Field of Screams at Staheli Family Farm

The Farm After Dark

Field of Screams is the night-time half of the fall season at Staheli Family Farm in Washington, and the region's best-known haunted attraction. Where the daytime festival is deliberately built for young children, this one is deliberately not: dark trails, costumed actors, and sustained scares rather than decorated corners.

The setting is the reason it works. Most haunted attractions are built inside a leased warehouse or a parking lot; this one runs across real farm ground, through standing corn and around actual outbuildings, in a part of Washington Fields with very little ambient light. Corn at night does a great deal of the work on its own — sightlines are short, sound carries oddly, and you cannot see what is one row over.

Not the Same Event as the Daytime Festival

This is the single thing most worth getting right. Beyond the address and the calendar, the two have nothing in common. Admission is separate, the audiences are opposite, and buying the wrong one is a common and expensive mistake — particularly for parents who assume a family farm's Halloween offering must be family-friendly throughout.

Treat them as two different venues that happen to occupy the same field at different hours. The farm publishes an age guideline each season; the attraction is aimed at teenagers and adults, and young children should not be brought through it.

Choosing a Night

It runs select nights from mid-September through Halloween rather than every night of the run, so the calendar is worth checking before committing to a date. The nights closest to Halloween are the busiest of the season by a wide margin, and the wait to get in stretches accordingly.

The practical advice is the same every year: go earlier in the run, and go on a weeknight if you can. Late October weekends are when people spend more time waiting than walking.

Getting There

The farm sits on Washington Fields Road, roughly fifteen minutes east of downtown St. George. The drive out is dark and rural at the end, which is part of the experience but also means you should not expect to navigate the last stretch by landmarks. Parking is on the farm.

Dress for a cold desert night rather than the warm afternoon you left — once the sun is down in late October the temperature drops fast, and you will be outdoors and moving slowly for most of the visit. Closed shoes, on uneven ground, in the dark.

Who It Suits

Teenagers, adults, and anyone who wants a haunted attraction with more space and less corridor than the indoor kind. It is emphatically not for young children — families wanting a Halloween outing that will not frighten anyone should look at the Scarecrow Walk at Red Hills Desert Garden or the Thunder Junction Spook-track-ular, both of which are built for exactly that.