Ben Fagan on the best summer job he ever had: playing characters like Undead Truck Driver, Snarling Clown and Mayan Sacrifice in a Hawke’s Bay cornfield.
By day it was the Amazing Maze ‘n Maize. A wholesome cornfield maze for the whole family to enjoy. By night, it was the CornEvil Haunted Horror Maze. For five summers, from my late teens to early 20s, I spent my Friday evenings scaring the bejesus out of the good people of Hawke’s Bay.
It started at Boo Camp, the auditions. In the Havelock North scout hall I staggered around like a zombie and got the job. Surveying the levels of commitment, production manager and “mistress of darkness” Ali Beal handpicked hopeful “scare-actors” and sent the rest home.
In the long summer twilight we’d park in the field outside and trudge in. Spend a couple of hours getting costumes and makeup on, and catching up. The backstage resembled a movie set or wearable arts show. Special effects, plenty of fake blood, latex, sculpted wounds, hand-sewn costumes, elaborate set pieces. Artist Ayla Corner used a tiny air brush to delicately paint skeletal faces and open wounds. She now teaches at Massey in Wellington. Her MFA was an examination of “the grotesque”.
As the queue started forming at the doors, there was a whole team briefing. Ali, the security team (known as the “stalkers”), and owners Les and Cal Huddleston would let us know any big groups who had booked, remind us to drink water, stretch, and look after our voices. Then they’d recap the procedures if you needed to escort someone out of the maze (use the codeword: “broken”) or if someone soiled themselves (let the team know you’ve got a “shituation”).
Then, showtime. We’d tramp off into the maze, organs dripping, teeth bared, eyes white or red or black. Unseen by us, the front doors would open and giggly teenagers, church groups, work trips, gang members and their girlfriends would file in. You could tell those who didn’t want to be there, those on a first date, and the goths who came to feel at home. Some tried to come multiple times but made it no further than the carpark.
Magician Gareth Ward aka The Great Wardini worked the crowd as they waited to enter. He’d never reveal his secrets but did one time show me the elaborate dried ice machine rigged up under his clothes that would create a haze from the cuffs of his shirt. The award-winning bookstore he went on to open with author Louise Ward shares his name.
The Hawke’s Bay Regional Prison was about a block away and you could see their towering floodlights from the maze. Every night we’d tell guests that someone had escaped and to keep an eye out. “People were totally on edge before they even went into the maze,” Gareth told me recently. “You had people scaring in the car park, you had a hanging body where people pay, you had spooky music, and then once we opened you started hearing screams coming out of the maze.”
We each had our stations. For my first year they gave me an easy one. Cal had somehow sourced the front of a big rig truck. He had hooked up the high beams and horn to be triggered by a switch on a long wire. The truck sat at a hairpin turn in the maze and you had to walk right up to it to get round the bend.
My job was straightforward. Hide in the corn until a group passed me, wait for them to make it almost to the truck, then step out behind them dressed as the undead truck driver, intestines spilling over my belt. When I triggered the lights and horn they would turn to run from the truck, see me standing there, and their brains would turn off. Some would run forward, some backward, some would drop where they stood or collapse into the corn (which I’d give them hell for: don’t damage my corn).
In later years, I had more interactive roles like Snarling Clown or Mayan Sacrifice. One year guests were led through a shipping container with human-looking body bags hanging from the ceiling. “The Butcher” tickled his machete down the backs of legs and hooked ankles in the darkness.
Scaring people is a lot like making people laugh. Both parties feel good after, and it’s contagious. We all developed strategies for cracking different kinds of victims. If a group were particularly blasé the trick was to get one person nervous and the rest would follow. For a pack of teenage boys showing off, all it would take is one nervous Nelly to go a bit quiet and the cracks would appear. Then one good jump scare and they’d scatter.
In between groups, it was so peaceful in the maze. I’d imagine I was a farmer checking out the crops under the full moon, or a palaeolithic human on ancient steppes. There was something timeless about the high maize and the stars. I could see the southern cross, and the pot. Then flashes of torchlight from the next group would bring me down to earth and I’d make sure I was in position.
Huge guys and their tiny girlfriends. They’d come around the corner girlfriend first. Torch resting on one of her shoulders and a large hand on the other. When I appeared they would shove her forward with one hand and take off back the way they came. When it had been raining, their jandals would remain in the mud while the rest of them departed. A couple of minutes later they would poke their head round the corner and in a scared voice call “bro, bro, I’m just coming back for my jandals… Leave me alone, don’t scare me.”
There were strict rules. No drugs or alcohol, no (deliberate) weeing on the corn, no gang patches. It was a formative experience as a 21-year-old, in the dark, roaring at a Mongrel Mob face tattoo. The power of the fourth wall.
Gerard Barron was the final event before exiting the maze. He had a chainsaw. The chain had been removed but when it roared to life you knew about it. Gerard went on to become a beloved publican, co-founding the Common Room bar which kick-started the revitalisation of East Hastings.
The night ended when Cal or one of the team would walk through the maze and say the code words: “It’s Tui time”. I’d gather my things and join the train of monsters filing out to grab a Tui and debrief.
When Cal and Les reflect on the maze, it’s the mix of people who worked there that sticks with them. “We had tradies, students, accountants, IT workers and the unemployed,” Cal told me. “We wouldn’t have met them otherwise. They were really good at their roles and became good friends.”
At the time of its closure in 2013, after 10 years, the whole corn-based establishment, scary and non-scary, had entertained 170,000 people. They sold off their costumes, mopped up the fake blood and exorcised the paddock. My mum swung by and picked up a couple of wooden CornEvil signs on my behalf. They were too big for my flat so I gave them to Gerard for his bar. They stayed up on the wall until he sold the place last year. I messaged the new owners to see if they kept the signs. No, they told me, they’d been given to a friend.
There used to be CornEvil mazes in Hastings, Whakatāne and Marton, all since closed. The only maze remaining is one occasionally grown at Spookers, south of Auckland, to complement their other haunted attractions. What scares me these days is how fast the years keep passing.
