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| - Open seasonally, The Haunted Barn is a one of the better haunted houses I've been to in the area. My first trip was two years ago, and we gave it another whirl this past weekend.
I don't want to give away too much about the specifics of the scares & effects (half the fun is the surprise), but I will say they do a good mix of playing into fears (claustrophobia, confusion, clowns) without relying on gross-out gore - making it okay for kids but still fun for adults.
You start by going into the barn, getting a good scare, until you finally break away to to safety - or so you think. Your first trip outside the barn turns out not to be an exit, but an entry to a path through the surrounding farmland. Unfortunately this year we got caught in a thunderstorm, so the outside was closed for safety. When we went two years ago, three of the people I were with ran into each other and fell down trying to escape a man with a chainsaw, so it made sense that with slippery grass and mud they didn't want hordes of people sprinting around in the dark. In any case, on a normal day you take a nice, scary walk through the woods, and loop around to confront the barn yet again.
The barn was definitely scarier for me this time around, but I was bummed that we got half of the experience cut out. For $10, that's kind of a big deal. The Haunted Barn sticks to their "no refunds" policy, but they were very nice about issuing our entire group of fifteen or so people rain-check tickets for next weekend. I'll unfortunately be out of town, so I'm out the money (and driving all the way out to Stoughton a second time sounds like a pain, anyway), but I give them credit for trying to make it right. It's not their fault Wisconsin weather is so bananas, and they've got to worry about the safety of not only their visitors, but their actors and equipment as well. I look forward to going back next year.
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