For Scare Actors in the Forest, Fear Sets the Stage on Halloween

The morning after a long night in the woods, Arrow Wehmeier sometimes carried a trace of the forest into the daylight. At her barista shift, co-workers would call out faint streaks of green that would linger under her chin or inside her ear — the kind of stain that might come from moss or damp pine needles rubbing against her skin. But it wasn’t the forest clinging to her, it was something stranger and more ordinary all at once: the leftover paint of a goblin.

Such is the life of a scare actor on the Key Peninsula.

Wehmeier has spent the last four Octobers transforming herself into just that: a chaotic green creature of her own making stalking My Haunted Forest, a seasonal haunted trail tucked into the woods of a working horse farm in Vaughn.

Her goblin is part menace, part mischief — the result of not just an actor, but an artist weaving improv, makeup, and energy into a performance. The goal is to get a reaction, even if that means sometimes trading snarls for snickers.

“If I can’t make you scream, I want to make you laugh,” said Wehmeier, an artist and muralist who graduated two years ago from Henderson Bay High School. “Either way, I want you to remember the experience.”

The Forest Becomes Their Stage

On paper, it is a spook attraction, the kind of place that charges $30 for a ticket and promises an evening of fright. In practice, it becomes something stranger: the dark forest and the light-hearted actors immersing in each other until the setting itself becomes a stage. It tests how far they can stretch their characters, and how much of themselves they’re willing to share.

Wehmeier acknowledged the high cost of a ticket and said she and her fellow scare actors hold themselves accountable to deliver value for that price. For them, it’s more than just a paid gig. The makeup, the outlandish costumes, the voices all act as creative tools.

Every performer has a favorite reaction. For Wehmeier, it’s a chain reaction when a group of people sees her lunge from the dark, and they suddenly bolt in unison.

“Getting every single one of them to run,” she said, “That’s the best.”

Building Fear, One Layer at a Time

Preparation begins long before the first guests enter. Wehmeier arrives at “the haunt,” as she calls it, around 3 p.m. on performance days to help set up tents, snacks, and makeup stations.

Then the transformation begins. The act of painting herself green isn’t just cosmetic; it’s part of her commitment to her performance.

Unlike the theater, there are no lines to memorize and very little direction after characters prove themselves. “You’re given a theme, a set, and a costume, and then it’s up to you to make it come alive,” Wehmeier said.

Training encourages actors to be “weird,” to tap into the quirks most people hide. She calls it an outlet. “You’re hired because you’re weird,” she said. Her affinity for fantasy and Dungeons & Dragons may not fit into her everyday life, but in the haunt, she channels her eccentricities into something eerie and unforgettable.

As a lead actor and zone director, she multitasks: frightening guests, mentoring rookies, and managing emergencies, mostly drunk people who get “handsy and rowdy.” Eight to 12 actors might fall under her watch on any given night, and that’s just one of many zones along the trail. Her walkie-talkie crackles with instructions as she slips in and out of character. One moment, she’s a goblin scaring teenagers; the next, she’s a supervisor caring for her employees.

“Guests deserve a great experience, so we make sure our actors give 100%.”

The Hog and Hammer

A few zones from Wehmeier is 19-year-old Kaden Higbee, a 2024 graduate of Peninsula High School. For Higbee, fear takes a different shape. At 6-foot-3-inches and more than 300 pounds, clad in black and hidden behind a bloody pig mask, he doesn’t need to move fast. He looms, dragging a sledgehammer, letting silence and size do the work.

“It’s intimidating enough when a guy who looks like me comes at you,” he said.

He’s learned over the years when to hold back, when to let a moment breathe.

But when the timing is appropriate, or if he isn’t getting the reaction he wants, he’ll give out a guttural squeal, a sound that tears at his voice by night’s end.

“I can muscle through it,” Higbee said. “But sometimes I have to limit myself.”

He first walked the haunted trails as a sixth-grader and started performing there as a high school freshman. Now, five seasons in, the forest has become his stage. Higbee knows the timing, the angles, and when to step forward. And if he can’t scare guests right then and there, he knows a secret pathway to scare them down the trail.

“I get them one way or another.” And as for kids, Higbee will take it easy on them during the early hours of the night set aside for families “who don’t want to be brutally terrified.” But if he sees them later in the evening, “That’s your fault for bringing them.”

The Unmasking

When the trail finally empties and the last scream dies away, the transformation reverses. Wehmeier scrubs at stubborn green paint in the shower while reflecting on the night — what landed, what could improve — sometimes leaving remnants for the next day. For Higbee, it’s as easy as taking off his mask, but a relief just to set down the hammer and rest his voice.

To outsiders, spooky attractions are a diversion, a seasonal thrill. But for scare actors, it’s performance art. Wehmeier compares it to painting a canvas: both create stories, demand presence, and require putting a piece of yourself into the work.

Higbee, a horror fan to his bones, describes it more simply. “I love Halloween with a passion. It’s one time of the year I can terrify people with no consequences.” He takes Halloween night off, surprisingly one of the slower nights of the season on the haunted trail, so he and his mom can dedicate the evening to making the holiday special for the kids in his KP neighborhood.

The season ends in November with a team barbecue, a bittersweet ritual where actors trade stories and say their temporary goodbyes. It’s when horses reclaim the forest, and the sounds of goblin growls and the pig squeals vanish until the next October.