Layered in coats on a chilly October 22, eight-year-old Avalee Coe and 10-year-old Adrianna Hawes played tic-tac-toe with mini pumpkins inside the arts and crafts pavilion, while not even a half mile away, a maze of hanging bodies, strobe lights, and human butchers awaited guests in a "haunted barn." The girls strategically avoided the YMCA's two haunted trails.

"I couldn't handle the barn. I'm pretty sure I can't handle the trail," said Coe.

Coe may have been right. Past the YMCA's farm and onto a wooded trail, Little Red Riding Hood searched for grandma, who knocked at passersby from an exposed coffin. A broken Humpty Dumpty rocked on a wall, and Little Miss Muffet twirled an umbrella.

"There is a chain saw, I have to warn you of that," said Executive Director Mike Mahoney, walking up a trail lit by glow sticks.

The YMCA's two-day Halloween Party took 85 volunteers to put on, said Mahoney. Many of the costumes on the fairy-tales-gone-wrong characters were handsewn and masks were papier-mâché, he said. While Pinterest inspired many of the party's details, the pranksters hidden in the woods were inspired by something more sinister.

"We make them feel comfortable, and then we take it away," laughed Jenn Dowling, after she had lured a skipping Hansel and Gretel into her candy house. The trio said they also like to invite guests into the house.

"It's a good time, besides my daughter sticking her nails into my arm," said Ryan Rymszewicz, who had walked through the trail with 13-year-old Taylar.

"A bunch of people jump out at you, one after the other, like Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!" said a smiling, 10-year-old Will Fairfax.

For scaredy-cats — including Program Director Samantha Fagundes who helped storyboard and execute the haunted barn, but didn't like walking through it — there were safer activities scattered about the property. The approximately 500 guests who visited during the weekend could enjoy a hayride, get their faces painted, and paint pumpkins.

Inside the upper pavilion, volunteers served Vampire Blood hot chocolate, Devil Juice apple cider, and Rat Brains popcorn, while guests like Lisa Ferreira and Emma Stout, 7, roasted marshmallows for their Mummy Snot Sandwiches s'more kits.

"We just came to hang out," said Ferreira. "She did not enjoy [the barn]. It was too scary."

"I went on the hay ride, and I thought it was creepy," said seven-year-old Armani Grace. "I thought it was, but it wasn't. The haunted trail was scary."

The stations had taken YMCA staff two weeks to put together, but the event has been a fall-must for the past seven years, said Mahoney.

"It's one of those things we do because the community loves to partake. There's nothing really scary outside the trail and the barn," said Mahoney.