Fright Farm’s 36th Season Opens the Mummy’s Tomb
SMITHFIELD, PA — Fright Farm has become a Fall tradition for thousands of spooky enthusiasts across the states of Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Maryland. Each year, Fright Farm’s management team comes together to revisit and re-theme the wildly immersive ~40-minute haunt experience in an effort to make the event more accessible to the repeat audiences, as well as to give show operations manager PJ Marinelli and his partner Amber Marinelli an opportunity to flex their creative muscles. After a landmark 35th year of operation in 2024, Fright Farm returned bigger, badder and better than ever with theme that PJ and his crew had wanted to build into the haunt for years; under the show title “Entombed”, the staff erected a life-size pyramid and flooded the attraction with sand, snakes and undead Egyptian royalty.
Despite its nearly four decades of constant, well-reviewed operation, there’s a good chance that you’ve never heard of Fright Farm. Smithfield, PA is a small township roughly an hour South of Pittsburgh, PA and 25 minutes Northeast of Morgantown, WV - and I use the word ‘township’ in a strictly legal sense, as there are precious few citizens and even fewer businesses within its borders. Indeed, most of Smithfield is farmland, a not-insignificant percentage of which happens to be part of Rich Farms’ expansive property. And while Rich Farms does all the usual “farmy” things (Wedding Venue, Pumpkin Picking, Horticulture, etc.) year round, from late September to early November, what the farm does best is scare the living daylights out of guests.
Above: Fright Farm’s exterior facade set against a dark and stormy night as the haunted attraction welcomes guests to the 36th consecutive season of scares.
The haunt is designed to be a linear experience with each “attraction” being experienced in turn - one ticket grants access to the “Hayride of No Return”, “The Grounds”, “Frightmare Mansion” and “Slaughter Hollow”, each with their own smaller vignettes therein. The Hayride alone can take ten to twelve minutes from end to end, and only after you’ve been dispatched at the ol’ farmhouse do you even begin the formal walkthrough leg of your haunted adventure. With so much ground to cover, it takes a literal village to transform Fright Farm’s expansive property each year - but the workload has never dismayed the incredibly talented, proficient and versatile creative team behind each of those respective transformations, and it has been an honor and a privilege to be able to document this haunt’s growth from year to year over the past three seasons.
So, what’s new and different at Fright Farm this year? Well, just about everything! The “Hayride of No Return”, which typically features several scenes and vignettes as wagons of guests are towed from the Fest-Evil Midway down to the mansion, saw one of its largest upgrades to date with several brand-new scenes erected for the first time. Of these, the standout was definitely the new ‘Rich Bros Circus Show’ scene, featuring a little slight of hand, a little acrobatic showmanship and a LOT of incredibly complex choreography - as well as one of the haunt’s most ambitious audio/visual configurations in its 36-year history. But just because one scene was particularly memorable doesn’t mean that other new additions to the hayride - I’m looking at you, ‘Five Nights at Freddy’s parody’ - don’t deserve acclaim. We’ve only been visiting Fright Farm for a short time, but this season’s hayride experience was by far and away the best of the iterations we’ve seen, and really serves as a great introduction to the scale of immersion you can expect from the rest of the haunt.
“The Grounds” is one of the longer stretches of the haunt experience, encompassing the subchapters of “Hallow Grounds”, “Cursed” and “Shallow Wharf”. The lattermost of these was new in 2024, and blew our minds even then - but has been dramatically improved in the year since, bringing hostile sea monsters and merfolk to the world of the surface dweller (i.e., you) in a wildly convincing fashion. “Cursed”, which debuted a new look during our first visit in 2023, is home to one of our favorite sets - the town of Richfield and the intersection of Dieagony Alley, which - while not drastically different from our 2023 and 2024 experiences in terms of set design - is being used in new and delightfully ‘witchy’ ways this year, which set you up for some great scares inside the witch’s cabin. Most notably, the infamous strobe maze has been replaced with an intricately-designed church that fits the overall theme of this leg much better than the previous iteration. And though “Hallow Grounds”, the introduction to all of these other legs, is likely the least changed from prior seasons…the simple fact of the matter is, it’s hard to improve on perfection.
