The corn maze at Australian Ranch is open again as the fall season approaches.
The regular maze will run throughout September with haunted maze events and a haunted house taking over some evenings in October.
While the maze ran into some problems with the crops due to a large amount of hungry cranes, that helped create a pinwheel shape within the corn. That unique shape creates the chance to play a game of wagon wheel tag. Players start in the middle of the wheel and can run around the spokes and outside of the wheel shape to avoid being tagged.
Lenore Yorston told The Observer the maze has been open every year, with the exception of 2020.
"We did take the COVID year off," she said. "It was just too risky. Especially the haunted one, when you scare somebody and they explode (with screams). There'd be too many germs flying." She said with a chuckle.
The maze started in 2003, Yorston said the idea was to have something fun for a family reunion.
"One person at the reunion said 'what sadistic person made this thing!?' She was actually mad cause she couldn't get out of there," She said. But the maze was a hit with the family and with the community, so they kept it running year after year.
In 2005 Yorston's children told her about a haunted corn maze they went to in Edmonton.
"That's all I needed for the seed to be planted," she said. She said the first year was chaos as people showed up to the ranch in droves, ready to be scared by the scare actors lurking within the corn field. "We got a chainsaw man in the corn maze and other scares."
She said there are four or five in the maze and five or six at the haunted house they set up in a 100-year-old ranch house.
While Yorston said she would never go into a haunted maze for fun herself, she does enjoy being on the scaring side of things. After the maze ends she said all of the scare actors, made up family and friends, get together and share their stories of their favourite moments scaring people.
"You can't be yappy. You have to be quiet and sneak up on people," she said. One of her rules is for the scarers to never talk to the maze's participants. She said if they do, it ruins the experience for people because they see the actors as regular people.
The chainsaw men in the maze carry real chainsaws with them, but Yorston made it clear it's completely safe as the chains have been removed.
The maze will have several haunted events during the day, Yortson said it's made for people who want the experience but are a little bit too afraid to be there at night.
The regular corn maze will run throughout September and end on Oct. 20. The two family days, made to be less scary and more creepy, will be during the day on Oct. 6 and Oct. 13.
The haunted events will take place on the first two Fridays and Saturdays of October with the final evening on Sunday, Oct. 13. The haunted events run from 7 p.m. to 9:30 p.m.
People can learn more about the maze on the Cariboo Corn Maze Facebook page.
