalent. Not fully able to see his face because of the dark/rain, and because upon speaking, his mouth revealed a lack of teeth and a gargley (the sound you make when you gargle) voice, which therefore made understanding his words pretty much impossible, all added to a “should we be frightened? Should we be laughing? Should we be serious? Should we be pitiful?” reaction. Not really gaining the answer to my original query, I just drove away in the hopes that the parking lot would soon arrive and that the man would not chase after us with a hook or scythe in hand.

However, when we finally arrived at the parking lot it did not add much comfort. Because the lot was on a grass field, and because it had been raining non stop for about 24 hours, the field was transformed into a muddy inferno. I parked in the spot where another bright orange clad parking attendant was directing me and Katie, Karissa, and I joked about getting stuck in the mud when we try to leave. We left my car and tiptoed through the mud and the pouring rain towards the entrance to officially begin our experience at F.o.S.