Above: Fright Farm’s theme for the 2025 operating season is ‘Entombed’ - featuring a trip to the pyramids of Egypt and a few encounters with the mummified undead.
“Frightmare Mansion”, which encompasses “The Farmhouse”, “Hotel Hawthorne” and - this year - “The Tomb” has long been Fright Farm’s darling. This, above all others, is the headlining attraction that builds and builds until you stagger breathlessly through a glorious finale and stumble out into the adjacent cornfield still saying “wow”. “The Farmhouse” is a timeless classic which rarely needs much alteration, though minor touches have been added to keep the experience fresh and unpredictable for returning guests - a new scare hole here, a creaky step there, and the odd scare actor placed in an unexpected location. This year’s Farmhouse experience leaned into the undying (ha) popularity of zombies and had several scenes with pairs of actors engaging one another, which is always fun to see. “Hotel Hawthorne”, which was new to the farm last year, still stands proud as a worthy addition…albeit with a bit more of a ‘Cairo’ theme than years prior, and the added bonus of a new ‘Adventurer’s Club’ room. Why? Well, naturally, because our adjacent finale takes place in Egypt! “The Tomb” is something that we know PJ and Amber have been dreaming of doing for years, and we were so thrilled to see their vision finally come to life. The full-scale pyramid, on its own, would have been enough to wow us…but the life-size ruins, the tomb itself, and the wildly detailed mummy costumes (shout out to Liz, especially) made this experience particularly memorable.
Now, it bears mentioning that what follows “Frightmare Mansion” is an optional experience that some may find too intense to face - however, as it’s included in your admission either way, it only makes sense to test your limits! “Slaughter Hollow” is the haunt’s more aggressive experience and the final chapter of the walkthrough, if you choose not to bypass the attraction. We’ve seen our fair share of intense attractions, however, and we were more than happy to brave the hillbillies of the hollow. Although this leg is the shortest of all with a roughly ~5 minute walkthrough, Fright Farm always floods this attraction with actors and makes it feel like a fog-filled nightmare that will never end - which, for some, makes for an even better finale than their highly immersive stroll through the Tomb. Trigger warnings for those with weaker stomachs include murder, gore, vomit and chainsaws.
Full disclosure, we didn’t have much time to experience the Fest-Evil Midway this year - which is a shame, because the staff work really hard to make it fun, entertaining and properly frightening. There are carnival games, challenges, escape rooms and coffin rides in addition to live music and roaming scare actors, all of which will keep you busy for a solid hour or two while you wait for your turn to hop on a wagon or debrief after surviving the scares. What we did have time to do (albeit after the cameras stopped rolling) was to grab a massive calzone from the bake shop, and please understand that I am not exaggerating when I say ‘massive’. This little nugget wound up being both dinner and breakfast for two people, and we can attest to its quality. Truth be told, between the calzone and the pizza slices we’ve enjoyed in years prior, I don’t think you’ll ever find a haunt with better food than Fright Farm’s - and you’ll certainly never find a haunt that serves bigger portions!
At between $35-40 per ticket, we often hear it said that Fright Farm’s pricing model is “too expensive” for a haunted attraction…and we could not possibly disagree more. If anything, Fright Farm is one of those rare industry standouts that is giving far more than it’s getting. Every haunt works hard to create immersive, terrifying and story-driven experiences for guests during the spookiest time of the year, but few successfully meet the bar that Fright Farm continually sets every year. I could spend another three paragraphs gushing about the uplighting and set design alone, but with the added layers of sound, pyrotechnics, fog, projections, scale and OF COURSE the incredibly talented actors, Fright Farm is - quite simply - the complete package. Though the show is nearly 4 hours’ drive for us from the Baltimore region, we wouldn’t miss it for the world; and we can only hope that our experience vlog from this year’s event gives you enough incentive to make the trek out to Smithfield yourself and get some good ol’ fashioned farm frights of your own. Thanks to PJ, Amber, Hannah, De Niro and everyone else at Fright Farm for accommodating our visit and allowing us to film.
Fright Farm (2043 Springhill Furnace Road, Smithfield, PA 15478) opens seasonally in September and October. Tickets are dynamically priced and may be more affordable on weeknights and Sundays. VIP tents and group experience pricing is also available. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit https://frightfarm.com/.
