Credit: STEN SPINELLA — THE BERKSHIRE EAGLE
https://www.berkshireeagle.com...
CLARKSBURG — It takes a certain amount of sorcery to execute a haunted hayride.
For Clarksburg School, theirs involved devoted teachers, student and parent volunteers, help from local businesses, the state park, the fire department, the police and the community. They also had three electrician dads, four junior high school teachers, a cadre of parents and current and former students.
In other words, it takes a village.
The Clarksburg Haunted Hayride has been going for over 20 years, according to Mark Karhan, or Mr. K, a junior high history teacher at the Clarksburg School. It returned to Clarksburg State Park Saturday night for the benefit of local families, with all proceeds — from $5 entrance fees for children and $10 for adults — going to Clarksburg School eighth graders for an upcoming class trip.
Karhan led The Eagle through a maze of creative and student-created scare sites, where scenes that could’ve come straight from “Friday the 13th” are put on by sixth, seventh and eighth graders, some dressing up as murderous patients and doctors, others looking ready for a spooky "Alice in Wonderland"-themed tea party. Others collected and strung up plastic body parts as if preparing for a feast.
The Clarksburg School teaches students from kindergarten through eighth grade from Florida, Clarksburg, Monroe, Rowe and Savoy. As usual, eighth graders were in attendance and a stacked concession stand from a variety of donors stood at the entrance.
Those who came to the now-spooky state park on Saturday rode three hay-covered trailers through the newly terrifying camping area past a street lined with jack-o'-lanterns and tiki torches, all the while the dark, wild environs of the forest add to the effect, making for an almost unbearably frightening experience.
A group of volunteers from the Clarksburg School and the community as well as local businesses organized and staffed the event, which was more a labor of fear than love.
But how exactly are the scare sites designed?
“The only thing that’s off-limits is anything to do with guns. Up to a limit, you can do whatever you want,” Karhan said. “Last year one of the parents, it was after bow season, and he had a real deer heart. That’s a good prop.”
“It gets to a point where for some of these parents, it’s a pride thing,” Karhan added. “You don’t want to be outdone by everybody else. And you want to have a scary site.”
Students and other volunteers showed up as early as 8 a.m. Saturday to begin setting up their sites. The planning for the hayride begins right as the school year does, with the junior high teachers holding a meeting and reaching out to parents and other potential partners. The electrician dads helped set up electricity in the middle of the forest to support the sites.
Even two hours before showtime at 6:30 p.m., large groups of students and their parents hung out at their camp/scare sites in anticipation. Karhan said that’s what makes the terror worth it.
“It’s the essence of what makes Clarksburg,” Karhan said. “The multigenerational aspect of it, how Clarksburg, North Adams and Adams parents have done this before with their younger kids. Then these kids putting up the scare sites, they were on the hayride when they were little.”
