The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cold. Leaves are changing colors and falling from high. Everywhere you look there are bails of hay and pumpkins for sale. There is no question: Halloween is coming.
This holiday of old, just like all the others, has been raped and mutilated by those in search of the almighty dollar.
All the evil sprits feel left out because they no longer have anything to do with Halloween, but have to play second fiddle to Spongebob and Pokemon. Viacom, Time Warner, Turner, Warner Brothers, Hershey, Mars and all the others are soon to be raking in the big bucks.
However, being the good Americans that we are, we do not allow the big companies alone to harvest everyone’s money. Privately owned pumpkin fields and haunted things of all sorts will pop up as surely as your professors will don their horrendous sweaters with seizure-inducing patterns to protect them from the cold.
Among the things that have been recently infested with apparitions is the old favorite, the haunted corn maze.
My friends and I decided that a haunted corn maze would be a good way to get some kicks last Saturday night.
After a good half an hour of driving, we found the place and got directed to park half a mile away in the middle of a field. The night had already taken on a chill that none of us were dressed for because the weather had been so nice up until that point and none of us believe in the Weather Channel. We should have realized that a corn maze was probably not the best thing to do on such a night, but we pressed on, blinded by the prospect of wandering around in the cold while guys in masks jumped at us from rows of corn.
We were greeted by a line of people so long that the souvenir shop which served as the entrance to the maze could not contain them all. We began our wait in the cold night by making jokes and conversation about how cool this maze had to be judging from the number of people there.
After maybe half an hour of waiting, we did not find it so funny. Had we not been so close to the ticket register by that point, we probably would have left, but the maze and all its wonders seemed to be within our grasp at long last.
The tickets into this labyrinth of wonders were $8 a piece. Considering that we could get lost and have creepy rednecks jump out at us at Wal-Mart for free, I thought that this was rather steep. But, refusing to admit to defeat to a long line and a high price, we paid and went to the other side of the ticket shack where we were sure all varieties of corn maze wonderment awaited us.
Much to our amazement and disappointment there was only more line wonderment to be had on the other side. Now I was very angry indeed that my $8 was already invested in this ticket which seemed to entitle me to an endless sea of lines and waiting.
Close to an hour and many half-joking quips about hypothermia later, we were allowed to board a flatbed trailer covered in hay which took us to a barn for our “Corn Maze Orientation” where a man dressed as a … dungeon master … maybe … told us that this would be a “no touch” maze meaning that the spooks could not touch us and we could not touch the spooks.
He then went on to make vague references to us dying as an attempt to frighten us. I thought again of freezing to death.
When our class on corn maze safety was over, we exited the other side of the barn and caught our first glimpse of the maze itself – which looked suspiciously like a field of corn.
From within came the sound of a chainsaw and shrieks of fear and at the entrance to the maze I saw something that frightened me more than any good ol’ boy in a mask ever could – another line to stand in.
The wait was only about 15 minutes before we were given yet another safety lecture and then finally released into the maze.
At this point I decided that the only way this maze could be worth what we had been through was if half our group of friends got killed and the other half was permanently scarred by the experience.
By now none of us could feel our feet, hands, ears or noses. They told us that the maze would take 30 to 45 minutes, but we walked so quickly that we made it through in 20.
When the spooks (15-year-old boys in cheap masks and dark clothing) jumped at us, we just side-stepped them and continued on.
Every so often one of the spooks demanded that we wait because we were getting too close to the next group and they claimed it would make the maze less scary if we all bunched together. If we managed to take a wrong turn a spook would pop from the corn and point us back in the right direction before we could even get a few steps off course. Some maze.
Randomly placed throughout the maze were strobe lights giving the rows that added headache-inducing quality they lacked before. It made me wish that I had epilepsy so that I could go into a seizure and be free from the hell I had paid to enter.
Once we escaped our corn prison we hiked back to the cars, dreaming of the heaters within. We were all numb, angry and tired. When the glorious heat thawed us enough to talk again, we all agreed that the only real spooks of the corn maze were hypothermia and epilepsy.
The only thing that keeps me from going back to said maze and setting it ablaze is the knowledge that the East Tennessean will be paying me slightly more for this article than it cost me to get into that stupid maze.

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