With Halloween just around the corner Kristina, her friends, and I made a trek out to western Maryland to experience the Markoff haunted trail. To get there we had to drive down a winding, curvy road in the dark. That was scary enough for me, but the night became more frightening when we got there.

After you pay the $25 fee to get in, you wait in an area with several bonfires before they call your group number. Actors in full creepy-costume interacted with us to pass the time. One was dressed in a suit and walked around like a possessed zombie droning about brains while chasing our group members around. When they called us enter the trail, we were bubbling with anticipation to see what was behind the doors.

We entered the first chamber which was full with hanging skeletons. I let Kristina go ahead of me as we entered the next part which led through a tunnel. As we ducked down to go through, Kristina got scared and thrusted her elbow back right into my nose. It hurt like hell but I stumbled on in the darkness anyway. After I was outside I started to feel a wetness on my hands. Using a nearby light I saw that my hands were covered in blood and my nose was dripping thick, dark-red fluid. It was evident that I needed to head back for some medical attention but how would I get there?

Luckily there was an actor dressed like Jack the Ripper directly behind this. When I tried to explain that I was bleeding and needed to leave, they acted like I was part of the show. With no help from the actor, Kristina helped me back the way we came where there was a guy dressed as a skeleton in the room full of dangling skeletons. He guided us out but on the way a girl saw the blood on me and started shrieking, “You can’t make me go, look at that boy’s face! What if that happens to me?” It was definitely a bonus freaking out waiting patrons.

I ended up at a dressing trailer where a lady dressed in a weird cat costume helped me wash up and stop the bleeding with paper towels. In 15 minutes I was good as new and Kristina and I headed back to the haunted trail. We ended up with a group of strangers, not our friends, but we had a good time anyways.

The trail was rough and hard to navigate in the dark which probably explains why we had to sign a waiver before entering. Actors would jump out of random places and Kristina would shriek. There was a girl ahead of us who was so jumpy she would scream when a tree branch touched her. At the end there were guys with chainsaws (chains removed of course) that chase people around. Kristina totally lost it and started sprinting away from them as fast as she could. I’m surprised she didn’t pass out from the sheer terror of the moment.

In the end it was a fun night. Even though I got a bloody nose, I left with a great story to tell which made it even better than I had expected. The trail is open through the 31st of October from dusk until 9pm. If you are in the area, it is definitely worth checking out.