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Screams, laughter, and a chainsaw added to the symphony of noise echoing through the October night.
The InnSanity, created by Parker and Amber Mcfarlane, is located at Sunderland farms in Chester, Utah, is back for another year. With new additions to the haunt, they are excited to offer you an even more thrilling experience that will be sure to give you the scare of a lifetime.
“I’ve been in the haunted industry nineteen years,” said Parker Mcfarlane, co-owner of the InnSanity. “Having my own haunt is something I’ve dreamt about ever since I started in the haunted industry.”
The dream of having and running their own haunt had been floating around in the Mcfarlanes’ heads for a while, but they hadn’t settled on a theme yet.
“It’s kind of been brewing for eighteen, nineteen years,” Mcfarlane said. “This was originally going to be a haunted farm, [but] as we were brainstorming together, we thought we needed a better theme. There’s a lot of farms out here so we thought a motel would be pretty cool, and that’s kind of how it all became.”
Once they figured out the theme for the haunt, the next step was to figure out how to build it. Using old storage containers and journeying to thrift stores to find props and set pieces, The InnSanity slowly but surely came into existence.
“Parker helped build the Haunted Hollow in Ogden, Utah,” said Amber Mcfarlane, an alumna of NS, Parker’s wife and co-owner of the InnSanity. “He helped build the Strangling Brothers Haunted Circus in American Fork. He also worked at the Haunted Forest.”
Having worked in and built multiple haunts, Mcfarlane was able to figure everything out and get the ball rolling. The next challenge that awaited them was finding a cast to bring all the characters to life.
“Normally the biggest challenge was getting a good cast together,” said Mcfarlane. “I don’t know how it happened, but we had the best cast last year.”
By word of mouth and social media, the Mcfarlanes’ were able to put together a cast that consisted of NS drama students, old colleagues and their family members.
“It’s really good for my first job to work with somebody that I know and their really good employers,” said Ava Sunderland, Amber and Parker’s niece. “It was fun and it was a really good work environment. We all knew what we were doing. They had clear work schedules and clear expectations.”
Despite the challenges that this year brings, the Mcfarlanes have decided to open up the haunt again this year.
“We were really debating whether or not we could open up until probably about two and a half months ago when we finally made the decision, ok we’re opening,” said Mcfarlane. “We’ve expanded, we’ve added new rooms, we added new props, we added a little hay maze at the end. My goal this year is to provide the public with something where they can just forget about Covid-19 and come out and have a good time, still be safe and still be clean, and just have a good time.”
With the InnSanity reopening this year, the Mcfarlanes are facing another problem, getting the word out.
“Getting the word out has probably been the most challenging,” said Mcfarlane. “We’ve got two things working against us: one, we’re kind of in a rural area, and two, our location isn’t really easy to find. I really think the biggest challenge for us is making sure people know we are here.”
One of the ways the Mcfarlanes are combating this challenge is through word of mouth and social media accounts on Instagram and Facebook.
“Social media of course is probably the biggest pull that we had. Most of it was word of mouth and social media,” said Mcfarlane.
The Mcfarlanes are eagerly awaiting the reopening of the InnSanity, October 2nd, and giving the public a place where they can enjoy themselves and escape the worries of the world.
“Last year I spent most of my time just at the exit and walking through,” said Mcfarlane. “Hearing the people scream and come running out of the haunt laughing and screaming and then they can’t stop talking about it, that’s what it’s all about, right there.”
