Lake Hickory Haunts kicks off spooky season on Sept. 12

Autumn is almost upon us, and Lake Hickory Haunts is inviting fear-seekers to embrace the spooky season.

Starting on Saturday, Sept. 12, Lake Hickory Haunts opens its 13 attractions for the season, inviting families across the area to come have their socks scared off as part of the theme park’s 15th year.

Ryan Settlemyre, one of Lake Hickory Haunts’ founders and its current sole owner, said there have been renovations and “overhauls” across the theme park this year, including updates to Descent, a cave tunnel attraction; Shipwrecked, a pirate-themed attraction; and Aquaphobia, a water monster-based attraction.

“Descent is massive, I won’t even go into all the things that it has,” he said, explaining that Descent and Shipwrecked are probably the attractions he’s most excited for people to see this season. Descent encompasses a 12-foot underground tunnel, a 50-foot over-water steel bridge, a new mine shaft, and “The Relic” — equipped with rock formations and large waterfalls.

“It’s really immersive, very unique. There’s nothing else like this in a haunt anywhere,” he said.

Over at Shipwrecked, the team built a 60-foot floating pirate ship for customers to warily explore as well.

Lake Hickory Haunts employs 150-200 staff each year, with 100 acting and 50-100 in customer service, parking, and safety. About a dozen full-time employees work year-round on the theme park.

“One thing that keeps me going is providing an opportunity for employees to do a job that’s enjoyable and fulfilling,” the owner said. “They get to really exercise their passions and be a part of something that’s fun and exciting — creating immersive environments (and) scaring people.”

“(Seasonal team members) love doing it and it really gives them something to look forward to, very much like high school football. How it is for high school guys that play football, that’s how it is for our characters. They just love it. They live for it.”

Settlemyre said the attractions cover all ages, and the employees are trained to be a little less ruthless when it comes to children.

“In general, honestly, we try to be the more family-friendly haunt,” he explained. “We train our actors, ‘Look, if you see a little kid who’s crying, leave them alone, right? If you see somebody having a panic attack, you stop scaring them. This isn’t so-and-so’s backwoods haunted trail where you get to run people out in the road because it’s fun.’ We’re serving our customers. … We have nothing demonic. We try not to be too gory or do anything that’s too grotesque.”

Although the entire theme park is geared towards families, he warned that attractions like Nightmare Factory, Extraction, and the Chop Shop are designed to be a bit more intense.

However, every attraction has customer service representatives that are there to help guide visitors that need to tap out of the experience.

Each year, over 1,000 people come through on opening weekend, and since opening, the theme park has expanded from its initial 25-30 acres to a whopping 75 acres of fear-based fun.

For Settlemyre, haunts are kind of a family business, with his father, Scott, volunteering on a haunted trail when he was in high school to raise money for a fire department.

The Settlemyres eventually opened a haunted trail on their property when Settlemyre was 6 years old, where he helped scare people and they donated the money to a woman battling cancer.

“From there, I was totally into haunts,” he said. “Then I went to Disney World, and Disney World was just a huge inspiration for me. I really like creating immersive environments and we had a great opportunity with family land.”

Not one to sit out on the fun, visitors can find Settlemyre around the park as the character, Shepherd, although he’ll be donning a costume, a mask, and trying to scare the daylights out of anyone who spots him.