To provide entertainment for various age groups, Spring Mountain hosts haunted events on Fridays and Saturdays at 6:30 p.m. with a combo of a lift, walkthrough and hayride, with an option of the hayride only.
Spring Mountain offers a experience called Scream Mountain; the events are open from 6:30-10 p.m. every Friday and Saturday in October.
Guests can go on the haunted hayride, or they can get the combo which includes a ski-lift up to the top of the mountain.
According to tractor driver Nathan Hanson, after the ski-lift there is a “five minute walk through the woods” in which there are different scenes to go through.
Lastly, there is a hay wagon that customers can ride, which goes through different scenes until reaching the bottom of the mountain.
Hanson said there are “various different scenes” and “halfway down the mountain you will hop on the hay wagon and ride down the rest of the way.”
The first part of the combo is the lift and walk-through at the top of the mountain.
After, when guests get off of the ski-lift, they will be met with a scare-actor to guide them to the entrance of the walk-through.
When going through the walk-through there are different scenes to see with different scare-actors that jump out at guests along the way.
Scream Mountain participant Jeff Garber said, “The scare-actor that led the way to the entrance freaked me out before even entering the walk-through,” which Garber found “unique and fun.”
After making it through the scenes of the walk-through, there is a short walk down the mountain, and then an employee leads the way to a hay wagon.
The whole set-up of Scream Mountain was “honestly great” for Garber because he “liked the way they kept you moving [and how it was] very fluid.”
Once guests get on the hay wagon, the wagon will drive through more scenes with scare-actors.
Instead of guests walking through scenes on their own, the scare-actors will play the scenes out at their pace, allowing for more creativity.
With each scene there will be two or three scare-actors that can get onto the hay wagon and interact with guests.
Garber enjoyed specifically the scare-actors who dance and sing, such as, “the guy who had everyone chanting his name and using a puppet to play out his role.”
While scripts could be used for scenes at haunted attractions such as Scream Mountain, the scenes are not scripted.
“You could go through five times and get something different every time,” Hanson said.
Hanson said the scare-actors at Scream Mountain have the freedom to do whatever they please and just come up with scenes as guests are going through.
Along with scare-actors’ scenes being unscripted, there also is no company that builds the scenes for these scare-actors.
I am here building and setting up scenes the majority of the time,” head scare-actor and builder Kyle Confino said.
This means that employees are there year-round building and figuring out where scenes should go for all attractions.
Confino said that his job is not seasonal for him and instead is a full-time job, unlike some employees, such as Hanson, who is just there in the winter season, or at night, and during haunted season.
“I am not always here for scaring,” Confino said.
Both Confino and Hanson believe that Scream Mountain is a family-like environment that everyone can enjoy.
Hanson even went as far as to say that they “take really good care of you” at Scream Mountain and Spring Mountain in general, which is Hanson’s favorite part about his job.
On the other hand, Confino’s favorite part of the job would be, “scaring the living daylights out of people,” since he loves to see the reactions on their faces and the screams they let out when he’s acting.