When I first joined the Wicked Woods, the team running it already had an entire haunted trail of scenes in place. But they were looking to change some things up and were willing to entertain ideas from anyone, even a newbie like me. So, after a few weekends of cleaning and prepping the scenes that were staying, I suggested a new scene.
The trail was nestled in a pocket of woods that was near a highway on-ramp. I thought we could play up the occasional highway noise heard in the back part of the trail with a runaway truck scare. In a lot of haunts, you might run into the front half of a car whose lights suddenly switch on and the horn blares. It makes for a great startle. What I was proposing is that we have a truck physically come barreling out of the darkness, lights blazing and horn screaming, only to stop just out of reach.
A little surprisingly, they went for it and we got to work.
The idea was to roll a fake truck front (on a cart) down a track through the woods. Using roller coasters as a model, the 20-25 foot long track included a surface for the wheels to roll on, guides to keep the cart from drifting side-to-side, and an up-stop rail so the cart couldn’t jump the track. And we built it all out of wood and parts from a big box home improvement store. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked.
My plan for the truck front was to make it look like the boxy, flat-front trucks. I figured that would be easier to build because, again, all wood construction. We’d paint the plywood front and mount real headlights in it. One of the other guys actually had or found a real truck front, but mounting it would have been too complex given the work done up to that point. When we were done, the truck front was twelve feet tall and the guests were a bit downhill from it, making it seem even taller.
In the dark with the lights in their eyes, most people weren’t going to see the truck front anyway, so the rough painting we did out in the woods was sufficient for the job. I wanted to include something that would make people chuckle after the initial startle, so we painted the ghost from the movie “Scream,” wearing a trucker hat, as the driver. I also wanted to put some sort of pun on the license plate and one of my co-workers (at my day job) came up with a great suggestion. Overall, it looked something like this (but not quite as silly):
Truly terrifying, I know.
To make it move, we rigged an elaborate cable system that went from the front of the cart, down the length of the track, and then up to some weights suspended in nearby trees. We had a motorized winch to pull the cart back into the ready position (kind of like a slingshot). When the guests got to the right spot, we released the truck, the weights fell from the trees (adding a nice “crashing” sound) pulling the cable, and the cart went rolling down the track, lights and horn blaring. The cart was attached to a safety wire and springs so it couldn’t get too close to the people on the trail.
I’d like to say it was really effective, but I don’t think most people were scared. It probably would have been better to have the truck be a distraction so someone on the opposite side of the trail could jump out screaming “LOOK OUT!!!”. But, it was ambitious and fun to make and a memorable start to my new hobby.
The following year, I was helping run the Wicked Woods and, if memory serves, I suggested retiring the scene. When we dismantled it, I made sure to hold onto a souvenir which hangs proudly in my garage/workshop:
