The traditional Halloween was a celebration of the harvest. Oftentimes, a family would assemble around a campfire to share ghost stories. Today, Halloween has morphed into a holiday celebrated by wearing scary costumes, trick-or-treating and haunted houses, but it still has roots in the harvest with events like the haunted hayride.
What you’ll need
No fundraising Halloween event is quite as spook-tacular without a haunted hayride. And even though it might sound like a lot of work, don’t let that have you running scared before you even get started. In reality, a Halloween hayride only requires 3 basic elements:
- A Truck with a flatbed or a tractor with a flat trailer attachment
- Hay bales
- Decorations
Safety First
The thing that scares most people off having a haunted hayride as a fundraising event is the idea of insurance, but it’s really nothing to shriek about. All you need to do is call your insurance provider beforehand to discuss the type of coverage you’ll need. It’s really quite simple.
If the haunted hayride is taking place on your property (if you’re a farmer or someone who owns a few acres), you can put the insurance under your home insurance coverage. If the hayride is operating off-site, you will need to secure insurance with the location owner’s insurance company.
Either way, you will need a policy that covers liability and damage based on the approximate length of your haunted hayride.
How to get things rolling
Next, you’ll need to borrow or rent a truck with a flatbed or a tractor with a flatbed trailer attachment for your hayride. The flatbed and attachment should have rails so riders can enjoy a safe ride. You’ll also need to fill the flatbed with bails of hay for people to sit on. You might even choose to decorate your hayride with Halloween décor.
Just make sure that you don’t use objects that can fall or roll onto riders, like pumpkins, unless they are secured tightly into place when the hayride is in motion.
Volunteer Ghouls (aka: helpers)
Seek volunteers to help you with the hayride. These volunteers might:
- Sell and collect tickets
- Act as rotational drivers
- Help decorate your haunted hayride either the day of or night before so decorations don’t get ruined if it rains
- Act as ghoulish face painters
- Construct various stations along the hayride route—a haunted house, snack/refreshment stand, a faux cemetery, pumpkin patch, corn maze, etc.
- And, to make your hayride truly haunted, volunteers to dress up and act as monsters to scare people and give out candy during the ride
Scream all about it
The last thing you’ll need to do is get the word out about your Halloween hayride fundraiser. To do this you can easily take advantage of social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and blogs and forums associated with your charity cause. You can also post and distribute print ads at schools, community centers, churches and local companies.
Any printed or electronic advertisements should include the date(s), time(s), cost per person, the location, and directions, parking information and even recommending appropriate clothing wouldn’t be a bad idea. In addition, it’s wise to schedule a rain date so that your haunted hayride doesn’t get frightened away by bad weather.
