Haunted hayride organizers speak out
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By Carmen Ensinger
After reading the article a couple weeks ago where Roodhouse Mayor Tommy Martin said that the city council is not trying to shut down the haunted hayride, the organizers of the hayride and haunted house wanted their “day in court,” so to speak.
“They are not telling us you can’t do the haunted hayride, but they are making it to where it is going to be very difficult for us to do it,” Drew Riley said. “They are saying we only have a couple of weeks to build the whole setup and things like that so it is kind of like while they are not saying we can’t do the haunted hayride and haunted house they are trying to make it so difficult we will quit doing it.”
For those who might not have seen the article a couple of weeks ago, a group called Roodhouse Rez Volunteers started a petition on Facebook to take to the mayor and city council. The petition said that the mayor and city council were trying to take away the event.
According to Riley, the first haunted hayride was held way back in 2005 or 2006.
“One year my dad helped them and then the next year I got involved and we started building something up on the top of the hill there and we built a haunted house in the pavilion,” he said. “Then, it all ended when they ended up kicking everyone off the park board and everyone got mad and quit. Then, my brother, my dad and myself started it back up again here recently.”
Riley; his dad, Ralph; and brother, Jim, do the mowing at the Rez and are caretakers of the park.
“We have been out here for the past four years and we just thought we would like to bring it back and so we did two years ago,” Riley said. “The first year, they really didn’t bother us, but I had to really fight them to get any kind of financial support because we literally had to start from scratch. We didn’t even have a single piece of plywood. They did give us some money so we could buy some materials but we paid it all back. Last year we turned in over $10,000 I think.”
But the real issue was over the use of the park pavilion that they had turned into a haunted house. They made the haunted house in the pavilion next to the stage, which is the area that the Roodhouse Police Department uses every year for its fishing derby, which is coming up on June 3.
The pavilion was totally enclosed on the outside with tin and plywood and inside were more than 100 sheets of plywood and hundreds of two-by-fours. It was almost like building a house inside the pavilion with different rooms for the different scary scenes, etcetera.
Instead of dismantling the haunted house after the Halloween season ended, they left it up. But Riley said there was a reason for that.
“We couldn’t take it down during the winter because the city came out and took our hayride wagon and our tractor and we had no way to haul the materials,” he said. “Not only that, but they used the shed we were going to store it in for their Christmas decorations.”
In March, they met with city officials with a proposal.
“We proposed the idea to take our hayride profits and build a brand new pavilion out here,” Riley said. “Me and my dad can build so we were going to offer the labor for free and build a brand new one over there if we could keep that one for the haunted house, but they shot us down. They wouldn’t hear of that idea.”
Also, Riley said with the exception of the fishing derby, that pavilion is hardly ever used.
“Nobody actually uses that pavilion but maybe one time a year out here,” Riley said. “Most people like using the one by the volleyball courts. So, since it isn’t hardly ever used, if we could just leave everything set up it would save us so much time because we are installing more than 100 sheets of plywood and over 400 two-by-fours. Last year it took us two months to get everything set up.”
The entire event is run by volunteers. From the ones who build the haunted house to those who help on the actual nights of the hayride and haunted house – it is all done by volunteers. No one gets paid a dime.
“The only money spent is what goes into materials to build the haunted house,” Riley said. “Sometimes we even put our own personal money in it. The city is saying we are losing money but that is impossible. We can’t be losing money because we know what we are spending and we keep all our receipts and make sure everything is paid for.”
Riley said they will persevere.
“We tried to make a solution with them with the idea to build a new pavilion,” Riley said. “But we are fine if we have to take it down every year – it is no big deal. We kind of like redesigning it anyway to make something different.”
