While walking through black and torn tarps, visitors will find creepy, murderous-looking rooms. In the background, screams permeate the air as the ripping of a chainsaw attacks the senses.

There are red spotlights everywhere, painting the forest and the rooms red.

The Haunted Forest is a Halloween tradition for many people in Iowa. The Haunted Forest has been run for over 23 years by the Ballard family and has the motto “don’t come alone.”

Actors within the Haunted Forest will take any opportunity they can to scare the willing participants that dare to enter their forest.

“We want the people in the line scared before they even go in,” said Lee Ballard, co-owner of the Haunted Forest.

The history behind the Haunted Forest

A magician named Orville Ballard founded the Haunted Forest in 1999.

“He loved to entertain people,” said Lee Ballard, Orville’s son.

Orville Ballard was a large part of making the Haunted Forest into what it is today.

Orville Ballard and his two sons, Lynn Ballard and Lee Ballard, went to Oklahoma to visit a friend’s haunted forest one year. Lynn Ballard, the current co-owner with Lee Ballard, recalled something his father had said during the trip.

“[My dad] was the one who said, ‘Well, you know, it’s a lot of money to start up, and by gosh, we’re gonna do it.’”

Lynn Ballard and Lee Ballard began helping their father out on day one. They hauled equipment from Cedar Rapids after they decided to repurpose the empty lot the Haunted Forest now sits on.

A friend helped bulldoze the trail so the family could begin making the Haunted Forest.

Lee Ballard recalled that the Haunted Forest’s opening weekend only had a little over 100 people show up, but the following weekend over 600 people showed up to see the Haunted Forest.

Today, the Haunted Forest sees hundreds of people each day it is open. Their record number of visitors in a single night is 1,200 people.

The Haunted Forest is located in Ames, but people will drive from Fort Dodge to experience its frights.

“In 23 years and 200,000 people that went through, there ain’t been ten that didn’t like it,” Lee Ballard said.

What lies within the Haunted Forest

Lynn Ballard and Lee Ballard both emphasized how important their actors are to the Haunted Forest.

“Every night we have pizza and pop [for the actors],” Lynn Ballard said. “They have camaraderie, and they share all the things that went on in the night. They all come together.”

The actors shape and build the Haunted Forest every year alongside the Ballard family. Lee Ballard said the actors help decide what the rooms will look like, and everyone enjoys picking their roles in the forest.

The Haunted Forest has over 100 costumes for the actors to choose from or use every year. The actors have the ability to bring in their talents, ideas and pets into the forest to make it a better experience.

Lee said that one year a woman brought her pet rats into the forest. The rats were placed into a fish tank, and customers were allowed to pet the rats as part of the walkthrough.

A few years ago, the Haunted Forest featured Mango the Robot, a character engineered by a student worker. Mango the Robot has a dedicated page on the Haunted Forest’s website, and the student would control Mango from a computer behind the scenes. His singular red eye would allow the student to see what the robot saw, and he would talk to people going through the forest.

In another year, the Haunted Forest’s staff included a couple of engineering students. The two ended up hanging a four-wheeler in the trees, according to Lee Ballard.

At one point, there was also a guy with an artificial leg.

“Don’t think [the actors] didn’t have fun cutting his leg off,” Lee Ballard said. “They would cut his leg off and chase [the patrons] with it. They come up with really crazy stuff. It’s so fun.”

The Haunted Forest is meant to be for the customer’s entertainment.

“It’s so much fun to entertain people,” Lee Ballard said.

There are many different themes within the Haunted Forest, and the actors match the different themes throughout the forest.

This year there are multiple new features the actors helped build. Some themes include a broken bloody playhouse, a graveyard and Death’s playground.

“I liked the spinning room,” said Sophia Weedman, one of the forest’s visitors. “It was pretty intense.”

What the actors have to say

The actors enjoy their work in the forest as well.

“I like [working] a lot because there’s a lot of variety in the way we can do what we do,” said Teddy White, a Haunted Forest employee of two years.

Actors will stand still and pretend to be a prop by standing still. In other instances the actors will hide in the dark of the forest or behind the black tarps that cover the Haunted Forest.

Andrew Forby, a sophomore studying mechanical engineering, has crutches on his arms as part of his costume. Many people assumed he could not move very fast through the forest and discovered the truth the hard way.

“They’re like, ‘oh, it’s okay; he can’t move that fast,’” Forby said. “That’s not true, and they learned that when I started sprinting after them on all fours.”

At the end of night after all the customers have gone through, the actors will huddle by the campfire across from the forest, eat pizza and share stories about their experiences.

“The entire point of a scare park is to let yourself be scared,” said Ciara Becker, a senior studying biology.

Rebecca Linn, a freshman studying art and design, wanted to highlight that customers should only go in with a group of five people or less.

“It’s just not fun for everyone in a larger group,” Linn said. “We jump out and scare someone, then we have to let the other people go by.”

If somebody is anxious or skeptical about going into the Haunted Forest, the actors will accommodate that person. Visitors can let actors know to not scare the group or walk through with a flashlight.

Additional information can be found on the Ames Haunted Forest website.