My Most Memorable Scare

My most memorable scare happened a couple years ago. I was roaming the farm on a busy night, walking up and down the lines of people waiting for attractions and scaring unsuspecting people. The area I was in could be seen by hundreds of people who were waiting for all three of the main attractions.

I came walking from the back of the line for the zombie paintball attraction doing my thing. The line for this attraction started out in the open, then toward the front of the line it went into somewhat of an alley where only the people waiting in line for that attraction could see what was going on. I got into that alley and approached a teenage girl who wasn’t paying attention, even though I had been chasing people around and causing screams for the last few minutes, slowly approaching the area she was in.

I snuck up and put my bloody masked face right next to her. As soon as she saw me, she screamed, turned around and ran backward down that alley toward the back of the line and I immediately gave chase. She got out into the open area where everybody waiting in line for all of the attractions could see her again and she was screaming at the top of her lungs, so EVERYBODY was watching. It was at this point that I saw what was about to happen, so I stopped running.

They have some queue lines set up for one of the daytime attractions where a large rope is draped between fence posts. These are not used at night, so they’re just kind of there. This would be easily avoidable by anybody who was walking normally or actually paying attention to what was in front of them. Unfortunately for this girl, she was doing neither of those things.

I watched as it all happened in slow motion. Her screaming, running full speed…directly into the draped rope, clotheslining herself and flipping head over heels over the rope and onto the ground. Once she hit the ground, her screaming stopped long enough for me to hear the hundreds of people who had been watching this unfold go “OHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”.

Now, my scare character is a dick. He’s not friendly. He’ll make remarks about your mom, he’ll tell you that your hair looks like a dead bird, he’ll ask you to take his picture with your pre-teen son because he looks like Justin Bieber, and he’ll point and laugh at you when you fall. But if somebody gets hurt, I’m no longer that character-I’m concerned that you’re okay and I’ll break character immediately to check on you.

As soon as I saw her hit that rope and fall to the ground, I started running toward her (remember, I had stopped as soon as I saw that she was about to hit that rope) to her to check to see if she was okay. But when she hit the ground and looked up, she didn’t know I was coming to check on her-she thought I was still chasing her to scare her more, so she got up and ran off again.

Obviously she wasn’t seriously hurt, so at this point I stopped running again and joined the other hundreds of people who were laughing hysterically at what had just happened. I never heard anything about it afterward so I assume she was fine, but I’ve thought about that scare a lot over the last couple years and it was definitely a good one.

As a bonus, here’s some more quick scares that stuck out to me:

-I scared a guy who was carrying hot chocolate (to my defense, I didn’t see that he was carrying it until after it was too late to stop the scare) and he splashed it all over his shirt

-I scared somebody and they dropped their entire bag of kettle corn and it spilled all over the ground

-I “farted” (look up “The Pooter”-that’s what I use) on somebody and they fell on the ground

-This wasn’t a scare, but I loved this gag because it always got big laughs-I have played a clown a few different times over the years, so I took a bicycle horn and tied it inside of my pants. I’d walk up to people, reach down and honk my…well, you know.

-I scared a kid so bad that he fell onto the dirt and started making snow (dirt) angels

-I got to play with one of the flame-thrower barrels on the hayride last year. I waited for the trailers to get there, then I would walk around really stiff while holding my butt while loudly yelling "I have to poop so bad!!!!!" While everybody's attention was on me, I flipped the switch for the flame thrower which was between me and the trailer. I don't know if it was any better of a scare than the normal routine with the flame thrower, but a couple of the tractor drivers found me afterward and said it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen so at least I made a few people laugh.

-Scaring people by yelling quotes from Step Brothers is always great..."DON'T TOUCH MY DRUMSET!"

OK, that's it for this post. If you have any questions or ideas for what you'd like me to write about, post it in the comments. Be sure to follow me on Instagram at @scaryvarner

-Uncle Varner