Scare yourself silly at Molitor’s Haunted Acres

If you’re ever in the central Minnesota region around Halloween, Molitor’s Haunted Acres is a place you could definitely try checking out. Located in Sauk Rapids which is like 5 minutes north of St Cloud (on Highway 10) and comes with a low low admission ticket price of $11.75 per head. Last Saturday, went out with a few friends to Molitor’s (“pronounced: mall-eaters”) and ended up completely missing the dumb exit which happened to be County Road 29 to Sartell. Gosh I’d driven a good 25 minutes up north before realizing my mistake. Everybody groaned in the back seats but it was ok hehe. Finally reached the place and the bumpy farm land parking lots were full to the brim.

Upon entering the place, I was super disoriented with all the lit-up decorations in place that I had trouble finding the ticket counter and almost stood in the bathroom line. How embarrassing! So we all paid for our tickets and stood in this long amusement park-like snaky line teaming with little kids possibly high schoolers or even younger. But before that, there was this dude dressed up in a gorilla outfit who jumped out at the girls in front of us right after they bought the tickets. Someone coulda died there cuz nobody was expecting it but it was still funny. A good 15 mins of waiting in line flew by watching the next group of kids getting scared every time they walked past the counter. Next thing we know, we’re ushered out the door into the back of the shelter area and onto a tractor (Hay ride) with a long flat bed and 2 rows of benches with the backs facing one another. The air was chilly [… here take my sweater… 😉 ], it was dark outside at 10pm, an instruction spiel about how we were not allowed to touch the “monsters” even if they could touch you was spelled out loud and clear, and off we went on this tractor with around two dozen teenagers and a few older couples.

As the 2-stroke high torqued engine of the tractor racketeered us onwards, the pale light of the cold (almost) full moon flitted through the tall corn fields and the bony dead looking trees cast eerie shadows. All of us were trying to laugh and talk trying to hide our fears while at the same time, straining our eyes into the darkness trying to spot “monsters” before they popped out in front of our faces. I saw a shadowy figure holding out a thumbs up sign just as we neared a giant fort with some ghoulish name on it. I must admit, the whole thing was looking pretty darn impressive compared to what I imagined it would be. BANG! The whole crowd jumped. Nothing. GROWL! All of a sudden, this hideous masked person jumps on board snarling at all of us especially the ladies who shrieked the entire way. They had smaller stalls with murderous looking butchers chopping up fake humans and then running out of their stalls and onto the tractor. Just for the record, Kaci was victimized by every single “monster.” Giant rats popping out, a giant T-Rex read that popped out of this house towards us actually scared me. I mean I saw the head popping out and then all of a sudden it’s heading straight for me but jus then, it stops and goes back. *Phew* So all in all, the tractor took us through a quite a few of those forts where they had different themes for different monsters and it was very professionally done. My only complaint about the ride was that the 2 sides did not witness what was on the other side with the exception of the two leatherface dudes (Texas Chainsaw Massacre) who had loud vibrating fake chainsaws and attempted to chop off people, one sawed off my legs. It was kinda freaky cuz they initially tried to avoid cutting us so we got the impression that mebbe those saws were the real deal. Then they tried cutting the benches and then on the audience. Just as the ride was nearing it’s conclusion, we saw that the folks facing the other way (left) could see a stone well and out of it crawled a jet black scraggly haired skinny pale girl representing the famous Hollywood horror blockbuster, the Ring (originally “Ring-O” from Japan).

Next up, we waited in line outside as a masked monster guarded a door to the “Mine shaft of Misery.” Close by to us, there were three dark witch-like robed figures standing and huddling in a corner whispering by the trees. Freaky. So we get into the mine shaft and gawd it was scary. Lots of monsters scaring and following people around through the almost ink dark corridors. There was so much going on in there but I can’t recollect much other than that it got me pretty good. There was another tunnel thing like the mine shaft and it was equally as scary (I admit).

So then, we had to stand out waiting in line to enter a “haunted house” with a vulturish looking monster. Kaci and I got lost in the house and got in a hilarious moment with a disembodied kid missing his lower half of his body. He was actually lying down flat with his face turned up and then clothes were added to create the effect that he was actually standing up with his arms tied on chains to the ceiling. Very cool effect but chilling. He couldn’t speak and I asked him where the exit was, he kept pointing in many directions and looked like he was about to burst out laughing. In the end he gave up and you could see he wanted to say “you stupid idiots. go to your left!” but we got it. Haha.

That was the end of it. We then went off to the campfire and Pravesh mentioned saying this was certainly the best haunted farm he’d been to for Halloween and also the cheapest. The last one he visited in Seattle sucked he claimed. I couldn’t agree more with him. So we sat around the fire place exchanging ghost stories. Well only I did but it was a nice fire going there and someone threw in more logs. Aaah. Too bad we didn’t have marshmellows with us at that moment. All the good ol’days of campfires. A highly entertaining haunted farm I must say but next year, we need to go to “Trail of Terrors” which is south of the cities by Shakopee. I hear it’s better but the admission tickets are probably like 5-10 bucks more as well. 😦 If you’re looking for a cheap Halloween haunted house visit but one that also offers you loads of scares and fun, go visit Molitor’s Haunted Acres in Sauk Rapids / Sartell.