Field Trip City

I was fortunate enough to finally hit the fabled Phantom Farm with my sisters tonight. The Phantom Farm is a haunted barn and hayride located on a back road about 20 minutes outside of Peterborough past Fraserville. For the past five years my sisters have regaled me of their experiences at the farm, and I'd listen with great interest. This year I got an eyeful of everything they'd talk about, including the infamous figure Sarah refers to as Top Hat:


The barn was well put together, and though it wasn't busy I was hoping we'd have the opportunity to wait in line longer to be terrorized by the cast of characters on hand. Hidden passageways opened, things dropped from the ceiling, we had a chainsaw waved in our faces - all before actually entering the door. We stepped into a room and were spun around for a good 15 seconds before navigating our way through the crooked hallways, torture chambers, bedrooms, and jail cells populated by the likes of Michael Myers, Leatherface, Freddy, Chuckie, and about 20 others kooks (including a young female zombie in veils, whose human-flesh hungry mouth lit up like a firecracker; I asked her for her number and got a wave of her webbed fingers).

The hayride through the Phantom Forest showed equal invention. Not only were we bombarded with grotesque scenes such as a beheading, a zombie uprising and people pleading with us to save them from oncoming serial killers, but several lunatics jumped in the wagon, stealing shoes and hats, dragging chains on the roof - at one point men wearing camouflaged fatigues shot at the top of the vehicle, prompting a body to fall off into everyone's line of sight.


Not a bad way to wrap up a weekend. It made me excited for Halloween, that's for sure. I'll be heading back next year.