Part two of Six Pines Haunted Attractions’ Haunt Files series. This one belongs to Chewy — carnEvil’s resident carnival creature, and, by his own account, the single hardest-working attraction on the farm.
The Wolfman gets the legend. Fine. Old barn, old story, very dramatic, everyone loves a slow-burn haunted history. I get the carnival. You know what a carnival is? A carnival is loud, it’s close, it’s got music playing while you’re trying to figure out where the exit is, and there is nowhere in that whole building for you to feel like you’ve got your bearings. I’ll take my job over his any night.
The Season They Put My Name On It
carnEvil had always been ours — the crew’s carnival-gone-wrong house, rebuilt with a new twist every season. But there was one year it stopped being just “the carnival house” and officially became Chewy’s Playground. That’s not me being dramatic. That’s the actual name they put on the marquee. I did not lobby for this. I did not need to. I simply showed up to work every single night and let the results speak.
Here’s what nobody tells you about running a carnival-themed haunt: the scares are easy. Bright lights, tight corners, distorted music — that part designs itself. The hard part is timing. A good carnival scare isn’t about jumping out. It’s about letting someone relax first. Let them laugh at the funhouse mirror. Let them think the worst is over. Then remind them it wasn’t.
The company said containment was temporary. That was a long time ago. Nobody official has driven down Main Street since, but that hasn’t stopped visitors from finding us anyway — usually after some newcomer sees an old post about the town online and decides the story’s too good to just read about.
My Favorite Night That Season
A birthday group came through — I want to say eight, nine people, all matching shirts, the kind of group that’s clearly been planning this trip for a month. Loudest one in front, obviously in charge, obviously not scared of anything, because he told me so. Out loud. To my face. Before I’d even done anything.
I let him get about four scenes deep before I introduced myself as an actual character in his birthday story instead of a background prop. The group still talks about it — I know because they came back the next year, same shirts, new birthday boy up front. That’s the whole business model, honestly. Give someone one unforgettable ten seconds and they’ll bring you their whole friend group the following October.
Sharing a Farm With a Legend
People ask if it’s strange, working carnEvil while the Barn of Doom gets all the ghost-story attention. Not really. Different job. The Barn of Doom is the slow dread — the sense that something’s been there since 1901 and never left. carnEvil is the immediate kind of wrong: the kind where the lights are too bright and the music’s too cheerful and you can’t tell if that’s part of the show or not.
Both work. Ask anyone who’s done Double Terror and gone through twice in one night which one got them worse the second time. I have my guesses.
Come Find Out What This Year's Playground Looks Like
Every season, carnEvil gets rebuilt around a new twisted concept, and every season I show up and make it mine regardless of what they’ve called it on the sign out front. That’s not going to change this October. If the Barn of Doom is where you go to feel like something old has been waiting for you, carnEvil is where you go to feel like something is happening to you right now, in real time, and there’s no slow build-up to brace for.
Buy your tickets and come see what this year’s version of my playground looks like. Bring the loud one from your group. I always remember the loud ones.
