Izabel Petroff took a deep breath and turned her face to the darkening sky. Then she shattered, exhaling a piercing wail.
The shriek earned a round of applause from her colleagues backstage at Hunt Club Farm in Virginia Beach. As scare actors, they can appreciate the art of a well-executed scream.
Less than 30 minutes before showtime, skillfully applied makeup, masks, prosthetic rotting teeth and contact lenses made their faces unrecognizable. Just as important were the costumes. One of the actors splattered fake blood on a shirt that looked a little too pristine.
Out front, a group of students from Salem High School were buzzing with excitement waiting for the haunted hayride to open.
“Last time I was here I lost my voice because I was screaming so much,” student Aiden Root said.
October ushers in a new flavor of tourism in Hampton Roads. Farms carve mazes into corn fields, open pumpkin patches and load hay bales onto wagons. The festivities leading up to Halloween punctuate a season beloved by locals and visitors alike. They’re good for the farms, too. The season brings in a surprisingly large portion of their income.
Slower nights at the Hunt Club Farm’s Haunted event bring in roughly 2,000 people, according to Sevannah Harvey, the farm’s general manager. Busier nights can attract twice that, which helps make it the farm’s highest grossing event every year.
And the phenomenon isn’t exclusive to Hunt Club.
Strawberry season in the spring used to be Cullipher Farm’s busiest time, Mike Cullipher said. Now, it’s the six weeks of pumpkin season, which runs from late September into early November. The 18 weekend days in that timespan bring in a third of the farm’s annual income, he said.
Agritourism is a growing industry in Virginia, encompassing everything from wineries and wedding venues to field trips and corn mazes. Most of the state’s agritourism is concentrated in other, more rural parts of the state, but Coastal Virginia isn’t far behind. It’s a nearly $100 million dollar industry in Hampton Roads and growing, according to a 2020 report by the Virginia Cooperative Extension.
Andrea Slye with the cooperative extension in Suffolk isn’t surprised fall is a busy time for local farms.
“You have those specialty or niche crops, like pumpkins, and though you can get them at a lot of your big box stores and grocery stores, a lot of people like the pick-your-own aspect,” Slye said. “And to be honest, in the southeastern part of Virginia, fall is an awfully nice season.”
The post-harvest boost helps farms get through winter. But the fall season happens to coincide with the region’s hurricane season, making this windfall largely weather-dependent.
“A season with every Saturday was nice and sunny and 65 degrees is going to be a lot better season than where a couple Saturdays had rain,” said Joel Bergey of Bergey’s Barnyard in Chesapeake.
Behind the scenes
Crystal Ventling is a bird walk attendant at Hunt Club Farm by day. She oversees the farm’s 600 parakeets, which mostly involves keeping them off the ground so kids don’t step on them. At night, she’s a scare actor for the farm’s Village of the Dead attraction.
“I’m a jealous, wannabe-lover who goes around town to all weddings,” she said of her character, who carries a bouquet of black roses. “I try my luck at the bouquet toss. I never miss a toss, but the bride always ends up missing.”
Her colleague, Ricky Dodge, looks after the farm’s tree walk while the sun is up and is known for entertaining young children with bubble guns. On October evenings, he becomes Skinner — a menacing clown with a pale and blood-streaked face who carries a bat and air horn. He roams the grounds, lurking in the shadows to catch people unaware as they walk between attractions or stand in line for cotton candy.
“I’ll scare you on the way to the bathroom,” he said.
“He’s one you gotta look out for,” said Lauren Freeman, Hunt Club Farm’s community outreach manager.
This is Ventling’s second year as a scare actor for the event, and Dodge’s fifth. Petroff, the one who let out the piercing shriek backstage, has helped bring the event to life for 12 years, starting when she was nine years old.
Nothing is more exhilarating than getting a scare, she said. Petroff doesn’t keep count of how many she gets in an evening, but the memorable ones stand out.
“People have peed their pants, people have dropped to the floor,” she said.
“People have dropped their phone and stepped on it,” Ventling added.
Hunt Club Farm’s Haunted event started in 1988 as a hayride for just the farm’s owners Randi and John Vogel and their friends. The event gradually evolved to include four haunted attractions, including a hayride, corn maze, village and cemetery. Each of these attractions get a fresh storyline every year, Freeman said.
The months leading up to October are a whirlwind that culminates in a big pay off, she said.
“(Haunted) keeps us going throughout the year, keeps us open during hard times,” she said.
Preparation for October festivities on the region’s farms is a year-round affair. They have to plant fall crops and plan corn mazes in the spring, for instance.
Mike Cullipher, a sixth-generation farmer who runs his Virginia Beach farm with his wife and son, said they alternate between challenging and easier maze designs each year.
“This year, (the corn maze is) a little bit over eight acres, and I think it's 48 minutes that it's supposed to take you,” he said. “If you don’t cheat.”
Bergey’s Barnyard’s corn maze started about 15 years ago. The design is always inspired by something happening within the family, Bergey said.
“The younger generation is starting to take on more and more responsibility as far as how much we take care of on the farm,” he said. “This year's (design) is an older tree in fall, shedding its leaves, and a younger tree growing, that passing (of) the torch.”
He compared the boost farms get in the fall to a squirrel hiding acorns before winter.
“It really is like making hay when the sun shines,” Bergey said.
Like Cullipher Farms, 30% of the Bergey’s Barnyard’s annual income is earned in the fall. This isn’t necessarily intentional.
“It’s just the way it is,” Bergey said, attributing the boost to local fall traditions and people wanting to be outside.
Although the farms in the area are all technically competitors, Bergey doesn’t see them as such. They all offer something different, he said.
Hunt Club Farm has its haunted attractions. Cullipher Farm has hayrides, seasonal treats and fields where people can pick their own pumpkins, apples, grapes and peanuts. Bergey’s Barnyard has baby animals, including goats and rabbits, as well as a corn gun, which uses air compression to shoot corn out of a cannon at high speed.
“We all get busy,” Bergey said.
There’s enough of the proverbial pumpkin pie to go around. The main challenge is the weather, he said.
Fall skies
The best part about fall can’t be sold or replicated, Cullipher said.
“It’s the smell in the air,” he said. “You get that crisp feeling, the air seems clearer, and especially late in the afternoons, it gets a certain smell to it.”
Farms’ access to changing leaves and crisp fall air is a major draw and vulnerability. One rainy weekend can set a farm back.
“If you’re a hotel or any kind of retail shop, and you know this is gonna be a bad weekend, that hotel room doesn’t go bad,” Cullipher said. “It doesn’t spoil. It’s not going to rot like a pumpkin or apple would.”
A few years ago, a storm rolled through and flattened the corn maze at the farm, he said.
“You can't charge anybody to walk through a maze that is flat,” Cullipher said.
So far, fall of 2025 is shaping up to be OK, Bergey said.
“Last year we didn't have a drop of rain in October, not one. It was crazy,” he said, “If last year was a 10 (out of 10), this year's been a seven.”
Hunt Club Farm’s opening weekend for Haunted got rained out, but the following weekend was clear.
A blanket of fog settled over the fields shortly after dusk, adding to the eeriness of the evening.
“There is something that you cannot reproduce about natural pitch black, knowing the sky is above you,” Freeman said. “It’s surreal.”
Screams of terror echoed through the farm. The sound brought a smile to Freeman’s face.
“That means everyone's done their job, and it's a good night,” she said.