Behind the screams at Wichita-area haunted attraction (+video)

Until last weekend, I’d never returned from an assignment with blood dripped all over my notepad.

I’d also never spent a workday made up like a demonic spawn of Satan, hiding after dark in a field of 20-foot-tall sorghum stalks, idly chatting with Freddy Krueger under the moonlight while waiting for more victims to terrorize.

But that all changed when I spent an evening behind the scenes at one of Wichita’s biggest and most popular haunted attractions – Field of Screams, which has operated for 12 years at Prairie Pines Christmas Tree Farm in Maize.

The attraction, which winds through a spooky sorghum field on the property, is now the biggest part of the Scott family’s business – so big that this year the family decided to close the farm to weddings during haunted house season. About 21,000 people go through the field each season, and owner Kip Scott hires a crew of 100 actors to staff it.

He agreed to let me join them to see what it was like to spend an evening making people scream, jump, flee and nearly lose control of their bowels.

It was awesome.

“Every year by the end I think, ‘I’m not going to do this again next year,’ ” said eight-year Field of Screams veteran Joe Williams, the Freddy Krueger who coached me through my shift in the field. “Then the next year, I think, ‘I can’t wait to get back in the field again.’ ”

Although I startle easily and despise being scared, I didn’t think twice about taking this assignment. I knew from a story I wrote years ago about what it’s like to work in the bowels of the Kansas State Fair’s Ye Old Mill that it’s much easier to be the scare-r than the scare-ee. The person jumping from the darkened corner is the one in control of the adrenaline, the victimizer instead of the victimized.

Still, being behind the scenes wasn’t completely un-scary. When I arrived that evening, it was still light outside and the actors were gathering to get into costume and character. Several of them were standing in a long line inside a metal shipping crate turned makeup room, waiting to have blood, gore and gaping wounds painted onto their faces and bodies. Scott has hired a makeup artist with a degree in theatrical makeup to prep his players.

Others were already dressed and were gathered outside, passing the time eating pizza, reading books and visiting. They were doing so while wearing makeup, masks and costumes that turned them into featureless ghouls, homicidal clowns, just-fed zombies and unbathed, wild-eyed psychos. It was an unsettling place to pass the time, and it grew even more unsettling when some of the actors decided to rehearse their shticks on the reporter. One of Field of Screams’ top chainsaw operators was a bit too convincing and kept menacingly circling me, staring me down and babbling about how he was a good boy cuz Mama said so. Eeep!

He never broke character, even when I hinted I might like to interview him. Every time I looked up, his black-rimmed eyes were boring into my skull, a look of deranged amusement on his face.

Staying in character is the key to eliciting scares, the actors told me. And it’s a struggle each night. Many of the people who pay to tour the field come wanting to be frightened. Others just want to prove to the actors that they can’t be scared and can get nasty about it.

“You just have to roll with it,” said Patrick Rakestraw, whose zombie suffocation noises were unmatched by anything I’ve ever seen on “The Walking Dead.” “A lot of them want to see if they can get you to break character. That’s how they have a good time.”

Chris Strader, who manages the actors, volunteered to take me on a tour of the haunt before it got dark and the demented thespians took their places, and even that was scarier than I thought it would be. Field of Screams, which takes about 35 minutes to complete, has parts sure to ignite any latent phobia, from a pitch-black elevator that traps you inside, to demonic, animatronic skeleton babies that pop out at you, to a shipping container turned into a glow-in-the-dark, 3-D maze of evil clowns. Even in the daylight, I was unprepared for the vibrating floor, bloodied headless mannequins and revolting butcher shop props I encountered.

Would I pay to go through this thing? At night? On purpose? Um. That’s a big fat negative.

But, as Scott informed a meeting of the actors just before the gates (of hell) opened, hundreds of people already had paid. The first two time slots were sold out to advance ticket buyers, and the nice weather that evening likely would translate into big walk-up crowds.

Give ’em the worst you’ve got, their boss encouraged them.

Makeup artist Christie Balla slapped a freaky face on me, circling my eyes in black makeup, painting my lips black and applying a healthy serving of dripping blood to the finished product. I held my notebook under my chin to keep the excess from dripping onto my Grim Reaper robe.

Then, it was off to the field. Scott and Strader weren’t sure where to put me. Did I want to run a chain saw? Did I want to staff the school bus from hell? Did I want to hang out with the welcome crew, which included a butcher with a bloody knife and a clown baring six-inch teeth, whose jobs were to unnerve people before they even walked in?

Ultimately, we decided I’d join Williams in the field. He advised me to stand back in the sorghum stalks, out of sight. As people approached, they would see Williams and his icky face coming at them, and I would jump out from the side, screaming in their ears.

I wasn’t sure I’d have much success with such an old-fashioned, un-fancy scare. But I managed to thoroughly freak out at least a few groups of girls, who were tiptoeing through the field holding hands, their teeth chattering. Many of them would offer instant feedback, delivered at the top of their lungs. “OHMYGOD THAT ONE SCARED THE *&#% OUT OF ME OHMYGOD OHMYGOD!”

Accidentally, I thanked one of them in a not-so-scary voice. Then I lost my voice. Screaming for an hour can do that to you.

I didn’t have the energy to make it through the entire night (the actors are often in the field as late as 2 a.m.), so when it was time for me to go, Williams kindly offered to guide me back to the entrance. He took me the back way, which required traipsing through the denser parts of the field in the pitch black. Every few feet, we’d run into another actor – one in a devilish man/pig mask stands out in my memory – making his or her way to another scare. As Freddy Krueger led me deeper and deeper into the stalks, my brain started to play tricks on me. Was this all a preplanned, murderous plot, now that I had no voice left?

“Really nice to meet you,” Freddy/Joe said as he dropped me safely back at the entrance. “Can’t wait to read your story.”

As I walked away, all I could hear were chainsaws and screams.

This story was originally published October 23, 2015 at 5:15 PM with the headline "Behind the screams at Wichita-area haunted attraction (+video)."