The time of the year when everyone was looking for the perfect pumpkin patch to go to during the chilly fall day, and maybe a thrilling haunted house at night came and went just a few short weeks ago. During that time, I had an opportunity to visit Cheeseman’s, where you could knock both things out at one place.

Located in Portersville, about 20 minutes away from Seneca Valley’s campus, Cheeseman’s offered day and night festivities. During the day you could take a hayride to their pumpkin patch where you can choose your perfect pumpkin to carve for the Halloween season.

But their nightly haunting festivities, which began at 7 pm, were the real outstanding features of this place. They have a very theatrical way of scaring their customers that clearly has a lot of thought and planning behind it.

First, we were put on a hayride that took us to the haunted maze. Throughout the ride actors jumped on the cart in an attempt to get as many screams as they can. As we went further, a tractor raced towards the back of the cart and it seemed as if it is going to crash into you, which is when what seemed to be a train started to come out the maze, making it feel like it was going to collide into the side of the cart. We then arrived to a small station where more actors started terrorizing everyone.

As we escaped the unnerving characters from the hay ride, we then entered the maze. There was a lot of effort put into this half of the experience, which was evident by the production of it all. We started in a field that was filled with smoke from a smoke machine that created an illusion that we were in water, and we couldn’t see anything underneath the fog, good scares happened here just for that reason. As we walked deeper through the maze, the more disorienting it got. A lot of strobe lights were used to warp your vision, making it more difficult to navigate the way through and easier to get jump scared since vision was delayed.

At the end of the day, this was a solid haunted house that’s overall experience is an 8/10. Some parts were lacking in scares, but the use of props and other theatrics saved that specific portion, making the overall experience better. In other words, this was definitely worth the visit and was the place to visit this Halloween season.