Read The Stories Behind the Storytellers to learn more about Field of Screams’ media night.

Before crazy clowns chased down gasping guests and zig-zagging zombies occupied haunted hallways, Field of Screams was once a field of spuds.

Jim Schopf remembers the rows of potatoes that used to fill the ground space of his family farm.

“Where we are standing right now, I remember just farming potatoes,” Schopf said. “None of this existed. The only thing that we did not build were the two barns.”

Brothers Gene Schopf and Jim Schopf, co-owners and founders of Field of Screams in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, turned what was once a farmer’s dreams into four family-friendly, nightmarish attractions.

In high school the brothers were inspired by a youth group that organized a haunted house called Scream in the Dark. Their inspiration turned their dad’s old barn into a makeshift haunted house full of Halloween decorations.

“We moved my dad’s equipment around and made our own Scream in the Dark,” Jim Schopf said. “We would invite our sister’s friends and our friends over for free, and we would jump out and scare them, and my mom would have cookies and cider afterwards.”

As the brothers got older their nightmares got bigger. Once Jim Schopf was in college and his brother was teaching high schoolers, they set out to make a little profit from a haunted hayride.

Jim Schopf explained that his enjoyment from organizing the haunted house was motivation to try out a haunted hayride.

As a member of the Millersville University wrestling team, Jim Schopf had no issue finding volunteer scare actors. After mowing paths through their dad’s cornfield and enlisting Jim Schopf’s college wrestling team, the fields started to produce a new crop — fear.

“Just strong crazy people. . . literally they’re not right in the head. It’s perfect,” Jim Schopf said. “They were like jumping out of trees and. . . breaking themselves almost. It was a pretty intense haunted hayride.”

The wrestling team’s chaos was only the beginning of the scares. The intense nature of the hayride began to draw the attention of many.

“Then we had people start showing up like, ‘can we help scare people?’ And we were like, ‘yeah put on this mask and go out there,’” Jim Schopf said.

As the park grew, the brothers juggled jobs as business owners, high school teachers and parents. The frightening foot traffic that the brothers were witnessing at the family farm tantalized them. To keep chasing their nightmares the brothers decided to drop one of the balls they had been juggling. Against their parents’ wishes in 2003 the brothers quit their jobs as teachers.

“It was definitely a huge risk, because you lose your health insurance, retirement, and all these benefits we had teaching,” Jim Schopf said.

Although they lost their benefits, they gained a community of eager actors.

Jim Schopf remarked that very few of the actors are professionally trained. What actors do not know they can learn from the scare school and scare university that Field of Screams offer.

“We try to meet everyone where they’re at and try to turn them into the best actor they can be,” Jim Schopf said. “For a lot of them they’re not looking to be actors, for them it’s like a club, a sport, a hobby. . . or this is their sense of purpose.”

As guests approach the mosaic of haunted buildings, trails, and carnival games, Krunk a disheveled clown lurks in the crimson light of the entrance arch.

Guests have been cowering, retreating or resorting to throwing food at him for the last 12 years that Kronk has been working at Field of Screams. Before joining the scare team, Krunk had no experience in acting. Krunk has learned a lot from chasing people back into the parking lot.

“You learn to read people. You can read just simple body language,” Krunk said. “Like you know that they’re afraid just by looking at them.”

Krunk may burst into the cramped photo booth while guests are posing for pictures and jump scare unsuspecting guests that are glued to their phones, but he is no monster. He will also take selfies with groups of friends, stand and chat with guests and co-workers alike, and point lost attendees in the right direction.

“This is a family environment, and we really like to keep it that way,” Krunk said.

There are four main attractions at Field of Screams: Haunted Hayride, Den of Darkness, Frightmare Asylum, and Nocturnal Wasteland. Each one is filled with scare actors as terrifying and as passionate as Krunk.

Each actor takes advantage of their convincing stage.

One attendee, Danile Gatjens explained that claustrophobic aspects of the Den of Darkness brought an unexpected realism to the staged attractions.

“I felt like everything was so real,” Gatjens said. “We had to crawl to get out.”

Pennsylvania residents Rachel Bredley and Ryan Showers have been to Field of Screams countless times. Showers expressed that fear takes many forms at Field of Screams.

“Each thing plays on a different fear,” Showers said. “The hayride is outside, and you feel exposed, the Den of Darkness is claustrophobic, so you feel trapped.”

The anxiety of walking through the Frightmare Asylum makes it one of Bredley’s favorite attractions. She further remarked that not knowing what will be around the corner ticks one’s brain into thinking it is reality.

“It does not feel cheesy like it’s not just Halloween decorations and people in costumes,” Rachel said.

Field of Screams began as just Halloween decorations and people in costumes.

“We wanted to see it grow we wanted to take the risk we thought we could turn this into something really cool,” Jim Schopf said.

And grow it did.

Those Halloween decorations and cheap costumes that the two brothers planted in high school grew into real fear.

Jim Schopf remarked that he could not imagine the act of trying to bottle up all the screams that occurred throughout all the attractions.

“We’re just this small family farm in Mountville,” Jim Schopf said.

While attendees toss up dust as they travel down the gray gravel road, Mountville is quickly forgotten.

As soon as guests put their car in park, they are transported to a place filled with ghastly ghouls, alarming aliens, deranged doctors and the memories of an old farm.

The dangers around every corner may distract the guests from the outside world. Jim Schopf, however, sees his family’s farm everywhere he looks.

The barn was once a silo filled with corn. The barn is now filled with creatures. The footpaths, which were once fields of crops, will never be forgotten by Jim Schopf.

“So many people have experienced something that we have created out of nothing,” Jim Schopf said. “At this point it’s over a million people who have come to Field of Screams over the years and have been terrorized and terrified, in a good way.”

This story was originally published on Stevenson Villager on October 1, 2025.