Hallowscream York Maze invited us down to check out their event for my first-ever visit and in this article we’ll be reviewing the mazes from best to worst.
This expanded event stretches over a large area and has been a popular attraction for many scare enthusiasts over the years with some top mazes that you’re weaving in and around for long periods of time. Hallowscream has to contain some of the longest scare mazes I’ve ever done with one clocking in at 12 minutes long.
Let’s start with our favourite maze and work our way down.
The Singularity
It was believed that inventor Joseph Clement perished in the Circus fire on the farm, but his body was never found, and rumours persisted that he had created a time machine. It seems those rumours were true.
Clement travelled forward in time to 2073 where he encountered a broken world where machines had taken over and war raged between robots and humans. Clement believed that a human/robot hybrid could bring peace to the world and he returned to our time, the point in history he saw where machines had first achieved consciousness. His vision is to create a new species that combines the best of man and machine, one true perfect being he calls ‘The Singularity’.
Enter his laboratory and see for yourself his plans to make this vision a reality, but beware the process is not yet perfected and more human test subjects are needed for his warped experiments.
The Singularity isn’t done on your own anymore, we were able to go through as a group but I did miss being alone for this one. I can imagine it was even better than doing it with a group as there were scares aplenty.
Some of the set pieces within The Singularity were superb and this certainly felt like a maze where they included their strongest actors as everyone sold the story perfectly.
The white room was a heart-in-mouth moment and the use of electronics, physical set pieces and beautiful masks and makeup made this an immersive and truly terrifying walkthrough.
I wish I had done this one alone, it really was the gem in the Hallowscream crown for us at this year’s event.
Barnaggedon 3D
The workshops at Dunnington lodge became a hotbed of industrial activity during the time that the circus was on the farm. Men wearing masks braved the heat and smoke to try and make Charlie’s mechanical visions come to life.
Most of them perished when Old Grey, the bull elephant crashed into the buildings as the great fire raged. Steam pipes burst, gas fires erupted, bodies were crushed and trapped.
As the fire raged the roof collapsed, and the cellars under the barns gave way, sucking everything into a subterranean world of chaos.
Now, enter the kaleidoscopic world of Barneggedon 3D. Put on your 3D Glasses to reveal a perplexing, space shifting world, where your eyes can’t be trusted to seperate what’s real from illusion.
I don’t think Barnaggedon would be second on my list if I was a returning visitor but considering it was my first ever 3D glasses scare maze it truly blew me away.
From a toilet spilling its guts all over my brand new £250 shoes to incredible UV graffiti littering the maze it was incredibly immersive, and disorientating and felt as though I’d taken an illegal substance as I wandered aimlessly through this UV wonderland.
The actors were on point and the glasses just added to the illusion, it did give me a bit of a headache (even more so than normal) when I left the maze but I loved just how unique and mad it all was. I could have stayed in there for much longer!
Corny’s Cornevil
Corny the famous circus clown was murdered on this site by Leonard Dunnington in 1873. His designs for a house of confusion were discovered with his remains when they were unearthed on the farm. We rebuilt Corny’s fun house and soon the spirits of the long dead circus clowns returned each Halloween in ‘Reincornation’.
Now 10 years later, we have discovered Corny’s plans for an even more twisted, more sinister house of fun. A world where rooms shrink, spin around, and defy gravity, where passageways lead to apparent dead ends and you come face to face with your own image contorted in fear in the maze of mirrors. Enter Corny’s Cornevil where demonic clowns and mind-bending illusions will have you questioning your sanity and begging for the exit!
Corny’s Cornevil is more of an experience than a scare maze as you navigate a funhouse and whilst the scares are few and far between this maze is just great fun!
From the mirror maze to the shrinking corridor to the anti-gravity room it’s just a great deal of fun! Not strong in terms of a scare maze but certainly a right laugh to navigate with some clowns popping up here there and everywhere.
The Flesh Pot
It was known that the farmer who lived at this farm in Victorian times, Leonard Dunnington, had his own slaughterhouse, where he killed and butchered his own meat for sale on the markets in York. Rumours were abound that he always had more meat to sell than his small farm could provide. The locals talked of how he must have been rustling cattle and pigs from neighboring farms at night. The truth was worse than this, far worse.
It is alleged that he would visit the seediest parts of York in the early hours of the morning, walking the smog filled streets with his horse and cart, watching for drunks and women who he could prey upon. He would sit them on the back of his cart and offer them a drink from his gin bottle, heavily spiked with laudanum. In a matter of moments they would pass out and fall backwards onto the cart. A tarpaulin would be pulled over them, and the next time they came round, they would be hanging upside down looking at the slaughterhouse floor. Their screams would be masked by the pigs squealing in the pens next door as they too awaited the knife.
Leonard took pleasure in removing their skins whilst they were still alive, and then butchered them as he did his pigs. Once they had bled out he jointed them up. The poor quality cuts along with the innards, feet, hands and heads were boiled up in a giant stewing pot make his the meat for his famous pies. The better cuts were sold as pork joints on his stall alongside his other meats.
People flocked to his stall, and talked of how eating his meat made them happy, blissfully unaware that the meat they were eating was human flesh laced with opiates.
Leonard Dunnington was tried and hung following the famous circus tragedy of 1873. It was claimed that he confessed his heinous actions to the priest before his hanging, but nothing could ever be proved, and the authorities kept this from the public for fear of causing an outrage in the city. The priest’s diary is held in the Borthwick institute in York, and has only recently come to light, casting further shadows over the farm’s gruesome past.
For me The Flesh Pot isn’t a bad maze, far from, it looks quite nice it’s just that during our run-through the actors must have been on their dinner break as we didn’t encounter a great deal of them throughout what is a very long maze.
This was a little disappointing as there were many times when we were just walking around with no jumps, no noises, and no atmosphere and it was a real shame.
Runthroughs are always different every single time and sadly for us our run-through just didn’t hit home in the scare department. Some of the scenes were wonderful though that’s for sure.
2073
2073 is a maze with so much potential. With set pieces including an army truck, crashed cars, an ambulance, a combine harvester and even a leaking fuel truck you’d think this would be incredible.
You’d be wrong.
There were no actor interactions with any of the giant set pieces, there were lulls where we were just walking around in pure darkness with nothing happening and then a very confusing ending had us inside a Tardis gearing up for a big finale that never happened.
It does sound as though this maze used to be one of the strongest at Hallowscream going by previous reviews but for us and our run-through, it was the weakest by some distance.
The giant set pieces and beautiful theming in other rooms deserve better incorporation of actors interacting within that space. This one was an experience to walk around but certainly not one that we’d rush to do again unless they crammed it with actors.
Scary fun nonetheless at Hallowscream this year, visit their official website to grab your tickets today!
