Schaefer Farms in Flemington NJ

Schaefer Farms’ Fright Fest in Flemingon, NJ offers four nightly Halloween attractions for the price of one throughout the whole month of October.

Schaefer Farms, a family-run farm located in Hunterdon County that offers local milk, butter, honey, cheese, flowers and homemade candles, welcomes October every year with daily hayrides that trail the farm’s forty acres of pumpkin patches. The hayride is free for individuals who purchase a pumpkin. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights throughout all of October starting at 7 p.m., Schaefer Farms opens its Fright Fest, which includes a 45-minute hayride through 200 acres of land.

The hayride, which the Schaefer staff does not recommend for children under eight years old, sits over 20 people plus two staff guides dressed in Halloween apparel. Before the ride begins, the guides lay out the standard set of rules.

The hayride includes brief, 3-minute stops at numerous attractions, where costumers stay onboard the ride as employed-actors perform scary, Halloween scenes. In the middle of the ride, the tractor stops and allows riders to get off at the Trail of Terror, a graveyard scene where actors who play the “living dead” chase unsuspected individuals back to the already positioned hayride a half-mile away. Upon arriving back at the hayride, riders are then dropped off at the Schaefer’s Mass-Acre Maze.

The one-way maze, which covers an entire corn field, finds five Schaefer Farms workers dressed as Jason Voorhees – from the American horror film franchise Friday the 13th – hiding among the corn stalks, waiting with prop chainsaws to chase unsuspected individuals. If people “survive” this chase, they exit the maze and come to the last segment of Fright Fest, a haunted house called the Carnival of Chaos located in the main barn of the farm. In groups of no more than ten, individuals enter the dark barn and are immediately enveloped in a layer of fog, procured through the special effects of dry ice. Employees dressed as clowns and demons hide behind corners and jump out at individuals until the very end, where costumers exit and find themselves back at the main entrance to Schaefer Farms.

Before or after visiting the Fright Fest attractions, individuals may enjoy apple cider, hot chocolate, hotdogs, and other concession food items located at five separate vendors near the entrance to the Schaefer property. Other snacks and Halloween decorations are on sale in the main garage, where people can also buy their Fright Fest tickets for $22 per head.

The last night of Fright Fest is on Halloween, Sunday, October 31. Tickets for Fright Fest stop selling at 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and 9 p m. on Sundays.