To celebrate the Halloweekend, the Daily Iowan Arts & Culture staff members have joined forces to bring readers a smattering of the area’s holiday-theme events. Whether you prefer spending your nights screaming at the top of your lungs in a desolate corn maze miles away from your apartment (is that a maize maze?) or nestled in the corner at a local bar, nursing a glass of Jameson as the local Celtic rock band celebrates the double holiday of Halloween and the Celtic New Year, we should have something for you.
Scream Acres
The entrance — the way out — has been long lost.
Darkness creeps across the corn maze as the full Moon dips behind gray clouds. Feet make frantic lefts and rights, anything to escape the endless rows of silent husks and looming stalks. Breath becomes labored, you can see — and hear — when people exhale. The crisp October air is punctuated by shrieks — some trailing into faint whimpers, others only sharp spikes of sound — while indistinct movement rustles the stalks to the left. The clouds recede, and the sliver of moonlight they reveal illuminates a skeletal figure, his eyes gaunt beneath a lurid mask, blocking the path.
A cry claws its way upwards as feet fly from the haunting, deeper and deeper into Scream Acres.
The haunted cornfield — and its inhabitants of ghouls, ghosts, and goblins — is one of four attractions at Scream Acres Park in nearby Atkins, Iowa. For years, the park has encouraged family fun (petting zoos, straw jumps, hayrides] in the daylight before unveiling its delightfully spooky nighttime attractions. For $20, attendees can choose — and only if they’re feeling brave — to visit two among the four panic-inducing attractions, three of which are haunted.
“We’ve had people pee their pants in these houses,” said Scream Acres co-owner Karen Pepersen. “They are going to be scared in there.”
While the cornfield is, for obvious reasons, a fan favorite, the theme houses offer each their own surprises. Terrified by the outbreak of clown sightings? Make sure to visit Carnival Chaos. Each winding corridors leads the attendee farther into the clutches of the red-nosed — and possibly tricycle-riding — maniacs.
After that terror trip, pick between Cell Block Z and the Slaughterhouse. One contains a decimated prison overrun by ravenous prisoners-turned-zombies. Chains rattle and festering corpses thrash against metal cell bars, arms outstretched. 
The Slaughterhouse offers no reprieve from fear, either, but then again, who is really looking for one?
Scream Acres offers a rare thing: forgone decency. In the space between elation and terror — clutching a friend’s sleeve, eyes clenched — the psyche can indulge in dread. Inescapable fears — bills, unemployment, loneliness — are replaced with the mindless thrill of a teenager in a rubber mask.
CAB Presents: Haunted House
The IMU is normally a gathering place in which students can meet between classes to do homework or grab a bite, but this Halloween, it will serve as an asylum for the grotesque and ghoulish.
On Saturday, the UI Campus Activities Board will turn the IMU Main Lounge at the IMU into a haunted house, which will run from 7 p.m. to 1 a.m.
A team of around 30 people will go into the IMU on Saturday morning and spend the next nine hours transforming the immense room into a maze.
“Once we have that set up, we start putting up the props and putting the actors in makeup,” said Nathan Spitz, the Night Hawks director for Activities Board.
Because the IMU is a fixed space, the basic layout of the maze stays the same from year to year, but the terrors lurking within change.
“[This year] we’re adding fog machines,” Spitz said. “We’ve got three right now and we’re looking to get more. It really adds a sense of the unknown in the maze.”
Wilson’s Orchard
Over the weekend at Wilson’s Orchard, the air was crisp and warm. There were no clouds in the sky, save for a few puffs of cumulus.
These conditions are perhaps the perfect time to celebrate what fall has to offer: the picking of apples, the drinking of cider, the endless fretting over what costume to wear for a friend’s Halloween party.
Nothing resembles the fall season more, though, than pumpkin picking.
This weekend, Wilson’s Orchard, just off I-80, nestled in the rolling hills outside Iowa City, will be open for business to those who want to spend their Halloween picking pumpkins and sipping cider rather than running frantically through a maze, unsure of who — or what — might be chasing you.
True to its name,Wilson’s functions primarily as an apple orchard, boasting upwards of 120 varieties of apples, but, every October, it expands its operations to include a fully functioning pumpkin patch, in which visitors can select their own.
Rocky Horror Picture Show
At midnight Saturday, the Englert, 221 E. Washington, will host a holiday screening of the cult classic film *Rocky Horror Picture Show*.
The movie follows a couple who, after their car breaks down, stumble into a conveniently nearby castle to ask for help. Inside, they discover that an annual party is going on, with all of the staff dressed in intricate costumes. They then meet Frank N. Furter, an apparent mad scientist, who has created a living muscleman in his laboratory. The couple is eventually seduced, separately, by the mad scientist, and then later released by the servants.
When the movie was in
itially released, in 1975, it was panned by critics. However, over the years, the film gained a devoted following and has since ascended to cult status. This phenomenon is most notably seen at the Waverly Theater in New York, in which those watching the movie often act alongside it, participating — though through the screen — wi
th the actors in the film.
The Englert will offer its own iteration of the Waverly model, giving attendees props with their ticket purchases and holding a costume contest with prizes going out to the ghouls in the best getups.
Wylde Nept Halloween/Celtic New Year Party
Halloween can get pretty monotonous. The same orange, the same pumpkins, the same costumes, year after year. So why not try something new? Wylde Nept, a local band known for playing traditional and original Celtic folk-rock, will offer people a different take on the Halloween party, as the musicians also help ring in the Celtic New Year at 9 p.m.Saturday.
The band consists of a variety of instruments, including those more familiar to the average American — guitar, bass, accordion — as well as those that they might not have heard of before, such as the bodhran or the dumbek.
Attendees will have the opportunity to participate in traditional Halloween fun — there will be a costume party — but they will also be able to hear some songs that only get played once a year, on this night.
Dracula
Friday through Oct. 30, the actors at the Iowa City Community Theater, 4261 Oak Crest Hill Road, will sink their teeth into the Victorian canon with their production of *Dracula.*
The cast of 10 is directed by Christina Patramanis with a script, taken from Bram Stoker’s original novel, adapted by Steven Deitz.
“We had a dentist helping us with the effects,” Patramanis said. “He came in and fitted some really realistic looking fangs on the actors. If they went to the grocery store in them, everyone would probably think they just had teeth like that.”
The actor
s portraying vampires also went through a significant amount of body-movement training to capture the ways a vampire would move.
Friday and Saturday performances will be at 7 p.m., with the Oct. 30 showing at 2 p.m. Whenever you choose to arrive, though, Patramanis believes you’ll have a bloody good time.
“[I’m looking forward] to just watching the audience go on this adventure,” she said. “There are horror and fun moments and suspense, and I think audiences will enjoy themselves.”